Chapter Text
Wealth. Fame. Power. Monkey D. Luffy, the King of the Pirates, attained everything this world had to offer. He found the One Piece. And even more than the treasure of the previous Pirate King Gol D. Roger, he attained the most sought treasure of mankind for all the world to rejoice in– the treasure of Freedom.
More priceless than all the gold of the world. More renown than Heaven itself and its golden gates. More powerful than the Gods and all their fickleness. Straw Hat Luffy won freedom for every poor enslaved soul, whether they’d been an actual slave or enslaved to the rigid unfair order that had structured their society, by dismantling the Celestial Dragons and defeating the one who sat upon the throne of the world. And as he stood atop that crumbled palace atop the world as they knew it, the Straw Hat Crew and Grand Fleet surrounding him in his victory, his grin was one that would be remembered for the rest of their history.
However, that is not where the story of Straw Hat Luffy ends. Even death itself was not the end of his story. For the power this man had attained was not one to be reached without equal consequence.
The brightest souls burned on the shortest fuse, burning all their light in one, bursting supernova before they faded into the dark. Monkey D. Luffy spent the last of his life in a battle against the rival pirate Black Beard when the other attempted to take advantage of the instability left in the wake of the power vacuum. The Straw Hat Crew defeated all who tried to tear apart the freedom they had won, and in turn, fell shortly after the end of their war.
But not a single one regretted their end. Because to these supposedly lawless, no-good pirates, to die together with their Nakama was the best death one could have. Luffy was the same. Smiling at the people he loved most in the world, he was the first to move on to the next grand adventure.
“The next grand adventure”– usually for the ilk of pirates, this would refer to Hell. Another world where the souls of various mortal realms were condemned to as punishment for their sins in life. However, this man was the King of the Pirates, the one who had won the freedom of his world, and to top it off had the touch of the divine within. So instead, Straw Hat Luffy opened his eyes to see the shining gold gates of Heaven, as well as the Seraph who stood before them in greeting. She had been expecting him.
“Welcome, Monkey D. Luffy. It is not every day we have the chance to receive the soul of a divine being, so I thought to induct you personally,” Sera’s voice resounded with the importance those words deserved, even bowing her head slightly as a show of respect before she straightened to smile at the once mortal man.
The reincarnation of Nika merely stared at her, but a certain amount of readjustment was expected when it came to transitioning to the afterlife. She did not hold it against him, clarifying, “The realm of Heaven awaits you.”
“Heaven…? Oh, so that’s real,” it was a rather simple statement, given the man apparently hadn’t believed in the divine beforehand. His head only tilted in confusion when he moved on to ask, “And what’d ya mean divine being? I’m no god, I’m the Pirate King!”
The title was declared with boasting pride. Luffy smiled up at her with his hands planted on his waist, grin taking up most of his small face. Even with how long Sera had been in existence, she found the sight rather… endearing, and found herself smiling just a bit more than the polite cordialness she usually possessed. But such is the nature of Nika, she supposed.
“If you are not aware, that can also be explained in time. For now, I must bring you into your new world as well as explain the ground rules of how things work here.”
She moved to wave a hand at the gates, intending to open them, only to be interrupted by Luffy speaking up, “Huh? Rules?! I have to follow rules even though I’m dead?!”
Sera turned back to examine the man’s apparent outrage, her smile fading. She tried to ignore the slight absurdity of the situation to give a serious explanation, “But of course. How ever would Heaven maintain its order without its many divine ordainments? For the sake of ensuring the peace, happiness, and safety of all our people, they must all follow our rules.”
“ …In that case, can I just go somewhere else then?”
She stared at the man. He stared back.
He was being serious, and she couldn’t comprehend how that could be the case.
Still, Sera maintained her propriety as she slowly explained, “The only other place you could go to is Hell. Would you truly prefer a realm of depravity and pain over the light of Heaven?”
“Do they have rules there too?” Surely, this being a bad joke would be preferable to this divine being honestly asking–
“Yes. Sinners are not permitted past the top Ring of Hell, the Ring of Pride. There is also an order ordained in Hell, though it is headed by Lucifer and his Sins rather than Heaven itself, and their control is not absolute. So while technically there is more room for unlawful behavior, it is not without its own rules– ”
“So I can just break the rules there like I usually do. That’s fine then! Can you send me there instead?” and then as though in afterthought, Luffy’s brows furrowed for a short second before his smile returned in full to add on, “Can you send me there please?”
“You know not what you ask, you fool…”
Sera finally had to put her foot down. Her one voice echoed into many. The eyes of Heaven opened upon her person and her form shifted, wings spreading wide.
Frowning severely, she intoned, “Hell is a pit of suffering! You, who have earned your place in eternal rest, do not deserve to be condemned! It is not safe there. Not only due to its inhabitants, but also due to Heaven’s culling of the populous to maintain our order. You do not deserve to be among those sacrificed in the Exterminations. Therefore, you need only accept the place you are meant to now reside.”
She began to calm herself as she spoke, at first certain that her frankness would allow this fool to see the error of his ways. But when she witnessed the way Monkey D. Luffy’s grin fell into an unimpressed stare… she recognized he was not moved.
Crossing his arms over his chest, Luffy tilted his head ever so slightly as he scoffed, “Now I really don’t wanna go with you. What kinda Heaven is this? It’s like the stupid Nobles all over again!”
Offense rose in a fiery burn as she immediately objected, “Do not compare the sanctity of true divinity with the like of those conceited mortals– ”
“Why shouldn’t I? The only truth I know is what I see, and what I see is that I won’t be free in this place! So I won’t go!” with that last huff, the man had the nerve to turn his back to her, insisting, “But fine. If you won’t send me there, I’ll just find that other place myself.”
Sera scoffed with the derision that idea deserved, “That is not how the afterlife works, Monkey D. Luffy. One cannot simply move to the other realm of their own will– ”
“Oh wait– I think I can see it all the way down there. Nice, that was easy! Even Zoro would’ve been able to find it… or not! Haha!” stupidly grinning at his own private joke, Luffy glanced back at Sera for one short wave before looking down through the clouds that made up the ground as once again.
“Well bye I guess, Angel-lady! You’re an angel, right? Whatever. If any of my crew get sent here, could you just send them down where I am instead? That’d be great! Thanks!”
He thanked her without Sera having even agreed to his absurd request. Then, with a hand firmly planted on his straw hat, took one step out into a now open space –since when had the path cleared?!– and simply… fell.
Entirely by his own will, the King of the Pirates, the one who had won the freedom of his world, the reincarnation the Sun God Nika himself, fell down into Hell.
Sera could hear his rambunctious laughter echo back up into the Heavens in his freefall, trailing off the further he went until it faded back into the ether from wince it came. Evidently, he found falling from Heaven all the way down to Hell to be a thrilling experience.
For one moment, she was stuck in place, staring without comprehension at the sight. The next, she reflected on what had occurred to lead to such a horrid turn of events. She even considered the accusations the man had put forward, wondering if the order of Heaven and the dirty work of its Exterminations was not as it was, would Monkey D. Luffy have accepted their world? There was even a small, quiet part of her that questioned that if a being of such a caliber had not thought them worthy… did Heaven truly shine as brightly as they believed it to?
And then the rumination was ruined in the next moment, when Sera thought of the news she would have to bring back beyond the gates. Handing raising to cover the normal set of eyes on her face, she sighed deeply.
“Oh Lords above have mercy… Garp is never going to shut up after he hears about this!”
It was a happy day in Hell. Or at least, it was for the Radio Demon.
There was some commotion occurring in the heart of Pentagram City, a particularly messy turf war no doubt. The fires that spread from various explosions was so extensive, the smell of burning flesh permeated the air. It was quite the enticing scent. One that drew out the hunger that was always seated deep within his gut, tempting him to indulge in a light pre-supper snack. Thus, Alastor decided to have a short trip out to see if there were any prime cuts lying around that he could partake in.
Of course, he had been a tad too optimistic about the matter. Gasoline and dirty oil driven fires did not make for a fine dining experience, and what choice parts there were he found much too overdone by the time he came upon them. He collected a couple arms and legs regardless, though. His standards were known to be quite high after all. A good portion of Cannibal Town would find the meat to be a proper hardy meal, so might as well not let the corpses go to waste and make some extra money off the sale.
His shadow had just finished swallowing an upper torso when the next thing of interest caught his eye. Or rather, it almost caught his entire body. If he’d not taken a good number of steps back into the alleyway he’d been standing beside, a newly fallen sinner would’ve slammed down right into him.
“Oh! Why, hello there! Have a nice fall? Aha!” it was overdone, but a classic was a classic. Alastor allowed himself a short, distorted chuckle that was echoed by a grainy laugh-track. His eternal grin curled just a tad mean.
His gaze swept over the sinner as the guy pulled himself out of the rather comical crater he’d smashed into the pavement. Alastor didn’t usual bother himself with others unless they’d proven themselves to be interesting, but since the newest poor unfortunate soul had given him a nice laugh, he supposed the man deserved at least an initial glance over.
The sinner was rather casual about the crash landing, simply moving to stand and brush himself off. Seemingly not in pain. His form was mostly that of a tan humanoid demon, a good head shorter than Alastor, with a slim, black-furred tail that swished behind him and a matching set of round ears that peaked out of the sides of his hair just beneath the straw hat atop his head. He seemed unconcerned with modesty, though not to a perverted extent thankfully, donning torn shorts and leaving his red shirt open to reveal his chest and the striking, large red X marring its center. His hands were also somewhat larger than normal, likely better for gripping, and Alastor allowed one of his brows to raise slightly when he glanced down to see the other’s sandals showcased slightly elongated, prehensile feet. Very clearly a monkey-demon, then. A somewhat uncommon form. Perhaps he liked monkeying around in life? Another knee-slapper right there!
Glancing back up at the man’s face, Alastor realized it looked more like a boy’s. He was rather young, though whether that was due to being young at heart or dying young remained to be seen. The only feature to mar his face was a thin red scar that curved underneath one eye. Wide eyes, black and round, stared back into his own gaze with a lack of fear Alastor tributed to simple ignorance as the boy asked, “Hey, Deer-Guy. Is this place Hell?”
A track of applause played as Alastor gestured the mic-head of his cane towards the sinner in a mocking bow. Grin growing even wider, he congratulated, “Got it in one! Bravo! Though, it is quite rude of you to refer to my person as deer-guy, monkey-boy. But I suppose I myself failed to showcase proper manners by not introducing myself first. The name is Alastor, at your service. To whom do I owe the pleasure of welcoming to eternal damnation?”
There were a number of reactions Alastor anticipated the other having. Wariness at his presence. Despair at the sinner learning of his fate. Or perhaps hopeless resignation, considering the boy had been quick assume he’d landed in the pit. One reaction that he had not expected in the slightest, however, was for the monkey-demon to gain his own wide grin. A much happier, more genuine one than Alastor’s at that.
“Great! I hadn’t been sure this was the right place when I jumped down here. Shishishi! Thanks Deer-Guy!” Alastor had to withhold a twitch at the repeated moniker, though it wasn’t difficult to do so considering his preoccupation with the unusual statement that had come before it. Standing proudly the boy declared, “I’m Monkey D. Luffy– The King of the Pirates!”
His name is actually Monkey? That’s hilarious. Though based on the way it was spoken, Alastor assumed it was the boy’s family name and that he originated from a place of that sort of naming order. However, he was not about to give up the perfect opportunity to refer to someone as Monkey.
Another point of consideration, though, was the second portion of his introduction. Alastor has heard mention of the title “King of the Pirates” previously. The people who spoke of it all came from a different world than Earth, where most of Hell’s sinners and Alastor himself fell from. They spun tales of a world covered almost entirely in ocean, the vast majority of the land taking the form of islands, and it was only more recently that they began to tell tales of the Pirate King. A criminal who’d presumably gained quite a bit of infamy before his execution where he had kickstarted a new era of piracy as people set out to sea in search for his hidden treasure. All the sinners who’d spoken of him seemed quite surprised whenever they learned that this Gold Roger was nowhere to be found, suggesting the man had somehow managed to weasel his way into Heaven.
It had been interesting to hear about such things, which was the only real reason Alastor knew of it to begin with. As far as he was aware it was knowledge most of hell’s residents weren’t aware of. They’d only learn of it if they happened upon a mortal of that realm who happened to be in the mood to speak of their past. It was also interesting to hear this Monkey claim the very same title for himself. “Is that so? Well, dear Monkey fellow, in that case may I ask you a certain inquiry? I’m not of the same world that you’ve come from, so while I’ve heard of these so-called Pirate Kings I know no real knowledge of the topic.”
Monkey tilted his head in a visually questioning look, likely having no idea what Alastor meant in saying he wasn’t from his world, but that wasn’t a matter Alastor was concerned with. Instead, he leaned in just a tad closer to grin at the boy and question, “What exactly qualifies a person to be King of the Pirates? It does not sound like the pirates of your world participate in an actual form of unified governance, so it is no true king, but at the same time there is still a tangible respect owed to the position. If you truly obtained such a title, how did you earn it? Did you acquire the most wealth? Did you commit some dastardly, evil deed, one that outweighed all the sins of all other pirates? Did you rule over the vastest territory? Come now, don’t leave me in suspense.”
“Huh? Nah, that kinda thing’s got nothing to do with it,” Monkey insisted, somehow both firmly and joyfully. He laughed that unique laugh of his at the thought. It teased Alastor’s half-hearted curiosity into something closer to full intrigue.
“Shishishi! I became the Pirate King when I found the One Piece, but that’s not the important part. The thing that’s most important, the reason why I dreamed of becoming Pirate King… is that the king of the sea is the freest person in the world!”
At that response, something shifted in Alastor’s being.
Not in some minor tap or adjustment, but in a full body tilt. A mind or world turned upside down. Intrigue, morbid curiosity, amusement; they all faded away into some other sort of feeling. Something somehow both vast and tiny, both full and empty. The very definition of bittersweet both settled and stirred inside his being.
Suddenly the world around him faded away. He could do nothing but focus on this boy, who still smiled at him so brightly. As though they weren’t stuck down in some deep, dark place. Or rather, the place that should have surrounded them simply failed to exist, so long as he was present.
“I’m the freest! I live my life freely, and I became strong enough to keep that freedom. No one’s able to stop me! So that’s how I did it. That’s what being King of the Pirates means.”
–What a nice dream that is, indeed. To be free…–
Alastor forced himself out of the strangeness, almost like blinking out of a spell though he recognized no actual magic was involved. The ambient sounds of the city streets returned, accompanied by the residual scent of brimstone and ugly wreck that’d been left behind after a foreign struggle. The Monkey boy was still grinning at him, apparently having no clue as to the impact his words had had on Alastor.
The Radio Demon preferred to keep it that way. His own grin was still intact, so he was still in control of the conversation. Still in control period.
Purposely leaning back, he distilled his unwanted instinctual reaction into as watered-down of a response as he could, “Oh my, that is quite an interesting line of thought. Much more conceptual of an idea than I had expected. And I do also admit to… underestimating you, if it could be called that. I had not pegged you to be a wise sort of fellow. A pleasant surprise, I assure you! Credit where credit is due and all.”
Instead of either accepting the somewhat backhanded compliment or lashing back at it –he would’ve found either outcome to be favorable– Monkey instead sent him a doubtful look. As though he’d said something incredibly unusual. “What’re ya talkin’ about? I didn’t say anything smart. Being free is just the best treasure there is! Isn’t that obvious?”
Again, for someone that comes off as simple to the point most would see it as stupidity, there is an aspect of that simplicity that manages to bring clarity to mudded waters with impressive ease. Alastor found himself wondering if he was overestimating the man, or perhaps underestimating him even still.
“…I would say you aren’t too far off the mark in your beliefs, but you’d be surprised how many people of this world come to value other things over their freedom. Though often not by their own preference. As you mentioned, one must be strong enough to keep their freedom as well.”
As a dealmaker, he makes an art of tricking people out of their freedom. Finding those hidden weaknesses, digging up whatever enticements an individual could believe to be more valuable than their very soul, whether that be wealth, fame, power. Safety, in the case they’re left to choose between second death and their being.
Alastor was suddenly struck with the desire to boast this aspect of himself. Brag about how he has made his mark as a demon by depriving people of the treasure this boy valued above all else. To force this Monkey to hate him, as he rightfully should. Alastor felt as though it would set right the feeling of wrongness that had come to weigh on himself.
But then the boy’s smile returned to shine bright once more. And Alastor, with the same sort of suddenness, found himself disinclined of the prospect that should have amused him.
“I like you, Al!” You do?
“You’re a nice guy!” And you’re quite the idiot apparently!
“Join my crew!”
“ …Excuse me?”
“Join my crew!” the Monkey repeated, as though Alastor’s befuddlement came from lack of hearing rather than lack of total comprehension, “Even though I’m dead I’m still a pirate, so I still need a crew! Everyone else is still on their way, but that’s okay. I’ll just introduce you to them once we find ‘em! It’ll be fun!”
Alastor stared at the boy. He stared back.
Alastor’s grin pulled tight as he attempted to keep the feeling of utter bewilderment off his face, while the boy just grinned, like there wasn’t a single care in the entire world–
“I believe you are under the delusion of some gross misconceptions,” Alastor kept his tone carefully contained as he wagged a finger at the boy, his grin curling into a sharp sort of meanness. He immediately revised his decision of provoking this Monkey into hating him.
“You do not like me, for you cannot like me if you do not know me. I am not nice, practically any soul in Hell will testify to that fact. And though this should be obvious enough that I shouldn’t have to say it– I have absolutely no interest in joining the crew of some has-been pirate! Truly, you should not have given such an offer so quickly in the first place. We’ve barely had a single conversation! I would have been in my rights to accept under false pretenses for the purpose of bringing ruin to you! Dismantling your crew from the inside out to leave you wallowing in eternal misery!”
As the background distortion of his voice twisted further and further into static, Alastor’s face shifted into something more demonic. Red pupils glowing bright as radio dials, black antlers growing wider and larger, his stature growing just a bit taller to properly loom over the Monkey– The Radio Demon grinned down with menacing, sharp teeth fully bared.
Monkey just beamed at him, completely unbothered. “Woah! That’s creepy! Cool! Anyway– yeah, you could’ve done that. But you didn’t, so it doesn’t matter.”
Alastor missed a beat at the unexpected blasé response.
Shifting back to a less intimidating visage, he raised his brows at the other. “It does matter, because it is something I am capable of and would truly consider doing. For all you speak of loving freedom, you could be precariously close to losing it should I ever be so inclined. I make a business out of entrapping souls, you see, being what they refer to as a dealmaker. I imagine you would no longer have any misconception about liking me once I own your very soul and person.”
At that, Monkey finally frowned at him. But it didn’t bring Alastor much satisfaction since boy was looking at him like he was the stupid one here. “That doesn’t matter either cause I wouldn’t let you own me. That’s never gonna happen.”
“Never going to happen– The point is that you wouldn’t have the choice to begin with– ” Alastor cut himself off preemptively as the sight of the Monkey glancing away in obvious boredom. Despite all logic he was clearly getting nowhere with that argument. The boy wouldn’t even bother to listen to an explanation of how horribly wrong he was.
So instead, Alastor escalated, “On top of that, even in life I was an awful individual. I gained quite a bit of infamy as serial killer. In fact, I’ve grown even worse in death and quite enjoy eating the flesh of my victims. My desire for human meat is without end! It’s why I had ventured out today– I was in the middle of picking up some delicious pickings!”
To emphasize his words and the sing-song twisted joy he said them with, Alastor’s shadow momentarily materialized to spit out the torso it contained. He leaned forward with a mischievous cruel grin while gesturing his cane down at the burnt, bloody piece of carcass.
The Monkey’s face pulled into a familiar expression of disgust –Finally, a normal reaction out of the lad! However, as a few seconds of silence passed by… the young face shifted into one of reconsideration. Eyeing the torso with honest curiosity.
“ …Does it really taste good?”
Another few seconds passed by, once again.
Alastor dissolved into an amorphous shadow. When he rematerialized, he was back in the hotel lobby.
“Let me guess, the meat out there was too medium-rare for ya, huh?” Husker deadpanned with an eyeroll from his place behind the bar top. Alastor left his kept soul be as he began strolling back up to his radio tower.
“Quite right.” He did not run from the conversation. He did not. It was merely a strategic retreat, no shame in that. No sense in attempting to converse with a person so incomprehensible. It was much simpler to wash his hands of the matter right there and subsequently never deal with that Monkey again.
To Alastor’s vast misfortune, however, it was not to be.
Later that same day, he was interrupted from his musings by the Princess of Hell’s squeal echoing up to his residence. Evidently very excited about something. So with a smile of anticipation for the upcoming entertainment, Alastor slinked through the shadows to materialize atop the balcony overseeing the hotel’s lobby.
Only for his smile to freeze in place at the sight of the damned demon Monkey looking around the place, same exact stupid grin on his face as before.
While the others gathered around to get a look at the new meat, the Princess of course gushed, fully unaware of Alastor’s plight, “Oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh– Are you here to check yourself into our hotel and set out on the path of redemption for Heaven?! Mister…?”
“I’m no mister. I’m Monkey D. Luffy, King of the Pirates!” It’s like he’s physically incapable of introducing himself without mentioning the title. The Monkey, as Alastor could predict by this point, ignored Charlie’s expression falling into confusion to keep rambling, “And nah, I don’t wanna go to Heaven. I decided to come here instead.”
That was the boy’s second mention of him, apparently, willingly choosing Hell over Heaven. Quite the curious thing. Alastor might’ve been intrigued to test and prod such a person if the Monkey hadn’t already cemented himself as such a pest. Though, it was somewhat amusing to watch the way the majority of the hotel’s residents fell into a spectrum of blank confusion.
Charlie, ever the innocent sweetling, of course failed to comprehend the implication. Her head tilted slightly as she examined the boy and questioned, “Wh…What? You don’t want to go to Heaven? But why? And then, why are you here if not for that?”
The Monkey smiled at her, and –to his annoyance– the look inspired Charlie to regain a bit of her footing and return a somewhat uneasy smile back. Much less fun than watching someone else be baffled by the creature.
“Because I wouldn’t be free there! And I’m here because when I asked around about Al, someone said that he stays at this Ham-Bin Hotel. Where’s the ham?!”
…
After a split second of being torn between raging over some soon-to-be murdered stranger giving away Alastor’s location verses the absolute hilarity of the Monkey getting the hotel name so horribly wrong, the scales finally tilted to one side upon Charlie’s look of horrified shock. As though the boy had just said he’d killed her first born.
Alastor tried his best to muffle his cackling laughter in the hand covering his face, but he knew it was for not. Ham-Bin. Ham-Bin. Where’s the ham? Comedians could only pray to the Heavens to write material this idiotic–
“It’s Hazbin. Hazbin Hotel,” the visually unimpressed Vaggie spoke up on behalf of her currently disposed girlfriend, pointing a finger back towards the door to say, “You know, like what’s written on the giant neon sign hanging at the top of the building?”
The Monkey just blinked his wide, innocent eyes at the woman. “The sign? Oh, I didn’t read it cause I don’t like reading. So there’s no ham?”
“NO! For the last time, there’s NO HAM!”
Alastor’s cackling pitched sharper at the sight of Vaggie’s glaring frustration paired with the Monkey’s face falling into clear disappointment. Not being able to help himself, he banged his free fist on top of the balcony banister he leaned over. He hasn’t laughed this hard in weeks.
Karma is quite the bitch though, as they say, and so it was only natural that Alastor’s escalating laugh drew the attention of those bellow. It cut off immediately upon round, black eyes spotting him. The Monkey’s grin returned in full force.
Having recovered her state of mind, Charlie glanced back and forth between Alastor and the boy questioningly as she realized the statement that had prefaced the Ham debacle. “Uh– Wait, what did you need Alastor for?”
The Monkey beamed her, bright as the sun. “He’s gonna join my pirate crew!”
“No– ” Alastor had to withhold the growl that wanted to unfurl in his voice, he ignored the others’ stares to clarify, “I most certainly stated that I will not be joining any crew of any sort. If you are here to convince me otherwise, I strongly suggest you leave~ ”
While drawling that last word, he finally did what he should’ve done on the street and opened up the floor to summon a medium-sized black tendril. It wrapped itself around the surprised Monkey, then, promptly threw him out the still open door.
Or rather, it would’ve had the boy not begun clinging to the thing like an actual monkey. As it wriggled violently in an attempt to rid itself of the unwanted baggage, Monkey laughed with the exact same cadence of excitement as a child on a theme park ride, “Ahahaha! What’s this mystery tentacle thing?! It’s fun!”
“This guy’s Nuts with a capital N. And not the good kind…”
“Well if he’s goin’ around sayin’ he’s a king pirate and lookin’ to recruit that guy into his supposed pirate crew, that’s to be expected…”
“I dunno, he seems like a fun kinda guy!”
“Monkey boy go swing swing, hehehe~ ”
Unperturbed and ignoring the remarks muttered back and forth between Angel Dust, Husker, Cherri Bomb, and Niffty, Alastor switched tactics. The tendril reoriented itself, wrapping around the small body with the intent to squeeze the life out of it.
It twisted hard, choking the laughter, but from his connection with the thing… Alastor recognized an unusual sensation. Instead of the wet sack that threatened to burst with just a bit too much force that usually was the mortal body, there was an elastic sort of resistance. Like squeezing a toy. He could clench as hard as he wanted, and the body would give with too much ease, only for it to expand back perfectly fine as soon as the pressure let up. There was no danger of it bursting apart in an ugly mess of internal organs and blood.
“A-Alastor– !”
“He’s fine dear. Unfortunately,” he immediately dismissed the Princess’s concern, more focused on examining the squeaky toy monkey of a demon with a peculiar look, “Monkey, what are you exactly? Most demons would find themselves with broken spines and limbs after this sort of treatment.”
After notably catching his breath, the Monkey directed his plain gaze back towards Alastor absent of any sort of malice. Like Alastor hadn’t just been choking the boy out with a monstrous tentacle from Hell. In demonstration, he pulled at one of his cheeks to show it stretch out absurdly. It reached a full arm’s length before he let go and it snapped back into place. “I’m a rubber man.”
No further explanation was given. After a short silence, Angel cupped his chin with one hand while leaving the other three to perch on his hips and hummed, “Huh… I can’t tell if that’d be good or bad for sex– ”
Charlie forcefully interrupted in a sad attempt to maintain some sort of dignity to the conversation, because she failed to realize it had already long been lost beforehand, “You’ve– certainly gotten a good handle on your demon powers after such a short time here! Or at least, it doesn’t seem like you’ve been here that long…?”
“Ha! Yeah, I just got here! That’s how I met Al. I almost landed on him!” was stated much too joyfully for Alastor’s liking. The boy almost casually clarified, “That’s just how I was when I was alive too, so ‘course it’d be the same!”
The Princess opened her mouth. Closed it. Then opened it again to question incredulously, “You… mean to say you were made of rubber… when you were alive, as a human being?”
“Yeah! Exactly! It’s cause of the fruit I ate.”
Reflecting on the various gossip he’s heard, Alastor hummed to himself as he remembered mention of those strange Devil Fruits from that sea-covered world. Ones that would give fantastical powers to those that consumed one. Apparently their users tended to become quite strong, so it wasn’t strange for certain pirates to have them despite supposedly being uncommon to find. It only made sense that such an intrinsic trait would carry over to a being’s demon form, which was commonly influenced by a variety of personal traits including personality, interests, skills, and method of death.
Of course, among those present he was likely the only one who knew that with the exception of one other, so everyone else looked at the Monkey like he was a psycho. As was deserved.
The glaring exception in question, however, was one certain also annoying individual who’d stayed quiet throughout this whole farce…
The King of Hell slowly approached Alastor’s tendril to bat at it lightly with his cane. Choosing to oblige rather than pick a fight, Alastor released the boy and retracted the limb, much to his own displeasure. Lucifer stood directly in front of the Monkey, who just stared back in curiosity. It was easy for the two of them to meet the others’ gaze since they were the same height, which would’ve been hilarious if not for the foreboding feeling Alastor was left with.
For a brief moment, Lucifer glanced back towards him with a wretched smirk. Alastor grinned back sharply in warning, but it was obviously ignored as the King looked back to the boy. He knew exactly what the guy was going to pull–
“You wouldn’t be free, huh? I can empathize with that sort of feeling. You don’t deserve to be maimed by the Radio Demon just cause he doesn’t know how to play nice,” Lucifer mused almost fantastically, referring back to the beginning of the conversation before transitioning to a new, unwanted thought, “Even if you’re not trying for redemption, I don’t see why you couldn’t stay at the hotel anyway. We’ve got plenty of space and if you’re new, you haven’t found somewhere to stay yet. What’d ya think? Wanna stay close to Al here?”
Monkey lit up like a star in the sky in the same second Alastor forced his frame not to tense up. To his even further displeasure, the sentiment was echoed–
“I guess I wouldn’t mind havin’ the kid around. Not like we don’t already got crazy people livin’ here…” even while Husker deadpanned without looking his way, Alastor knew the cat had agreed for the sole purpose of pestering him. He would find a way to make him pay for that.
Like the bandwagoner he was, Angel Dust raised multiple hands and jumped at the opportunity to join in on Alastor’s suffering, “I second that! The guy might help liven things up around here… And even if he’s nuts, he’s still a cutie~ ”
Monkey just stared blankly at Angel’s suggestive wink, not reacting in the slightest even while Husker groaned at the come on. Cherri sounded a hum of agreement. Niffty giggled that cute maniacal laugh of hers at the prospect. Even Vaggie, the ex-angel who usually never willing mixed herself into the trouble the others stirred, grew a lopsided half smirk at the thought of bothering Alastor and sent her paramour a nod.
After watching everyone’s reactions, Charlie slowly turned her head up to look at him with an apologetic smile, hands clashed together in placation. Alastor let his own smile go tight in response.
“Now, Alastor– I don’t want you to be uncomfortable or bothered or anything, but… Part of the vision of our hotel is to accept anyone who comes to our door. I don’t think it’d be right to turn him away…”
He could see that he was clearly outvoted in this but refused to give his own consent on principle. Instead of responding, he retreated back into the shadows in what he knew the King would interpret as a show of surrender, and the very thought of that broiled like the fires of Hell that surrounded them.
Now back in his tower, Alastor finally allowed himself a deep sigh of utter annoyance. Today was not a happy day in Hell. In fact, it was likely the third worst day in Hell that he’d had.
However, in the back of his mind, in a brush of a whisper he thought… at the very least, things should be entertaining for a good while, now. While Monkey D. Luffy was certainly an annoyance, he could never be accused of being boring. And that counted for much in Alastor’s book.
Notes:
Edit to add this wonderful fanart of Alastor meeting Luffy made by the artist novahee over on twitter!
Chapter 2: Full House
Chapter Text
Alastor had hoped to go at least a couple of days without having to deal with the new Monkey infesting his hotel, but as he was quickly coming to learn, the pest seemed to know just what to do to pull at Alastor’s nerves.
He hadn’t even made it until the next day when, upon the end of one of his more casual regular radio broadcasts, the trap door leading up into his radio tower suddenly slammed open. Monkey’s straw hat covered head peaked out of the floorboards, smile practically taking up half his entire face. Alastor’s own smile pulled taunt as his eyes narrowed at the other.
In the next instance, a small tendril grew out of the floor to slam the door shut. But the slippery Monkey had already managed to scramble his way into the room. He stupidly looked around at everything in obvious curiosity.
“Wow! Is this place a lookout or somethin’? It’s so high up!” he exclaimed this while making a straight line for the balcony. It was a new installment Alastor had put in after having remade his radio tower. After slamming the door open to stand out under the awning, Monkey came right up against the fang-like spikes that took the place of a proper safety railing. He placed a hand on his hat to keep it in place while fully leaning the entire upper half of his body through one of the openings between them.
After raising his brow a bit at the scene, Alastor decided that he couldn’t possibly be expected to turn away from such obvious temptation. Or at least, the Princess shouldn’t expect that much from him. So while Monkey was busy laughing at the sight of how far down the ground was, Alastor causally made his own way to the balcony. Then, grin curling into a full smirk, he grasped the back of the other’s shirt to throw him up and over the edge.
But of course, that would’ve been much too easy. Rather than fall to his second death, Monkey’s hands grabbed onto one spike each and his arms stretched an absurd length as he fell. Once his descent had slowed and they’d gone fully taunt, Alastor took a few steps back when Monkey came shooting right back up. He flipped back over the poor excuse for railing to stick the landing back on the balcony.
Either completely ignorant to or ignoring the attempted murder, the boy grinned at Alastor with a laugh, “Shishishi! That was fun! I got so close to the ground before I flew back up!”
“…Yes, quite the fearless thrill seeker, aren’t you?” No use crying over lack of spilt blood. Arms clasped behind him, Alastor turned his back to the other to reenter the studio proper. He heard the Monkey follow him with a hum in the back of his throat. “And just so you are aware, this is no lookout. It’s my radio tower, where I set up broadcasts that play over airwaves throughout this Ring of Hell. They’ve become fairly well known throughout the realm due my broadcasts frequently featuring the dying screams of my enemies~ ”
Distorted static twisted his voice at the end with his bloodlust. His face twisted with it, his head circling around too much in a 180 that cracked his neck in the snapping motion.
But, of course, even now while the Monkey was staring at Alastor with his head twisted all the way to face the wrong side of his body, the boy just tilted his head to the side in a confused hum, “ …So it’s your mystery tower. Got it!”
“ …Do you not know what a radio is? A device which transmits sound across vast distances without the use of cables.”
“Never heard of it! Do you like ‘em? They sound kinda like some Denden Mushi.”
“And those are…?”
“Snails you use to call people!” Monkey explained with full confidence, then after his face scrunched in thought, cheerfully added, “And some of ‘em can show you what’s goin’ on somewhere or let you hear something!”
After trying –and failing– to envision these supposed snails that have essentially replaced the telephone, radio, and television of the other’s foreign world, Alastor promptly decided he wasn’t that interested in the matter unless he’d have the chance to actually see one for himself. Which was fairly unlikely. He also decided to magnanimously forgive the Monkey for never having heard of the radio before considering his world was also equally ignorant to the invention of the television.
It was only then that Monkey pointed at his improperly placed head and bluntly asked, “Do ya want help fixing that?”
“ …Not necessary,” was all Alastor replied before he snapped his head back the right way, facing away from Monkey again. “And yes, I do quite enjoy radio broadcasting. I’m the Radio Demon– much of my power is based on my influence over it.”
“Cool! That’s sorta like the names they put on pirate bounties! You think I could be the Straw Hat Demon?”
“That’d be quite the idiotic demon. So it suits you perfectly! I’m curious though, was the King perhaps the one to direct you to my tower?
“Who?”
After a short pause, Alastor glanced back at the other’s questioning stare, this time turning his body slightly rather than breaking his neck to do so. “King Lucifer?”
“Don’t know ‘em.”
Seeing he’d need to get deep into the weeds for this one, he clarified as simply as possible, “He talked to you. Blonde. Rosy cheeks. Large top hat to compensate for lack of height.”
“Ooohh Hat-Guy! Yeah, he said you’d be here!” As he thought. That annoying little pest of a royal…
“As I expected. Alright, that’s all I needed to ask of you. Now farewell! Don’t come back!”
With the sendoff, Alastor dissolved the trap door he’d led Monkey to stand over to recede into shadow. The Monkey yelped when he fell right through the empty space. He swiftly rematerialized the door behind the other’s exit.
Just before he could sweep away the issue as being resolved, however… A short moment afterwards, Alastor felt a twinge in the back of his mind. Someone had entered his quarters.
Impossible. While his living space in the hotel technically physically existed, he made the door to it unavailable unless he permitted it to be so. Essentially whenever he left his room it was unable to be located by anyone else. So how could that idiotic Monkey–
Alastor emerged from a shadowy corner of his room and, just as he thought, the Monkey was there. Head swerving back and forth from the cozy study and the nighttime bayou that made up the two halves of Alastor’s living space. At Alastor's entrance, Monkey’s own head twisted all the way around sans neck cracking to see him, grin wide on his face. Though he jumped a bit to let his body twist around with it right after –does he usually do that or did Monkey pick it up from him just now? He’d rather not know…
“This mystery room is SO COOL! It’s outside even though its inside! It’s your room, right? How’d ya do that?! And where’s your bed? Don’t ya sleep in here?”
Shrinking down into a shade, Alastor reemerged behind the Monkey and, with both hands clawing into the other’s squishy shoulders, began guiding him forward back towards the door. He drawled, “Wouldn’t you like to know. Even if I explain it, you wouldn’t understand regardless. And not that it’s any of your business, but I only bring the bed out when it’s time to rest. Leaves more space available that way. There’s no purpose in you being here, so it’s time for you to– ”
“But I do have a reason! I wanna sleep with ya!”
A loud screech of a record scratch tore through the air.
An entire thirty seconds of silence. Alastor then spun the boy around in his hands to look him straight in the eyes. They stared back at him, full of nothing but blank innocence.
The Monkey hadn’t meant it in a sexual way, so he was just going to skip over that possible implication for the sake of what little remaining sanity he possessed– It took almost all of Alastor’s restraint to slowly hiss out through the bared teeth of his tight smile, “And why, exactly… do you want to sleep in the same quarters with someone who wants to kill you?”
Monkey had the nerve to pout at him, crossing his arms and outright whining, “I can sleep by myself, but I like it better when my crew are around. When we’re on the ship most of us are in the same room. It’s nice…”
Is this boy an actual child??? And he didn’t even mention the explicit death threat at the end. “Well! It’s so very unfortunate for you that none of your crewmates are at the hotel, because, as I’ve already said– I am not one of them!”
With that said and his shadow opening the door, Alastor pushed Monkey back out of the room. Arms pinwheeling in a blur, the boy tumbled head over heels in a yelp while rolling out the doorway. His shadow slammed it shut with all the violence Alastor wanted to inflict on the other. He cheerfully jeered through the wooden barrier for good measure, “Just talk to Charlie and she’ll set up a room for you! The next time you try to come back here, you’ll be leaving without a head to take with you! Not like you’re using that brain for anything anyways, right?!”
Thankfully, the Monkey didn’t try to get back into Alastor’s room or tower after that. Instead, he seemed to spend the next couple of days exploring the hotel and bothering the rest of its inhabitants, something which Alastor found to be much more favorable when he himself wasn’t the target. Though depending on the person in question, how much they were actually bothered by the boy differed…
“Why’re you so small, Fifty?”
“Heh~ All the better for crawling through the walls to find the roach nests to cut off their legs in the supposed safety of their homes~ !” Niffty cackled at the Monkey in that charming, messed up way of her, giggling up at where the boy was leaning over to look down at her.
Monkey merely blinked a couple times before responding, “Huh… You’re a weirdo, aren’t ya? As long as you’re havin’ a good time that’s fine I guess.”
“Thanks~ Is Monkey boy a bad boy~? I like bad boys!”
“Lots ’a people say I’m bad, but I don’t think I’m that bad. Angel-Lady probably wouldn’t ‘ve tried putting me in Heaven if I was. But I’m not too good either.”
Face falling into a pout, Niffty turned her back to stalk away, muttering, “I don’t wanna bad-good boy, I wanna bad-bad boy! Where’re all my bad boys?!?!”
Monkey just straightened back up with a curious stare and hands on his waist, completely unaware he’d just unintentionally averted a potential crisis. Cherri Bomb just came up next to him to sigh, “That’s just Niffty, ignore her. She’s a special girl she is… So, what’cha ‘pirates’ do for fun? A lotta drinkin’, partyin’, and clubbin’ I hope!”
At the cyclops’s mischievous grin, Monkey sent an excitable grin right back, yelling more than responding, “Yeah! We’re always having parties! And the parties always have drinking! I don’t drink that much though, cause I always have to save room for more meat. Zoro and Nami drink tons though! Sanji too, but only with wine. And what’s the last one ya asked about, Eye-Lady? Like when ya club someone with a stick? I don’t use weapons– just my fists!”
Cherri’s face fell into slight disappointment at hearing the Monkey was more interested in eating than drinking, before it fell further into confusion at the last question. “Wha? Ya don’t know what clubbin’ is? Ya know, goin’ out to shady joints at night with music that’s too loud and drinks that’re too expensive to grind against a rando and maybe end up hittin’ the full run? And again, the name’s Cherri Bomb.”
Predictably, Monkey just stared blankly at the woman. Alastor knew what was coming. His shadow that was lurking around to keep an eye on things grinned even sharper right before the boy replied, “So… It’s a mystery dance. If it’s expensive then I don’t think Nami would let us.”
That conversation ended with Cherri rolling her eye and scoffing at the boy, clearly internally labeling him as useless for her junkie lifestyle. Alastor just found himself musing that, at the very least, the Monkey’s crew seemed to have the sense not to leave the boy in charge of the finances. Though the fact that this ‘Nami’ apparently had that much control over such an essential aspect of their organization to the point she could dictate what the supposed captain of the crew could or could not do was also an interesting thought to consider.
One of the more entertaining interactions involving the Monkey revolved around the boy’s noted obsession with food. Like a bloodhound scenting a hunt, the boy rather quickly located the kitchen and promptly devoured everything that wasn’t a vegetable. And even the vegetables took somewhat of a hit, so at least the boy couldn’t be accused of skimping on his dietary needs. The meat especially went fast. Alastor would’ve been upset by that had he not had his own food storage, seeing as the others had not wanted to be bothered by the sight of his venison carcasses or worse hanging about the place. Which meant that he had been the only one who’s food was spared. Quite the humorous outcome indeed!
After Charlie had a quick panic that ended with the suggestion to order pizza for the night, Vaggie threatened the Monkey to leave the kitchen alone. He agreed in a very non-committing manner, then did literally the exact same thing as soon as the meat had been restocked. After that, Vaggie attempted to spear the boy through the stomach. However, the Monkey had proven much too evasive to get a hit on. After the third iteration of this, Charlie attempted to plea with Monkey, looking utterly pathetic yet at the same time still attempting to keep up her ‘nice’ schtick. And his response to this had also been interesting…
“Are you the captain here?”
“H-Huh?” the Princess questioned stupidly, before she shook her head a bit and revised to an intelligible reply, “Uh– We’re not a crew so no, but, I am the one in charge of the hotel. If that’s what you’re asking.”
Monkey gave the woman a thorough glance over. Then looked straight back at her to say, “You’re the captain but you’re not strong enough to tell me what to do, so… I’m just gonna keep doin’ what I want! If you wanna stop me you gotta be strong enough to stop me yourself, ya know!”
“Wh-What?! Wait! Come back! Luffy please– !”
Needless to say, the Princess’s pleas fell on deaf ears. Her options were limited from that point. She could ask her father for assistance, but Alastor had noted that despite the King taking residence halftime in the hotel, Charlie had been avoiding relying on him for anything outside of the direst of circumstances. Thus, Alastor took great pleasure when the girl was forced to knock upon his doorstep, instead.
“Alastor… please… can you do that thing you do with your room for the kitchen? Luffy won’t stop eating everything!”
From his place leaning against the doorframe, he made an obvious show of tapping his chin in fake consideration, eyes half-lidded in carelessness. “Is that sooo~? Well. It’s most unfortunate that you yourself are the one who decided to accept the Monkey into the hotel despite your steadfast hotelier’s very wise and very valuable opinion on the matter. The issue would be fully resolved if you tossed him to the curb, you realize?”
“I– I can’t do that. And I know you’re upset he’s here and I’m sorry about that, really! But– even if he’s causing some minor problems, he’s a really nice guy! He even complemented our portrait of Sir Pentious! And he actually likes it when I sing!”
“Ah yes, because eating a week’s worth of food meant for multiple people in one sitting is but a minor problem. Since that’s the case, obviously you do not need my help for such a non-issue. Why don’t we stop wasting both our time– ”
“Wait!” Charlie cried out holding her hand out towards him, looking particularly pathetically tearful and desperate, “Alright, it’s more than a minor problem, yeah. So– I’d really appreciate it if you could help us! In fact, as the Princess of Hell, I order you to help us! …Should you decide you’re okay with it?”
Alastor allowed himself a good minute to pretend to think, purposefully leaving Charlie to stew in suspense.
“Hmmmm… Why not! It will most definitely upset the Monkey, so that alone makes it worth the effort I suppose!” It was only then that Charlie’s expression lightened into relief, the Princess profusely thanking him.
While he’d agreed to help, Alastor did have a true reason to be reluctant to offer his services. He still didn’t know how the Monkey had managed to find the door to quarters after all. For all he knew, the boy would still be able to find the kitchen despite his efforts, and he didn’t want that fact advertised should it be the case. Fortunately though, whether it be due to the first day being a flunk or there being some unmet requirement, from that point Monkey was unable to find the doors leading to the kitchen.
The boy aimlessly wandered about trying to find it the first time, miffed and searching in vain in the area he knew it was supposed to be. But he gave up by the time dinner was properly served, suitably distracted. He tried again the next day, and fully pouted after going another hour without luck. He went out to the city in search of food then.
“Breaking news! Reports are saying a demon was found serial ransacking various butcher shops throughout the city! They were unable to apprehend the assailant, who was unusually fast to be point that there were no clear sightings of him! However, at least one butcher saw enough of the thief to identify it was a demon with some sort of a black tail! As though that description doesn’t include nearly half the damn city!”
Right on que, Monkey casually strut though the hotel lobby with a rather absurd pile of cold cuts in his arms. Everyone who’d be watching the news report on the old-time TV slowly turned their heads to eye him.
Jumping up to stand in his way, the Princess cried in despair, “Luffyyyyy!!! You can’t just steal all that food! You need to pay for it!”
Wide round eyes blinked back at her. “Huh? But this is Hell right? Can’t I just do what I want? Also, I don’t have any money and I was hungry.”
“I mean it is Hell, yeah, but people still have to…” Charlie trailed off as she processed the last part of what the boy said. Looking back at him from where she’d been in the middle of pacing across the carpet.
“Wait… Right, I guess you wouldn’t have found a job or anything, since you just got here…” then, she gained a horrified look, asking, “When you ate all that food… is it because if you don’t eat that much you’re still hungry? Like, the normal dinner portions aren’t feeding you enough???”
“Well yeah. I always need to eat a lot. Sanji always cooked extra for me,” as though to emphasize the point, the Monkey took one of the cold cut slices to eat in one gulp. Though Alastor knew the boy wasn’t the type to have done the move on purpose and it’d been a mere coincidence he’d decided to eat right then.
All at once, Charlie’s face turned close to tearful. She came in close to Monkey to clasp her hands together and apologize, “Oh my gosh… I’m soooo sorry Luffy! I hadn’t even thought that you were going hungry! Of course you were raiding the fridge, you weren’t getting enough to eat and you don’t have the money to buy more! And here I was telling you to stop– Oh no– I think I’m gonna cry– !”
“There, there… It’s okay…” Vaggie awkwardly comforted her paramour, coming up beside her to hold Charlie by her now shaking shoulders. The Princess was distraught with the thought that she’d failed as a host.
For his part, Alastor was fairly certain that the Monkey would’ve attempted to raid the kitchen regardless of if he actually needed the food or not, but it was also true that he clearly needed more than the meal size everyone else partook in. It would be the same as attempting to only give Alastor himself a leg of venison rather than a whole carcass. Though in his case he’d supplement his meal by consuming the person in question who’d been foolish enough to make such a mistake. Perhaps the Princess should count herself lucky that he’s always taken charge of his own meal planning.
Rather than try to console her tears or bite back in bitterness over the situation, Monkey, true to form, smiled rather kindly at the Princess. Though not without swallowing down another piece of his hunt. “Aw– It’s okay Chacha! I know you’re a good guy! You didn’t mean anything by it. All ya need is to train and get strong and you’ll be a great captain!”
The Princess promptly burst into tears at that. Straggling pieces of meat fell to the floor as she jostled the boy in her too tight embrace. When the ex-angel carefully retracted her sobbing girlfriend, the Monkey confidently proclaimed “Thanks Veggie!” and from where he lurked up in his tower Alastor chimed a rather hardy laugh at both the misname and the sneer of frustration it provoked.
That was another interesting thing about Monkey. Despite the way he hadn’t taken too long into their first conversation to at least partially learn Alastor’s name, the boy didn’t even bother trying for anyone else. If he referred to anyone with a vague semblance of their name, it was skewered almost beyond recognition. It was a genuinely impressive feat considering it was entirely unintentional. Alastor found the habit quite hilarious… Until upon second thought he’d realized the only people Monkey used the actual name of other than Alastor himself was whenever he referred to one of his supposed crewmates, always with the air that they were expected to just know who he was talking about without having met any of them.
He disliked the comparison. The bit promptly lost all humor it had.
…Well, not ALL humor, admittedly. Despite the joke souring, Alastor still couldn’t resist having some appreciation for the way Husker’s furry face fell into the most unpleasant scowl upon the Monkey calling him–
“Hey Cat-Guy! Is this really all ya do all day?”
“For the last damn time kid– The name’s Husk. HUSK!” After a couple seconds spent glaring at the boy, Husker gave up with an exaggerated eyeroll at the unmoved smile he received, “And no. Believe it or not, I have an actual life outside this hotel. One that I could be livin’ if I wasn’t bein’ forced to work here! Now if ya don’t wanna drink, why don’t ya just go back to gettin’ lost tryin’ to find the kitchen or somethin’?!”
Even while Cat-Guy complained, he still slid over Angel Dust’s drink to the other without a word after he’d finished pouring it. Angel winked at him in thanks before turning on his stool to wag his eyebrows at the Monkey. “Don’t mind Husk here, he’s just a bit feisty. Sooo, Luffers… You’re the kinda guy that likes havin’ fun, right?”
“Yeah!” was the cheerful, grinning response. In contrast, Husker was already sneering as he turned his face away, already knowing where the other was headed.
Leaning in to lay two arms across the Monkey’s shoulders, Angel brought his face close to the boy’s while he flirted, “So how ya feel ‘bout havin’ some fun with little ol’ me? I bet’cha I know a bunch ’a tricks you‘ve never seen. Yer a little round-faced cutie, so I wouldn’t mind makin’ it worth yer while…”
“Oh please…”
Ignoring Husker’s annoyance, Monkey excitedly asked, “You know magic tricks Arms?!”
There was a pause where Angel blinked in confusion. But he quickly regained his lecherous smirk, moving his free hands to curve down his fluff and reattempt, “Nah… I’m talkin’ ‘bout a different kinda trick. Ya know? The ol’ midnight tango. A hanky-panky. Some sweet ‘n’ spicy kiss-don’t-tell with a guy that knows just the right way ta work his body, who can work ya down ‘til yer beggin’ ta have a taste ’a me…”
Angel received a blank look. Monkey didn’t even know enough of what he was talking about to label it as a mystery anything.
“ …I’m askin’ if you wanna FUCK! Goddammit!”
Angel exclaimed while throwing his arms into the air, finally giving up his air of sensuality in a way that had Husker snickering. Until the spider’s face lit up at a realization. The smirk and fluttering eyelashes were back in full force again much to Husker’s displeasure. “Wait, if yer so helplessly clueless… does that mean yer a virgin? Oh Luffers baby, I can rock yer first time sooo good! That’s a promise! What’cha say ya finally lose that V-card of yer’s with a whore who knows what he’s doin’?!”
Alastor almost wondered if the Monkey would still fail to clue in, but the boy simply stated, “Oh. That’s what all that was? Then no. I don’t really care about that stuff. What were you talkin’ about, Cat-Guy?”
Angel Dust finally leaned away from the boy after that, put out and rolling his eyes at how fast Monkey had lost interest. Husker meanwhile rose an eyebrow at him without pausing in his motions to clean the glass he was holding. “Well, for as much as Al bitched about you followin’ him here, looks like there’s at least one thing you guys have in common. That and how much damn meat you somehow manage to stuff down your throats… And I meant what I said. My job here is involuntary servitude as far as I’m concerned!”
At that, the spider was the one to raise a brow. Holding up his glass to take a sip, he snarked, “I know yer under contract and all Husk, but come on– By this point ya can’t say ya aren’t choosin’ ta be here! That whole time Smiles was missin’ while we were doin’ all the hard work to rebuild the place ya never took the chance to flap yer pretty wings and leave the nest.”
“Maybe that’s cause even if I was hopin’ for the opposite, I knew he’d be back eventually,” Husker shot back defensively while turning around to put the glass away. He then ruined his own efforts by hesitantly admitting, “ …And I didn’t say I wouldn’t stick around, if I had the choice. Just that I don’t got the choice at all! Or does that not matter to you so long as ya got a bartender makin’ your drinks?”
Angel Dust flinched back, face falling. He put his glass down to the side and leaned forward over the bar top, placating, “That– That’s not what I meant, Husk! Really! Sorry if it sounded like I wasn’t takin’ ya seriously. I know what it’s like. It’s just… I wish you’d admit you actually like hangin’ around us, once in a while…”
Husker kept his back facing the other, but Alastor’s shadow could see the other’s furry scowl soften, likely regretful. How pathetic.
Monkey, meanwhile, of course failed to realize this had become a private moment and stuck his confused little head in, “You really can’t leave? What’s keeping you here then?”
Once again, the cat’s scowl returned in full. Though this time sharp with resentment and bitterness rather than mere frustration. While Angel tensed up in his seat beside Monkey, Husker looked over his shoulder at the boy, gaze narrowing.
“ …Let’s just say a certain Overlord’s got a leash on me. It was my own fault, gamblin’ my soul away and all like an idiot, but that doesn’t mean I gotta like it.”
The Monkey’s thoughtless, neutral expression pulled into a frown. He didn’t hesitate before asking, “You mean Al? He said he does stuff like that. Told him it wouldn’t work on me.”
Both Husker and Angel straightened in shock at Monkey’s bluntness, eyes flashing wide. But in the next moment Husker’s gaze narrowed once more.
“He told ya about it outright? Ha– must’ve been real desperate to turn ya off recruitin’ him if he didn’t even try for the long game to trick your soul outta ya. How lucky for you,” leaning forward with both hands on the counter to give the boy a serious glare, Husker scoffed in his face, “And listen, I know ya’d think it’d be easy. Just don’t make a stupid deal in exchange for your soul, right? But when ya got a lot ridin’ on the line, when yer down on yer luck and end up thinkin’ if I just got one good hand, things’ll start goin’ my way… You end up takin’ risks you shouldn’t have to try and keep what you got. Only to end up losin’ it all…”
Really, how much more pathetic can this man get? Oh, the despair and inhumanity, to have lost one’s soul! Perhaps he shouldn’t have indulged in that gambling addiction of his then? So very easy to blame everything on the oh-so evil Radio Demon and dismiss the mistakes one’s made to lead to that moment. It takes two to have a handshake after all.
Not that Alastor was complaining. In fact, he truly relished his Husker’s pathetic, miserable groveling. To have swept in and won it all from an Overlord who was too confident about their place in the afterlife, to have had that prime opportunity to take advantage of that man’s mistakes to take everything for himself– he doesn’t think there’s anything in Hell that he takes more amusement in than that. Besides murdering the Overlords outright and broadcasting his violence for all to fear, that is. Husker here should simply be thankful he’d been useful enough in his vulnerability to have ended up in the former category rather than the later.
“Do you want help?” the question, so plainly stated, brought Alastor out of his musing. Monkey was looking at Husker with a similar sort of plainness to his features, but there was something firmer about the stare.
Husker squinted at that, suspicious. “ …Help with what, exactly?”
“Becoming free!”
The cat stared at the boy for a solid few seconds. Then, he turned his face to chuckle with acidic bitterness. Alastor echoed it from his place in his tower, the mean cackle curling his grin sharp. The spider just grimaced into his drink.
“Heh… I guess I appreciate the thought, kid, but there ain’t nothin’ you can help with. Not about this. Contracts can only be– ”
“Why not? Maybe you can’t do anything about it on your own, but I’ll find a way to do something.”
Husker scowled, becoming annoyed at the boy’s insistence to ignore logic and common sense, and Alastor… had a tempting idea.
Only the cat and the spider were in the lobby currently, along with the Monkey. Niffty was off in the walls somewhere no doubt, scurrying around like the insects she so loved to hunt, and Cherri who rotated between staying at the hotel and guarding her territory was off galivanting. But the Princess, her paramour, and the King were all having a meeting at the royal residence proper to attempt to plan defensive measures for the next Extermination. A meeting that Alastor was sure would go nowhere due to the King explicitly barring him from the discussion.
Alastor does not usually advertise the depth of control he has over his kept soul in front of the others, knowing it would upset the Princess and wanting to avoid potential issues from that. But with only the poor excuse for a bar joke trio present… he was freer to act how he pleased.
“If ya wanna try ‘helpin’ so badly, well just knock yourself out. Literally! Since you’ll probably lose yer head over it! Don’t come cryin’ to me when– Fuckin’ SHIT!” Husker jolted back with a curse when Alastor materialized out of his hidden shadow, walking up to the side of the bar in long, sure steps with his arms and cane held behind his back. Angel also cursed, outright jumping out of his seat to stand back. Monkey didn’t move in the slightest. He just stared at Alastor with those blank eyes of his.
Then, the cat seemed to pale somewhat underneath the fur of his face. “You– Boss, were you… doin’ that creepy shadow stalkin’ thing and listenin’ to us the whole time?”
Alastor made sure to keep his smile joyously pleasant. “You know me so well! Really now, you shouldn’t be so surprised by my entrances at this point, Cat-Guy~ ”
Husker’s face regained its color as it reflexively pulled into a snarl, “Oh not you too now! For fuck’s sake– ”
“And that’s precisely the backtalk I was expecting. Perfect! I have an excuse to do this now– ”
In the blink of an eye, an eerie green chain ending at a collar on Husker’s neck materialized into existence. Alastor harshly yanked it towards him, forcing the man out of the bar space to fall on the floor at his feet. Just to emphasize the action, Alastor placed a slightly crushing step onto the middle of the cat’s back between his wings, forcing him to remain flat on the ground while at the same time pulling the chain taunt by further wrapping the links around his cane. Alastor’s grin spit his face when one of the bar seats clamored onto the ground, pushed away and discarded as Monkey abruptly stood to stand directly in front of him.
The stupid boy final had a proper scowl on his face. “Let him go.”
The Radio Demon allowed himself to bark a short, shrill laugh at the powerless demand. Beneath his heel, his pet trembled oh so sweetly. The perfect picture of terrified subjection.
“A-Al… Alastor please!” the withering spider was the one to call out, this time. Still at the side but holding out his hands and pleading with surely familiar helplessness. “Husk didn’t even do nothin’, he was just answerin’ the new guy’s questions! That’s all! We– We won’t do it again! And– ya know that guy doesn’t know how things work ‘round here. He doesn’t know any better!”
“Yes, I know he’s too stupid to understand, Angel. That’s why I’m teaching him now through a practical lesson!”
Distortion buzzing louder and louder in his voice, glowing red radio dials set into hollow black eye sockets were set squarely on Monkey’s anger. His pet choke under his heel when Alastor grew taller and taller, limbs, neck, and fingers lengthening to a disgusting degree. Wide and branching antlers grew, casting a web of shadows over the scene. The red-lit X seared prominent in the center of his forehead.
Tightening his pull on the chain even further, his head tilted at a concerning angle as he heckled, “You want to help Cat-Guy so badly, but what can you even do, you de-evolved Monkey? This is the work of power you know not, cHiLd. Or are you going to ignore this along with everything else and still ask me– ”
With both unhesitating swiftness and lack of fanfare, Monkey’s fists snapped out to grab onto the chain and pull the links apart. They broke apart into two pieces, leaving the end leading to the poor soul to fall on the floor while keeping his grip on the end wrapped around Alastor’s cane.
He paused at the sight, and then laughed anew at such futile efforts.
“AhAhAhHaHaHa~ You truly do not know how this works, do you? I can make as may chains as I please to bind to this soul! The Contract at play is a deeper sort of pOwEr~ ”
To drive the point home, the chain Monkey was still holding vanished, and a newly formed chain whipped out of his cane to replace the broken one with ease. The Contract in question materialized to hang in the air beside him, inked in an unsettling green light. Alastor’s too-long arm reached out to grab it and stick the thing in Monkey’s still scowling face.
“Only the dEaLmAkEr can control the Contract. Whether it be to change or void or own in my possession, my oWnErShIp cannot be taken! It is out of yOuR rEaCh– ”
The Contract was snapped out of his hand. Monkey’s hands deftly held either side of the sheet before tearing it apart in one great rip, jagged edges running down the center to cut though the inked magic.
Alastor stared at the two halves of the Contract as they floated gently to the floor.
Angel stared at them. Husker stared at them.
They all watched in total silence as the thing lit up into smoldering white flame. It ignited at the torn bits to eat through the center, until they consumed everything. Not even smoldering ash was left.
The chain wrapped around Alastor’s cane and Husker’s collar promptly shattered apart entirely, link by link. It dissolved until there was nothing left. They all stared at where it used to be.
All except for one. The only one who moved was Monkey, who leaned down to carefully pull Husker out from under Alastor’s hold. The man was utterly still, shellshocked as he was placed back on his feet and the boy patted him on the shoulder. He ignored the bugging eyes and gaping jaw to smile brightly in triumph. “There! All better! Don’t know why it was such a big deal though. It’s just a piece of paper.”
“…You …shouldn’t ‘ve been able to do that,” Angel was the one to find his voice first, hand holding the top of his head and still staring at Monkey with eyes so wide they practically took up half his face.
“Huh? Why not? Paper is paper.”
“ …Paper is– That wasn’t just any paper!”
Husker finally snapped. Grabbing at the collar of Monkey’s shirt, he shook the boy back and forth in manic jerking motions that matched the bewildered partial insanity of his expression. “It doesn’t work like that! That’s a fuckin’ magical Contract! It’s just some– some bullshit metaphysical representation of the real thing! They can’t be physically touched! Not unless ya have the magic that made it in the first place! What you did is literally! Physically! IMPOSSIBLE!!!”
“ …So it was a mystery paper. Still doesn’t matter. I do things people say I shouldn’t be able to do all the time. I tore it up, and that’s that.”
The shaking jerked to a stop. Husker was left staring, mouth gapping without finding any words to say.
Very carefully, slim pink fingers detangled the cat’s hold on the Monkey to slowly pull Husker away. Angel’s smile and hesitant words were filled with enduring shock, but he’d screwed his head on back enough to decide, “Alright… So that just happened… Husk, ya know what? Let’s just… not think about it too much? No lookin’ a trojan horse in the mouth or whatever the sayin’ is. You ‘n’ me ‘re gonna leave right now to celebrate with a night out on the town, while Smiles here is still broken… Good luck Luffers!”
With that warning, the spider swiftly picked up the dead weight and fled through the hotel doors. Monkey just watched them leave with a curious hum.
It was only then that Alastor felt himself blink back into comprehension. He felt that he was out of his demon form, having been outright shocked right out of it. He stared at the Monkey. The Monkey stared back.
And really, truly, Alastor should be broiling with fury by now. With the understanding of what the Hell just happened, he should be ready to erupt into a monstrous rage the likes of which had been seen by the Princess’s dearly beloved Hazbin Hotel. He should already be shifting back into his most demonic, powerful form to tear the limbs off the Monkey one by one, saving the head for last to tear off with serrated teeth.
But instead, Alastor just stared at the other, and he stared back. Like man and the abyss. But who is the man and who is the abyss, in this scenario?
“ …How ever did you do that?”
After a couple of blinks, Monkey just shrugged. All the previous anger had left him to leave his casual belligerence intact. “Don’t know. I just did what I wanted, that’s all.”
Alastor’s eye twitched ever so slightly, pulling at the frozen grin on his face. But the annoyance didn’t keep, fading back into the void of… it wasn’t quite shock anymore. A similar sort of emotion, certainly, but the weight of it carried differently. Rather than the light breathlessness of shock, he felt it weigh down in his chest rather unpleasantly.
“ …How very nice for you. That you can just do what you want, and that’s all. Meanwhile here I am, unable to do what I want and keep a person within my control simply because it disturbs your delicate sensibilities. Is it not hypocritical of you?”
“Nah…” and with the denial, the Monkey’s smile pulled into an edge that Alastor had yet to see from the boy, but he himself found quite familiar. Just a touch of childish pride teasing just a bit mean.
“It’s like we said before. You gotta be strong enough to keep what you win. I was just strong enough to win him back is all. Pirates don’t play fair anyway.”
Alastor’s grip on his cane tightened, his fingers lightly scrapping against the top of the mic-head as he planted the end into the floor in front of him. His jaw tightened as well, teeth grinding together slightly. The ends of his grin curled tight further and further.
Only for his head to tilt back and his maw to open wide in distorted, delirious, maniacal laughter–
“AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA– ”
It stopped as abruptly as it started. The sound cut off all at once, merely leaving the echo to resound against the walls. Eyes closing shut and smile a thin crescent of a moon, Alastor turned his back to other. He didn’t bother checking for the boy’s reaction. He was as unconcerned with Alastor’s should be concerning behavior as always.
As he started walking away, without glancing behind him, he chimed back, “You win this round. I suggest you take care to ensure it’s not your last.”
“It won’t be.”
“Ha– Foolishly confident as usual …But I suppose you have reason to be. Farewell for now, Straw Hat…”
The moniker, spoken in the eerie murmur of radio feed, echoed through the halls along until the sound faded. Leaving only the echo of footsteps behind.
Chapter Text
There was something unusual concerning Straw Hat. A statement that seemed almost idiotically obvious, but this unusual Alastor was thinking of went beyond the boy’s antics or eccentricities. He was unusual in that there was something fundamentally very different about him than the average mortal soul condemned to Hell. Something that was beyond just the world he’d originated from.
Husker hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d said breaking another’s contract in the manner Straw Hat had should’ve been literally physically impossible. And yet, as the boy himself had said, he’d done it anyway. Not to mention the suggestions of him having been able to choose between Heaven and Hell for himself. Even if Straw Hat seemed content not to look more into his own capabilities, Alastor now found himself to be invested in this point of intrigue that had dropped down from the sky in front of him.
For all the boy defaulted to proclaiming every concept he failed to comprehend to be a mystery, it was Straw Hat who was the current mystery of this Hazbin Hotel. There was something about him that Alastor didn’t know. Something that Straw Hat himself might not even know. And even if he did know, only to the extent of the most basic understanding. He’d be unable to explain it even if Alastor questioned him about it.
Not that he was planning to do so. He could play with his puzzles just fine without resorting to having the answers handed to him. Therefore, with a new game at play, he set the shades to begin lurking about for more information regarding the Straw Hat’s world. It was the main lead he had to work with at the moment as well as being a good starting point regardless.
This type of game was one that required patience, however. Alastor knew better than to expect instant results. For all that he set his magics to work throughout the night, life at the hotel continued as usual. Including the continued work of a certain bartender…
“So… what was it you was sayin’ ‘bout involuntary servitude again?”
“If ya want yer drink you’ll shut that damn mouth of yers!” Husker hissed like an actual cat when he slid the spider’s drink over to him. Angel Dust grinned knowingly, complying with the request for silence by starting on his monstrously pink excuse for an alcoholic beverage.
To the surprise of absolutely no one, Husker did not leave the hotel despite having an actual choice now. Though admittedly the only residents in question who were aware of this were the four present when the incident occurred.
The man spent the first couple of days of his newfound freedom in shock. Even after seemingly having wrapped his head somewhat around the idea during his “celebratory night” with Angel, it was clear he emotionally failed to understand. He looked quite bit similar to a zombie wandering and staring into space. It was to the point that Charlie had attempted to ask after the issue, only for Husker to decline her efforts. It had saddened the girl, but shortly after the cat pulled himself back together again, so with the apparent issue having passed the Princess left things be.
Alastor had been able to see through his shadow the very moment that Husker had, finally, come to fully understand what had happened. Because as soon as everything clicked together inside that furry little head of his, a look of firm determination came over him. He went straight to finding Straw Hat.
It was a bit amusing since that was a day Straw Hat had been bored enough to leave and randomly wander the streets in search of a so-called “adventure”. He’d yet to get a phone –and considering his world used snails in the place of telephones, would likely remain unaware that he should get one until someone complained about having to locate him. Just as Husker needed to do now. The cat ran himself ragged trying to follow the various signs of disarray and minor destruction until he came upon the boy. Very characteristically, he was in the middle of stripping a turkey leg bare of its meat in one giant bite. One this time paid for via the allowance Charlie had oh-so kindly provided for him due to the fragility of her bleeding heart.
“Cat-Guy! What’s up?”
Glare narrowing, Husker opened his mouth to complain, only to close it and reconsider his response, “Ya know what? Call me whatever you want. You clearly earned it. Anyway, I got somethin’ important to talk to ya about, so come over here for a sec…”
He pulled Straw Hat further into a nearby alleyway, likely wary of potential ears or cameras listening in for a certain other Overlord that wasn’t Alastor. For his own part, Alastor made sure his shadow was well hidden enough that it was overlooked as Husker began conversing in earnest. Though his start was a rather awkward one.
“I… guess I should thank ya first, actually,” Husker admitted while scratching at the back of his neck, glancing at the boy only to avert his gaze just as quick, “You... You didn’t have to stick your neck out for someone you hardly even know like me, but ya did anyway even when I was only talkin’ ya down. So… Thanks for that.”
Straw Hat just smiled brightly, belligerently dismissive of the other’s uncertainty. “Nah! You guys give me food, so I like you! And you said you were okay with me helping, so I helped! That’s all.”
“That wasn’t… I wasn’t givin’ permission– Nevermind. Why the fuck am I tryin’ to argue with the guy that freed my damn soul about how he did it?” Husker seemed to question himself more than the other in that sentiment, before switching back to the issue at hand. His expression fell into something dark and heavy, the total opposite to the boy he spoke with.
“I’m not the only one with a Contract like that… wasn’t, I guess. Angel… He’s in a lot ‘a deep shit with his Contract. His soul’s owned by a different Overlord named Valentino. A sick fucker who’s top of the sex entertainment business in the city that’s part of the Vees’ industry conglomerate or whatever it’s called. I know I was just talkin’ about how ya don’t need to stick your neck out for folks you’ve known for two weeks at best, so I’ll understand if you’re not up for it. They’re not part of the hotel so they won’t let it go like Al did just cause ya have Charlie’s protection.” –Which was an incorrect assumption to make concerning why he chose not to retaliate, but he was content to leave the cat to his ignorance– “But… what do ya think about gettin’ him outta that deal? Like how you did for me…”
Alastor was unsure if Straw Hat would understand what “sex entertainment business” meant, but the boy didn’t make mention of it. Straw Hat’s wide black eyes blinked at Husker, smile having dimmed into that usual blank expression that gave the impression nothing of value was going on in that Monkey brain of his. Though whether or not that’s true remained to be seen considering the other’s tendency for surprising bouts of perception.
“I’ll help if Arms asks me, but he needs to ask.”
Husker seemed surprised that that was the stipulation raised, rather than anything related to things that actually made sense in this context like likelihood of success or potential compensation. His face pulled into half a grimace as he asked, “What’s that gotta do with it? I mean– he should be askin’ for your help now after seein’ what you can do, you’re right, but… He’s terrified of that guy, kid. He’s probably talked himself out of pullin’ ya into the mess.”
After humming in the back of his throat a bit, Straw Hat gained a softer smile as he replied, “Then you should talk to him and tell him to ask for help.”
“Isn’t it enough that I’m askin’ on his behalf? It should be the same for ya either way.”
“Nah– it’s totally different. You can only help people that’re ready to be helped, ya know.”
“I’m pretty sure regardless of if he’s ready or not he still needs the help!” Husker finally huffed in frustration, crossing his arms over his chest, wings and tail twitching slightly in agitation. He glanced away from the boy then, apparently ready to give up on the self-imposed task.
He startled in place when Straw Hat further explained, “Yeah, he does need help. But if he’s not ready for it then he won’t let it happen. When my Nakama get like that I just gotta make sure they know it’s fine! So since you’re Arms’s Nakama, you should be the one to do it. He won’t care if it’s me– it’s gotta be you!”
The curious word failed to translate for some reason. Alastor found himself appreciative that Husker, after looking back at the other with hesitant consideration, asked of his confusion, “Uh… I think I get what you’re puttin’ down now, kid, but what’s that thing you said… Nakama? I’m assumin’ it means friends or somethin’ like that…”
“Well yeah we’re friends! But it’s more than that too…” Holding his chin in his hand, Straw Hat looked like he was about to give himself an aneurysm trying to think through how to translate his likely unexplainable thoughts aloud. A true trial for one of his nature, to be certain.
“It’s friends, but forever ‘n’ ever cause you’ll always be waiting for ‘em when they’re not around! It’s family, but better cause I like ‘em all more than Grandpa and I only talked to my dad that one time! It’s crew! I got lots ’a friends, but not all of ‘em are Nakama. So you and Arms are Nakama and ‘re also Chacha’s Nakama and she’s the captain. Get it?”
“…So yer comparin’ us to a pirate crew. Got it.” Husker rolled his eyes at the lackluster explanation, but soon after, his gaze fell half-lidded in pensive thought. “Ya got a point buried somewhere in that mess, though, so… I’ll try talkin’ to him, yeah.”
Husker left shortly after that with thoughts weighing heavy on his mind. Since his shadow had gone to the trouble of following the cat all the way to Straw Hat’s location, Alastor had planned to keep the tail on the boy in case some entertainment came about from it.
Only for the monkey demon to tilt his head up and to the side, gaze somehow immediately finding the general location of where the shadow was hidden. He looked more curious than put out at having an eavesdropper in his midst. “Doesn’t bad stuff happen when ya don’t have your shadow like that? Guess it would be different for Al though. You’re weird like that! Shishishi!”
His shadow slunk away with almost a petulant air about it. It streaked inky blackness in its wake as it retreated back to Alastor’s side to sulk. He patted its head, somewhat sympathetic for the poor thing while at the same time, once again, properly intrigued by Straw Hat’s capabilities. He should really just stop assuming anything at all about the boy’s behavior or actions. He had the feeling that would be the only way to stop being caught off-guard whenever Straw Hat turned around to do something fully unexpected.
The referenced talk occurred but a day or so later after Angel returned from a long night of filming. When he returned to his usual place at the bar, Husker led the spider outside and a good distance down the street from the hotel, likely trying to avoid Alastor listening in. Foolishly at that, considering his shadow could simply follow them out unnoticed. Angel Dust clearly worried over the need for privacy. Husker was quick to start once they’d reached what he arbitrarily decided to be an appropriate distance.
“You should really ask the kid to break your Contract for you, Angel.”
“…H-Huh? What’cha talkin’ about, Husk?! That’s– ” face screwing up and unable to look at the other, Angel had to detangle his words, “That’s– It’s different for me than it was for you! Al would ‘a killed Luffers if Charlie wasn’t around to get on his ass about it after, but Valentino’s not any sorta reasonable like that! I can’t ask him to pick a fight with an Overlord! Not to mention one in the kinda alliance he’s got. That’s like hecklin’ three at once!”
“So what? You’re just gonna give up on the best chance you’ve ever had to get your soul back and let it walk away?! You can let the kid decide for himself if he’s willin’ to pick that fight or not– at least ask him about it first!”
“Luffers was dumb enough to pick a fight with the Radio Demon, and ya expect him to make any kinda informed decision about how far he can punch up?! He’s gonna agree cause he doesn’t know any better and doesn’t listen! Ya know that Husk! Are ya really gonna blame me for not wantin’ ta take advantage of him like that?”
Now outright grimacing, Husker took a couple steps forward. When Angel failed to raise his head to look at the approach, he huffed and continued with insistence, “I’m not tryin’ to blame ya for anythin’, I just don’t understand where you’re comin’ from. It’s nice you’re lookin’ out for the guy, but I would’a thought you’d be lookin’ out for yer own skin enough to take the chance on him. You should be at least. You may be soft on your friends, but ya haven’t known the guy that long.”
Both sets of arms crossed over Angel’s chest. Mouth pulling tight in a firm line, he finally raised his eyes to give Husker a particularly pathetic, soulful look.
“I’m lookin’ out for him cause he helped you! That matters! I can’t put Val’s target on his back when I owe ‘em for– for savin’ the soul of someone that important ta me…”
Husker’s expression wiped blank in surprise, blindsided by the answer. There was a heavy moment of consideration where Angel just glared at the other in defiance. Brow furrowing again, Husker glanced away only to force himself back to maintaining eye contact.
“That… It means a lot to hear ya say that. I’m… It’s nice, don’t get me wrong, but I care about you too. Ya know that, right?” Fingers clawed into the fur of his chest as Husker’s gaze turned into a painful, desperate plea.
“If I’m bein’ honest… for a while now, the thing that I hate the most about this Hell, the thing I came to hate even more than my soul bein’ owned by a psychopathic bastard… It’s havin’ to see you walk in after a night of that– that fucking god-awful bitch hurting you!”
Angel Dust flinched back, his turn to fall into shock. But Husker just kept up with his rambling, “It’s seein’ the way ya gotta pretend to be fine when you’re not! It’s seein’ the way ya try to protect everyone else when you’ve givin’ up on protectin’ yourself! What’s it any good havin’ my life and freedom back if I can’t even use it to save you?! I– ! I…”
His gaze lowered to glance down at the hand on his chest. There was a tense moment silence. A decision seemed to settle inside Husker, and he looked back up in full certainty.
“…I’d trade it all away if it got ya outta there, Angel Darlin’. I’d even trade it to back the Radio Demon himself.”
The grin of that certain Radio Demon curled in on itself, growing wide and cruel.
From up in his tower, straightening his lax posture in his seat, Alastor immediately took interest in the conversation again. His attention recaptured after having waned with coming boredom at the too-sappy happenings.
Angel, meanwhile, lost the strength of his legs, forcing him to fall into a lean against the metal bars of fence they stood beside as his knees slowly sunk to the concrete. He looked to be in even more disbelief than he had been seeing Straw Hat break the Contract. Husker jolted into kneeling down with him, quick to steady the other, but the spider just stared at him, gaze wide and horrified.
“Wh-What… Don’t… Don’t say stuff like that. Are ya tryin’ ta get Al ta come steal yer soul again?!”
“I said it cause I meant it.”
“But WHY?! How– ” voice breaking, distraught tears budded in Angel’s eyes as he cried, “H-How could ya care that much… ‘bout someone like me…?!”
Large hands coming to rest on both the other’s shoulders, Husker gave Angel a somber look. “Because– Cause it’s more than just bein’ friends. It’s more than bein’ family. It’s more than some make-believe pirate crew– The Hell ‘m I even talkin’ ‘bout? That kid’s really gotten to me. Whatever! It’s just– cause I do care. You’re someone worth carin’ about. Even if ya don’t feel that way, it’s the truth. I already talked to Luffy and he said he’d help if ya asked, so ya don’t gotta worry about that. Just… accept the help, please. If you can’t do it for yourself, do it for me.”
A couple stray tears blinked out of their place, falling down Angel’s cheeks. When Husker’s hand moved to thumb them away, the spider tensed under the touch. Angel’s gaze fell half-lidded as it lowered to the space between them. When he next spoke, it was a barely audible, shuddering whisper…
“ …What if …What if he’s right about me? Val... What if he’s right that without ‘em, I’m just… Just some worthless, used-up addict whore. What if I really am nothin’ without him? What if that place is where I belong? What if yer seein’ somethin’ that ain’t there, and I’ll just end up… a disappointment.”
“ …He’s not right. The fact he got ya to believe that bullshit for even a second is fucked. I already said I’d offer my soul for you, Angel, so if you’re nothin’… that just means I’m nothin’, too. Just two losers with nothin’ to give, just like we said.”
Using a finger, Husker gently tilted up Angel’s chin to guide the spider gaze back onto him. The once dim eyes began to shine just a bit brighter from the unshed tears. “If ya need someone to spell it out for you, I’ll say it plainly– The place you belong is that has-been hotel, where the rest of us has-beens live. Where the people that care about you are. I can be harsh on ya sometimes, but really… by now I think I know ya well enough to know that you could never disappoint me, because I can trust that ya won’t let me down. We all fought together for that place of ours, and we’ll fight for you, too. You just gotta fight for yourself along with us.”
When Husker’s hand shifted from Angel’s chin to his cheek, the other’s slim pink hand rose to cover it. After a tense, breathless moment, Angel’s lips pursed. He responded quietly, “…I gotta… think about it, for a bit at least. So just– just promise me… no matter what happens or what I decide… don’t even think ‘a makin’ any deals with Alastor or anyone else at that.”
“Angel– ”
“Don’t ya Angel me, I’m bein’ serious here! You offerin’ yer soul for me is very romantic ‘n’ all, but I don’t want ya ta lose it! So… Promise me.”
“ …Alright, then. I promise.”
Scoffing loud in his otherwise empty studio, Alastor pulled his shadow away from the scene with a touch of huffiness. All that time invested into a conversation that practically bored him to tears, and for what? For an unfair tease to end in the most unsatisfactory manner possible! Such pathetic drivel…
As he said he would, Angel Dust took quite a bit of time to think over Husker’s suggestion. Almost a full week went by without the spider making his move, all the while acting as typical as he usually did. Husker was not so subtle. Whenever Angel was around, he would keep a solid sight on the other, watching and waiting. There was nothing else for him to do at that point but to wait.
It was only at the end of this timeframe that anything of note occurred. The day began, as most days of unprecedented disaster do, with a normal, light-hearted breakfast. More festival than usual even, since the King had deigned to make pancakes. Alastor had almost absently noted that the man had been attempting various efforts to lighten Charlie’s mood, suggesting that the meeting they’d had concerning anti-Extermination planning had gone as poorly as Alastor had envisioned it would.
Alastor himself had chosen to attend breakfast as well, knowing that the King being forced to provide food for him would surely grate against his nerves. Though he was also there for one other purpose as well.
He watched on with a contented smile as Straw Hat paused in the middle of shoving his pancakes into his face to turn and glance back at where Alastor’s shadow had poked at his shoulder. The boy’s expression somehow managed to light up despite being outrageously morphed around the pancakes half sticking out of his mouth, waving at the thing while it waved back. From the other side of Straw Hat, a shade minion poured hazardous-looking green poison all over the last remaining pancakes on his plate.
The others at the table all stared at happenings in shock, forks halting in place. Except for Niffty of course, who instead grinned in budding anticipation while rubbing her hands together. Charlie choked on the bite she’d just taken, hacking and coughing violently. The King completely ignored the poisoning to rush to his daughter’s side and fuss over her.
“Alastor what the actual fuck– ?! Don’t Luffy– !”
Too late! The speed of Straw Hat’s voracity surpassed that of Vaggie’s reaction, and within the next blink, the poisoned pancakes were already consumed.
The boy grimaced at the taste when he finally settled down, leaning back in his seat while sticking out his tongue in an attempt to look at it. “Ick– were there veggies in those ‘re somethin’, Veggie?”
“Alastor just poisoned you, you dumbass! Cough it up right now!” Vaggie growled, slamming her palms onto the table. She then redirected her glare back to Alastor to continue her rage, “Are you seriously doing this now?! Did you think we’d just let you do that shit right in front of us?! The people who stay in this hotel are under our protection, and we won’t stand by while– ”
“Oh– that’s fine then, Veggie. It’s no problem. That doesn’t work on me.”
There was a single beat. Everyone’s heads slowly turned back to Straw Hat, Alastor included. Straw Hat’s grin was as shining as always, fully unbothered by the matter.
“ …What’d ya mean it doesn’t work on ya?!” Husker was the one to question, half bewildered and half annoyed at the attitude.
Still unbothered, Straw Hat just shrugged with all the carelessness he possessed. “The Poison-Guy poisoned me a ton and I almost died but I lived, so now it doesn’t work on me. Cool right!”
Vaggie slapped a hand into her face, covering it as she groaned into it. Charlie resolved her choking, leaving her free to look at Straw Hat with a conflicted, worried expression. She wasn’t sure if she should still be panicking or not. Niffty just huffed in miffed dissatisfaction. Angel stared wide-eyed with his fork still hanging in his mouth, rapidly blinking at the monkey demon.
Cherri leaned her face against her hand with her elbow on the table, then questioned with only partial interest, “And ya don’t give a shit that the guy you’re apparently tryin’ to recruit just tried killin’ ya because… ?”
Straw Hat blinked at the woman once, like he was trying to process why he should be worried about something as trivial as Alastor poisoning his food. “It didn’t work so it doesn’t matter, right?”
“No! No it very much matters! That was a very not good thing to do!” Charlie finally reacted, jolting into a stand to place her own hands on the table and lean forward towards Straw Hat’s side in a frantic motion. And even still, Straw Hat shrugged. This time with a petulant pout.
“It’s a not good thing yeah, but I still don’t care. He hasn’t been really trying and he’ll stop once he joins my crew. So it’s fine.” Eyes shifting to the side in another split second of thought, Straw Hat’s smile returned in full when he looked back at Charlie again to correct himself, “It’d be fine if he still tried a bit sometimes even after he joins, too! It’s how he has fun and it’s kinda fun for me too, haha!”
There was another beat. The silence was broken by Alastor’s seat scraping against the floor as he stood up and pushed the chair back in. He then promptly turned his back on the affair, holding his hands and cane behind him as he walked away while musing aloud, “I had not expected anything of that, and yet you still managed to provide an unexpected experience. I suppose I know better than to try that again, then. You’ll be pleased to know that your tolerance will serve you well though. Until next time, Straw Hat.”
“Bye bye! I’m gonna take your pancakes– !”
“You shall not.” Alastor had his shadow devour the rest of his plate, including the plate itself, in one go. He chuckled in the back of his throat in delight at the boy’s loud whine of disappointment.
From behind him, Alastor could hear the King stammer in awkward nervousness, “Wow! You– are really concerningly dedicated to befriending a serial killer cannibal demon who wants you dead! It’s sort of uncomfortable to watch actually. And I say that as the guy who invited you to the hotel for the sole purpose of fucking with the bastard!”
“You– What? That’s why you brought up Luffy staying with us?! Daaaad!”
“Uh… Wait a sec, I can explain! How do I explain? Oh, I got it– You see Charlie, when a man and a man hate each other very much– ”
“Don’t start like THAT!!!”
He had clearly left at just the right time.
It wasn’t until later that day when the action started. Once again, the act was preluded by Angel Dust returning from a long shift, arriving in the late-night bleeding into early morning.
Despite the late hour, Husker was still about. Since he’d spoke with Angel he’d purposely matched his schedule to the other, as though if he didn’t keep constant track of the spider’s whereabouts he’d miss the crucial moment when Angel made his decision. Apparently the clinginess had paid off for him. As soon as Angel made his way into the lobby, Husker’s face went dark with low-lying, concentrated fury. He didn’t like what he saw.
One of Angel’s hands was covering one side of his face, holding an ice pack against the inflammation misshaping the flesh of his eye and cheek. His eye was fully shut and discolored. One of his arms was already bandaged up, tended to before he’d left. Husker quickly slid out of the bar to approach and take a more thorough look.
Angel, who’d kept his stare firmly on the ground up until then, finally raised his gaze to show an expression cast in bitterness. It seemed that the spider had upset Valentino in some way that day. Presumably, that was the last push the spider required.
“I’m gonna talk ta him in the mornin’…”
“Angel…”
“I– I didn’t even do nothin’!” Angel spat out the words with his free arms curling in over his torso. Husker reached out to hold the injured one lightly by the elbow, his own expression a shimmering scowl. “He just freaked out ‘bout the tiniest little thing like he always does! What else does he want from me?! Isn’t it enough that he gets ta– ”
The spider abruptly cut off his growing tirade at the sound of a yawn echoing down the hallway. The two present as well as Alastor were surprised to see a sleepy Straw Hat make his way into the lobby, though he himself less so than the others.
Brow furrowing now from confusion rather than hidden rage, Husker was the one to question, “Wha– What’re ya doin’ up at this hour, kid?”
“Felt there’s somethin’ wrong with Arms when he came in,” the boy explained without actually explaining anything. While he took a few seconds to bring his mind out of the fog, Straw Hat stopped his hand in the middle of its motion rubbing his eye when his sight cleared up enough to see Angel. The hand dropped to his side as his mouth pulled into a proper scowl.
Approaching to stand directly in front of Angel, Straw Hat crossed his arms over his chest and plainly asked, “The bad guy hurt you, right? You want me to help?”
Angel stared at the boy in his continued surprise, not having braced himself for getting right into things, but it quickly fell into a muted look. His gaze averted in its discomfort.
“Yeah… I… I need your help, Luffy. I… wanna be free, too…”
“ ‘K. Let’s go then,” Straw Hat agreed with a nod. As soon as Angle gave his consent, he turned around to head towards the door.
Abruptly looking back up in a blink, Angel stammered, “W-Wait– We’re doin’ this now?! At crack ‘o clock in the mornin?!”
The image of casual understatement, the boy just glanced back to shrug. “Yeah. Why not now?”
The two stared at Straw Hat for an enduring moment. Then, Husker placed his hand on Angel’s back, helping to guide him forward. Angel glanced down to see the cat nod in somber agreement.
And with that, the unlikely trio left the hotel and began to make their way through the city.
The sky of the Pride Ring was darkened by the time of night, but not to the extent the sky of the surface world did. The blood red of the sky always held a somewhat dim illumination that stemmed from the expansive pentagram that hovered above it as well as its darkened celestial body outlined by its own scarlet pentagram. The closest thing Hell, or at least this Ring of Hell, had to a sun or moon was the light of those pentagrams as well as that of Heaven off in the distance above, a view of salvation far out of reach. At “night” the red of sky darkened, and Alastor had always appreciated the additional ambiance of these witching hours.
Angel led the way to stand in front of the Vees’ towering skyscraper that stood near the center of Pentagram city. He had ditched the ice pack sometime in the middle of the journey, evidently not wanting it to get in the way. They paused on the sidewalk opposite to the front of the building. Straw Hat tilted his head way back to find the top of it. “Woah– It’s so tall! A lot the places are tall here! It’s cool! So, where’s the bad guy at?”
Taking a hesitant side-glance at Angel, Husker offered, “Ya don’t have to come with us, Angel. Ya shouldn’t have to deal with that bastard anymore. Me ‘n’ the kid could figure it out and you can wait here for us.”
“ …No. I’ve gotta go too. I can’t just leave everythin’ to ya guys. If I’m really doin’ this, I gotta face him head on,” Angel declared with solid resolution before moving on to how to progress, “By now Val should be asleep in his penthouse at the top ‘a the buildin’. I don’t think it’ll be too hard ta get the guy ta show off the Contract, he’s a prideful sonna ‘va bitch showoff and won’t see it comin’. The hard part’ll be just gettin’ through the place with all ‘a Vox’s security around and gettin’ the Hell outta dodge before the other Vees show up ta– The Hell ya doin’ wit ya arm???”
The bewildered question was aimed at Straw Hat, who was in the midst of pinwheeling his right arm in a spinning blur hinging at his shoulder. Smiling at Angel’s and Husker’s confusion, his left arm looped out wide to circle the both of them. He held them tight against his side much to both of their discomfort.
“We don’t gotta go through the inside. I can just take us right to the top so I can beat him up! Hold on ‘k!”
“ …To the top? Wait– you don’t actually mean– ”
Straw Hat ignored Husker’s fretting, shooting the momentum of his arm out to stretch, stretch, and streeeetch all the way to the roof edge of the skyscraper. Angel and Husker’s eyes bugged out a bit at the absurd sight.
Before fear overtook them when they were all abruptly jerked up and into the sky, following the tension of the rubbery arm.
“OOOH SWEET BABY JESUS– !”
“FUCKIN’ CHRIST ON A STICK KID– !”
“Gum-Gum Rocket! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA– !”
Emerging from his shadow that had been lurking at the side of the walkway, Alastor stepped out to admire the view of their shrieking forms, one of thrill and two of terror, becoming smaller and smaller as they rushed up to the tower’s pinnacle. His shadow scurried up the side to make sure he could watch the coming show.
They crashed through one of the large floor-to-ceiling window walls of the penthouse. Straw Hat turned his body and curled the two further against him so that his back would take the brunt of the impact. He seemed completely unharmed even as their momentum continued into an inner wall opposite the window. Husker and Angel emerged from the cloud of dust and debris in a daze. Straw Hat merely stepped out of the hole in the wall they’d made, casually brushing bits of drywall and glass shards off himself.
After Husker shook his wings free of debris, he shot an exasperated glance towards their uncaring method of transportation. "Even ignorin' the literally shootin' us into the window thing, ya seriously have a move name for that- ?!"
“WHA– What the fucking Hell was THAT– ?!”
Valentino shot out of his bedroom in a start at the sound of the ruckus. From the upper balcony, he leaned over the railing to peer with the horridly inept sight of his squinty bug eyes to try and see through the settling dust. He only just caught sight of the three, face going slack in instinctual shock, when a hand stretched up to grab him by the neck.
Straw Hat tore Valentino through the railing, jerking him down to slam his face into the tile of the ground floor so hard it shattered into a web of branching cracks. Kneeling over the moth, Straw Hat kept his left hand’s hold on Valentino’s neck while slamming one foot into his lower back and wings, pinning him down. The boy didn’t even budge when the Overlord tried bucking him off, a feat considering that as the physically largest of the Vees, Valentino possessed a fair amount of physical strength. Straw Hat was half his height at best but remained unmoved by the much larger demon’s struggle.
Four arms attempted to scrabble back to claw at his attacker, only for Straw Hat’s right hand to go flying in a blur. Each of Valentino’s elbows were crushed by powerful palm strikes that left both the tile and the moth’s bones and joints cracking in such quick succession, it almost looked like four hands were attacking instead of one. So fast that the man’s guttural hiss of pain only sounded after the last arm was demolished.
When Straw Hat lifted his hand back, palm still open with its fingers lightly curled in, it was a stark black that bled into the tan flesh of his lower arm. The color highlighted the scarlet faintly smeared across the inside of the palm. Valentino’s blood leaked and splattered against it when splintered bone broke through flesh and skin.
This entire series of events commencing from after the crash-landing entrance occurred within the span of approximately five seconds.
Further to the side next to Husker and once again thoroughly shocked, Angel hissed a low, “Hooooly shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit…”
“Where’s the paper?”
Pain still hissing in his throat, Valentino turned his head as much as he could to glare daggers at the boy pinning him down. He growled out, “I-It’s really come to this, Angel baby?”
Coming to a start, with Husker reaching out to place a comforting hand on his back, Angel forced himself out of the shock to take a stand, “Ye– Yeah, asshole! I’m done wit this bullshit, alright?! I’m not gonna let some– some bullshit piece ‘a paper keep me from takin’ my life back! Consider this my two minutes notice!”
“…Who’s even this no name monkey you got to fight your battles for you? I’ll admit, he was a good find, but this won’t be enough! Did you forget who I am?! Who it is who owns you?!”
Valentino’s fury shifted into a thin grin of cruelty. As he spat out those last words, red smoke bellowed out from around the moth to fully surround him and his captor. Eyes flashing wide in fright, Angel Dust immediately grabbed Husker by the arm to pull the both of them further back from the so far one-sided fight, using one hand holding a piece of cloth he’d pulled out of his fluff to cover the cat’s mouth and nose and another on his own.
“Since you did this well, I’ll give you the privilege of seeing for yourself my Contract for Angel baby’s soul. You can read it and weep as you gasp for air, convulse on the ground, and PARISH~ ”
A gold-tinted Contract with red smoke spiraling around it materialized inside the red fog. Valentino giggled, just a tad charming mixed with a tad insane, like his threat was a flirtatious thing, “You ever try Hemlock, cutie? Now that’s a drug that’ll knock ya dead! I usually use something else for fun times instead, but I maxed out my toxins just for you!”
From inside the crimson fumes, Straw Hat tilted his head to the side just a bit in a rather unnerving motion. He stated plainly, “You’re kinda dumb aren’t ya, Moth-Man. That doesn’t work on me.”
“ …What do you mean it doesn’t work– ”
Hand having returned to its normal coloring, Straw Hat snatched Contract out of the smoke. He brought it to his mouth to snag one edge with his teeth, tugging sharply with his fist and jaw to rip a messy, jagged diagonal tear through the thing.
Valentino’s visible eye went bug-eyed at the sight of his Contract floating down through the swirling smoke. Still within the dim red, it caught white fire and burned until it was fully consumed. Just as Alastor’s had been.
From the relative safety of Angel’s spectator spot where he’d been staring wide-eyed at the scene, a smokey red collar and chain materialized only to shatter apart entirely. His gaze jerked down to where the bonds had used to be, the free hand that wasn’t holding either his or Husker’s face lifting to faintly graze his fingertips over the empty spot on his neck.
But Straw Hat wasn’t done, still. In his opponent’s –victim’s?– utter shock and disorientation, the boy got up while turning Valentino around in his grasp, pulling his head so far back it stretched out his neck a good couple of feet while his forehead bled into black. All the tension released in a snap. As well as a crack, when Straw Hat’s head came flying forward into a crushing headbutt that sounded like it moderately cracked Valentino’s skull open.
“Gum-Gum Bell!”
The smoke began to waver as Valentino seemingly began to waver in and out of consciousness. And still, Straw Hat wasn’t done. The rubber man took full advantage of his flexibility, twisting his torso in on itself over and over until it wrung into a tight coil. Then using both hands to grasp either side of the moth’s shoulders, he let the coil of his body unwind into a spinning blur of a top. The movement also blew away the red smoke that had remained.
Valentino was released to fly at top acceleration into the intact window beside the one the group had entered through.
High up above where Alastor stood on the street level, he could see the small form of Overlord Valentino shatter the window, shooting out of the penthouse. His velocity wasn’t halted in the slightest even with the obstacle. He arched over at least three streets before crashing through the window of another tall building that happened to be in his path.
Smiling in pleased satisfaction, Alastor gave a polite clap that was echoed by a track of applause. It was only appropriate for a delightful end to a delightful, if somewhat short, feature presentation. And to his continued delight, the encore began immediately afterwards.
Late to everything of importance as always, a flash of electricity sparking out of one of the intact security cameras took the form of a furious Vox. So indignant and charged in his rage, he skipped right to throwing his hands out to deliver a blitz of crackling blue-electric voltage right at Straw Hat.
Encased in the lightning-like strike, the boy… had absolutely no reaction of any sort. In fact, he seemed fixated not on the attack he was experiencing upon his person, but on his confusion over Vox’s head. His head tilted this time in harmless curiosity as he eyed the shape of it.
“Oh, that doesn’t work either. What’s up with your head Square-Face? It’s like a Denden Mushi screen!”
Vox stared at Straw Hat, pixelated mouth dropping open and eyes going wide. Straw Hat just stared back blankly.
“ …A– A what? Have you– do you not know what a TV is?! And what do you mean it DOESN’T WORK– ?!?!”
The half-befuddled half-enraged exclamation was interrupted by the door to the penthouse slamming open. A sneering Velvette came in hot unloading a machine gun at the intruder. Husker and Angel, who had ceased their remarkable imitations of stagnant chopped liver long enough to begin creeping their way back towards Straw Hat, stumbled to dive away.
Straw Hat took the bullets head on. Only for them to fail to pass through his skin, elastic body stretching and sticking out where each individual piece of ammo would’ve passed through his body, halting their paths. When his body retracted, the force of it snapping back sent all the bullets shooting back in the direction they’d come from.
The still shocked Vox –slow-minded imbecile as usual– cursed as he got clipped in the side by the wayward fire. Velvette was much faster in her dodging behind the doorway, moving with her instinct despite the rather outrageously unexpected outcome.
“It’s cause I’m rubber. That doesn’t work either also,” the boy belatedly answered, then turned to look at the equally shocked poor excuses he had for teammates, “Ya want me to beat ‘em up too or nah?”
Blinking back into a half-way comprehension of reality, Angel realized the question had been directed at him. He stammered, “Uh– I– I think we’re good, actually…”
Then when Straw Hat threw his arms out to wrap one around each of them, pulling the two against either side of him to make a run for their point of entrance, Angel understood how, exactly, the boy planned their retreat. “Oooh no no no no no nononono– !”
“Look alive Angel Darlin’!” Husker had the presence of mind to call out while, in Straw Hat’s hold facing back towards the room, he threw out a pair of dice. They exploded in front of Velvette, forcing the girl back and her aim with a rather large pair of scissors to go askew. Seeing that Vox was in the middle of collecting himself, electric charge beginning to spark off the TV man like static, the spider caught on and pulled out his own guns from his fluff. His bullet spray was enough to distract the Overlord, forcing him to dissolve himself into energy to further avoid getting shot.
Their efforts were enough to cover their backs in the short time it took Straw Hat to reach the window and jump out.
As they began their freefall from the top of the skyscraper, the boy laughed out in excitement while Angel screamed at the top of his lungs. Husker was shouting at Straw Hat to let him go because he has “wings dammit just let me fly instead of draggin’ me down with ya!”, but he went unheard under the deafening cacophony.
Despite the frenzy of activity, Alastor found his eyes only drawn to Hell’s newest agent of chaos. The iconic straw hat had flown off its proper place, wavering in the wind and hanging by the thin thread keeping it attached to Straw Hat’s neck and revealing thoroughly messed spiky pitch-black hair. The scarlet sky began to lighten slightly with the coming of dawn. Usually a barely noticeable change, but with the shift, something changed about Straw Hat as well. For just a quick, ephemeral moment, no more than a couple of blinks, the boy up in the sky almost seemed to shine in a shimmering ghost of an outline of light. An unearthly presence falling upon the dour darkness of the pit below him.
While his attention was captured, Alastor didn’t let himself become distracted. As they rapidly fell from above, Alastor tapped his cane against the pavement to stretch shadows out across it, forming a large circle on the ground with himself placed at the very edge. Grin wide with laughter on Straw Hat’s face, he caught sight of Alastor and his own thin smile.
Alastor gestured with his mic towards the rather shady-looking creation and called out, “Interested in a shortcut for your daring getaway, Straw Hat?”
The boy immediately beamed at him. His two passengers were not nearly as enthused by the offer. Angel flailed his limbs crying out “NONONONO!” again while Husker just visibly resigned himself to his second death. They both likely assumed that either he would let them splatter their bodies to make a mess of the street, swallow them whole with the shadows, or worse.
He almost thought of doing such just to get a good laugh out of it, but luckily for them, there was a different outcome that was even more amusing…
The timing couldn’t have been better even if Alastor had tried. The vagabond trio fell at a frightening speed down into the shadow in the exact same moment Vox zapped himself out of the front door security camera. His raging, glitching scowl fell slack into shock at the sight of Alastor, too-large red pixelated eyes going even wider.
Tilting his chin up just so slightly with a smirk to make sure the mechanical man knew he was looking down at him, Alastor wiggled his fingers in a mocking wave as his own body merged with the darkness. He just caught sight of Vox fully devolving into an error-filled rage before his presence slipped away.
“It’s been fun old pal, at least for me that is~ ”
“ALASTORRRRRR-R-R-R– !!!”
The shadows spat the trio out of the ground in the hotel’s courtyard, momentum carrying them up into the air, before gravity began to reverse its efforts and brought them back into another fall. Alastor rematerialized out of the same shadows and watched Straw Hat suck in an absurd amount of air. “Gum-Gum Balloon!”
He kept hold of the spider and cat so that he touched down onto the ground while they landed on him. They bounced from the elasticity a couple of times before finally settling. Straw Hat released his breath in one huge gust, rubber balloon body deflating in one go and releasing his captives at the same time. Angel fell onto the ground on his hands and knees, as though just to feel the pleasure of its security. Husker just fell straight onto his back to groan at the sky, arms, legs, and wings spread out wide.
“Jesus fuckin’ Christ…! I literally saw my life flashin’ before my eyes for a sec there, Husky, and let me tell ya– It fuckin’ sucked!”
“Preachin’… to the choir here… It would’ve been a way to go, for sure…”
“Alastor!!!”
He was suddenly accosted at the side. His frame tensed up when arms wrapped around him in an embrace. Looking down to see Straw Hat grinning up at him and leaning his head just a tad too close such that his chin rested on the side of Alastor’s upper arm, he only blinked at the other’s noticeable shift to his full name. “You came to help! Shishishi!”
He allowed a grace period of exactly three seconds before he dematerialized himself, causing Straw Hat to abruptly fall onto the grass with a yelp, then reformed right beside the now giggling boy. “While I did indeed help in a manner of speaking, aiding you lot was not my main purpose. I had simply been admiring the fine entertainment you were providing and saw the opportunity to enhance my amusement. A heist like the one you pulled off wouldn’t be complete without leaving your pursuers in the dust after all! And as for your choice of opponent, well, I could hardly pass on a prime opportunity to heckle those self-important upstart Vees. Our interests happened to align is all.”
Straw Hat pushed himself up enough to cross his legs, large hands resting on them. The smile he sent up at Alastor didn’t wane in the slightest. “Still, you helped! So thanks! I’m glad you came!”
It was a rather strange feeling to be thanked for following whatever whims he happened to act upon. Most people he encountered, including the ones he “helped” with his deals, didn’t bother to thank him as they knew everything he did was for his own benefit. Outside of Rosie, who was a polite and delightful socialite of a cannibal, and Charlie, who always strived to act with niceness and freely gave her gratitude to everyone for even the smallest gestures.
Straw Hat meanwhile could be considered nowhere near polite company nor could he even be considered “nice”. Alastor’s impression of the boy was that he did not give gratitude freely. However, he did greatly value certain actions others would consider minor, and thus gave gratitude for those actions in kind. Or perhaps he was conflating Straw Hat’s gratitude for being fed to be of greater significance than it actually was, as he’d proven to be a largely food motivated individual…
They’d made enough of a ruckus that various residents arrived to investigate. Cherri Bomb, upon seeing her friend on the ground looking rather winded, rushed over in a yell, “Angel babe, what’s goin’ on here?! Did something happen?!”
“Did somethin’ happen? Oh Cherri, everythin’ happened! It was– it was incredible!” Cherri’s large eye blinked down at Angel in vague surprise at the wide, elated grin he directed up at her. With the adrenaline from the freefall and brush with death coming to pass, the spider could now begin to feel excitement for what had occurred.
“Ya should ‘a seen it! Like holy shit! Our cutie monkey here can fuckin’ fight! I ain’t never seen anyone handle Val the way he did! He– He broke his damn arms! He threw ‘em out his own damn window! On the top floor! Who the fuck even knows where he ended up! And the look on Val’s face when he tore up my Contract– oh, it was fuckin’ PRICELESS! Better than any damn crack or hit or high of any drug in all ‘a Hell! I’ve never felt this fuckin’ good before! It’s like I– I… I’m…”
All at once, the wind rushed out of him, leaving a vacant look about Angel’s face. He stared blankly down at the grass beneath him, one hand curling his fingers into the turf while one slowly raised to copy the gesture, feeling for something on his neck that was no longer there.
In the next blink, tears began to bud in Angel’s eyes, and he quietly sobbed out in full disbelief, “I… I’m free, Cherri, I… I’m free… We’re free…”
With an appropriately solemn expression, Cherri lowered herself to kneel next to Angel and hold one of his hands. But he was no longer looking at her. Instead, he looked for Husker with that last whisper, reaching out for the somber man when he approached to kneel next to him. Angel Dust smiled up through the tears streaming down his cheeks. In a mirror of that night not too long ago, a large, furred hand cradled his face to wipe them away.
Husker gave a small smile back, something soft, delicate, and somehow dimly bright. It was an expression Alastor had never seen on the other’s face before. “We’re free, yeah. Ya got that right… I saw yer real name on that damned ‘bullshit piece ‘a paper’. You want us to use that now instead of the stage name?”
After a bit of sniffling and using one of his extra hands to rub at his eyes, Angel answered, “ …Nah. I always thought I’d go back ta Anthony if I got the chance, ya know, but… What can I say? Angel’s grown on me. Or maybe ta be more specific, Angel Darlin’s grown me. So I hope ya was plannin’ on keepin’ that up.”
Husker immediately looked away at the other’s teasing smile, fully flustered with his fur puffing up in his blistering. Yet still somehow clearly pleased.
He found the whole affair to be rather distasteful. Having decidedly seen enough unamusing emotions for one day, Alastor promptly turned his back to head towards the hotel.
Charlie and Vaggie had arrived as well. Charlie had been about to approach to fret over the others, only for her paramour to hold her back with a serious look and a shake of the head. For once, the Princess deigned to follow Vaggie’s restraint, allowing Husker, Angel, and Cherri to commiserate together in relative privacy. But still, the both of them stood back watching over the scene in sympathy, still in reach if their presence was needed. So caught in the moment, Charlie didn’t look away as Alastor passed, and Vaggie only glanced over him briefly.
The out of place echo to his steps did not go unnoticed. As he made his way through the lobby to head into the hallway that led up to the hotel rooms, Alastor looked back to see Straw Hat wasn’t that far behind. He quicky caught up once Alastor had stopped in place, and still, he was smiling at him. Alastor returned the expression with a slighter, more neutral grin.
“Don’t wish to participate in the pity party? Well, I can’t say I blame you, but you are the MVP of the hour currently. You should be relishing in the prize of your decisive victory!”
“Nah, we’ll have fun when they’re ready. I just wanna see if you’re ready yet.”
“ …Excuse me? Ready for what, exactly?”
“Ready for me to help you too.”
Alastor stared at the boy. He stared back.
Within his grip, his fingers clawed lightly at the mic-head of his cane as they tightened their hold. The edge of his grin sharpened into something unpleasant. “A rather presumptuous thing to assume of me. Especially one of my level of strength. Feeling foolishly confident after besting an Overlord, are you?”
“I know Moth-Man wasn’t that strong, and I can tell you’re strong. But I still wanna help you!”
“Again, you are presuming– ”
“I can feel it,” Straw Hat cut him off, the weight of the words along with his stare stilled Alastor’s reflexive indignation and wit, “You’re not free, right? So let me help you.”
So plainly stated, and yet his voice carried with it a heaviness. Like it was no matter of ability nor circumstance nor even determination, but rather, that it was simply something that will be. Like the boy could, upon his own whim and consideration, will whatever he wished to be to be. For whatever reason, it brought to mind the image of how he’d seen this boy, falling from the sky with a smile so bright it almost seemed to bring upon the dawn of the day.
It's distasteful.
Alastor turned away from the other, making sure his grin remained unmoved. He carefully but firmly planted the end of his mic into the carpet by his feet. Then, he responded with his own deceptively light words, “Would you like to know what it is I hate about you the most, Straw Hat? At first, I thought the thing I hated about you was how difficult you were to control. Always doing as you please all the time; it was so taxing to attempt to manage you as I wished.”
“A lot ‘a people don’t like that about me, yeah! Aha!”
“ –But soon, I learned how to incorporate you into my expectations. In some ways, it could even provide a good amount of intrigue to otherwise mundanity,” he continued without losing a beat, thoughts a steady stream that refuse to be dammed, “No. Now, I realize, the thing I hate about you the most… is that you, by your very nature, instill hope into people. Faith. The wish for better. The wish to dream– whatever way you think of it, I dislike the prospect of your attempts to convert me to such thinking.”
Straw Hat’s face scrunched up at the explanation. Alastor hated that he knew the boy well enough by now to know that it was not in reaction to him stating he found something hateful about the other, but at what he said he hated. “Huh? What’re ya talkin’ about? It’s good to have dreams!”
“Is it truly? Is it not a painful, wretched thing, to dream for something so far out of reach? To see it within your view and attempt to claw your way up to it, to be unable to do anything but attempt to reach it for how much your heart yearns, until you find that the climb up only continues to prove vaster and vaster. Always in sight but never in hand. Until there is nothing left within your being and life but the insanity of that desire...”
Leaving his left hand to rest on his mic, he raised his other hand to gesture into the air, holding it in place as though to behold something from above. To claw at something from above.
“There is a foreign old tale of my world. It spins the story of a Buddha in paradise taking notice of a good deed done by a sinner in Hell, leaving a simple spider uncrushed in his path. Thus, they deigned to use a single thread of a spider residing in Heaven, casting it down into Hell to provide a path to climb up. The sinner reached for the thread and began his climb, going so very far up yet further still to go. Only to look down and see that more of the damned had started to climb up the thread as well. In fear that the thread will break, he yelled that the path was only meant for himself, and thus proved himself unworthy. The thread broke, condemning the sinner and all who attempted to follow back down into Hell.”
Returning both hands to his cane and shifting to send a proper look at the blank-faced Straw Hat, Alastor scoffed, “I find it to be a fallacious and pretentious story. The most inconsequential of things, a spider left unharmed, that was all the gods needed to find the whim to gift their oh-so precious salvation onto one of the damned. Only to rescind it as soon as their whims shifted the other way. No matter what the sinner did, that thread was always meant to break. It was but a mere spider’s thread. How could it be expected to carry not but one, but potentially countless of the damned into Heaven? They shouldn’t have even wanted unworthy sinners to follow him. The only logical decision was to stop them from following him. And yet, the gods looked down on him for such basic, necessary self-preservation. Because it all seems so much easier from up above where one need not climb.”
With a dramatic flair such storytelling deserved, Alastor spun his cane in his hands until the mic-head came to an abrupt stop on Straw Hat, pointing at him. The boy stared down the end of it. Alastor’s grin further sharpened, this time in cruel amusement.
“From what I can see, you are the spider’s thread. Though not one that leads to the literal ‘Heaven’. Perhaps you can take the weight of one of the damned, or perhaps even two, but eventually… someone will pull down on you too harshly. There will be too much weight to carry. And you will break.”
Turning his face away from the boy once more, Alastor folded his hands behind his back, keeping his mic tucked with them. He began to walk away, intent on ending the conversation at that, “To hand over control to someone else’s whims is but a promise for disappointment. Therefore, I will not rely on something as fickle and untrustworthy as supposed aid granted from another. Whatever I want in this world, I must find a way to attain it for myself. That is the only path I have faith in.”
He startled at the feeling of a hand grasping his shoulder. He hadn’t heard nor felt Straw Hat rush to approach, and yet when he glanced over, the boy was there. Frowning and staring at him with those big, round eyes of his that somehow seemed to just see right through him. Seeing things no one else as ever been able to see about him.
“I won’t break,” was all he said, stated with that same weighty certainty as before, “And I won't change my mind. It doesn’t matter how heavy it is, how hard it is, or who we gotta fight– Whatever you’re carrying, I’ll hold it with you. Wherever you’re climbing to, I’ll climb with you. That’s what I decided when I set out to sea as the captain of my crew.”
It felt like Alastor was consumed by that stare. In a vague sense of déjà vu, something inside him shifted. The world and halls that surrounded them faded away in his mind’s eye. All he could see was this boy who stared at him, waiting for his response.
This boy who was not actually a boy, but a man who acted as though he could carry the weight of the world upon his shoulders. And yet he didn’t, left utterly without burden, weightless and free. Like any burden handed to him would become weightless in turn just by being held within the palm of his hands. He stared at Alastor as though he saw everything that he is, every sin and burden either hidden or displayed with pride, and still, he metaphorically held out his hand to that most horrible of demons. Waiting for his gesture to be accepted.
–What a nice dream that is, indeed. To be free. Perhaps, if he just reaches out for that thread that hangs from above…–
The thought is killed before it could breathe any further.
Alastor disappeared, sinking into the shadows of the floor and falling away from the grasp of Straw Hat’s hand. He returned to the darkness from wince he came.
Notes:
Two references to mention this chapter:
The story Alastor talks about at the end of the chapter is The Spider's Thread by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa.
Angel Dust's line telling Val about his two minutes notice is a nod to the Helluva Boss song 2 Minutes Notice.
Chapter 4: Radio Star
Chapter Text
The mood in the hotel was sickeningly joyful after Angel Dust was released from his Contract. That same day after the trio involved had some much-needed rest, Cherri Bomb insisted on Angel going out to celebrate. Angel agreed right away, and even Husker was quick to be convinced to join in. And as the demon who got the job in question done, Angel convinced Straw Hat to go with them as well, who while he had no idea as to what the clubbing experience entails was excited to try a new “fun party”. Alastor had noted though that Angel slipped some chicken nuggets away to bribe Straw Hat into staying longer once he’d realized their choice of establishment failed to provide food, a rather clever idea.
Usually Alastor wouldn’t bother watching over such tasteless mundanity, but there was one small part of him that had been curious to see Straw Hat’s reaction to such a foreign experience. It wasn’t too much of a hassle, so his shadow followed them for at least the beginning of their venture just to see the gist of things.
While initially disappointed by the lack of food and confused by the style of gyrating perversion that the modern generation attempted to pass off as “dancing”, they managed to keep Straw Hat around for a few rounds of drinks through the timely release of nuggets. While reportedly not a drinker, even the boy was excited to get to the first round, calling out for sake as his choice of drink. With a clang of cups and arms in the air, they all shared a toast.
Having downed his first small cup in one go, Straw Hat used the bottle he’d been served to pour himself more while Cherri and Angel moved on from their cocktails to ordering shots. Instead of taking another drink, however, the boy instead slid off his bar seat to approach a shady corner at the side. He held out the cup towards Alastor’s shadow, offering it to him with a smile. “If you wanna have fun you should just come over! Every good battle needs a party after, and you helped, so you get to party too!”
Without a word, Alastor’s shadow slipped away, retreating back to the hotel.
Even if he had any desire to join in on the inanity, which he did not, he most certainly could not join. Not when considering one of the attendees in question was still celebrating his freedom from the Radio Demon. But of course, Straw Hat was too much of an imbecile to think his invitation through.
–He had not run from Straw Hat. He had not. He merely tired of attempting to explain such concepts to a person who had actively chosen not to understand. There hadn’t been any point to wasting any more time–
From what he heard of events later, apparently the night out was shorter than Cherri would have liked. After some random demons flirting with Angel escalated to them attempting to drug his drink which escalated to Husker almost starting a fight which then escalated to Straw Hat moving straight to punching one of the offenders all the way through a wall, they were promptly thrown out. Angel hadn’t been put out by the outcome though, as it seemed the act reminded him of Straw Hat’s very efficient beat down of Valentino. Even moving into the next day, he was still recounting the “Moth-Man” fight to Cherri, and then to Vaggie and Charlie once they walked into the lobby and Cherri purposefully switched out with them as she’d tired of the retelling. Each iteration had become more and more exaggerated than the last. Which was saying something considering the starting material had already been absurd to the point one would assume it to be exaggeration.
“ –and then he headbutts the guy so hard, his neck snapped in half! I swear I could hear it! His head was practically fallin’ off! But he wasn’t even done yet, oh no! Cause he picked Val right up and spun ‘em ‘round before BAM! Crashin’ out the damn window he goes! I don’t even know how many damn floors that buildin’ has, by god! I hope his guts splattered wherever he landed and he takes an eternity ta reform!”
“ …Okay, and how much of all that actually happened?” evidently believing the majority of the tale to be fictitious, Vaggie crossed her arms in annoyance as she sighed, “Listen Angel, I– I’m sorry to hear the real situation you were stuck in, and I’m glad you got out of it and can have fun with what happened the other night. But it’s kinda important to know how an Overlord as powerful as Valentino was taken down and well as how you broke the Contract. Trouble’s going to follow from this from the other Vees even if Valentino doesn’t pull himself together soon, and we need to be prepared.”
“Not that it will be because of you! The trouble, that is!” Charlie was quick to stick her head in between and interject with forced cheer, “However those meanies try to retaliate isn’t your fault at all, Angel! I just wanna make that clear in case you thought that’s what Vaggie was saying, because she definitely wasn’t saying that and it would just be awful if you thought that’s how we thought– ”
“I get’cha loud ‘n’ clear Princess, calm down. And I already told ya guys! Luffers was the one ta beat up Val, and he was the one who tore up the Contract! Frankly speakin’ until it was time to cover our asses, me and Husk here were just standin’ there lookin’ pretty,” rolling his eyes at them, Angel hesitantly admitted to the last point.
Vaggie raised an eyebrow at the claim. “I find that hard to believe since what you’re describing about a magical soul-binding Contract being torn up is literally, physically impossible. Let alone all the other stuff you claim happened in the fight.”
Husker was the one to stick in his head at that, loudly snarking, “Ya think we don’t know that, woman?! I had an entire damn emotional crisis over this like a week ago! Yer way too late to the party to be the one complainin’ here! Keep up with the times!”
While Vaggie returned the cat’s scowl, Charlie cut in with a vague sort of confusion, “Oh, so that’s what you were acting weird about around that time? That was before what happened with Angel’s Contract though, right? So Luffy’s already done this before! What happened then?”
There was an awkward silence. Alastor chose then to promptly manifest himself from where his shadow had been observing by the wall leading to the corridor. After Husker glanced back at his narrowed gaze and smile, the cat uncomfortably looked away, rightly put off by any delusions of confessing to the matter.
“I believe that is rather beside the point, my dear. The real crux to be dealt with here is that our resident straw hat wearing Monkey has delightfully unique capabilities, along with being quite the brawler.” Charlie jolted slightly when he placed a hand down on her shoulder, individually curling his fingers in a way he knew to be unsettling. He released her as soon as her pretty little head swerved to look at him, though, already making his way to pass by her and stand closer to a decidedly unpleased Husker.
Alastor looked at Angel to add, “And while that flight from the Vees’ tower will most certainly take a while to heal from, I do not believe Valentino will require full re-manifestation. He crashed through another window of a nearby building rather than falling all the way to his bloody mess of a death.”
At the news, Angel’s face fell into a particularly annoyed type of disappointment. “Rats. Guess ya can’t win ‘em all…”
“Wait… So you’re saying that Luffy actually took out Valentino all on his own, Alastor?” Vaggie questioned again, tone shifting from fully doubtful into more of a disbelieving realization that matched the way her eyes widened at the thought. Charlie also looked suitable shocked.
He grinned unabashed and wide at their delightful reactions. “Why yes, that is correct! It was a most quaint showing! Poor Valentino had been embarrassingly ambushed in the dead of night only to find that his most reliable method of murder was utterly useless against Straw Hat’s most unusual biology! Why, he couldn’t even put up a proper fight with how brutally and violently that boy beat him down! And then by the time the two others arrived he’d already been involuntarily vacated from the place, and their retaliatory attacks were also completely useless! The media showboat’s especially so.”
“It’s like they just let any above average sap who manages to con their way into social power and souls become Overlords nowadays, the mark of generational decline indeed. I made sure to let everyone in the city know about the Vees’ total pathetic humiliation that same afternoon broadcast,” making a show of inspecting his claws in implied boredom, he shook his head with a sigh of mocking disappointment, “Perhaps if you lot bothered to pull yourselves together enough to find some class, you’d have a radio other than my own in which to listen to my station, and would have thus heard the news as it came out rather than be so out of the loop as to the current social gossip. If I was you, I’d be rather embarrassed by the faux pas.”
While Charlie properly glanced away in awkward sheepishness, Vaggie just narrowed her glare further. The irritation was only enhanced when Straw Hat suddenly stuck his head out of the hallway after having finished another failed attempt to find the kitchen. “Oh! I wanna listen to Alastor’s rad-o or whatever! Especially if he’s talkin’ ‘bout me! Shishishi!”
“It’s pronounced radio…” Alastor’s grin stiffened as his eyes narrowed at the other’s entrance.
When Straw Hat strolled over to the group –of course choosing to bother Alastor even further by standing beside him– Charlie took the opportunity to direct her curiosity towards the subject of the mystery in question. “Wow Luffy, I didn’t realize you were so strong! How did you get so good at fighting? Is it because of what you did when you were alive?”
“Yeah, I already told ya! I became the Pirate King! That means I had to be stronger than every other pirate that wanted to be King of the Pirates! I had to fight a ton of ‘em along with a ton of marines and stuff!” Straw Hat declared with a proud, boyish grin. He rested his hands on his waist to stick out his chest slightly.
Seeing the universal round of blank faces, Alastor decided to enhance his amusement by making fun of their total ignorance. While he would prefer not to validate Straw Hat, it is getting rather tiring to witness such extended befuddlement over something Alastor had already known about for almost an entire month. Even the best of jokes run their course over time.
“Indeed, while I could easily tell you were in fact a pirate, I had my doubts as to your claim that you had achieved such a high standing title in life. But after seeing a sample of your prowess, I do admit the idea is no longer such a far-fetched reach.” He purposefully did not glance at the beaming smile that earned him.
“ …Wait, so …You’re actually a pirate?! I– I just thought– !” Alastor could practically see the wheels spinning rapidly in the Princess’s head as she tried to find a more polite substitute to saying that she’d thought the boy to be completely delusional. The other three were also equally blinking away their bewilderment. “That– that was a game or something. You know, like, playing pirates instead of… actually being one…”
Straw Hat just stared blankly at the girl’s sheepish, stilted smile. “Well sure I played pirates a lot as a kid, but I’m not a kid anymore! I set out to sea as soon as I was seventeen and strong enough to start my adventure!”
“How’re ya a pirate when they stopped being a thing, like, centuries ago? At least for the not internet kind. Also, ain’t seventeen still kinda young? Bein’ a pirate’s supposed to be illegal right?” Angel asked with genuine curiosity, leaning back further to lounge on the lobby couch to better look at the boy. Seated beside him, Husker just raised his brows at the line of questioning but was also clearly paying attention.
“What’re ya talkin’ about? There’re tons of pirates all over the place! Seventeen’s old enough, that’s when Ace started too. And yeah, that’s why pirates get bounties and I gotta fight marines.”
Alastor deigned to clarify, knowing the conversation would go nowhere with only Straw Hat’s input, “Piracy may have declined in our modern world yes, Angel, but where Straw Hat’s from they are in the midst of a great pirate era. He is not of Earth, you see. Though I don’t actually know what the name of their world is called.”
He finally glanced over to acknowledge Straw Hat at that and, as expected, the boy was of no help at all. “Huh? It’s just the world right? There’s only one world!”
“ …He’s a fuckin’ alien???”
“I do not believe that term fits exactly, seeing as I don’t believe that world resides on the same plane as our universe. He’s still of humanity.”
“How did he end up here then?!” Vaggie was the one to demand in growing exasperation. She gestured with both hands first to Straw Hat and then to the area at large, glaring right at Alastor as though he had anything at all to do with the circumstances.
The glare simmered further when Alastor half shrugged at the ex-angel, smile unaffected and relaxed. “While I am quite the learned demon, even I have no knowledge of why the afterlife was created the way it currently exists as. Straw Hat’s case is not unique. To the contrary, his people falling into Hell is a regular occurrence, it is simply that Earth’s population of dying sinners far outnumbers them. They are present and acclimate to society down here just as the rest of us.”
Hand buried in her hair and still visually processing everything, Charlie exclaimed, “Why didn’t you tell us any of this when he first started staying here– ?!”
“Heeeey daughter, future daughter-in-law, and friends! The unwanted busboy was excluded from that greeting just to be clear. Anyway, what’s the deal with all this fuss I’ve been hearing about a certain Monkey of ours throwing an Overlord out a fifty-story building? Cause if the story’s true, that’d be kinda awesome! Ha!”
Lucifer’s entrance into the lobby was as attention catching as it usually was. The man was such a narcissist it was like he was physically incapable of walking into a room without fanfare. Seeing a prime opportunity, Alastor’s grin curled into a full smirk, striking while the iron was hot.
In his most falsely apologetic tone, Alastor leaned forward onto his cane with both hands and belayed to Charlie, “Oh my dear, I had not realized you were left in the dark as to Straw Hat’s origins! You see, I had simply assumed that as the supposedly attentive father that he is, the King here would have surely informed his daughter of such relevant, esoteric knowledge! But truly, I am clearly at fault for assuming too much of the man. It has always been myself that has provided you with whatever learning you’ve required for this hotel of ours, after all. King Lucifer has simply proven himself to be sadly unfit in that regard!”
“I beg your fucking pardon– ”
“Dad!” the King cut off with a start when Charlie stood before him with a fully disappointed look to chastise, “Did you really know about Luffy?!”
“Huh? Know about what?”
“That he’s from– from not Earth?!”
Lucifer’s eyes squinted in obvious confusion as he hesitantly affirmed, “ …Yeeees?”
“Well why didn’t you tell me?! Us– that is!”
After a couple of blinks, the King averted his gaze with a nervous smile, adjusting his lapels in discomfort. In the exact manner of a man who realized his idiocy was about to lead to a woman scorned, he admitted as slowly as physically possible, “I… didn’t know… you didn’t know…?”
“How was I supposed to know?!” Charlie burst out in utter exasperation, hands flailing with conflicted energy that had nowhere else to go.
“Uh… Well… That’s a very good question, actually! I just… didn’t think about it…?”
“DAD– ”
“Listen, it’s not that big a deal Char-Char, alright? They’re mortal humans all the same!” Lucifer was practically sweating under his daughter’s fiery glare, trying to wave the whole thing off, “I mean– the only time it really comes up is when one of the tougher ones try to make trouble, and I could tell when we met him that Luffy wouldn’t be that type of trouble. If he was then it’d be a different story! Why, the last crazy-ass pirate I had to take care of… wasn’t that long ago now that I think about it, maybe almost half a year ago? Some dragon-ogre guy. He just dropped in the pit and went right to looking for me as soon as he figured out how things work around here. Absolutely obsessed with fighting the strongest guy around and conquering, let me tell ya! Demanded a fight to the death and everything! A little trip to an interdimensional pocket to make sure there was no collateral damage and a minor altercation later, I sent him to his death death just as requested. No, wait, was that soul woman before or after him… Doesn’t matter! Anyway, your old man’s got everything covered, so no need to worry! It’s not a big deal!”
Charlie opened her mouth. Closed it. Then with her eyes as wide as they could go, opened her mouth again to say, “I– That’s– not even what I’m upset about??? I’m mad because it helps me to know important things about our guests like this and you didn’t even think about that? And now you’re saying you fight pirates on a regular basis and NEVER BOTHERED TO TELL ME?!?!?!”
Eyes swerving everywhere as though to look for a convenient way to die, the King of Hell was outright stammering now, “I– ! It’s– ! Really not on a regular basis I promise– ”
“THAT’S NOT THE POINT!!!!!!”
As slowly as possible as to go unnoticed, both Angel and Husker slipped away from the scene to avoid becoming collateral damage. Complete the opposite, Niffty peeked out from some crawl space in the ceiling to witness the brewing chaos. Straw Hat just watched the back and forth with the vague half-interest of someone watching just to have something to watch.
Fully satisfied with the inconvenience he’d aimed at Lucifer, Alastor had to restrain himself from laughing at the fool. He began to make his way to the hallway, having left a perfect distraction to his departure in his wake. Or at least it would have been perfect, if not for a certain ex-angel.
Vaggie’s glare was fully set on Alastor, seeing right through his purposeful sowing of discord. He supposed she must’ve been quite upset on her paramour’s behalf. That was the only reason why she would suggest in a knowing tone, “Hey Luffy… If you really wanna know what Alastor does for his radio show, you should help him with it today. I’m sure an interview with the sinner that instigated the fight that’s the talk of the city right now would be a great segment.”
Alastor felt the serrated teeth of his grin grind together almost painfully when Straw Hat instantly yelled his excited agreement to the suggestion. He made his way back to Alastor so fast, he was suddenly beside Alastor once more within a blink.
And the thing that really, truly grated on him was that she was right that it was a good idea for a segment. Not only in terms of providing interesting content, but also in terms of absolutely infuriating a certain upstart media demon. He’d throw an entire infantile tantrum over losing viewers to Alastor’s broadcast providing a high interest interview with the newbie who’s singlehandedly demolishing the Vees’ reputation. So it came down to the question of what he wanted more; to be as far as physically possible from Straw Hat, or to indulge in what was sure to be a hilarious, absurd, and entertaining opportunity to throw salt into Vox’s surely festering wounded ego?
…Well, he can’t expect to ruin anyone’s day by being a coward now, can he? He shouldn’t be conceding ground to Straw Hat regardless. He’s the one in control so long as he makes it that way. He needs simply to use the other as he pleases.
“ …I must warn you, Straw Hat. If you make any mention as to attempting to recruit me into your little crew, I will actually kill you, and the broadcast schedule will change to me violently murdering you live on air.”
“Alright! I’ll be good! Promise!” the boy brightly agreed, not put off at all by the death threat. But since when has he ever been.
And so with a too-smug Vaggie left behind to the still continuing father-daughter conflict, Alastor made his way back to his radio tower with Straw Hat right behind him.
The boy looked just as interested by his abode as he had previously. Alastor had to conjure up a second chair for Straw Hat to sit in, not so unpolite as to leave the other standing, and it allowed him a couple of seconds to question his decision of going through with this farce. But really, it’d probably be more of a hassle to convince Straw Hat otherwise than it would be to move forward with the interview, and it was with this in mind that Alastor set his microphone stand in between the two of them –slightly favoring his own side of course.
Looking as young as his boyish charm and face portrayed, Straw Hat was almost bouncing in his seat in anticipation. Alastor was fairly certain the boy was about to find himself somewhat disappointed since while Alastor would find entertainment from vexing the Vees, from Straw Hat’s end it would just be a basic question and answer, and that pleased him.
“Salutations my dear listeners, your favorite Radio Demon is on the air once more with more salacious news as to the recent embarrassing defeat of Overlord Valentino of the Vees. Best turn off your VoxTek screens and prepare yourself for some real intrigue, because I have with me today the urban myth and potential rising star Overlord himself, the sinner who threw Overlord Valentino out of his own penthouse window! Care to introduce yourself to the crowd?”
“Hi! I’m Monkey D. Luffy! And I’m the– ”
“ –The Straw Hat Demon! The man of the hour, yes! We are certainly aware of that! I’m sure the sinners at home are practically dying their second deaths waiting for more juicy details of the affair to sink their teeth into!” he interjected before Straw Hat could get into the King Pirate nonsense that would shoot down the credibility of the interview significantly, “Let’s get right into the meat of things, no use beating around the bush. The first question I’m sure people at large are wondering is what, exactly, prompted this conflict?”
“Moth-Man hurt one of my friends, so he had it comin’.” He’s still using that stupid nickname, how delightful!
“He did indeed, aha! That leads to our next point, however. Valentino has certainly, through various means, harmed many a sinner. How is it that you were able to do what seemingly no other has done throughout the demon’s rise to power and put up a fight?”
Straw Hat’s doubtful head tilt made it known how stupid he thought that question to be. He responded in perhaps the best way possible, “It’s not like it was hard. I already told ya Moth-Man wasn’t that strong.”
Through his connection to the radio waves being sent out across Pentagram City, Alastor is partially able to sense what is occurring around individual radio speakers while he’s using them. He doesn’t usually pay much attention to this portion of his ability, but both in this case and in his coverage yesterday, he tuned in to the specific frequency of Vox’s radio. The radio that the demon in question would certainly deny having if someone ever asked.
Yesterday he’d been inconsolably ranting all the while Alastor spilled the tea as to the Vees’ Tower home invasion. Today, as soon as he realized Alastor was talking about it with the perpetrator trash talking one of their members, there was a flurry of movement suggesting Vox had broken something nearby in his rage.
Alastor’s grin curled further, pleased with the response. Straw Hat’s face gained its own grin as though in response to that. “Is that so? Many would disagree with you considering the man is an Overlord. However, I am of the opinion that while becoming influential to our society is an understandable reason to be titled an ‘Overlord’, not all Overlords are created equally in terms of their raw power and strength. Based on your experience would you agree with that sentiment? Take yourself for example! The sinners of Hell are now debating on whether to consider you an Overlord or not due to your defeat of one, but because you were a literal unknown who’s yet to have any influence other than this conflict, there’s been no public consensus. At the same time, you have clearly already proven yourself stronger than Overlord Valentino. Do you have an opinion on the situation?”
“I don’t care about bein’ one of those o-lords or whatever. But about the other thing, yeah!” the agreement was spoken more as a laugh than a word, Straw Hat still beaming at him, “Even though you’re both o-lords, I can tell you’re a bunch stronger!”
It was as though he’d scripted it himself, but even better since it was a completely genuine answer– “Ahaha! Flattery will get you everywhere my dear. So please, tell me more! Based on your shorter encounters with the other two Vees, how would you rate their strength?”
“Who’re they again?” Brilliant! Simply brilliant! It sounded like Vox broke one of his own screens with that one!
“They were the two individuals who showed up much too late to do anything of importance right after you threw Moth-Man out the window.”
“Oooh them, yeah. They didn’t seem that strong either. You could beat ‘em.” Now even Velvette was shrieking up a storm. Her poor unfortunate models best keep clear of her for the day!
Alastor, admittedly, was perhaps becoming too pleased by Straw Hat’s responses. He jumped right to rubbing the salt in as obtusely as possible, “Why aren’t you a darling little Monkey~ And I mean little literally, seeing as you still easily tossed around Valentino despite only coming up to about half his height. It made for quite a sight! Just to make things crystal clear to certain listeners at home, you are saying, in your fully unbiased judgement, that I am superior to each of the Vees individually? Including the CEO of VoxTek himself, Vox?”
“Which one’s that?”
“I believe you referred to him as Square-Face.”
“Oooh the guy with the weird head, yeah. You could definitely beat him. He’s a big deal here? That’s weird!”
And with that, Alastor felt his connection to Vox’s radio shatter along with the radio itself, having been thrown down onto the floor. At the absolute victory, he allowed himself a hearty laugh. Straw Hat matched it with his own inane laughter.
“Ahahahahahahaha– Oh– ! Yes! That message was certainly delivered loud and clear! Good job! I believe however, we might be starting to alienate some of our listeners in our fun,” while Alastor transitioned to a more serious note, his posture remained anything but. He lounged with one elbow on the control panel of his station while leaning his side of his face into his hand. Looking at how Straw Hat had managed to draw up his legs to sit cross-legged in his seat, the other also seemed without tension. Not that the carefree boy often found himself tense over anything.
This time Alastor’s question was one born of his actual curiosity, though he spoke with the same grand inflection as he had with all his previous questions, “You seem awfully confident as to your assessment of these Overlords. However, you only truly fought one of them, and only somewhat at that considering he failed to put up enough of an initial struggle to gain any ground. So at the risk of invalidating all your prior delightful answers– What are you basing your opinion off of? If it’s simply due to their total incompetence when it came to handling you, I’d say that’s a fair basis to stand by!”
Straw Hat hummed to himself, seemingly taking his response more seriously and thus not just spouting off the literal first thought that came to his mind. After he messed with his wriggling tail for a minute, he stopped abruptly, sitting up straighter to decisively respond, “I could tell how much will they had when they tried attacking me. It wasn’t that strong, so they weren’t that strong. They weren’t fighting for Moth-Man, they were fighting cause they didn’t like that I was there, so their will was weaker!”
After a few seconds to properly interpret the other’s words, Alastor couldn’t help the slightly unimpressed hum he sounded, “So it’s because they weren’t fighting for their friend. How quaintly naïve. I would’ve expected you just to say that outright, though.”
“Well cause it’s more than that too! How much will you’ve got is important! It’s not just when it comes to protecting friends,” shrugging noncommittally, Straw Hat insisted, “You fight at your strongest when there’s something you’d die fighting for. Those three didn’t have that, so their will was weaker than mine.”
“ …That’s quite an extreme point of view. Though it leaves one to ruminate. A rather short broadcast, but I think it best to leave the listeners to consider the thought– Does one have something they’d die for? And does that make one strong, or perhaps… it’s simply a weakness. Some food for thought as they say. Farewell until next time, dear listeners!”
It was a rather unusual end to the segment. Alastor’s interest had already moved on with the end of the real fun of it, and in the transition, Straw Hat had managed to catch his attention as he often does. While he wished to continue the line of questioning, some things are better discussed off air.
After disconnecting his microphone from the system, Alastor turned his partially interested gaze back to Straw Hat, who just blinked back questioningly. “You know, while I was the one to threaten you as such, I’m somewhat surprised you didn’t actually embarrass me on my own radio show.”
The other’s blank look shifted back into a bright smile. “Wha? Course not! I promised, and I keep my promises!”
“ …Quite the moral paragon when you choose to be, aren’t you.” Perhaps it will be easier to control the boy if he simply manipulates him to make more promises, a thought to consider for another time. “I couldn’t help but make a certain inference from what we’ve discussed. And beyond that, I have a certain question concerning various observations I’ve made of you throughout your time here. If you’ll indulge my curiosity.”
“Okay!”
“You have absolutely no inclination as to keep any of your cards to yourself. I may be the one asking after you here, but I still must say– That will come back to bite you after telling the wrong person the wrong thing, someday.”
“But it’s fine right? Cause it’s Alastor!”’
“ …If you were to tell Husker that, I’m sure he’d have a stroke. So maybe consider the idea!” Alastor dismissed the boy’s very unwise trust in himself as another mere symptom of his chaotic inanity, moving on to his first point of curiosity, “To start with, I had a thought concerning your determination of the Vees’ strength. You’re deciding factor was that they lacked ‘will’, which you defined as one having a desire so valued, they consider it greater than the value of their own life.”
Straw Hat took a second to process Alastor’s more complicated reinterpretation of his simplicity. “Mmm… Yeah! That’s right!”
“So for you to so decisively point me to be the stronger of us four Overlords, am I right in assuming it is because you believe me to have this will to die?”
“It’s not a will to die,” Straw Hat summarily shut down the claim, looking a bit miffed at having to clarify something he personally believed to be obvious, “No one wants to die. But if I die living for my dreams, then that’s a death I wouldn’t regret! And you got all mad about it before, but you have a dream like that too! I could tell as soon as I met ya.”
Alastor allowed himself to raise a brow the statement, grin quirking just a bit lopsided. “And that quote-unquote ‘dream’ is…”
Grin growing larger and shining so very bright, Straw Hat declared, “We’ve got the same dream! We both wanna live free! It’s why I want ya to join my crew! All the others have different dreams, but even though we’re really different, we got the same one! Isn’t that funny!”
Something shifted in his mind at the thought. Alastor ignored it. He didn’t allow himself to physically react, merely moving on to counter, “I believe wishing to live freely as a prerequisite requires being alive to do said living. Dying for such a thing is rather missing the point.”
“But instead of living in a way you don’t wanna forever, you’d rather die tryin’ to live the way you want to. Right?”
Unrest turned inside him. Alastor adjusted his head in his palm such that it was holding his chin instead of his cheek, turning his head to stare straight out the window instead of at his conversation partner. He felt like he should be more angered by Straw Hat speaking of things that weren’t his business, but somehow, he just found himself sighing at the trouble.
“I suppose you wish to loop back to ‘helping me’ again, but I’m disinclined to that. How about another quandary I had? In your simplistic mind, you equated Princess Charlie as to being the ‘captain’ of this hotel, which includes being the captain of the residents such as Husker and Angel Dust– ”
“Cause she is, yeah!”
“ –Which begs the question I arrived at,” Alastor continued without missing a beat despite the interruption, “Do you consider her to be my captain?”
When Straw Hat started obnoxiously laughing at the suggestion, Alastor wondered if he should feel sympathy for poor Charlotte Morningstar. Instead he internally laughed at that prospect.
“Haha! Nah, she’s not strong enough to be your captain now. Chacha can get that strong if she wants, but she’s gotta want it!”
“Which circles back to that matter of will for you. Perhaps I may manage to divine the mysteries concerning your strange mind yet!” Alastor also mentally noted how Straw Hat, despite using ‘will’ as his determining factor, also still seemed to ascertain the hidden potential Charlie possessed as being a royal of Hell and Morningstar.
“While it’s good judgement of you to exclude me from her motely ‘crew’ so to speak… That also implies you believe yourself to be stronger than me, to insist upon instating me into your crew.”
Straw Hat’s grin stretched into something boyishly proud and confident, at that. “Cause I am! We can fight if you wanna see! But we can’t do it at the hotel. Chacha’ll be sad if I tear it down.”
The unshakable certainty with which Straw Hat spoke with could almost be considered insulting given the context. Alastor was tempted to take up the offer simply to humble the boy. However… he was also left with the distinct sensation that doing so would entrap him in some way.
He wasn’t one to rush into such matters without consideration. While Straw Hat’s claim stung his pride and made him wish to bite back in spite, he recognized that he truly did not know how strong the boy was. With the way he made quick work of Valentino, he’d been acting nowhere close to the upper limit of his power. It made the question of who would best whom into more of a guessing game. While Alastor considered himself to have strong offense as well as a multitude of powerful mystical techniques, he could tell just by the little he’d seen that Straw Hat was an excellent physical brawler. One who’d already showcased one entirely impossible skill via his breaking of Contract magics. He wouldn’t wish to enter a confrontation with the other with as many unknowns as there were at play.
“Since I’m strong, ya don’t need to be scared of leavin’ things to me. Let me fight for you.”
The insistence soured his mood in an instant. Grin tightening at the edges as his gaze narrowed into more of a glare, Alastor forced himself to look back at the boy’s innocent face. “Broken records are useless things, Monkey. And it is not fear that stills my hand, but practicality. There’s no point to such a battle when it’s a certainty you’ll lose it.”
“No it’s not! I can beat anyone I need to! Just tell me who to beat up and I’ll prove it to ya!” Straw Hat huffed almost childishly, crossing his arms over his chest.
Reaching out to take his cane into hand, his fingers sequentially tapped atop the mic-head. He shifted his weight to lean on the opposite side he’d been residing in to lean his head uncomfortably far over, holding out his free hand towards Straw Hat in a mocking gesture. “Is that so? What a big boy you are, to be able to beat anyone! How old were you when you died again? Let me guess, it was from a fight, correct? One that you lost?”
Humming to himself, the boy looked like he actually had to think about the answer. “Hmm~ I think… I’m twenty? Think my birthday already happened but I don’t remember! So nineteen or twenty! And it was a fight but I didn’t lose! I killed him first and we wiped out his crew too, so we won!”
Alastor mentally paused at the blasé delivery. Straw Hat wasn’t quite the age of a boy, but just barely twenty was certainly still young. Many die younger, of course, but the boy was young enough that in the modern age his death would’ve been considered an untimely tragedy. And yet, he stated his circumstances without much care.
“…And your death was without regret because you died living freely?”
“Yeah,” Straw Hat smiled at him with that word, as though there was anything to be smiling about. Though he supposed he shouldn’t be throwing stones in that regard.
“You were right, before… It’s hard to dream. After I set out to sea, there were a lot ‘a times it hurt. There were times when I wasn’t strong enough. I almost died a lot, too. But that’s cause things that matter the most hurt the most, so they make people the happiest, too. It’s only when ya don’t care that it doesn’t hurt, right? But then it’s not fun anymore! And you wanna still have fun, don’t ya?”
“…I believe the things you and I consider to be fun are quite different.”
“But some of ‘em are the same! Me beating Moth-Man’s ass was fun for both of us! And I liked that you were havin’ fun with your radio even though I didn’t know what you were laughin’ about, so I had fun too!” the boy ended in a slight giggle, as though watching Alastor relish in the unseen misery he orchestrated onto people had been genuinely funny.
Alastor also found himself withholding a head-tilt of curiosity as he had another realization, “You said it right, this time. Radio. I suppose you can learn.”
“Well yeah, it’s somethin’ ya care about! It’s your treasure!” Straw Hat pointed at his mic as he made the distinction, still smiling, “So I care about it too, cause I care about you.”
There’s something about the statement that catches him so very off guard. He should find it naïve if anything. And it’s not as though no one has cared about him before, though admittedly they were not exactly numerous in number. But even still…
It’s the way that Straw Hat spoke the phrase. It was with that same certainty he tended to carry. The same certainty he held when he told Alastor he wouldn’t break. The same certainty he held while breaking into an Overlord’s territory to save the soul of a friend. The same certainty with which he snatched the Contract for Husker’s soul right from Alastor and tore it into fiery sunder.
It’s that certainty which took what Alastor should have considered to be a fanciful sentiment and made it into a foundation. It seduced him into truly believing the boy’s word, that somehow for whatever inane reason, he does care about Alastor. And that just wouldn’t do–
“If you ‘care about me’, then would you DIE for me?” Alastor couldn’t keep the snarl from his voice as it distorted at the end, twisting into a cruel note.
“If ya needed me to yeah, but for this I can’t, right? If I lose the fight, you can’t be free. So I gotta live for ya instead!”
It’s with that– that insane allegation that Alastor finally snapped, grin a baring of sharpened fangs.
“You don’t even know me! You cannot just– the type of statement you are making should not be spoken on a simple wHiM! If you had any sense of awareness as to the depth of mOnStEr I am, you would know I am not deserving of such FoOlIsH, blind dedication!”
Despite all his glaring red pitted eyes, despite his baring of teeth and looming antlers and disturbing form… Straw Hat just stared back at him with those carefree eyes of his.
“That’s just what you and other people think. I decide for myself who deserves to be on my crew. It’s not a whim, it’s the truth.”
He should protest. He should rage and cackle and call the whole thing a lost cause and just swallow up the boy in one bite. But the weight of those words, the weight of his voice–
In the face of it, the fiery burn inside of him withered and died.
Without his spite or vitriol or hatred, the space inside Alastor’s chest felt hallowed. Like a void, empty and barren. Throughout his years, he’s never been offended whenever someone had claimed him to be heartless, because he found the idea amusing. That place of weakness instead filled with negatively charged emotions and the enjoyment he derived from them.
But without them… he’s not much of anything at all.
“…You’ll die for this. The one who owns me is at the same level as the King of Hell himself.”
“I won’t die. And that’s fine, I can still beat ‘em.”
“I find that dreadfully hard to believe…”
“Then don’t believe me, just let me do what I want!” Straw Hat dismissed the concern entirely before, after a couple blinks, he added on in a completely unconcerned tone, “And weren’t ya tryin’ to kill me anyway? Just make this the next game. I don’t mind cause I know I’ll win.”
Alastor stared at the boy. He stared back.
His head tilted back to burst out in laughter at the absurdity of it all.
Holding none of its usual meanness or jeering, but instead just purely laughing. As though he’d heard the funniest joke in the world.
In the back of his mind, he wondered if he’d finally fully gone insane. Then decided he’s probably been in a state of insanity for quite some time. It was simply that for all of Hell’s sinners, including horrid, wretched creatures that passed as humanity, he’d never truly met someone at his level of insane before.
And it’s hilarious–
“ –AHAHAHAHAHAHA! HA– Oh deer~ Well, who am I to stand in the way of someone playing a good game of Russian Roulette? It’s one of my favorites for a reason. Not only have I run out of arguments, you’re also much too insane to listen to any logical reasoning in the first place! My time has been wasted attempting otherwise!” Alastor stood up while he chimed pleasantly about his defeat, smoothing out the front of his suit and adjusting his bowtie. His appearance had become slightly messed in his fussing. It’s embarrassing, really, how much the boy had been able to rile him up.
Placing the end of his cane against the ground to rest both his hands on the top, he smiled at Straw Hat cheerfully. “I will enjoy spectating your funeral from the sidelines! Do you have any last words you would like me to impart onto any of the hotel residents?”
Unsurprisingly, Straw Hat beamed at him despite the morbid tone. Rushing to stand from his seat and throwing his hands up into the air, he exclaimed with full excitement, “So you’re lettin’ me fight?! HELL YEAH! AWESOME! I don’t need to tell ya anythin’, cause I’m not gonna die!”
“I will simply tell them you spent your last moments enjoying the delusion of your grandeur, then. I suppose you wish to pick your fight now?”
“YEAH!”
“Ah, yes. The early worm gets eaten by the bird, as they say. How silly of me to even pose the question when your eagerness is so apparent!”
With a twirling spin of his mic, an outline of eerie green light drew itself in the air. When the circle was complete, the inside filled with the same sickly glow. An utterly suspicious-looking portal that could take anyone to any sort of terror-inducing destination. One that no one with any sort of brains or sanity would regard with anything less than upmost caution.
Which was why Straw Hat straight up walked right through it, without waiting for Alastor to even give an explanation or waiting for Alastor himself to go first.
That’s right– he need not take this boy seriously. There was no need to put any sort of emotional stake into this. He needs simply to accept the new featured presentation for what it is; basic entertainment for him to find more amusement in! There was no risk in the endeavor. It’s not like he cares for whether Straw Hat lives or dies. He will likely need to deal with his master’s ire, but that would’ve been something to contend with regardless. Might as well get a show out of it!
–And if the show happens to take an unexpected turn… Should the thread he’s taken hold of remain unbroken…–
He kills the thought before it goes any further. But as has proven since he’d been mistaken as a deer and shot in the head in the midst of hiding a body an entire lifetime ago, things that die have the tendency to come back, one way or another.
And so it is with his mind leaning more towards mania than sanity that Alastor takes his own step through the portal. He need not mentally prepare himself to stand before the Queen of Hell if his mind was already too compromised to care.
Chapter 5: God of Liberation
Notes:
Thanks again for the fanart by ADEMONEO :D (Appropriately timed too considering the chapter lol)
Chapter Text
It was a dark, deary sort of place. Cut off from even the light of Hell’s blood-red sky. Instead, liminal space that served as a sky hung above in a cold monotonous gray. Pocket dimensions such as these were not meant to be real places, and thus, there was no color or sense of definition to the area. Merely shades of gray all stacked atop each other, seemingly reaching far out to a horizon that resembled more a framed painting on a wall than the meeting of sky and ground. An infinity which felt more limiting than anything else. The only features to proverbially bring the space any sort of life were, ironically, spikes of blackened sharp husks that may have once been trees at some point. But even those were scattered about, few and far between.
Alastor had wondered once what it said about that woman for her to have created such a “garden”. If it was a mere reflection of her despair regarding her fall from grace, or if this was in fact how the famed Garden of Eden had looked in her eyes. But at the time he’d had the thought, he’d dismissed it as quickly as it’d come. Such pondering mattered little to him in the context of things. He’d preferred not to think of her at all.
He had felt when the owner of his soul had returned to the realm of Hell. She had descended on an unsuspecting day not to long after the Extermination. Though she had yet to call upon him. Alastor had assumed she’d been lying in wait, letting plots brew before enacting them when the time was right. He had been decidedly avoiding their reunion, perfectly fine with waiting until he could no longer ignore the woman’s presence, but he supposed it was better to get undesirable executions over with before the guillotine hanging above fell without warning.
Straw Hat was already in a staring match with the regal form of the Queen of Hell when Alastor stepped in after him. He didn’t look at her with anything more than the usual sort of blank curiosity he often possessed, and she looked over him with a similar if much colder inquisitive glance. She was not surprised at his arrival, not that Alastor would expect her to be. She had likely been watching over Hell and specifically the hotel all this time.
Her gaze didn’t stray from Straw Hat, even when she only addressed Alastor, “Radio Demon… so you ended up falling in line with the boy after all. I will admit I find that to be a rather interesting decision, but I suppose even now, much of the way your mind works remains unknown to me.”
“I had simply tired of having to constantly reject him, Your Majesty” he gave a casually stated explanation as he moved into a low bow, disappearing his mic in the same movement so as to not be impeded by it. It left him feeling uncomfortably vulnerable, but he also knew having it on his person wouldn’t help when it came to her. Thus, it was better to store it away to keep it safe. “I knew it’d be no trouble at all for you to deal with him, so I believed this to be the most convenient way to deal with the annoyance! I do apologize for acting so forwardly.”
After only a slight pause, the imposing feminine voice intoned, “And I believe we both know that I do not act in your convenience. You test me, Alastor.”
He tensed at the mention, but despite already knowing what was coming, he still found himself disoriented when chains of gold light dragged him down. His collar manifested to force him to kneel on the ground before her. He was unable to even lift his head to look upon his tormentor.
“Your buzzing voice is already enough of an irritation without the false pleasantries it so easily spews. I tire of it.”
Alastor kept himself from flinching when the stitching around his lips manifested in his own veridian power, only to flash into gold. The seams pulled themselves together to seal his mouth shut tight, forcing it into a stiff, thin line of a stretched grin.
He thinks that, out of all the ways this woman binds him, somehow this was always the worst. It felt like a poisonous invasion, to pervert the smile he purposefully used to maintain his poise and subvert all sense of control he had over it.
It’s the most pointed of insults, to cage him from even using his voice. He was the Radio Demon, the vainest sort of radio host in both life and death– His voice and his eloquence were the personal characteristics he took pride in the most. Even more so than the pride he held for the power he gained in death, the aspect that most would assume to hold such a position. Joking insults of how he “loved the sound of himself speaking”, while still exaggeration, were rather on the nose. And she withholds it from him at the slightest misplaced statement. Finds it an irritation to hear him speak.
And yet, he can do nothing but feel the bite of bitterness coil in his chest. The vitriol that vies to come forth can only choke and die in his throat. He didn’t try to fight against its hold, knowing it would only sharpen the deep ache the thread tore into his flesh and skin.
There is no one in this world that he has come to hate more than this person. Indeed, constrained to this subjugation, he is reminded of why he so often feels like he is at the end of his rope. Trying to free himself of this cursed existence–
With his gaze forced downward, it was easy to see when a hand shot into his line of vision to grasp at the end of the chain connected to the ground. In one great heave, it broke the ending links, leaving the rest to dangle from his neck. Before Alastor can even find the awareness to raise his head, two hands clasp the sides of his face to guide it back up and to the side.
“Alastor! Wha– How do I get it off?! Does it hurt?!” Straw Hat’s face is cast in almost frantic worry. Kneeling down beside him, his gaze flitted about Alastor’s face as though he’d find some hidden mechanism to undo the power laced through the seams sewn into his skin. The attention was an inescapable spotlight set on his person, momentarily blinding his vision to all else.
Despite himself… Alastor felt ashamed. Ashamed for the boy to witness him in this state. He couldn’t keep himself from averting his own gaze. Couldn’t keep his ears from pressing back. Couldn’t stop the way the back of his hand unconsciously raised to press against his mouth, a useless attempt to hide.
He would’ve felt similarly for anyone to see him this way, humiliated to such a degree, but in concerns to Monkey D. Luffy specifically… He would hesitate to admit to it, but the boy had come to earn his respect throughout their acquaintanceship. Respect not just for the boy’s power both known and unknown, but also for the ideals and way of life he committed himself to. It is because Alastor so highly regarded Straw Hat’s boundless free spirit that he envied it so venomously in turn. It was a harsh reminder to what he himself lacked, and the fact that he very much is lacking has been put on full display.
Alastor belatedly realized that with Straw Hat’s full attention on him, the boy had turned away from the woman –absolute imbecile to the very end, this one– but she didn’t strike an advantage. Rather, she simply watched from afar, before calling out, “You would do well not to trust that demon. Why does one of your nature covet him so? Do you not find the evil of this devil to be something worth condemning– ”
“SHUT UP! I’m not listenin’ to somethin’ so stupid!”
When Straw Hat turned to look back at her, the look on his face…
Alastor has never seen the other carry such an expression before. Scowl mean and dark, pulling at his face as he bared his teeth and his pupils constricted. Alastor could practically feel the rage coming off the other in rays of heat. Before Straw Hat moved to take a stand, however, he glanced back at Alastor once more to frown at his state.
Straw Hat lifted his hand to remove his referenced hat, only for him to push it forward into the lower half of Alastor’s face. His own hands reflexively grasped the hat along its sides. Sharp claws held onto the straw somewhat awkwardly. Straw Hat then immediately stood up, turning his back to Alastor and to walk forward towards the Queen.
It was only then that Alastor realized the hat had been granted to him for the express purpose of allowing him to hide his mouth.
“Take care of my hat for me, will ya? It’s my treasure. You should move outta the way too. This fight’s gonna be a big one.”
…What a foolish boy.
The hat within his claws felt deceptively light, it hardly weighed anything at all. Alastor’s jaw clenched as he stood up while holding it in place to cover his shame. He walked backwards a good ways away, knowing that however the show ended up, it wasn’t one he would want to be caught in the middle of.
The Queen met Straw Hat’s glare head on, stare merely becoming firmer at having been brushed off. She began her declarations again with more insistence, “Lucifer might not have realized it yet, but I’ve watched you closely enough to have an idea as to what you are, though not exactly who. You have no need to retain a demon of the Radio Demon’s ilk. Are you truly so careless as to mess in matters you have no need to on just a whim?”
“It’s not a whim! It’s what I decided! And I already said I’m not listenin’ to ya! Everything you say is dumb!” fists clenched painfully tight at his sides, Straw Hat’s yell was a borderline growl, “What ya said about Al’s voice is dumb! It’s my favorite thing about him! It sounds nice even when he’s sayin’ mean things! And even when it does that weird thing, it’s super cool! I won’t let ya take it from him!”
Alastor’s mouth wavered against the firm pull of its restraints. His hands clenched, fingers trembling for just a split moment before he forced them still.
Tension ran like a livewire through the tips of his claws all the way up his arms and down his spine and through the tips of his ears. His frame was carefully frozen in place, preventing him from flinching when his tormentor sighed in enduring irritation.
“Even your defense of him is strung about with inanity… Very well, I can see this will not end with negotiations. And as I have already seen your power against Contracts, I will not so carelessly show it to you as the two Overlords you’ve bested did. I propose a deal. Though I suppose it is more of a wager.”
He cares not whether Straw Hat lives or dies– he did have that thought. But he’s perfectly aware that, for people like the boy and himself, there are fates worse than death.
Straw Hat sneered as the Queen stepped forward, her hand already raised forward and bathed in a golden glow. The golden sheen of her irises and black diamond necklace resting against her collar bone glimmered with it. Long blond hair swayed behind her as her horns grew into prominence, curling thick atop her head by the time she was directly before the boy, forcing him to tilt his head up to keep eye contact with the much taller woman.
She offered, “We shall have your fight. When I win, I shall attain your soul. If you should defeat me, you shall attain the Radio Demon Alastor’s soul. Will you agree to these terms?”
He shouldn’t agree. Straw Hat had already made it known that his freedom was the treasure he valued more than any other. There is nothing of more value to him. Even if he kept with his delusions of somehow winning against the Queen of Hell, he should not find it worth the risk–
The boy didn’t hesitate in the slightest before slapping his own hand against the woman’s. The handshake was completed in a blinding flash of gold and white.
For the first time since they’d walked into this place, a wide grin stretched across Straw Hat’s face. Much meaner than usual. “Yer not gettin’ my soul, cause I’m gonna beat the shit outta ya– !”
The Queen’s eyes flashed wide for a blink of a second when Straw Hat used his hold on the slim hand in his grasp to jerk her forward. She brought her other hand up just in time to catch the punch that had been aimed at her face. Both arms trembled under the force of the other, before she managed to push the boy back.
As Straw Hat’s feet righted themselves, she stepped back to summon a tall divine scythe into her possession. The long blade gleamed with the white-gold sheen all angelic weapons featured. Her chilling scowl reflected on its surface.
“You’re not taking me seriously enough if you thought that would work. Not a very sporting beginning to our bout, either.”
Still, the boy grinned at the woman, expression just becoming wilder. “Don’t ya know? Pirates don’t fight fair! And I knew, yeah! I’m just too pissed to hold back! I’m glad I can go all out against ya!”
Straw Hat punched his right fist into the palm of his other hand, and the sound of it resounded loudly through the empty space around them. Then seemingly resounded again, and again, until there was a steady thumping in the air like a heartbeat gone too fast. A deep drumline rushing into a crescendo that beat in tune with the feeling in one’s chest, calling them to action.
The scythe’s blade blurred through where Straw Hat had been standing, but the boy had already jumped high into the sky above. He’d jumped of the ground in a bounding leap, the surface bouncing with him like a trampoline rather than the solid surface Alastor had stood over shortly. Alastor’s gaze widened as the other’s form changed before his eyes.
Tan skin shone with an outline radiance of alabaster. Pitch black spikes of hair and ears floated without weight and curled into a cloud like mass, with even the black monkey’s tail dissolving into amorphous white. It curled around Straw Hat’s front, crossing over his bleached-out clothes before curling back around to hover above the back of his shoulders like a hovering shawl. His eyebrows had paled to white too, curling at the inner ends to match the swirls in his hair. And when the boy opened his eyes, the once dark irises now gleamed with gold, forming a ring around his still stark black pupil for an intense stare.
Seeing his form enveloped by such divine light and power, the truth could not be ignored. This man is a God.
A divine being held within the casing of a mortal shell, until this moment. His grin took up a good half of his face, and even more so when he opened his maw to laugh manically–
“GEAR 5th! HEHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA– ! Are ya gonna get big? That’s great! I wanna get big too! This is gonna be so much fun! I haven’t fought like this since before I DIED! HyeHAHAHA– ”
Just as he’d said, the Queen’s form was shifting as well, growing out wings along with growing her size in full. And additionally, just as the God had also mentioned, his own form grew as well. It grew and grew and grew until he was like a giant floating in the sky. He shined so brightly it hurt to look at him, just like looking into the sun on the surface world. His grin alone seemed bright enough to light up the dark of any night.
And yet, Alastor could not look away. The straw hat remained a solid presence within his hands.
“HEY HEY– Horn-Lady! Wanna know why you’re gonna lose?!”
“I suppose you’ll tell me regardless,” snarking at the God’s mania, the woman grew her own size to rival his, taking flight with damned wings.
Her scythe had grown larger with her, and then began to grow in number. Flashes of gold spotted stars in the gray sky, blades circled end on end around her. When some of them shot at Straw Hat, he spun about almost comically, twisting this way and that to avoid the ammo. One nicked the edge of his arm, and the blood beaded out as shining gold.
Straw Hat didn’t react to near hit, still grinning and laughing in a way that sung with madness. The enlarged fist in front of him bled into alabaster rather than the obsidian coloring Alastor had seen it feature previously. His declaration was bursting with almost out of place joy, “HeHAHA– Ya see, I can’t actually do that much! I can’t use swords or read a map! Or cook or lie! Or fix wounds or remember history! Or fix or steer the ship! Or sing or swim!”
“It sounds like you can’t do much of anything.”
“YEAH! EXACTLY! AHAHAHAHA!!! And I still don’t know anythin’ about this place! Or those mystery papers, or how to use magic, or even what a radio is! But that’s okay, cause those are all things my crew helps me with! And one thing I can do, I’m reeeally good at– ”
When the woman’s main scythe swung in a blur at Straw Hat, he ducked under the blade while shooting up his hand to grab at the staff of the weapon. In bent under his hold, not in a creasing of metal, in a curving, soft arc. After he pulled it back like the rubber of his arm, she had to rush to dodge, teeth bared in a sneer as the bladed end retracted back to her.
She managed to avoid the blade, but not the white blur of a punch shot out at the exact location she’d dodged. The God had thrown it a split second before she’d even moved one way or the other. The hit to the face sent her flying back. The dull gray of the ground blew apart in a shatter when the titan crash landed.
Summoning his mic once more, Alastor quickly encircled himself in the thin coating of black-green power to act as a shield. Merely standing back from the battlefield would not be enough to protect himself. When the Queen of Hell rose back to her feet, her visage was truly that of a demonic entity, eyes eerie pits of a blood red void swirled with gold.
Like everything else, the God just grinned down upon her. A monstrous kick fell from the sky like an axe, or a guillotine.
“ –I can FIGHT! I’m free to fight how I wanna! It’s the thing I’m best at, cause I’m the captain! So when people mess my friends– when people fuck with my crew– my job is to FUCK! THEM! UP!!! HYAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!”
…It seems he’s officially spent too much time in the pit if that’s the line he went with. It was a good line, though. Alastor rather enjoyed the variety of it.
It looked as though the war of the worlds had laid waste to the landscape.
The previous monotony of flat monochrome had been dredged through like a riverbed, random debris and parts torn asunder from the false earth. Whatever dead tree had stood in the way was broken into splinters, snapped like twigs and tossed across the area wherever the pieces happened to fall. And now, color was splattered about in streaks. The white sheen of angelic blades, either intact and sticking out of the ground or shattered into scattered pieces. And that of split blood, both gold and scarlet, dying patches of the gray to make for a most unusual abstract art piece.
Compared to the boring, plain state that had previously characterized the garden of gray, Alastor much preferred this image of collateral chaos.
Scarred into the ground was an elongated crater where, at the end of the ditch, blond hair was spread across the gray in a mess, fanning around the form of the Queen of Hell. Her form had shrunken back to its normal size and was singed in various patches by the God’s fire, blood streaking down her face. Her arms and legs were also spread wide and stuck into their own cracking indents, streaked with scarlet and bent in unusual ways. Well, arm as in singular, seeing as the right arm had been torn clean off. It lied in a pool its own of blood a good distance away.
Even though Alastor stared at the sight, he still found the image of it incomprehensible. It was only the feeling of straw against his palm and lap that grounded him to the fact that this was reality, and not some fantastical figment of a dream.
He’s done it…
This boy… This King… This God … He’s actually…
There was a pant of a half chuckle, the God was still trying to laugh even through his huffing exhaustion. While he certainly looked better than his opponent, he had also reverted to his original size and was rather liberally leaking gold. Especially from the new wounds on his chest that had been slashed over his previously existing scar by apt double swings of a scythe.
He slowly approached with a slight stagger to his steps, standing over the fallen woman to grin down at her. “Heh… I win…! So where’s the paper…?”
From her place on the ground, she just glared at him, though weakly.
“You… are mistaken. You may destroy this body all you want… and I shall persist…! There was no stipulation for how long this conflict may linger… A battle can continue into war! I need only return, once I am able…”
Alastor knew what she was referring to– He knew, and yet he could not speak of it. Even as his mouth trembled with the effort, the sting of his seams harshly clawing their protest into his flesh, Radio Demon’s voice was still sealed away from him.
But somehow… the God knew, too. Closing his eyes with a considering hum, their stark visage popped open once more as he declared, “Oh… That’s where ya are!”
A hand stretched down to clasp the black diamond that hung around the Queen’s neck. Snapping it off, the God held it before himself, before clenching his large fist to crush it.
Power burst forth, exploding like a miniature supernova of ominous black, red, and gold that screeched through the air. But it was quickly overcome in a flash of white. The light covered and consumed the darkness, shrinking down into the pinpoint of a star.
Then, it vanished entirely, light blinking out of existence. Taking along with it the soul of Eve, the Mother of Humanity.
In a gasping start, Queen Lilith came back into her body. However, Alastor was much more focused on the red-tinted Contract that materialized above the woman, inked in pristine, glittering gold. Without the God even having to tear it, the paper lit into white flames on its own. Burning down to the very last bit.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Just as the woman who had created it.
From around his own neck, the collar and its chain burst apart, dissipating into specks of light before they withered and died out. The gold stitching covering his mouth dissipated as well.
As the ache of his strained face dimmed, he lifted the hat in his hand, and Alastor allowed his expression to fall.
He couldn’t remember when he’d last let himself be without his smile… But from behind the cover the straw hat provided, he allowed himself the freedom of the momentary relief.
Things had not come to an end yet, however.
In the air beside Monkey D. Luffy, a new Contract of white wrote itself into existence. Though rather than holding a divine glow, it looked… remarkably like a regular piece of paper. When it finished unfurling, rather than the restricting weight of new bonds, Alastor felt something slip around the ring finger of his right hand. As well as the surprising sensation of all his current Contracts possessing others’ souls breaking at his end. A book of Contracts manifested into existence, only to combust in a bonfire of white.
How inconvenient. For such a thing happen, he supposed one under this God’s banner is prohibited from enslaving another. Usually he’d be more concerned about such a loss of power, but considering the context of the situation, it was decidedly not that important of a detail. And on the other end of things, Alastor did feel that he had access to the depth of power that had been cut off from him with Eve’s Contract. Win some lose some, as they say. Between the two, he did prefer to keep hold of his own personal power.
Though he will miss tormenting and lording over the unfortunate souls that found themselves to be his prey…
Holding up his hand, it was now adorned with a ring. One that showcased a cartoonish looking design of skull and crossbones with a familiar straw hat atop it. No chain or collar, no manacles or leash. He was boundless, merely brandishing an oath of commitment– It was the least restrictive Soul Contract Alastor had ever seen to the point he wasn’t quite sure it should count as one.
“I suppose I should just be thankful it didn’t manifest on the left hand instead…” he had to work out some distorted croaks in his voice, after it’d been forcefully contained for so long.
“Al…!”
Blinking his focus back up, he realized the God was back in his mortal form. And looked quite the worse for it. The Contract dematerialized back to the ether as he began to stumble his way over, one eye half closed and mouth pulled down into a weary uneasiness.
Seeing the other’s attention, Alastor worked fast to pull himself back together, taking control of himself. At some point he’d fallen to his knees and hadn’t bothered to get up, so he quickly stood and brushed his pants off with his free hand. His ears twitched out of their rather embarrassing wary position to point upright. He kept the hat hovering over his mouth while green stitches sewed themselves back into the upper corners of his lips. When their light dimmed with seemingly nothing left behind, his smile was set back to its previous pristine condition.
Alastor lowered the straw hat with a bit of a flourishing gesture, stepping forward to meet the slowed boy halfway. When he outright stumbled into Alastor, partially falling onto him, Alastor used his right hand to steady him while he allowed the hat to hang from its string by the crook of his other arm, that hand holding his cane. There’d be no point in handing it back when it was clear Luffy was about to fall unconscious.
He blinked down at Luffy when he squinted up at Alastor’s smile, inspecting it with blurry eyes to ask, “Ya alright…? Chopper’s not here but we can… find ya a doctor or somethin’.”
“I’m fairly certain you are the one in need of a doctor, dear captain. I’m quite unharmed,” pushing the boy back by the shoulder slightly to get some space, Alastor drawled in a somewhat cheerful tone, “Unfortunately you’re stuck with me instead. I have a good sense for stitching human flesh, so you need not worry about perishing at least, but it will likely not be as clean or without pain as the process would be with an actual medical professional. I’m not exactly known for my healing capabilities.”
Despite the somewhat ominous warning, Luffy immediately beamed at him. Or at least as well as he could at the moment. “Alastor called me captain! So you’re joining right?!”
“I do believe I’m obligated to, at this point. Considering you are in possession of my soul and wish for me to join.”
At that, the other’s face dimmed into his usual blank-looking vague confusion. “Huh…? What’cha talkin’ about…? When did that happen?”
Raising a slight brow of amusement, Alastor explained the obvious, “Your deal with that woman was to attain my soul, not to free it.”
“…HUH?! That’s not what I wanted!” The boy almost tipped himself over trying to turn his head about, but Alastor kept a firm grip, keeping him from jostling himself too much. “My bad! Where’s that… paper thing– I’ll get rid of it for ya!”
“You have to be the one to summon the Contract.”
“Oh …How do I do that?”
…It’s a good thing he’d already resigned himself to this outcome. Keeping his smile pleasant, Alastor just waved the matter off with a somewhat flippant hand gesture, “I am unsure as to how to teach another the basics of dealmaking arts, as usually that is learned individually in the process of becoming a dealmaker. Instead of, as you have just now, skipping every other step that most would have been required to learn to get to this stage. But you need not fret over it, my dear. This is essentially the same end result as you were wishing for in terms of recruiting me. I suggest keeping the deal in place regardless. It will be helpful for you to actually be able to govern over me. I’m afraid I can be quite the loose cannon otherwise and you are supposed to be the captain here, as you so love to mention!”
“No! It’s totally different! I want ya as my Nakama, I don’t want yer soul!” as he partly anticipated, Luffy rejected the clear line of logic to pout his insistence otherwise. His weakening eyes squinted at Alastor again in rather miffed befuddlement, “Why’re ya even okay with this?! You’re not mad? Don’t ya wanna be free?”
“Freedom is a relative term, dear captain. Frankly speaking, our Contract does not seem to be in anyway normal. Otherwise it would not have manifested as such…” He brought up his hand in demonstration, showcasing the newly acquired sigil.
Luffy flipped moods almost instantly. Grinned at the sight, he shot out his own hand towards Alastor. “My jolly roger! And we match!”
Alastor redirected his gaze to see that, indeed, there was a matching crossbones ring on the boy’s hand. He blinked at it once before stating, “Oh yes… this Contract is not normal at all! This is not supposed to be an obligation that goes both ways, you see.”
“Why wouldn’t it? You’re my Nakama, and I’m yours! We’re each other’s!”
Luffy’s view was as simplistic as always. However… Alastor supposed not all matters need have complex explanations.
For a moment, Luffy stared at him with a very focused look. Before Alastor could question if the boy’s vision was failing him, he suddenly brightened with an apparent realization. “Oooh I get it! Alastor’s embarrassed he wants to join! That’s silly of ya! Aha!”
The end of Alastor’s grin finally pulled taunt at that claim, his gaze narrowing. Before he could attempt to defend himself, however, Luffy just bulldozed onward, “If ya wanna keep it for now that’s fine, then… We’ll just… get rid of it when ya… don’t need it anymore…”
And with that, whatever adrenaline had been keeping the boy functioning ran out. Luffy fully fell against Alastor as his face went slack and his eyes closed.
Gazing down at the face currently making a mess of his shirt and coat, the very picture of innocent and at peace, one could almost forget this boy was a God who’d just fought off an ancient entity in possession of power beyond a mortal’s wildest dreams.
“…Really now, entrusting such vulnerability to a demon like myself might just be the very definition of unwise. Do you not realize the most likely method for us normal sinners to break a deal is through the death of the dealmaker? …No, I suppose this is nothing more than useless rambling, isn’t it? Even if you did know, you wouldn’t care. Not in the slightest.”
Testing out the Contract, Alastor waved his hand in a gesture that was able to unmanifest both his own ring as well as Luffy’s –and thank goodness for that, he couldn’t imagine having to be stuck with constantly wearing such a gaudy thing! Leaning the boy further onto one side, Alastor raised his mic with his left hand to draw the same green energy portal that they’d used to arrive. He then set the mic to float in the air beside him.
Reaching down, he lifted Luffy up into his arms to carry the boy rather than ungracefully drag him around, one hand supporting his back while the other held the back of the knees. With the straw hat still hanging from his arm and his mic traveling behind him on its own, Alastor stepped through the portal to end up back at his tower.
While he had a couch he usually summoned to his studio when the whim suited him, Alastor was hesitant to ruin it via the staining of heavenly blood. Not due to the morbidity of such a thing –depending on the piece in question, bloodstains can greatly enhance a furniture’s design in his opinion– but because it wouldn’t suit the color of his couch. So instead, he deigned to ruin the couch Lucifer had chosen for the lobby living space. When he summoned it through the shadows, however, there happened to be three people sitting on the thing at the time. And so the couch rose up from the shaded ground of his tower along with King Lucifer, Husker, and Charlie, sitting on the couch in that order. They all looked very disturbed by the sudden change in environment.
“Hey! We were in the middle of a family counseling– Woah! What’d you do to the guy?!” Lucifer cut off his own shrill complaint to instead gawk at the very bloody body Alastor was still holding. His look was similarly matched by both Charlie and Husker, but with the latter two looking more worried than simply shocked.
“Luffy!”
“What’d ya do to the kid?!”
“I didn’t do anything. I summoned the couch because I have use for it. So I suggest you all move,” even though he phrased it as a request, he was already in the middle of tossing the three to the side and out of their seats with a strong bat of a large shadowy tendril. With the space vacated, Alastor was able to lay Luffy down across the cushions. Blood smeared liberally over their surface, similar to how his own coat and shirt had become soiled with gold.
He then handed the boy’s straw hat to a smaller tendril for it to place on top of the control panel, out of the way from all the blood. Before he could get to the real work, though, Husker made himself into an annoyance by coming up to Alastor’s side to demand, “If it wasn’t you, then what happened to ‘em?!”
After averting his gaze to look back at the two royals staring from behind the cat for a split second, Alastor looked back down at Husker with a feigned pleasant smile. He ignored the loud slam of Vaggie barging her way through the trapdoor to chime, “While I’d love to get into specifics, I’m running on something a schedule at the moment. So to make a very long story short– The good captain here challenged Eve, who’s been possessing the Queen of Hell, for the right to my soul. He bested her in single combat and destroyed Eve’s soul, freeing Queen Lilith of said possession. While he looks quite the fright, she does indeed look the worse between them, and if you wish to prevent her death, I suggest you attend to your dramatic family reunion posthaste!”
Alastor emphasized the suggestion by pointing at the still present portal with the mic-head of his cane. Charlie looked to be either going into shock or attempting to progress through all five stages of grief within a single minute. He didn’t particularly care which currently. But luckily, the King seemed quick to pull himself out of his reflex of shock, calling out his wife’s name before dashing into the portal. The sight of her father departing, along with a shake of the shoulder by her girlfriend, was enough to get Charlie to frantically make her own way through the portal with Vaggie following right behind her.
With the majority of the distractions gone, Alastor was finally able to conjure up a veridian thread and needle. After patting the boy down with conjured antiseptic and cleaning off some of the blood, he started on the largest wound, the one that was overlayed atop the mark on the boy’s chest. A new X-shaped scar to match.
As the needle delicately pulled itself through rubbery skin and shimmering gold gore to begin stitching one end of the cut closed, Alastor vaguely found himself wondering if the X had been left by the wound that had killed the boy, or if it’d been from a scar he’d earned himself previously in life. If Luffy often ended up in a similar sort of condition after going all out in battle, he could easily envision the boy collecting such scars with ease. Alastor perched himself atop the arm rest Luffy’s head was closest to, watching over the remote operation with the diligence needed for such precise work.
“ …He …I knew he was strong with how he took out Valentino ‘n’ all, but the kid really took out the Queen of Hell too?! Or the Mother of Humanity?! Whoever!”
Even when Husker stumbled to stand beside Alastor and Luffy’s upper torso, Alastor didn’t let his eyes stray from the needle’s movements. “He did indeed.”
“But HOW?!?!”
“He’s a God, Husker. A God who’s free to do as he wishes, apparently.”
“ …What.”
While Alastor still didn’t deign the cat a glance, he could easily imagine the mystified shock of the other’s face from his tone alone, the word having been uttered more as a hiss than a mark of confusion. With the end of his cane firmly planted against the floor, Alastor’s fingers tapped sequentially on the top of his mic.
He explained with as little inflection as he could manage, “The one who lies before you, this nuisance of an idiotic Monkey demon, is in fact the mortal form of a divine being. His blood should be enough proof of that. Though I am unsure how much the captain himself is aware of, he certainly knows how to fight with said divinity.”
“ …Like he’s– not an angel, but he’s not God God, right?” Husker quietly questioned in an attempt to piece together the absurdity into something resembling logic.
“Oh Heavens, I should hope not! No, he is not the Abrahamic God. Based on what inferences are available to me, I am assuming he is of some type of Pagan divinity,” after a brief moment of consideration, Alastor added on his musing, “My top guess is that he is a divine being either meant to represent or act in service of the human concept of freedom. It would explain his personal obsession with the ideal as well as why he would innately possess the ability to break deals concerning soul possession. When my soul transferred to his ownership, my Contracts of that type were automatically voided. A most unusual occurrence.”
“Wait… HE’S got your soul now?!”
“I did say he’d fought for the right to it, did I not?”
“But that’s– Luffy hates that kinda thing!”
“He was not the one to set the terms and he did not catch that detail. Nor does he have the knowledge required to know how to summon his own Soul Contract.”
“Doesn’t know how ta– Ya gotta be jokin’!” Only then did Alastor allow himself to slip in a quick judging side-eye at the other. Husker’s face scrunched at the look. “ …‘K, ya aren’t jokin’. Right… There’s really nothin’ either of ya can do ‘bout it though?!”
With a dramatized sigh, Alastor plainly replied, “I don’t consider that question worth answering.”
“ …Nah, that’s it, isn’t it? You can do somethin’, but you’re choosin’ not to.”
Alastor’s grin pulled tighter, jaw stiffening and claws tensing while Husker continued in a serious tone, “Fine– bein’ a God and beatin’ Lilith and/or Eve? For some godforsaken reason– fuckin’ Hell I’m never gonna be able to curse that normally for somethin’ ‘bout the kid now– anyway, I can believe somethin’ weirdly impossible like that from him. But there’s no fuckin’ way I’d believe this guy thought ahead enough to order ya to fix ‘em up, or even just to not kill ‘em! For some fucked up reason he trusts ya too much to think he’d need it! And here ya are! With fuckin’ proper bedside manner ‘n’ everythin’– !”
Husker was interrupted when the door to the studio slammed open once more. This time, little Niffty was the one to scurry up onto the floorboards. Her face halfway to distraught.
She rushed over to Alastor to take hold of one of his lower legs, shaking it as she cried, “ALASTORRRRR– Our Contract! It’s– It’s GONE! WHY?!?!”
Leaning down slightly to pat her little head in consolation, Alastor playfully cooed, “Oh my dear Niffty~ You needn’t worry! There’s been a mere organizational change is all! We need simply to establish another deal, this time with the agreement for you to be under my employment in exchange for standard pay and the occasional gift of bugs for you to impale and tear apart as you please. Does that sound acceptable to you?”
After some more sniffles to subside her sobbing, Niffty responded with a wobble, “I– I like impaling bugs, yeah… Okay!”
With the green flash of a quick handshake, the wrong was righted. Though without the feeling of her soul within his hold. Alastor swiftly turned back to watching his needlework even as he requested, “Could you be a dear and collect some towels to take care of this mess later, Niffty? While I love the color of divine blood split, it is rather unhygienic to drip it all over the place like this.”
“Okay sir! Can I lick some of it up when I clean it, too?! Hehehe~ ”
“If you promise to be good and leave me to finish up with the captain here, yes.”
“WOW! I promise, I promise! I’m so excited ehEHEHEHEH!”
With that, the girl scurried back from wince she came. If he had to guess, Alastor would imagine Husker was watching her leave with the usual disturbed look he got whenever Niffty’s uniquely twisted mind made itself known.
“ …Hmm. She does bring up a good idea, though.” Seeing the last suture had just finished stitching in, when his needle and thread pulled itself out, Alastor dipped his hand down to collect a small sample of lingering blood along the edge of his claw. He stuck it in his mouth to get a good taste.
“Mm– Oh! It doesn’t taste of plastic, how delightful! It tastes more delectable than common angel blood too! Very divine indeed, aha!”
“ …Fuckin’ seriously?!”
As his magics got to work on the other more minor injuries scattered across Luffy’s body, Alastor was able to focus his attention on Husker properly. The man was currently giving him a very judging glare of exasperated outrage. He waved at the other dismissively, smile back to pleasantries. “Oh come now Husker– The good captain won’t mind! That was hardly even a sampling.”
“He SHOULD!!!” Husker threw his hands in the air, wings going wide with the motion as he rolled his eyes. “And the name’s Husk! Ya don’t get to call me by your dumbass nickname now that you don’t own me anymore. I should be the one laughin’ at you now! Ya know that, right?! Warmed up real quick to the kid, didn’t ya?! Who’s the pet here now! Hope yer enjoyin’ it ya– ”
Husker was ungracefully cut off when a palm lightly slapped into his face. Not outright slapping him, but just awkwardly holding itself over the lower region of his face. Their gazes both trailed down the arm down to the boy it was attached to. Luffy’s eyes weren’t even open as he mumbled, “Don’t… call ‘em that… ’s my crew…”
Tensing at the admonishment, Husker removed the hand with a grimace, huffing, “Fine, kid. But I was just givin’ as good as he– and he’s already out cold again… Did he really wake up just for that?!”
After staring down at the slumbering boy for a few more seconds, Alastor let out a cackle of a giggle, “Ahahaha~ Yes, he did indeed! If there’s one thing I’ve learned today, it’s to always expect the unexpected with this one! I dare say there will never be a boring moment with him around! At least that’s one thing I can look forward to.” Reaching down again, this time Alastor’s hand brushed aside black bangs out of the way from the boy’s sleeping eyes.
Rather than a snark of a response, there was a beat of silence. The lack of reaction drew his eyes back to Husk –the other was right about him having lost his privilege over him, though he wouldn’t let the cat know he agreed with the sentiment. He was staring at Alastor with a vague sort of surprise, like he was still processing the sight of him. Leaning back upright while returning his hand to the mic-head of his cane, Alastor tilted his head slightly, questioning, “Did I perhaps get some blood on my face? I’d say to take a picture, but we both know that wouldn’t last.”
“…It’s nothin’. Just…” Husk averted his gaze in his awkward hesitation, staring half-lidded off to the side in pensive consideration. “ …Ya always got that stupid grin on yer face, but I’ve never seen it look like that before. It was… It looked closer to how the kid smiles, actually.”
“…To respond to your previous line of implicit questioning, the way the captain freed me from my Contract was somewhat different than either you or even Angel Dust, Husker. He struck a wager, agreeing to put up his own soul as collateral. Didn’t even think otherwise about it. And then he won.” He felt Husk’s abrupt shift, looking back at him in alarm at the mention of such a familiar gamble. However, Alastor was no longer looking at him. Instead, his half-lidded gaze had returned to resting on the peaceful face God laid out below him.
“If a God were to fall down from the Heavens, forsaking its beauty to stand before the worst and most wretched of the damned to enact for them a miracle… To choose one who should be far from their reach as well as all that they treasure… Is it not human nature to gain faith in the divine when evidence of their grace is impossible to deny? Entire institutions of religion have been built on much less than what I’ve witnessed today.”
“ …Didn’t take ya as the religious type,” Husk’s tone was as stunned as it was wary.
“I’m not. Never have been, in fact. Whoever heard of a devil devoting themselves to a God? It’d be quite an insane notion. I’m simply speaking in metaphors… For the most part. I do tend towards insanity after all,” shifting his stare back to Husk’s uncertain expression, he transitioned to a different thought, and Alastor’s grin curled just a tad sharper, “And as for your comparisons, there is one thing of consideration that you are unaware of…”
Husk gained somewhat of a grimace, anticipating that he wouldn’t like where Alastor was heading. “And what’s that?”
Despite his lead in, he left the other in suspense for a bit. His work on the boy had finished. A tendril moved to take up the straw hat, sinking back into the floor with it in its grip. Alastor himself moved to stand and slip his arms under Luffy, lifting him into another carry and mentally noting he’d have to clean off the boy a bit more before he’d be fit for a bed, along with cleaning himself up of course. Husk’s eyes followed him, raising to meet his own eyes once Alastor turned back towards him with his still pleased, sharp grin.
“You see, when this boy is in his divine form, when he had been in the midst of battle against a pinnacle of both Heaven and Hell… In truth, his smile looked quite a bit like mine rather than the other way around.”
Eyes flashing wide, Husk paled slightly as he considered that idea. Perhaps even imagining the sight of it as much as he was able to. Alastor grinned wider at the other while sinking down into the darkness.
He reemerged in the hotel room Luffy had taken residence in, though the boy didn’t seem to use it much outside of sleeping. After a bit of magical cleanup and a changing of clothes, he carefully slipped the bandaged body under the covers so as to not undo his efforts. He turned around promptly after. But when he moved to take a step forward, he was halted by a slight tug on the back of his coat.
Alastor glanced back at Luffy, who still didn’t completely rise from unconsciousness, just mumbling, “Don’t wanna be… alone…”
“ …Needy little thing, aren’t you,” while he sighed in complaint, he flicked his mic to change out his own suit into a fresh one sans blood. Then flicked it again to summon a cushioned armchair as far from the bed as it could fit and an old-fashioned radio atop Luffy’s bedside table in the space beside where the straw hat had been placed.
It wasn’t like he had anywhere else to be at the moment. He could listen to his tunes here just as well as he could in his quarters…
Alastor reclined into the rather cozy seat and summoned an ottoman to rest his feet on, crossing his ankles and leaning his mic against the side of the chair. Settling in, he set the radio to play some soft jazz at a quiet volume. And while it hadn’t been his initial intention, he found himself softly humming along with the song, closing his eyes as he allowed himself to relax. A single, deep sigh, the tension strung throughout his whole body bled out.
It’d been a long day for him as well, after all…
Chapter Text
The regenerative healing process took a shorter amount of time for the afterlife than wounds in proper life do, especially for those of divine nature. However, wounds inflicted by angelic weaponry had a harder time healing than most. Luffy spent a good day resting, his unconscious spell lasting from the time of the battle through the night and all of the next day after.
Alastor didn’t spend the entire time at his bedside. He had nowhere near enough patience for that. So he left at various times whenever it suited him, though still making sure to avoid the rest of the hotel’s populous to avoid any annoying badgering of questions. He would still circle back to the boy’s room to check on him and waste some time. Attending to the wounded didn’t suit his style, but since he was already in the midst of playing doctor for this farce, he might as well commit to the bit and make sure his patient wasn’t ruining his efforts. Alastor didn’t keep a regular sleeping schedule, being too much a creature of the night to be tempted into the indulgence every night, and thus he retained his vigilance throughout this period of the captain’s weakness.
It was during one of the times Alastor had been loitering in the other’s room that Luffy properly woke up. He’d been lounging in his armchair reading with a background set to jazz when the boy shuffled into sitting up, only to immediately hiss and be forced to lie back down. Alastor sighed as he set his book aside to glance at the pouting manchild. “I would rather you not open the wound I graciously closed up for you, thank you very much.”
The pout turned into a beaming grin in an instant at the sight of him. Alastor stood up to approach the bedside before the boy could do something stupid like fall out of the bed to come over to him instead. When he was within reach, Luffy somehow managed to pull himself onto his side enough to wrap his arms around Alastor’s waist a good number of times. The boy giggled up at him even as Alastor tensed under the contact. “Shishishi– Alastor took care of me! Thanks!”
“…Indeed, you’re very welcome. Though I do believe I was a bit obligated to do so, I did think things would be rather dull without your shining presence to grace us, foolish idiocy and all. Why, it would’ve been such a shame to lose it only just after I’d learned how to weaponize it against other people!”
“Really? Haha! I’m glad Alastor likes me now, cause I like Al too! I can’t wait ‘til the rest of the crew meet ya!”
The Radio Demon was not convinced that the boy’s crewmates would be nearly as enthused to learn how their captain had recruited a serial killer cannibal Overlord, but he knew the point would be ignored if he stated as such. Instead, he permitted Luffy the attention he was clearly seeking, shortly patting the head of black hair as he plainly replied, “I do believe you are putting words in my mouth now, but it’s not as though you listen to what I have to say regardless.”
Smile somehow growing even brighter, Luffy closed his eyes and laughed up at him, “Hahaha! Yeah I do! I already said I like listenin’ to Al!”
“Listening to one speak is not the same as comprehending the words, my dear… I suppose I still appreciate the sentiment, however. And I do have to admit to a certain amount of fondness.”
Luffy was ecstatic with the admission, energy winding tight inside, but Alastor made the boy stay in bed for the rest of that day, judging it to be too soon to trust him to move around. However, he easily convinced the boy with the promise of food, of which he was absolutely ravenous for. Alastor, estimating that he’d likely need no less than enough food to feed fifteen people, decided to take the opportunity to brush up on some of his lesser used recipes.
Jambalaya and roasted venison were of course featured, but he also made various other dishes he had learned from his mother in life. Some good old-fashioned gumbo, crawfish, po-boys, beignets for dessert; homestyle New Orleans cuisine just couldn’t be beat in his eyes. Alastor was unsure if Luffy’s world had any equivalent to it but figured a gut like his would gladly consume anything of sufficient standard, and it’d be a favor to introduce the boy to the new taste if that was the case.
Predictably, Luffy downed what was practically a feast all in one extended sitting. He was very appreciative of every dish, always unnecessarily calling out how good it was. Despite himself, Alastor found that the excessive praise pleased him even when he hadn’t made the food with such a thing in mind. It was to the point that he didn’t mind how much of a mess Luffy had made of his bed, having to switch out the covers with the flick of his mic for a clean set. It was only when the boy clapped at the gesture with the same dumb look as a kid at a lowbrow magic show that Alastor became irritated with the other. Along with the last annoying backhanded compliment the boy had managed to slip in at the end…
“Woah Al, your food’s so yummy! It’s almost as good as Sanji’s!”
“ …Almost as good. I see,” Alastor’s grin pulled sharp as the words curled out of his mouth in a testy drawl, “I am assuming this Sanji is a rather remarkable chef, then…?”
Stretching out his arms wide in emphasis, without recognizing the demon’s irritation, Luffy happily declared, “Yeah! He’s the best in the world! He knows how to cook everything! Just tell him what ya like and he’ll make it for ya!”
“And if I were to make a request for human meat? You do know it’s one of my favorites~ ”
“ …I don’t think he knows that one.” Alastor’s smile curled mean at having forced the usually unflappable boy into a pause, even when it didn’t last for long. A win is a win in his book, no matter how short-lived.
It was the day after that when Luffy pressed on leaving the room and going about, decidedly bored. Looking at the state of his chest, Alastor judged that while it should be okay to be out of bed, he didn’t want the boy wandering around too much. Rather than deal with the boy’s whining he suggested the compromise of letting Luffy loiter in the lobby rather than just his room so as to interact with the others.
And so with his elated agreement, that was how Alastor found himself seated in the new lobby couch beside Luffy. A couch which was much more stylish than the previous gaudy thing Lucifer had somehow deigned to be an acceptable design. Alastor had half a mind to thank Luffy for getting his blood all over the atrocity right in front of the King’s face just so the tiny man knew how much he loved having the opportunity to replace it.
While Luffy settled himself on the cushions cross-legged, he unnecessarily leaned against Alastor’s side seemingly just out of an unconscious need for contact. The boy quickly gained the attention of Husk and Angel Dust, who Husk covertly texted to come down when he caught sight of Luffy entering the shared living space, and Cherri Bomb, who followed in after Angel. While Cherri stood back to observe the boy with a curious one-eyed stare, the other two stood in front of the couch to fret over Luffy. Alastor prepared himself for what would either be an extremely boring conversation or an extremely amusing one, depending on how the spider and cat prompted Luffy.
“Luffers! Good ta see ya up finally! We heard ‘bout what happened from Husk here– are ya seriously a damn GOD?! Like, the literal holy shit?! And ya beat up Charlie’s mom?!?!”
Pouting in confusion, Luffy rebuked, “Why do people keep sayin’ that? It’s like I told the Angel-Lady, I’m no god, I’m the Pirate King! …Horn-Lady’s Chacha’s mama?”
“Well yeah. She’s the Queen of Hell and married to King Lucifer, and Charlie’s his daughter and the Princess of Hell, meaning Charlie’s her daughter too,” Husk was the one to lay out the obvious explanation, before sending a narrow-eyed glance at Alastor and asking in suspicion, “Did that guy not tell ya that’s who you were fightin’?”
Luffy carelessly shrugged, so close next to Alastor that he could feel the brush of movement on his arm from it. “Didn’t ask. Guess he said they were as strong as Lucy though. It didn’t matter since I was gonna fight ‘em no matter what.”
“Lucy? You’re a damn riot, ya know that Monkey?” Cherri laughed out the nickname while covering her mouth, trying to keep the dam from overflowing at the ridiculousness of reducing the infamous King of Hell Lucifer to Lucy.
Alastor also appreciated the artistry of the unintentional insult, though he asked in curiosity, “At what point, exactly, did the King go from Hat-Guy to Lucy?”
“He made good pancakes, so I remember his name now! Kinda!” He should’ve known. Alastor made a mental reminder to make better pancakes for Luffy the next morning, just to ensure the captain knew his superiority in that field compared to the King. And beignets were better than pancakes anyway, so he’d be making those too to prove that point as well…
Raising a brow, Husk grumbled, “And I’m still Cat-Guy…?”
To both Alastor’s and Husk’s surprise, Luffy shook his head to cheerfully correct, “Nah, you’re Husk!”
“Well thank god for that… Shit. No, that’s… Whatever!” Husk quickly moved on from his awkward stammering at the unintentional reference to the boy’s godhood to question, “Not that I’m complainin’ but when did that happen? It seems ya gotta certain threshold for this stuff.”
Luffy seemed like he had to think back for a second. Alastor tensed when the other’s head tilted far enough to the point it was leaning against his shoulder, the brim of the straw hat uncomfortably sticking into him. By the time Alastor pushed at the boy with a single finger to force him upright once more, Luffy answered without reference to his actions, “Started remembering after Moth-Man and Angel!”
“Aw yeah look who made the list! Knew I’m too pretty ‘a face ta stay Arms forever!” Angel preened at the upgrade, one of his hands running through his hair as though his looks had absolutely anything at all to do with Luffy’s attention span. He excitedly pointed another two hands at his cyclops friend to ask, “And she’s– ?”
“Eye-Lady!”
While Angel’s expression fell into miffed disappointment, Cherri herself just laughed it off, “Hah– Guess haven’t gotten into enough ‘a yer trouble yet then, but another fight’ll come up eventually! Ya make things excitin’, Monkey, so try to have your trouble when I’m around next time alright?”
“Don’t encourage him! He’s already picked a fight with Hell royalty! I don’t even wanna know how he’s gonna escalate from this! Like fuckin’ Hell, he’s barely been here a MONTH! Think about that! How’re we supposed to survive an entire afterlife with this guy here!” Husk shot back, ignoring Angel’s rather devilish giggle.
“Oh– I won’t stay here forever. I’m a pirate still, so I’m gonna adventure around!”
At that causally stated proclamation, Luffy drew back the attention of all four of the sinners surrounding him. Seeing that, apparently, this would be his problem to deal with from now on, Alastor carefully posed the question, “And… what is your plan for that, exactly?”
Luffy looked towards him with a very proud, boastful grin, seemingly proud of the fact that he had a plan at all to be sharing. Alastor supposed it mustn’t be a common occurrence for the carelessly free-spirited boy, indeed. “We gotta find the rest ‘a the crew! Then, we gotta get a ship!”
“And the fact that there is no body of water in which to travel by ship means…?”
“Franky’ll figure it out!” Alastor spared a moment of relief that that wasn’t his problem and then mentally laughed at this Franky’s future misfortune within the same stream of thought.
“Then, we adventure ‘round this– whatever it’s called!”
“Ring, they’re referred to as Rings of Hell.”
“Yeah, that! And then after this one, we do the rest!”
“…Sinners are not able to leave the Pride Ring, which is where we currently reside.”
Predictably, Luffy just snickered, leaning into Alastor further to wrap an arm around his shoulders in a rather conspiring manner, “So what? That just means it’ll be an even better adventure! Pirates always go where they’re not supposed to! We’ll just figure it out and do it anyway! Being free means we go wherever we wanna, so we’re gonna do it!”
The plan is a rather impossible one… But that is the God’s specialty, he supposed. So Alastor found himself returning the Luffy’s grin with one laced in mischievous amusement at the thought of the future chaos that was sure to be had, allowing his frame to lean just a bit further into the hold such that one of his knees knocked into the other’s. Though his tone was still entirely sarcastic, “Right, how silly of me to question the dear captain! Of course you shall do whatever it is your heart desires, regardless of any practicality or logic! I await what is sure to be an entertaining turn of events.”
“Shishishi!”
The motion of Angel shifting his weight from one leg to another drew Alastor’s attention back to the others before them. He found that the three were all thoroughly examining him as well as the arm Luffy still had around him. Clearing his throat a bit, Angel was also the one to shoot the metaphorical elephant in the room, “So… Yer really joinin’ Luffer’s crew, Smiles? …Guess that nickname’s no good when the both ‘a ya are ‘round, huh. Since ya both ‘re smiley fuckers. In like, weirdly different ways.”
Alastor flashed a brow raise at the question. “I am rather obligated, so yes. With all the interesting happenings that tend to originate from the captain here, the idea of it no longer bothers me as much as it had initially.”
“Alastor’s my Nakama now! No one can take ‘em from me!” Luffy wrapped his other arm around Alastor’s front now, as though there was a danger of Angel spiriting him away from the boy. Alastor glanced down at the sight of Luffy pressing his pouting face into the side of his arm. He had yet to decide if he should be putting up a fuss about it or not.
“You’ve gotten clingier since the transition, have you not?”
“Ya didn’t want me close so I didn’t bother ya, but now that we’re Nakama it’s fine! Shishi~ ”
Alastor had to take a second to think over the implication. “ …That was you showing restraint before? I shudder at the thought. You’re truly going to cling to me like an actual tiny adolescent primate until you have another of your crew to take my place, aren’t you? As though I haven’t provided enough for you already by effectively acting as your cook, nanny, and doctor all at the same time.”
Out of all the ways he could’ve responded, Luffy, without an ounce of shame, excitedly requested, “Oh! You should sing too! Since Brook’s not here and Al can sing and has a nice voice. You can make nice music play even though ya don’t have any instruments too, it’s cool! Chacha only let me shake the mora-ca thingies.”
The last statement was in reference to sometime within the first week or two of Luffy’s residency at the hotel, where Charlie had attempted to have the boy join in one of her musical numbers. Within ten seconds of Luffy’s attempt to sing, she promptly requested for him to switch to ‘playing the maracas’ instead so as to spare the rest of them from the horrid wailing. Alastor himself on the other hand prefers auditorial performance and enjoys a good song –he especially enjoys stealing other people’s songs, on top of that.
That does not mean, however, that he will sing for the boy like a canary upon his request. Carefully prying off the additional arm crossing over his front while guiding Luffy’s face away from his immediate person, Alastor deadpanned, “I don’t think I shall, no. Not when it doesn’t suit me.”
“Okay, I’ll wait ‘til ya wanna sing then!”
“ …That is not what that answer means.”
“Yah it is! Haha!”
“Wow… You should really ask for some overtime pay for this when his crew gets here, Al,” Cherri suggested with obvious amusement.
Angel nodded, mockingly sympathetic, “She’s right. That’s what, four separate jobs yer doin’ for ‘em now? It’s the pirate’s life for ya now, but that doesn’t mean ya shouldn’t take advantage ‘a the opportunity for an honest wage.”
“How’s that song go… Hell’s forever whether you like it or not, that’s it yeah. Good luck dealin’ with this kid forever. I think yer gonna need it.” Husk looked much too smug for Alastor’s liking. That wouldn’t do. What did he have on hand to amend the situation…
Turning his smile back to Luffy, Alastor lied straight to his face, “Husker’s upset because he confided in me the previous day about now much he wishes people would pet his ears more.”
“Really?!”
“You lyin’ piece ‘a shit– !” Husk was cut off by the jostling of Luffy’s stretched out hand vigorously rubbing the top of his head. He batted it away with a growl, “ –Cut it out or I swear to god– ! Wait– fuckin’ Hell not again– ”
The sound of the front door banging open interrupted them. When Alastor looked over to find that a stone-faced King Lucifer was approaching, he quickly moved to bat Luffy’s arm off his shoulder and straighten his posture, adjusting his mic to be placed directly in front of himself. A second look accounted for Charlie and Vaggie, both trailing more hesitantly by the door. Charlie held a furrowed brow of solemn concern with the hand of her love resting firmly on her shoulder. Internally, Alastor felt a twinge of relief that the Queen was nowhere to be seen behind them, though he’d never admit to having been wary it.
Sensing his unpleasant mood, all three of the hotel residents backed away to the sides a couple of steps, tracking the powerful monarch with cautious eyes. Lucifer stood directly in front of Luffy and looked down at him with that unreadable face. Luffy just looked back in blank curiosity.
“Straw Hat Luffy… That’s what they called you in life, right? At least from what I’ve been able to tell.”
“Yeah?”
“Good, good… You see, this is a bit of an awkward conversation I need to have with you,” Lucifer’s eyes strayed down to the apple of his cane, expression pulling into a more recognizable pensive frown.
“Firstly, what I really need to say is… Thank you, for helping Lilith. I won’t get into the details cause it’s kinda complicated but, she ended up with this deal with Eve, and even though I knew about it I wasn’t strong enough to void it, and so I’ve just been… Here, in Hell, being useless and depressed and doing nothing… Well, I’ll spare you from having to listen to stuff you probably don’t care about, TMI right?! Aha! …Anyway– ” the King forced himself to continue before he could further embarrass himself, finally looking back at Luffy properly.
“Just… you were able to help my family when I wasn’t able to. I know that’s not what you went there to do, but you did, so… Thank you, truly. I’m in your debt. And if there’s one thing you should know about demons, it’s that they take their debts seriously. So don’t hesitate if there’s something you want to ask of me.”
Almost in an instinctual movement, Alastor immediately slapped his hand over Luffy’s stupidly grinning mouth just as it opened. He used the grip to twist Luffy’s head towards him, forcing the boy to look at him and the still pleasant smile on his face.
“No, I am not going to let you speak. Because I know like one knows of the morning sunrise that if I let you, you will ask for the first stupidly unnecessary favor that pops into that monkey brain of yours. So if you actually value anything I have to say at all, this is what will happen; When I let go, the first thing you’ll do is promise me that you will discuss any potential favors from the King with me prior to asking for them. Are we clear, dear captain?” despite his fairly insulting word choice, Alastor’s tone remained politely amicable. He wasn’t upset with Luffy so much as he was trying to avoid the boy’s impending disastrous idiocy, and he was simply gleefully taking advantage of the fact that no matter how cruelly blunt he was, Luffy wouldn’t care.
“I’m sorry, but I thought he was supposed to be the captain? Why is the busboy the one giving orders here?” Lucifer’s mocking drawl was accompanied by a heavily judgmental side-eye. Alastor ignored the useless King’s jeering.
Luffy vigorously nodded his agreement, not looking put out by Alastor’s coercing or demands in the slightest. When he let go of the boy’s mouth, it was still grinning at him. “Alright, I promise!”
“Figures…” the King rolled his eyes at the interaction before setting his sights back on Luffy. This time, his stare was back to that unreadable look he’d had about him when he walked in. The look of it set Alastor internally on edge. “You’re free to use that debt however you wish, regardless of what the deer says mind you. I cannot overstate that I am extremely grateful for what you’ve done. But that being said…”
It was then that King Lucifer’s eyes narrowed as he intoned with a completely straight face, “You beat the shit out of my wife. And no matter the context for that, as a dutiful loving husband, I am now obligated to beat the shit out of you– ”
“Dad– ”
“I’m serious Charlie, I cannot let this go!” Lucifer didn’t even deign to glance back to look at his daughter’s wincing face, fully focused on glaring down at the blank expression Luffy sent back up at him. “She hasn’t even woke up yet! And her arm! You tore her damn arm off! You’re lucky Belphegor was able to put it back on! And you also broke the rest of her limbs?! How did that even count as an angelic wound when you were just using your bare hands?! Actually, it doesn’t matter! Cause as you can see, there’s nothing to be done about this other than me paying you back in that way too– ”
“I believe that’s quite enough of that,” Alastor interjected in a timely manner. He stood up to regain his height advantage over the King, purposefully looking down at him with his chin slightly jutted into the air for effect. He also neatly slid in between where Lucifer was standing in front of Luffy’s seated position on the couch to force the man back a couple of steps. When Angel and Husk moved to flank him, apparently attempting to provide an unneeded show of support in defense of Luffy, Alastor just mentally noted the efforts and promptly ignored them.
Alastor tapped the mic-head of his cane against Lucifer’s chest, and the man batted it away with an enraged look, horns beginning to grow out in his anger. The Radio Demon smiled down at the King with purposefully feigned politeness, “Are you truly complaining that the good captain didn’t go easy on the Queen of Hell herself? Or rather, the Mother of Humanity using Queen Lilith’s form. Regardless, of course he had to fight to his fullest efforts. It would’ve meant death or the loss of his soul otherwise. And he likely would not have been able to go straight for Eve’s tool of possession even if he’d known of it, since it was only after he’d exhausted her body that its defenses were reduced. It was only because he beat the shit out of your wife as you so eloquently put it that he was able to save her. To force him into a position where he has to use the favor you oh-so graciously granted him in order to avoid you accosting him is quite the ungrateful gesture for a person who’d supposedly been thanking him no less than a minute prior!”
“That– That’s not what this is about! He can use the favor for anything that’s not this, so he still gets to keep it!”
“ …Are you purposely acting like a fool right now? I detect exactly zero logical thought behind this line of thinking, and I know a thing or two about illogical thinking.”
“I’m being serious! You just don’t get it because it’s not like the scary big fish in the small pond of sinners Radio Demon has anyone that he loves!” Lucifer spit out the word in a harsh jeer, mocking Alastor for the supposed failure of not being inclined to such a thing, “I love Lilith, so I’m going to fight for her when she’s hurt! That’s the most basic duty anyone has for the people they love!”
Alastor let himself spit back, tone caustic and full of venom, “And yet, as you said before, you’ve done nothing up until this point! Aren’t you just trying to find a way to take out your frustrations over the fact the captain here accomplished what you utterly failed to achieve? The sin of Pride is quite the predictable one, is it not.”
Lucifer flinched back at that, looking fully pained. Before he visually steeled himself back up even tighter than before, even more angry, “No. That’s not what this is about! I know I– I wasn’t enough, alright, and that’s why it’s even more important that I fight for her now that I can! Why are you even butting in about this?! I thought defending people was above you.”
“On the contrary, if you waited a bit longer, I’d love to see the good captain show you exactly where you stand in comparison to him. However, I spent a not insignificant amount of effort sewing that chest back together. I’m not going to idlily stand by and let someone rip it open again! Especially not the likes of you. This is truly our King? A pathetic failure of a father and husband? It’s laughable! Perhaps you should consider handing your title over to the Pirate King here, as he’s already proven to be better at the job than you!”
Scowl lifting into a derisive grin, Lucifer huffed a facsimile of a laugh, “Ha! Isn’t that just rich coming from you. Come to think of it, I’ve been wondering something ever since Lilith explained some stuff before she passed out– ” This time he pointed the apple of his cane into Alastor’s chest, and Alastor was the one to bat it to the side with his own mic.
“You hated me as soon as I walked into this hotel, right? Before I thought it was just cause you couldn’t stand to know there was someone more powerful than you taking charge, but that can’t all there is to it. Don’t you also hate me because someone in the image of my wife enslaved you? You’ve probably secretly hated Charlie this whole time too and have just been getting along with her to earn her trust, planning to use and control her in some way to worm yourself out of your deal! I was starting to think maybe I should be more sympathetic towards you, you know, but no matter what you’re just determined to make everyone else’s lives just as miserable as your own! Even now you’re miserable, aren’t you?! Nothing in your life to find joy in! No one in your life to love! All this power you so covet, but you can’t even use it to keep yourself from being passed around like some creepy voodoo ragdoll! Gone from the slave of the Mother of Humanity to the rabid guard dog of a God, oh how the mighty Radio Demon has fallen– ”
Lucifer suddenly stumbled back, struck by a hard punch to the face. Alastor jolted slightly as he turned to follow the retracting fist back to Luffy.
When the boy with his thunderous expression stood up to stumble forward after the King, Alastor quickly took hold of his shoulder to prevent him from moving further. Feeling his ears twitch back upright, he didn’t have more than a split moment to be annoyed at how they’d folded back on their own.
“I’m not about to let you rip open your chest either. Sit back down– ”
“No!” Luffy didn’t even let him finish before he yelled out, “I won’t let him talk about ya like that! You’re my Nakama, not some dog or doll! Why do people keep sayin’ that kinda stuff?!”
Alastor’s grin pulled just a bit tighter as he tried to find the best way to sugarcoat it for the boy, “It is simply the nature of such bonds down here in Hell. To own another’s soul is to own them entirely. Comparing such a status to being a pet is not unwarranted. I even held such a view myself over those I’d contracted.”
“Yeah, well, that’s stupid! It’s just a piece ‘a paper! No one can own anyone else! Not for real! Even if they own their body or their soul– No one can take anyone else’s will from them, they can’t take their dreams! That’s what really makes someone who they are! If they don’t get that then they’re just dumb!”
The declaration caught him so off-guard that Alastor’s hold ended up loosening, allowing Luffy to easily pull away from it. He stood before Alastor now in between him and the King, who was pulling a hand away from his quickly purpling eye to regard the boy with an astonished sort of shock. Charlie had rushed to stand behind him, holding him by the shoulders and also staring at Luffy with wide eyes.
With a firm hand, Luffy pushed a spread palm right against Lucifer’s chest to force him to back away further. The captain leaned forward with a glare to say, “I don’t care if you’re some king! And I don’t care what you say to me! You can hit me for hurting the Horn-Lady! You can laugh at me! You can kick me outta this place! I don’t care about any ‘a that stuff! What I care about is you hurting my friend! Alastor’s my Nakama! He’s my crew! I don’t own him but he’s mine and I’m his, so don’t say that I do! I’ll die beating the crap outta ya before I let ya say anything to hurt him like that in front of me! Cause I’m his captain and that’s my duty!”
…What is it with this boy and his propensity for proclaiming his unwavering defense of Alastor in the face of Hell royalty while also punching said faces? At this point, Alastor really wasn’t sure if he should find the trait endearing, flattering, or a downright irritation. Luffy hasn’t even finished healing from his fight with Eve as the Queen and here he was, starting another with the King himself. Husk had been right to fret over how the boy would escalate his outrageous behavior.
On the other side of the conversation, the King was completely flabbergasted. Is it truly so unbelievable someone would speak up for him to such a degree? Even in silence, Lucifer continues to insult him.
In the end, it wasn’t King Lucifer who reacted first, but his daughter. Charlie smoothly moved to pull her father back and place herself in front of him, leaving her back to Luffy while she looked down at Lucifer. From his point of view Alastor wasn’t privy to her expression, but based on the way Lucifer’s fell into devastation, it mustn’t be a happy one.
After a deep breath, Charlie spoke in a quiet but firm voice, “Dad, Luffy’s right. You… You were way out of line, just now.”
“Ch-Charlie– ”
“No. Listen to me. I know you’re upset about what happened with mom, I don’t like how hurt she got either, but punishing Luffy for that is not okay! What he did helped her. And I know that Alastor was– was saying bad things, too, but that doesn’t give you the right to talk about him like that. And he was doing the right thing standing up for Luffy! The stuff you were saying was just… it was awful. I know you guys don’t get along, but I can’t believe you would– you would actually say stuff like that to him,” her words began to waver at that point, like it hurt her just to think back on the moment even when none of what was being said had been directed at her, “From what I’m seeing… he isn’t the one trying to make other people miserable, you are. That’s not okay.”
King Lucifer truly did look miserable, in that moment. Absolutely beside himself in the face of his daughter’s intense disappointment. His words stumbled over themselves, fully unsure in how to fix such an unmendable situation, “I– I just… I didn’t mean… I’m sorry, Charlie. Really…”
Crossing her arms over her chest, Charlie’s tone gained a bit of an edge, “I’m not the one you should be apologizing to.”
She stepped out of the way after that in a clear suggestion. Still, though, Lucifer was hesitant to look at Alastor, keeping his wince directed at Charlie rather than in front of him. However, there was someone else still standing in between Alastor and the King.
After a brief pause, Luffy turned to look back at Alastor to say, “I’m gonna use the favor to tell ‘em to say sorry to you.”
“I beg your pardon– ”
“Hey Lucy!” Before Alastor could even finish his remark, Luffy just turned right back to Lucifer after that. The exchange had, apparently, satisfied the condition Alastor had set for the boy to talk to him about his favor before cashing it in. The King’s attention jolted back to Luffy, utterly caught off guard. “I’m usin’ my favor now, so say sorry to Al already!”
“No, he is not going to use his debt on such a thing, because that would be the very definition of a stupidly unnecessary request!” Alastor tried to pull the boy back by the shoulder, only for him not to budge in the slightest. He didn’t know whether to be amused or outraged that apparently every time he’s manhandled the Monkey in whichever way previously, it was seemingly due to the boy allowing himself to be moved.
Predictably, Luffy remained unmoved by his logic as well, “No it’s not. It’s important.”
“How is a useless fake apology of any significance at all?”
“Because you’re important and deserve one. I don’t care about what I’d ask him for later, I just wanna ask this for you instead.”
Alastor wasn’t quite sure why the words felt like a slap to the face, but somehow, they did. Which was utterly bizarre. It wasn’t even the first time Luffy had said something along those lines to him. And yet each time he did, it was as though the weight of those statements compounded more and more. In all his eloquence, Alastor found himself without a response to quip back.
There was an extended pause. Then, Lucifer visibly deflated, averting his furrowed gaze away from Luffy to stare blankly at the floor. When he looked up again, he sidestepped around the boy to face Alastor properly. His expression was solemnly earnest rather than the resentment Alastor had been expecting.
“ …They’re right. I… I went too far there, Alastor. What happened to you with Eve wasn’t– ”
“Don’t. sPeAk of it.”
Lucifer winced again, though Alastor had a feeling it wasn’t in response to the slight shift in his image or the extreme distortion of his voice.
“ –Okay, right. I’ll just say that… I’m sorry. Some of the things you were saying was… You were right, about them, and I didn’t like that. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you or Luffy. And I know you’re– not gonna say you forgive me or anything like that, and that’s fine. Just…” the King’s eyes quickly flashed to the captain before setting back onto Alastor to say, “You don’t have to worry about the kid using his favor for this, alright? I’m not counting it. And I’m sorry to you too, Luffy. I’ll just… leave now. I’m worried about Lilith waking up alone anyway…”
In a spiral of amorphous magical flame, Lucifer disappeared.
Left in his wake, Charlie took a shuddering breath, tears brimming to fall down her cheeks.
“Oh Charlie…” Vaggie’s voice was almost sickeningly soft as she approached the Princess, face empathetically forlorn. She reached out to hold Charlie’s face in her hands, wiping the tears away from one side and then the next. “It’s okay, sweetheart, you did good. You did.”
“I– I know– But I just– hic– I don’t know w-why I’m crying…”
“Hey Charlie!” the address drew her attention immediately, causing Charlie to inadvertently move her face out of Vaggie’s hold to turn at look at Luffy. The boy smiled up at her, still brightly shining even as it was a touch gentler.
“Thanks for talkin’ to your dad for Al. It’s hard bein’ captain sometimes, and you did really good! You’re already getting a lot stronger, see? And also, uh– sorry I punched him and your mom, I guess.”
Charlie took in a gasping breath, eyes still shining from tears. But rather than being cast in despondence as she had been before, her lips turned up into a small, fragile smile.
Touched beyond words, the girl threw herself at Luffy, wrapping her arms around the neck and shoulders of his shorter stature as she wailed, “Oh Luffyyyyyyyyyyy~ !”
“Aaaaand I think that’s my que to scram. What a wild turn that tea party ended up takin’, right?” quick to avoid the lingering sappy emotions, Cherri Bomb sent a finger salute towards the others before making her way towards the door, “Catch ya later bitches! Let me know if Luffy ends up havin’ that fistfight with King Lucy after all, will ya Angel babe?”
“Fuckin’ do not put that back into the universe right after we done killed it!” Angel called back with insistence.
“Well… I don’t think I’m getting her off him for a bit,” Vaggie sighed as she came to stand in front of Alastor. From their places still nearby, Husk snorted at the comment while Angel muttered “been there yeah…”
Alastor watched as Luffy blankly stared at Charlie, before visibly shrugging off his confusion and just returning the hug with multiple wrapping arms. At the rather interesting image of an embrace they made, he chimed gleefully, “Oh, that’s no problem! It’s a relief to finally not be the one stuck in that rubbery mess of limbs! Dear Charlie can have the captain for as long as she pleases! Aha!”
The retort or huff of annoyance that he was anticipating never came. Alastor glanced back at the haphazard group to see Vaggie and Angel Dust staring at him in bewilderment. Husk just had a too knowing smirk on his furry face. Alastor questioned in a flat tone, “This again?”
“Well yer smilin’ the same way, so yeah,” Husk’s retort was also annoyingly knowing, one hand resting at his hip while he made a half shrug, “I tried tellin’ ya before– the change’s like night ‘n’ day.”
At Husk’s reaction, Angel’s surprise slowly shifted into a satisfied smirk as well. He flashed a suggestive eyebrow raise at Alastor. “Luffers’s a pretty stand-up guy, ain’t he? You’re in good hands, Smiles. But I think ya know that already.”
“ …I don’t believe any of what I just said contained any sort of complement directed at the good captain.”
“Ya didn’t need ‘a say anythin’. We got eyes, ya know! I got a whole eight ‘a ‘em even!”
Vaggie, meanwhile, had to blink her vacant expression away. She settled on something half-thoughtful and half-satisfied, before her gaze flitted back to her still wailing paramour. “It’s different, isn’t it? Having someone you want to fight for… You found yourself a good captain, Alastor.”
He hesitated to respond, considering how much to withhold seeing as none of the matter was any of their business. However, he found himself distracted from his ruminating as the sight of the embrace shifted into one of Luffy now attempting to pry the Princess off him, evidently done with her sob session. She was holding onto him hard enough that he was whining strained curses as he peeled her hands back. After a short chuckle kept to the back of his throat, Alastor relented, “ …I do admit, it’s a rather novel experience. I have yet to determine if said experience is a pleasant or unpleasant one, however.”
“I think you’ll figure it out quick enough,” Vaggie gave him her own half shrug with the statement, before she smugly mentioned, “You know, maybe you should consider thanking me for siccing Luffy on you for that broadcast. Seems like things turned out well for you.”
Alastor shot back in his more sardonically joyful voice, “I will most definitely not be considering that, and I will not be thanking you for the suggestion to do so either! I do believe I’ve wasted enough time down here, so farewell and good riddance to you all!”
As he turned his back on the affair and walked off, however, Alastor couldn’t help but pick up the lingering conversation the recovering Charlie began with Luffy…
“Thank you so much, Luffy… For everything. Not just for mom, but Angel. Husk. Alastor– You’ve done so much for them and I– I wasn’t able to do anything for them even though I… I’m supposed to take care of them. Not that they can’t take care of themselves, but– I wanna be able to help them when they need it, and I didn’t do anything– ”
“You talk too much. Just keep gettin’ stronger! I used to be a weak crybaby too! My brothers made fun ‘a me all the time!”
“Huh…? You? Really?!”
“Uhuh! Couldn’t even throw a punch right! It’d just go all over the place! Shishi! I had to work hard, and even when I got strong, I had to get even more strong. There’ve been people I couldn’t save… I had to keep goin’, until I was strong enough not to lose anymore. If you just keep goin’, you’ll get to where ya wanna be, too.”
“ …Thank you, Luffy. I’ll do my best! For you, too.”
…Even when he learns more about the strange God that has chosen him, there are seemingly endless mysteries that have yet to make themselves known. He supposed things would get too boring otherwise, though.
It took two days after that for Alastor to finally decide it was time to remove Luffy’s bandages. For every moment up to this, the boy had practically been a bloodsucking leech with how he refused to detach himself from Alastor. He would force Luffy to retire to bed only for the manchild to incessantly whine if Alastor himself tried to leave the room. The annoyance and his own apathy towards the situation were enough to lead him to agreeing to stay, though not to sleep.
He’d been keeping himself busy throughout the night using shadows to search out his priorly kept souls and assess their situations, determining if it’d be beneficial to reestablish a non-soul related deal or if they were still desperate enough to agree to the handshake. If he did deign to prey upon them again and they asked after what’d happened –they’d all looked disappointed their deals hadn’t been broken by his death– he’d casually dismiss the apparent urgency of the circumstances by explaining he was now in alliance with a demon who disliked working with souls, and it’d been a worthy trade to dismiss the Contracts of sinners not of use to him in exchange for having the power of said demon on hand. Naturally, they all became terrified by the prospect of what horrible, monstrous demon could have been strong enough to attract the Radio Demon’s attention to such an extent. It took quite a bit of restraint to keep himself from laughing in their faces. And then he would return back to the hotel to face a Monkey rudely demanding to be fed, and the matter would no longer seem as amusing.
Needless to say, by the time Luffy’s wound had sufficiently healed, Alastor realized that if he had to spend too long of a time being the boy’s sole companion, he would actually kill the bastard out of pure frustration. He said as much to Luffy, too, as he unwrapped the gauze for the last time. Examining the other’s chest, the large red X now had a stitched-up X atop it, lit in stitches of his veridian power.
“I did warn you it wouldn’t come out clean, but I think it suits your character. I can hide the sutures if you’d like.”
“COOL! Thanks!” Luffy declared while looking in the mirror with his hands on his waist, clearly uncaring of the slight deformity, “And nah, I wanna keep the glowy stuff. It makes it look cooler and more Alastor-y!”
“I do believe that’s the first time my name has been used as an adjective before. You’re quite welcome, dear. On that note, though, I do have to say… If things go on as they have been for too long, I will become much too tempted to smother you in your sleep and feast upon your divine flesh and blood. I have a suggestion to make.”
Entirely indifferent to the threat of being cannibalized, the boy just glanced at him to reply, “Yeah?”
“Well, firstly, I am assuming that should any of your crewmates were to have heard your interview on the radio from not too long ago, they would have promptly attempted to search me out to find you in turn.”
“Yeah! They’d come right away! Except for Zoro, he’d just get lost.”
Alastor deigned not to comment on that last point, instead moving on to explain, “Hmm… While my broadcasts are extensive within Pentagram City, they are not absolute. They may not have been available anywhere a speaker was playing to have heard it. And additionally, I don’t bother spreading my signal to other cities of the Ring, as this city is the main hub for sinners. So some may have even ventured outwards, considering you are pirating adventurers after all.”
“Oh… That makes sense, yeah. I can just look around for ‘em then!”
“Now, now– this is a large city, dear captain. It’s large enough to hold the vast majority of the sinner population, as crowded as it is. And that’s not even considering the rest of the Ring. Should you simply wander about at random, you may just take all of eternity to find them! Haha! It would be hilarious if not for the fact that I will go completely insane by then!” Alastor laughed the idea off before reaching his actual conclusion, “You have seen my ability to search out and gather information with shadows including my own to some extent. I can remotely search all of not only this city, but other populated regions of the Ring through this method. Therefore, I suggest leaving the matter of searching for your wayward crew in my very capable hands! You need simply provide descriptions for who I should be looking for, to the best of your ability considering they probably look fairly different now, and I can– ”
He was unexpectedly cut off by Luffy outright ramming into him. The boy’s tackle was so strong, it knocked Alastor right over such that they were both ungracefully sprawled on the floor of his room. The rubber arms, legs, and furry tail were more akin to the grip of an octopus demon than anything else. Alastor found himself blinking up blankly at the ceiling as Luffy rubbed the side of his cheek into Alastor’s in a very puppy-dog manner.
“YEAH!!! THANKS A TON!!! Alastor’s really so cool! Shishishi!”
“Yes– I can see your appreciation very clearly. You can remove yourself now!”
“No!” after a couple seconds though, Luffy jostled as he seemed to think of something, amending his refusal, “Oh– I remembered somethin’! Wait here ‘k?”
The boy was out the door as fast as he’d thrown Alastor to the ground. With great irritation, he picked himself up and brushed off his suit.
Alastor will admit –within the confines of his own mind that is– that he was gradually becoming more accustomed to the captain’s clinginess, which surpassed even Niffty’s in terms of overwhelming abundance. It was why he’d begun allowing Luffy into his own quarters when attending to his injury. Just because he was getting used to it, though, did not mean he was pleased to be mauled in such a careless manner. Once again, his mind questioned why he hadn’t bothered just letting the God bleed out beside Lilith. What’s a matter of being ungrateful and backstabbing when he was a demon Overlord only out for himself? It would’ve been the most practical course to take by far…
True to his word, it wasn’t too long before Luffy came bursting back into the room. He carried in a large pizza box, bottle, and two small cups with him, declaring, “We gotta have a party for Alastor joinin’ the crew! We’ll do one when everyone’s here, but I don’t wanna wait that long!”
“I would not imagine you to have the patience to wait that long, yes,” Alastor commented while watching Luffy place his procurements down on the table in front of the fireplace. Only for the boy to start dragging over the two armchairs to the bayou section of the room, along with the table to set up in front of them. He’ll have to clean those up later. “Is there a reason why you’d prefer to have the ‘party’ over there?”
“So we can have a campfire, duh!”
Alastor withheld a comment about the lit fireplace the boy had taken the furniture from. He recognized the lost cause for what it was. Instead, he sat down in one of the relocated seats and conjured up a fresh deer carcass, already skinned and gutted this time. Then he used some small tendrils to tear the legs off the dead meat and set them up over the green flames he manifested to act as the desired ‘campfire’. Luffy beamed at him as though he was in the midst of hanging the moon in the sky. “That pizza could never feed the both of us. Since you’re set on a camping experience, I’ll graciously cook some of my venison for you. The rest will remain rare for myself.”
“Yummy! Thanks!” The boy then ‘thanked’ him by dragging over another side table that he placed close to Alastor.
“And this is for…?”
“Your radio, so you can play the music ya like! Ya wouldn’t wanna put it on the ground right?”
…That’s actually quite thoughtful. At the suggestion, Alastor conjured his old-time radio onto the table, setting it to play some upbeat ragtime at a quiet volume as to remain in the background. “You know, dear captain, you do the most marvelous job of keeping me guessing as to whether you’re dumb as a rock or have a real brain somewhere inside that Monkey head of yours.”
“Thanks!”
“I’m not certain that was meant to be taken as a compliment. On another note, I’m surprised you didn’t attempt to recruit the rest of the hotel residents to participate in this little party. You’re a the more the merrier type from what I’ve gathered.”
And while he didn’t mention it, he also was surprised to watch as Luffy, instead of going straight for the pizza, set it aside to place the two cups down in front of himself and Alastor to pour some sake for the both of them. The boy was paying an absurd amount of attention to making sure he didn’t spill –which Alastor agreed was very needed considering the pourer in question– not looking up at Alastor as he replied, “I would, but it’s Alastor’s party, and ya don’t like havin’ a lot ‘a people around sometimes. You’d have more fun with just the two of us, right?”
Before he could respond, Luffy finished pouring and held up his cup toward Alastor with a shining grin. “Alastor also likes doin’ things properly, so we’ll have a sake ceremony! It’s how you declare your bonds! I did one with my brothers when we were kids to become brothers, and then Barto and those other guys did one without me agreein’ to say they’re my fleet or whatever. But ours’ll just be to say we’re crew and I’m your captain! So cheers!”
Alastor stared at the cup for a minute, before he took his own small cup in hand. He smiled back at Luffy as he clinked their cups together. “I do like to keep my deals official. As the captain wishes– Cheers!”
He doesn’t recall ever having had sake before, being a hard to come by foreign import in life and uninterested in the drink in death. It was strong, but not so strong as to make a harsh burn, running down his throat smoothly and with a slight sweetness to it. He still preferred whiskey, but he would not be opposed to enjoying the drink for the occasional special event.
He also took the opportunity to ask after the people he was meant to be searching out and found many of the captain’s descriptions to be… fairly peculiar.
“I found Zoro first! So he’s the first mate I think, but he’s the best with swords! He uses three of ‘em! His hair looks like grass and he always gets lost! If he’s not with anyone, he’s never gonna find us haha! Then I met Nami, she likes tangerines and her hair looks like ‘em too! She also likes money! She figures out where we are and how to go where we wanna.”
“A swordsman and a navigator then. A navigator is a must and having a dedicated fighter is also likely a necessity for someone of your troublesome nature. Some rather bright coloring compared to the natural hair colors of Earth, but they shouldn’t be too out of place here in Hell.”
“Then there’s Usopp! His nose is super long and he tells good stories cause he lies a lot! He uses a big slingshot to shoot lots ‘a different stuff that he makes! And then Sanji! His food is suuuuper yummy! He’s blond with weird swirly eyebrows. He likes to kick people and curse at ‘em, especially Zoro! Aha! They’re always fighting!”
“You don’t have a description beyond long nose for the lad? How sad! It’s not very common for snipers to be proficient in slingshot rather than a simple gun, but it sounds like his ammo is also unique. And the remarkable chef, yes, I remember you having previously mentioned him. You’re not concerned by the apparent discord within your group?”
“Nah, that’s how they have fun. Anyway, then we met Vivi, but she didn’t keep travelin’ with us cause she had to stay home and run her country. She used to be a princess and now she’s queen! Also she’s still alive. Oh– But then we met Chopper! You should like him cause you’re both reindeer!”
“While it’s intriguing to hear you managed to have legitimate royalty on your crew at some point, I feel the need to clarify; I have features of a typical deer, dear captain. Reindeer are a separate type of deer. As you’d brought up that name when asking after a doctor, I had thought that to be your doctor’s name, not your pet’s.”
“No, he’s the doctor yeah! The marines thought he was a pet too though! Shishi!”
“So he is a person who consumed one of those strange fruit found in your world and gained reindeer attributes, then.”
“No, the other way ‘round! He ate a fruit that made him more human. And then learned medicine ‘n’ stuff and now he’s a doctor!”
“ …That is …most interesting.”
“Right?! Hahaha! And then there’s Robin! Oh, I guess we met her before Chopper actually, but it doesn’t count cause she was working for Croco then. After we saved Vivi’s country from that guy she joined us! She knows a lot ‘a history stuff and can read poneglyphs, she’s really smart! And she can make a bunch ‘a extra arms ‘n’ legs ‘n’ everything cause of her fruit, and she’s got black hair like me!”
“Rather peculiar to have what sounds like an archaeologist on a pirate crew… But that also sounds like a handy ability indeed, aha!”
“People who look for history are just lookin’ for a different kinda adventure! Also we needed to read that stuff to find the One Piece! After Robin was Franky, he’s a SUUUUPER cool cyborg with lazers and robots! He made the Sunny Go and fixes her up when she needs it! Sunny’s our ship!”
“ …I had not thought your technology to be advanced enough for techno-organic fusion. Your shipwright is truly that sort of being?”
“It’s cause he’s really smart and fixed himself up to be one! All his stuff runs on Cola! He learned a lot ‘a things while he was trainin’ too!”
“I do apologize, but surely you don’t mean Cola as in the soft drink beverage?”
“That one yeah! And oh! Oh! You’ll like Brook too! He plays a ton ‘a instruments and sings! When he was trainin’ he was a rockstar for a while but went back to only playin’ for us when we all met up again. Every pirate crew’s gotta have a musician! Ya can’t have a proper crew without one! He also likes makin’ jokes a lot!”
“ …Alright, moving past the Cola-powered cyborg for now– While I do appreciate the musical arts, I’m not quite sure it’s right to have strict requirement for such talent aboard a pirate ship. But I suppose everything is to the captain’s discretion. Do you have a physical description of this musical fellow for me so that I need not accost every down-on-their-luck street act?”
“Yeah! He’s got a cool afro! And he’s a skeleton!”
“ …He was a SKELETON in LIFE??? How in the Seven Rings of Hell was that not your starting descriptor?!”
“Yeah, cause his fruit let him come back after he died but then he got lost cause of fog! So he ended up a skeleton! Shishishi! Isn’t that funny?”
“Well yes, I actually find that idea to be hilarious! However, I’m not certain the fellow himself would think similarly! Now what godforsaken creature do you have as your last crewmember?”
“That’s Jinbei! He joined last a while after the others, but he helped me before then too when I really needed it. He used to be the captain of his own crew before he agreed to join me instead, and now he steers the ship! He’s a fishman, so he’s a really good swimmer and can use Fishman Karate ‘n’ stuff!”
“So he’s the helmsman. And a fishman is… not simply a person who consumed a fruit which made them into a fish?”
“Yeah! They’re like humans but they live under the sea like the mermaids do! Now they can live on the surface with everyone else though, so Jinbei’s really happy about that!”
“ …On the scale of the literal reindeer doctor, soft drink cyborg, and dead-but-alive skeleton, I suppose mermaids and mermaid-adjacent creatures are an almost normal, believable concept for a world covered in ocean. I’ll accept it. And here I was worried that the rest of your crew wouldn’t be nearly as interesting as you. I truly shouldn’t have considered the thought in the first place!”
“Yeah, that was dumb of ya. I only invite people I think ‘re cool to be part of my crew. Like Al!”
“That is perhaps the most backhanded compliment I’ve ever received if that’s what the term ‘cool’ means to you!”
Alastor tried not to ruminate too much on the fact that he’d apparently been drafted into a freakshow of a pirate crew. Nor on considerations of how well he’d get along with the rest of them when he tended to judge most people as being not worth his time.
While he’d initially been skeptical, Alastor did, indeed, find himself relaxing with the more causal festivity. None of the discussion was of any real importance, but it was engaging to question Luffy about some peculiarities of his strange world –including asking after that casual mention of a fleet Luffy had passed over– even if his explanations required quite a helping of personal interpretation to logic out, while he himself explained contrasting points of either Earth or Hell in turn. The pizza Luffy had chosen was of course piled with every type of meat available as a pizza topping, and his venison was as delectable as always. Luffy tried a raw piece of deer out of curiosity, and when his expression tightened into serious consideration to declare that he liked it more than non-meat food but less than cooked meat, Alastor cackled at the reaction.
The pleasant atmosphere, as well as the alcohol likely, did well to loosen him up. Luffy didn’t have too much to drink outside of a couple obligatory cups of congratulations, so Alastor was the one to finish off the bottle. After the sake had run dry, he ignored the flush that warmed his cheeks and brought out some good rye, wanting the occasion and the pleasant buzz that came with it to last a bit longer into the night.
And despite the original resistance to singing for Luffy that he'd had but a couple days prior… when a favorite song of his came on, he found himself chiming along.
“Hey, hobo man! Hey, Dapper Dan! You've both got your style! But brother, you're never fully dressed without a smile~ ”
“Your clothes may be Beau Brummelly! They stand out a mile! But brother, you're never fully dressed without a smile~ ”
Alastor laughed shortly into his microphone, amplifying his voice fully through the radio. Luffy laughed back when Alastor twisted his head all the way around with a crack and leaned into the boy. Their chairs had been pushed directly side by side by the other some time ago. He was close enough that some of Luffy’s laughter was picked up by his mic and mixed into the radio music and static, and thought it added a nice touch to the charming tone.
“Who cares what they're wearing on Main Street or Saville Row, it's what you wear from ear to ear! And not from head to toe, that matters~ ”
On the line, Alastor drew the tip of his claw from one corner of the God’s lips to the other, following the smiling curve of them. A perfect demonstration for the song. Though not one he usually uses, as if he wasn’t using it as an intentionally irritating gesture, it could be easily misinterpreted for vulgar means. He didn’t have to worry about such a thing with this boy, however. At the trailing end of the smile, Alastor shifted to pinch the rubbery cheek and pull it out a half-arm’s length. When he let go and it snapped back in place, Luffy let his head snap back with it in a mimic of a bobble head wobble, eyes squeezing shut and bursting out in a giggling fit at the action that was again mixed into the track. Oh, that’s actually quite fun!
“So, Senator! So, Janitor! So long for a while! Remember, you're never fully dressed without a smile… ”
As the song trailed off, Alastor bopped the boy atop his head with his mic as he threw in a quick quip, “I hope you realize you’re a spoiled brat. Not many have been privy to a private performance by the Radio Demon, after all!”
“Shishishi! I know! It’s cause you and everyone else like spoilin’ me!” Luffy happily admitted to without shame, grin truly stretched from ear to ear on his rubber face.
After blinking his wide eyes back open, Luffy swung himself over so that he was sitting sideways in Alastor’s lap, his tail wrapping lightly around Alastor’s knee. Alastor tensed at the contact, mind quickly processing if he should push the boy off or not when he was distracted by Luffy reaching a hand towards his face.
He copied Alastor’s prior motion, tracing the curve of Alastor’s own smile with his finger, emphasizing, “I like it when ya smile like this the best!”
Humming as Luffy’s arm shifted to lace behind Alastor’s neck and rest across it and his shoulders, the demon asked in genuine curiosity, “Is it truly so different?”
“Yeah! A lot ‘a yer smiles aren’t happy ones, but this one’s super happy! So it’s the best!”
“Hmm… Well, while the captain is a man that only smiles when he’s joyful, I use my smile for much more than that. It’s an important tool to maintain control, among other things. I suppose that displeases you? As fearless as you are, you have no need to smile in the face of such a thing or any of that like. You’re not even afraid of death, are you?”
To his surprise, Luffy just shook his head, grin unwavering. “Nah– I’m scared of stuff too. I’m not scared of dyin’, but bein’ alone scares me. So I’m really glad I found Alastor right away when I came here, since I’m not lonely with ya around! And it’s weird how you’re always smilin’, but that’s fine too! As long as ya still have happy smiles, you can smile however ya wanna! There’s no bad way to do it!”
The mention of Luffy’s fear of loneliness wasn’t a surprise. It brought to mind how the boy had attempted to set up residence in Alastor’s quarters the very first night, how he’d been adamantly against Alastor parting from his side in any significant manner for the past few days, as well as the close contact he liked to keep.
While Alastor himself didn’t tend towards such a desire for closeness, his mind strayed from its previous fretting and his frame lost its tension, becoming accustomed to the new warmth and weight… He thought he wouldn’t mind too much indulging in the captain’s whim.
Luffy’s stance on there being ‘no bad way’ to smile had him feeling doubtfully intrigued, though. Accepting the challenge, Alastor lit up the previously unseen stitches at the edges of his grin to gesture towards it and nonchalantly pose, “Even if I were to make said smile by sewing my mouth into a semi-permanent fixture of one?”
“ …That’s really weird. But Al’s really weird, so… guess it’s fine? Kinda.”
Alastor managed to earn a hesitant, judging stare from Luffy at that. An absolute weirdo with a crew full of weirdos calling him a weirdo, talk of pot calling the kettle black! He laughed at the absurdity of it, feeling a high from successfully agitating the usually unmoved God.
Before he knew it, the fire burned down into embers, the food ran out, and the whiskey had long run dry. When Luffy began to visibly tire, leaning into Alastor’s side out of dozing rather than intimacy, he yawned a whine of a request to stay in the room. To which Alastor caved and conjured up a second bed for the other.
More unexpected was Luffy pushing him into his own bed, mumbling about how Alastor hadn’t been sleeping and telling him to go to bed too. Seeing as it had been a while since his last rest, Alastor chimed a noncommittal agreement. Though he waited until the boy was softly snoring before cleaning up and switching out his clothes for a more comfortable night set. Alastor tucked himself under the covers while leaving the soft, quiet piano of Clair De Lune to play –somewhat overdone, but Debussy is now considered a classic for a reason– not actually expecting to fall fully asleep. He couldn’t even imagine willingly falling unconscious with another person in the room. Such a vulnerability typically put him much too on edge for such a thing.
So it was a somewhat embarrassing shock to wake up late the next morning with Luffy still snoring across the room. He had immediately knocked out. Not only that, but he couldn’t remember having slept that soundly in ages.
Ultimately, he decided that as long as he continued to wake up and make himself presentable before the boy woke up… There was no harm in also catering to that whim of the captain’s.
Notes:
Reference for Alastor singing "You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile" here ;) edited from the OG pilot Alastor singing voice actor's cover.
Chapter 7: Food for the Soul
Notes:
Thanks again for the fanart by RENEGADElion0 posted on their twitter here :D
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Since the founding of his totally awesome hit company IMP, Blitzø has had to have a certain policy when it came to accepting hits from certain sinners.
When they first figured out that there was apparently a whole fuckin’ other surface world some of these dipshits fell down from, Moxxie freaked the fuck out about it, but Blitzø himself just went straight to complaining about how the fucking sinner of the week was tryin’ to chump-change them through bullshit conversion of these berries their world apparently used as money. Who the FUCK names their currency after fuckin’ FRUIT by the way??? After figuring out which part of the grimoire to use to follow the trail the sinner’s soul had taken to arrive in Hell, it didn’t seem like it’d go much different than usual. The only real difference was that the target was a pirate, which was fuckin’ cool if you asked him. So no big deal, right?
Wrong. Huge deal. MAJOR deal. The pirate in question –he was an old man, they said, already half-way out the door, they said– was fuckin’ built like a brick house, just short of being two stories tall, and surround by absolute freaks that might be considered human beings including an actual fucking mythical phoenix guy. During the stake out when Moxxie started having a stroke over watching through the scope as the guy cracked literal earthquakes into the air, for once in his life, Blitzø agreed with his underling’s take. He said fuck this bullshit, we aren’t gettin’ paid enough for this, and promptly pulled him and the M&Ms outta there. And from then on, whenever a sinner started their hit request by saying that their target was either a pirate or marine or whatever the fuck a Cipher Pol or Celestial Dragon is supposed to be, Blitzø would put a gun to their face and demand to know if the fucker would be easy enough to kill with a bullet to the head, if the answer was no, he’d then ask what the fuck do ya think WE can do to kill ‘em then?!?! and kick ‘em to the curb.
That being said, it was still goddamn annoying to have to give up on a whole portion of offers, especially since even if they weren’t frequent, they were usually very high offers. Kinda had to be when a bunch ‘a the targets already had a set fuckin’ dead or alive bounty on their heads. So Blitzø had been bitching about tryin’ to figure something out about that –partially cause it kept him distracted from thinking of other, Stolas-related things– when, about a month ago, he’d been distracted by the sound of other people bitching from down the street…
“Mosshead you piece of shit stop walking already we are in the WRONG SHITTY CITY!!!”
“It’s not my fault the streets keep moving! This place is just weird! If ya gotta problem with it swirly brow then stop following me and find your own damn way to the captain!”
“That’s exactly what I’m trying to do! But if I leave you then we’ll literally never find you again in this afterlife and Nami will be upset with me! For once in all of your shitty existence just admit that you’re fucking lost!”
“For the last time I’m not lost! And you think I care if that witch beats the shit out of you– ”
“SHUT! UP!” Blitzø finally snapped, sticking his head out the office window to empty an entire mag at the two without even stopping to look at them, “SHUT THE FUCK UP THERE ARE OTHER PEOPLE IN THIS FUCKIN’ CITY TRYIN’ TO BITCH IN PEACE YOU FUCKING– ”
He was suddenly punted back by a kick to the head, crashing through the wall of his private office and into the reception area. The debris settled to the sound of guns at ready and weapons drawn. Blitzø stopped himself from getting into another cursing fit at the feeling of a blade to his throat. He looked down the katana to see the mosshead guy glare down at him with a single eye.
“Put down your weapons,” mosshead ordered the growling M&Ms and Loona, “He shot first. I don’t care either way, but we can end it here, or we can take you all out.”
There was a beat of silence, tension so thick in the air Millie could cut it with her axe. Then, the blond swirly brow guy raised his leg into the air–
–only for his foot to go crashing through his friend’s –frienemy’s?– face instead. Mosshead cursed as he made another fucking hole in Blitzø’s wall, but swirly brow just cursed back, “Shitty mosshead, the hell do you think you’re doing threating these perfectly fine ladies?!”
Th guy rushed to bow to the girls and give them both a very obvious heart-eyes once over. “I’m so sorry, Miss and little Miss, that shitty bastard is just incapable of learning manners. You weren’t hurt by our rude entrance were you– ”
“STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM MY DAUGHTER YOU FUCKING PERVERT!!!”
“THAT’S MY WIFE YOU’RE TALKING TO MISTER!!!”
After another round of chaos that ended when Loonie bit off both Blitzø’s and swirly brow’s faces, things calmed down enough that Millie’s stomach rumbled from their missed lunch hour. With his face still covered in bandages, swirly brow immediately offered to make lunch to make up for the horrible inconvenience he’d brought to such beauties, and mosshead had to punt both Blitzø and Moxxie in the back of their heads before they could start another round, with the only reason Blitzø let the guy off for it being cause he also punted swirly brow in the head too. Since having the guy cover lunch was the least these fuckers could do, Blitzø didn’t put up another fight after blondie walked off to put something together.
Then swirly brow came back with the best fucking sandwiches Blitzø had ever eaten. Like, it wasn’t even a contest. How in the Seven Rings of Hell did the guy make this with only deli meat, cheese, and bread??? This is NOT the shit he buys himself at the store! And thinking with his stomach, he asked through a bite full if the guy would be up to catering for a hit company specialized in killing off people of the living world –so long as you stay the fuck away from my daughter, don’t think this means I’ll let that go you creep.
Mosshead was the one to answer him, grinning a mean-looking smirk, “We’ll do you one better. If you gotta way to get up there, there’s someone we’d be interested in taking care of. There’s a certain Fleet Admiral that our captain never got to have a last battle with since he was too busy with other world government freaks to beat up, and the guys we left him to were opposing marines. Didn’t finish the job.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake, course you’re one ‘a those fuckers– Listen, if he can’t be killed with a normal ass gun and bullet we are not– ”
“Who said we’d be sending you? All we need is a ride. The two of us are more than enough to handle the likes of a government dog.”
Looking over the two fuckers and thinking of how he hadn’t even seen them fuckin’ jump him through his own window, Blitzø had to admit they probably didn’t need IMP’s very capable help. He agreed to the job of being the middleman of a sorts. So with that in mind, he set up the Asmodean Crystal Stolas switched out the grimoire for –don’t think about it, don’t think about it don’t think about–
Turns out the guy they were hunting down was literally made of magma, like the fuck? Despite the whole being made of magma thing, though, they seemed capable enough of slicing and kicking the guy until they punted him into the sea to drown him. You can drown these fuckers? Really, that’s all you need?! This place is like 95% FUCKING WATER!!! From Blitzø’s watch point he could see the other ex-marines run back and forth like frantic ants, shouting about how the Straw Hat Pirates have returned from death as demons to take revenge! or whatever. Only then did he realize they maybe should’ve worried more about the potentially being discovered part of this mission, but compared to Earth this place didn’t have the right tech or magic to come after them, so he decided to put off gettin’ his panties in a bunch about it until trouble actually came knocking at their door.
The successful mission brought a new game into play. Apparently while they were looking for some pirate captain of theirs, mosshead was also looking to save up enough money to buy six more swords. Why would a single fucker need, in total, nine fucking swords, you ask? Well apparently he’s upgrading to 9-Sword Style whatever the fuck THAT means! It was no skin off Blitzø’s bones though. So they made a deal where mosshead would take on missions for their world with targets they didn’t mind killing in exchange for a cut, along with swirly brow being paid for his cooking. But the guy better not even look at Loona or God help him Blitzø will find a way to string out his guts on his own fucking grill!
This arrangement was in place for only about two weeks when word got out enough that another interesting fucker ended up coming to IMPs door. One that the bitching duo knew in life. After a short conversation about oh so this’s where you ended up Trafalgar? Your crew here too? Probably in Heaven? That’s a shame. Have you seen our captain around? No? Too bad, enjoy the break while it lasts though– The extremely tired looking new fucker said he was looking to take out Blackbeard, the most pirating pirate name that Blitzø’s heard since the absolute unit that was Whitebeard, only for dumb and dumber to explain their captain had already killed him. With just a nod, Trafalgar accepted the response and switched to saying he was looking to take out a Flamingo in prison or something like that. To which the bitching duo, without missing a beat, immediately exclaimed, “AGAIN?!?!”
Which sounded like there was an interesting story there, but if Blitzø wasn’t being paid to listen, he didn’t really give a shit. That being said, they were apparently cool with the guy and not cool with the Flamingo, so it was another mission for the books.
Turns out the prison the Flamingo was in was a fucking fuckfest. Like six levels of torture under the sea fuckfest. Blitzø always knew humans were fuckin’ bastards, why else would they feel the need to build their prison literally in the layout of actual Hell?! And they had to go all the way to the fucking bottom to even reach the guy they wanted to kill, and the braindead mosshead kept getting fucking lost instead of running in the literal same direction as the rest of them, and what was even the point?! That’s just moving the fucker from one Hell to another! But Trafalgar had cash and was on the mission himself since he wanted to give the killing blow so whatever! Maybe he gets off on it?! So they got in, killed the human who was not an actual flamingo, and on the way out busted one of their friends out along the way just for the Hell of it.
After the success, Trafalgar paid up and said he’d get out word of the “Pirate Hunter” taking up bounty hunting again along with “Black Leg”, along with looking out for the still missing captain. When mosshead told him to also pass around that “Straw Hat Luffy” is the new Pirate King while he was at it –what the fuck is with all these stupid ass names???– Trafalgar promptly lost his shit, demanding, “Why in the name of Gol D. Roger was that NOT the first damn thing you told me?!”
“What? You really thought we all died without him finding the One Piece?! Be real Traffy!”
“Well excuse me for not making assumptions about that brat finding the most legendary treasure of the age!”
“He’s the shitty brat who was always gonna do whatever he puts his mind to, you know that. Could you even imagine a world where he didn’t get his way in the end?”
“ …No. Because being with you lot has rotted my damn brain, that’s why! This is not normal, I’m telling you! Here I thought dying would at least finally spare me from this mess!”
When the guy turned to leave in a huffy fit, though, the swordsman caught him by the shoulder to say one last thing, “Hey. Once we find him, don’t spend too long avoiding Luffy, alright? He… really didn’t like what happened, with you. Blackbeard was in our way so we would’ve taken care of him anyway, but he killed him for you. The last war of the Straw Hat Pirates was fought in honor of you and your crew. Think about what that means.”
To that, Trafalgar just looked… stunned. Any possibility of responding just absolutely obliterated. Hiding his face in the shadow of his hat, he left without saying another word.
Did Blitzø even know what that entire conversation was about? No. Did he care? Fuck no.
All he cares about when it comes to these freaks is how many zeroes swirly brow suggests adding onto a bounty after they get the name of a target. And the delicious fucking food that guy makes, by God– He’s pretty sure he had a dry orgasm eating those bacon-wrapped scallops. They were just that good!
And so that led into the current day, which started off just like any other day with the bitching duo. After attempting to go over details of an offer, they got to bitching at each other over something totally irrelevant. Blitzø broke up the fight by firing his gun at the ceiling, shouting, “SHUT THE FUCK UP LADIES, YOU’RE BOTH PRETTY, ALRIGHT!!! So just calm the fuck down and explain to me why the Hell we aren’t accepting this Kata-bari as a target– ”
He cut off with another curse when there was a knock at the door. Stomping over, Blitzø readied his gun, prepared to shoot whoever was on the other side just to take the edge off. Slamming the door open, he was exactly 0.3 seconds away from completely losing it at the sight of absolutely no one when the sound of static caught his attention. Looking down, an old as fuck radio had been placed on the doorstep.
“Salutations to the Immediate Murder Professionals and company! This is a special localized broadcast brought to you by the Radio Demon, perhaps you’ve heard of me? Regardless, I have a message for the two Straw Hat Pirates frequenting this establishment; Your captain is waiting in anticipation for your arrival at the Hazbin Hotel in Pentagram City! How it is that you found yourself in Imp City is a curious development– ”
“Al! Did ya find ‘em?! Who’re you talkin’ to?!”
“ –And here’s the man himself now! I believe I’ve found your first mate and chef– ”
“ZORO!!! SANJI!!! Hurry up and come over! I’m hungry! Sanji, don’t let Zoro leave ya or you won’t make it in time for dinner!”
“Did I not feed you but an hour ago?”
“Yeah, but thinking of Sanji’s food made me hungry again.”
“ …I suggest you make your way posthaste, before I lose my patience and your captain loses his head. Farewell for now!”
There was a sigh behind Blitzø, tinged with both frustration and fondness of all things. He turned around to glare up at swirly brow. The bastard was fuckin’ smiling at the ancient thing on the ground. “Sounds like Luffy’s been having a good time, found a sap to cook for him and everything. And here I was worried he’d starve without me around.”
“Tch. What’s he talkin’ about you keeping me on a leash? He should at least trust me to find my way back to him!” tone also utterly fond, Mosshead was grinning too. Less of a bloodthirsty smirk as usual and more of an endeared lopsided thing. And swirly brow was so caught up in having heard from their captain, he didn’t even follow up the statement with a scathing insult about how the guy couldn’t find his way out of a cardboard box.
It was disgusting! For the entire time he’d been working with these two trainwrecks, Blitzø had never seen them… actually get along, about anything. At all. No, scratch that– they got along for exactly one thing, and that was killing the red dog bastard. But it was a shared violence this guy is so fuckin’ dead comradery, something Blitzø himself could relate to perfectly fine. This, on the other hand, was something else entirely. Like as though just the reminder of their captain’s presence was enough for them to find common ground.
Squinting his glare at the fuckers, Blitzø drawled, “Don’t fucking tell me… The entire time you two have been here, you’ve been fighting worse than you usually would cause that guy wasn’t here too?!”
Scoffing, mosshead rolled his singular eye, “We always fight like that, and Luffy doesn’t bother getting in the way of it. Though… I guess without him or anyone else in the crew around to distract from swirly brow’s awful personality, I have to deal with it more often.”
“Huh? It’s you who I have to deal with more without the others around! Especially with the lovely Miss Nami and Miss Robin gone! I could’ve been pampering them all this time instead of being stuck babysitting you!”
“I don’t care who’s dealing with who, I all care about is that you made it MY FUCKING PROBLEM TOO!!! Get your asses outta here already! You better fuckin’ pick up the phone when I call with a hit offer, mosshead! And swirly brow, how’s catering once a week sound?”
“You think I’ll have time for your shitty ass once I have the captain to feed, horn bastard?! His stomach’s easily worth ten people!”
When the two fuckers made their way out the door, Blitzø swerved towards the M&Ms. They were both looking at him in full seriousness, understanding the severity of the situation instantly. “Plan M. I repeat, we are initiating Plan M. Our damn bacon-wrapped scallops are on the line here!”
“Understood sir!” after the salute, Millie turned towards her husband to give him a kiss on the cheek, the two looking sappy and besotted as usual, “Sorry hun, but I gotta save our baby back ribs.”
With a slight nod, Moxxie visible steeled his heart as he agreed, “I understand, my love. For the sake of our prime rib, I give authorization for Plan M sir!”
And with that, Millie rushed after the two pirates, flagging them down with an energetic wave. Swirly brow immediately did a 180 while mosshead scowled at him.
She smiled up at the fucker, batting her eyelashes as she pulled out her full Wrath Ring Belle drawl, “Oh Sanji darlin~ You’re not really leavin’ without a lettin’ me give ya a goodbye kiss, are ya? Why, ya haven’t even promised me ya ‘ll come back for dinner sometime!”
The pathetic man instantly dropped to his knees, hands clutched together and literal hearts lighting up in his eyes. He bent way over to get his face close enough to the much smaller imp for Millie to plant a tiny smooch against his cheek, never even dreaming of making the woman overextend herself for the gesture. “Oh Miss Millie~ <3!!! I would’ve never expected to receive such an honor from such a beautiful, radiant woman! Of course I’ll be back to cook for you and Miss Loona! Just call me whenever and I’ll figure it out, no problem!”
“HELL YEAH– I mean, I knew I could count on ya, darlin’! Our dear Sanji boy would never disappoint a lady, now would he? Have fun with your captain!”
As Millie strut her way back to the office with the biggest smirk, mosshead scowled down at the still wobbly heart-eyed swirly brow. He tsked, “You’re damn pathetic, you know that cook?”
“What’d you say swords for brains– ”
Blitzø was all too glad to slam the door on that brewing fight. Smirking wide, he held out a fist bump for Millie. “Now that was some good fuckin’ work out there, Mills!”
“He never stood a chance honey. You had him dead from the start!” Moxxie pulled his wife into a proper kiss after the compliment. Though when he pulled back, his face winced from remembered agony, “I am SO glad those guys are gone though! Every day with them and Sir in the same room is a day I contemplate the benefits of death…”
Pulling back from the kiss with a giggle, Millie chimed, “Aw, don’t be so dramatic darlin’! And that was nothin’! Like takin’ baby back ribs from a baby!”
“Or prime rib…”
“Or bacon-wrapped scallops!”
“Or wagyu sirloin…” Loona chimed in from where she leaned against the doorway to Blitzø’s office, licking her snout at the thought. She’d been in there due to Blitzø forbidding swirly brow from being in the same room as her except during mealtime, and she found the guy disgusting enough to agree.
Overall, Blitzø was also fuckin’ glad to see those Straw Hats go. But on the other hand, he’d still be looking forward to when they came back for the occasional dinner and assassination… And then look forward to seeing them leave again right after instead of FUCKING FIGHTING IN HIS OFFICE EVERY DAY ALL DAY!!!
It took a few days after Luffy’s injury had mostly healed before Alastor found the first set of the Straw Hat Crew.
During the time, he’d been tending to the boy as he had been while Luffy had been recovering, still cooking for him, enduring his never-ending presence, and letting the other stay in his quarters. Alastor recognized that he didn’t need to cook for Luffy, the hotel kitchens were set up to provide most meals so long as food was in stock to put something together with. But for whatever reason, the knowledge that there was an actual cook on the crew that would take over for him left Alastor with the impression of well, might as well give the boy what he wants for now, comforted by the implicit deadline. Since he’d cooked for him the first time, Luffy had become prone to hounding him for more rather than searching for the kitchen. Which Alastor should find annoying, but somehow came to hold a strange pride over a lesser used talent of his being appreciated.
When it turned out that the first two members he’d located included the chef –a shade having seen them after a particularly large brawl of theirs destroyed the majority of a street in Imp City, surely there couldn’t be that many kick-based and multiple sword wielding sinners with an undying feud wandering about– he even found himself feeling a tad… slighted, at how easily the boy could replace what was clearly a highly valued service of his. As illogical as it was, considering the entire reason why he’d offered to search for the crew had been to alleviate his own burden in dealing with the captain.
It was later the same day after he’d sent out his message that the two arrived at the doors of the hotel. Alastor had noted from a distance that the cook had literally tied a rope to the swordsman’s wrist, tugging the man back into step like an unruly dog as soon as he attempted to wander. The rope was quickly cut into tiny pieces by a flash of a blade as soon as they’d made it to the past the gates, but it was a concession that he’d allowed the leash for a long enough time to make it to the hotel.
Luffy burst into excitement at Alastor’s mention of his crewmates’ arrival. He ran down from the radio tower so fast that he’d managed to beat Charlie to answering the door. Alastor manifested himself from a shadowy pool not too far from the entryway, watching with a neutral smile as the captain stretched out his arms wide enough to wrap around both men in one giant hug, grin just as huge on his face. And for all the chef and first mate came off as surly and boorish in his initial impressions of them, they also had an open grin at the reunion, catching the boy and returning the hug without complaint.
The good mood didn’t last too long, though…
“ZORO! SANJI! You guys were together this whole time?! That’s so funny! Ahahaha!”
In an instant, the two smiles were gone. Replaced in full by the glares the two men sent each other. When the swordsman scoffed, he moved to try and pull Luffy further towards himself and away from the cook. The cook was clearly not pleased, keeping a firm grip that stretched the boy out between them.
“Yeah right– the cook’s been nothing but a pain in the ass! Every time a woman so much as walks down the street I gotta deal with his pathetic drooling!”
“Right back at ya, sword for brains! Who the hell do you think even got us to this shitty hotel?! Cause it sure wasn’t you!”
With a quiet gasp, Charlie murmured sadly to an annoyed looking Vaggie, “Our hotel isn’t shitty, is it?”
It was like the flip of a switch. One second, the chef was in a glare off fighting over the captain, the next, he was standing before the two women to bend in a full bow. Luffy had been released to suddenly snap back at the swordsman, who fell over in a yelp at the abrupt change in force.
Now that the two weren’t fighting, Alastor was more able to focus on the appearance of these two new pirates. Sanji was still blond with “swirly eyebrows”, just as Luffy had described to him but with one eye covered by bangs. However, he now also had a somewhat insect-like appearance. His face featured a blueish skin tone but based on the look of his hands, it seemed to bleed into black at some point on the limbs. His legs were very prominent from what could be seen with the full pants of his black suit, akin to a grasshopper perhaps? The most bug-like feature added however were the two antennae that poked out from his hair, which curled into a pattern similar to the man’s eyebrows.
“I deeply apologize for such a rude comment about your hotel, Your Highness. Surely, no hotel run by a Princess as lovely as yourself could ever be anything short of extraordinary!” his voice was absolutely simpering as he looked up. Pink hearts had morphed out of his pupils and irises to take up most of Sanji’s eyes. When he reached out to take one of Charlie’s hands into his own, either ignorant to or ignoring the way her smile turned awkwardly uncomfortable, Vaggie glared so hard at the gesture that Alastor wouldn’t be surprised if literal daggers formed from the look alone.
“You truly are a lady born of angelic kindness to have let my mannerless monkey captain stay in your delightful presence! I can’t thank you or your equally lovely friend here enough– ”
Sanji was forced to let go of the hand in a swift withdrawal when a spear slammed down into the spot he’d been standing in seconds prior. Vaggie stepped in front of her paramour with a scathing scowl and tone, “Hands off bud! That’s my girlfriend you’re talking to, so you better tone down the flirting before I tone it down for you by cutting your throat out!”
“V-Vaggie, please don’t– ! Calm down…”
Rather than react in anger towards the threat or even disappointment at hearing both the women were taken, after the chef blinked at them a couple of times, the hearts in his eyes grew even brighter. Sanji cupped his hands together as his body began to wriggle in place like a worm, for lack of a better description. He exclaimed in full approval, “Of course~! Of course such wonderful beauties wouldn’t want anything to do with any ugly, horrid men– The love between two delicate ladies must be the purest form of love in all of life and death <3!!! I would never dream of interfering with such a wonderous thing! Such enchantment! Such grace! I just can’t help but admire– ”
The chef was summarily cut off as he was thrown into the back of the loveseat in the living room, having been punted by the back handle of a sword. Alastor was pleased to see the inflicted violence.
The attacker in question came forward before the group. Roronoa Zoro had a fairly intriguing demon form, featuring an extra set of muscular arms and two extra heads that sprouted from his thick neck and were faced perpendicular to his center head. While his main head held a mostly normal face besides one of his eyes being closed with a scar running through it, the other two only had wide mouths that seemed to match the expression of the main mouth. Alastor vaguely remembered there to be a demonic deity in mythology with a similar multi-arm and head design, though he was guessing the green-tinted skin was derived from the man’s hair and not the Asura theme. Most of the green chest, including the slash of a scar that ran diagonally across, it was visible due to the man’s darker green robe-like attire.
“What you’re doing is the opposite of thanking them for helping Luffy! Sorry about him. When it comes to women, he’s dumber than even Luffy,” Zoro huffed in full irritation before respectfully adding, “And thanks for putting up with our captain, by the way. I know he’s a handful at best, and it looks like he’s already gotten into a fight before we were able to meet up…”
The swordsman frowned at Luffy’s stitched scar at that last statement, evidently displeased. Luffy just smiled up at his first mate, not put off in the slightest. “It’s okay, Zoro! Even if you were here, I wouldn’t ‘ve let ya help with the fight. I had to prove to Alastor I was strong enough to be his captain!”
“Oh, uh– ” Moving to place herself in front of a now only slightly miffed ex-angel, Charlie smiled somewhat awkwardly at the newcomer, “Thank you for your gratitude, really! But Luffy’s actually helped us a lot too, so it goes both ways. And since he recruited him, Alastor here has been the one looking after him the most! He even patched him up and everything.”
“Yeah! Alastor’s great guys! He’s on the crew now!”
Alastor spoke up at the captain’s unintentional que, tone full of fake pleasantries, “Yes, quite. I am known as the Radio Demon by most of Hell. I would say it’s a pleasure to meet you both, but that impression has already been fully ruined. It seems we will be working with each other for some time, though, so I will do my best to gain a tolerance as to the more unbearable aspects of your personalities!”
At that, the swordsman turned to him with an examining look. Even the cook picked himself up to approach. Alastor stretched his grin wider and sharper. The two looked him over in a serious glance before Zoro smirked and asked, “You’re one of those Overlords, aren’t you?”
They actually seemed to be anticipating a response, so he replied, “Why yes, that I am! Does that fact displease you?”
“Hell no. You heard him, swirly brow, pay up!” Holding out a hand towards the other man, a mean smirk cut into Zoro’s face. Sanji cursed at the sight of it as well as Alastor’s answer. “Even I can’t believe you were stupid enough bet against Luffy asking one of those guys to join! He was bound to ask one ‘a these demons and they’re supposed to be the strongest of the non-Hellborn!”
“Yeah well, that’s cause I was betting on the bastard asking a demon that’d be the worst case scenario for me, which were literal cannibals! In comparison to that I’d take an Overlord any day!”
Just as the man began riffling through his pockets, Alastor felt his grin grow even wider in amusement. He was all too happy to chime in, “Oh~ in that case, you’ve called the bet too early. For you see, while I am not of the cannibal race, I am indeed also a cannibal! So you were both correct in your guesses!”
Sanji smirked while stuffing his money back into his pockets. The swordsman balked at the shift, “Hey! What’re you playin’ at cook?! That doesn’t count! Give me my winnings!”
“Are you deaf now, mosshead? He clearly said he’s a cannibal! How does that not count! I don’t owe you shit! …Shit,” only then did the chef seem to process what he’d said. Switching to pulling out a cigarette, he looked back at Alastor in a harsh grimace. “Please tell me you can eat more than just people. If you can’t I’m gonna wring that stupid captain’s neck, I swear...”
Luffy ignored the threat entirely, just laughing his head off at the apparent bet and byplay going on. Alastor wasn’t sure what was more hilarious, the fact that the possibility of the captain recruiting a demonic Overlord or cannibal was great enough that his crewmates would bet on it, or the fact that both bets had been right. With a curious, mocking hum, Alastor questioned, “And if I were to say I cannot…?”
Sucking in a breath of his now lit cigarette with the air of a seasoned chain-smoker, Sanji released a swirling puff of smoke in a total sigh of exasperation, “I would have to learn how to cook in ways I really don’t want to. But I’m only making that kinda stuff if you honestly can’t go without it, otherwise you can get it for yourself however you usually do. Even if I’d hate it, I’m the cook. I can’t let anyone on the crew starve like that.”
…Well, even if the rest of his personality is absolute disgusting garbage, at least the man takes his job seriously. Even theoretically agreeing to cook human flesh when one wasn’t included to such depravity was a considerable accommodation.
Even still, Alastor was a spiteful demon, so he let the guy stew in silence for another twenty seconds before admitting, “ …No, I also hold a preference for Louisiana Creole cuisine as well as venison!”
The chef deflated in obvious relief. “Thank god– You shitty red-eared bastard, you really made me wait that long to answer that?!”
“I do prefer my venison raw if that helps. I usually partake in it straight off the carcass, one whole carcass per sitting!”
“You want me to serve UNPREPARED MEAT?!” he shouted that as though he found the concept to be just a step below the offense of serving human remains, “You shitty piece of– Fine! I’ll make it rarer than blue but I am not going without adding some seasoning or something! Zeff would kill me in a heartbeat if he knew about this, I can just feel it! Show me some recipes of what you like if you have them too.”
In a clear side-eye, the swordsman questioned, “You complain about that old man beating your ass for that but not the offer to cook people?! Don’t ya think that’d be worse for him considering the whole eating his own leg to give you all the food when you were starving thing– ”
They blurred into action in an instant. Three swords were drawn, two held in strong arms while one of shining white angelic steel was in Zoro’s main mouth, countering the kicks of three separate legs. Sanji had grown out a second set of jet-black legs, similar to a grasshopper’s hind legs just as Alastor had thought. He leaned firm onto one leg while the other three kicked the swordsman in a mess of black afterimages. Along with countering them all with his blades, Zoro grew out a third set of arms to complete the Asura image, hands pulling at more of the scabbards that were split between his hip and back to bring the number up to the nine swords total.
“Dammit cook, you really wanna go now?! I’ll get out more swords if I have to!”
“Why’re you acting like the offended one here after you brought THAT up!!! Are you really that much of a dumbass?! And I still can’t believe you made us work up money to get even more shitty swords! Who the hell uses nine swords?!?!”
“I got nine places to hold ‘em so why wouldn’t I get nine?!”
“Charlie! My magic felt a fight broke out, who’s attacking the…” having emerged from a swirl of magical fire, Lucifer stopped short at the sight of the confrontation. He stood beside the stunned faces of both Charlie and Vaggie, one stunned in shock while the other in growing outrage. “Hey– Hey! You’re breaking the furniture! Stop that! …Please!”
Predicably, the cursing duo completely ignored the King. Alastor was very amused to see that the two were, in fact, wrecking the furniture the King had picked out. After this, he’ll finally be able to replace everything along with the couch he’d already switched out! Looks like these two are good for something after all! Luffy also seemed unmoved by the raging conflict. That is, until Cherri jumped out from where she’d initially hidden behind the bar top, Husk and Angel watching her leave their relative safety with wide eyes –had they always been here? These Straw Hats are just so distracting that he truly hadn’t noticed!
“Stop it you bloody bastards! Pen’s painting’s over there!”
At the angered feminine cry, the cook immediately stalled in the middle of a stalemate with the many swords. The swordsman was about to press the advantage when two stretched out hands grabbed the both of them by the back of their collars. Luffy tore them back away from where they’d been precariously close to running into the painting of Pentious that Charlie had commissioned after the Extermination battle. His arms retracted with so much force, the two went straight over his head and through a wall, landing them outside the hotel once again.
“Shitty captain– ”
“Luffy– !”
“No!” Alastor was internally surprised by the insistence in Luffy’s voice. The captain moved to stand over the rubble he’d made of the drywall and wood to stare down his two men, both hands planted on his waist.
“The snake captain is their treasure! So you can’t ever break it, and you were about to! No fighting in there! …And not by the cool dragon statue also! Or in Al’s mystery radio tower!”
Luffy turned towards Alastor with an expecting gleam in his eye, clearly looking to be praised for thinking ahead enough to include his studio on the list of things to not break. And Alastor did have to admit, it was more than he’d typically expect from the monkey. A pleased hum was all Alastor needed for the boy to beam at him.
Pirates dumb and dumber finally gained properly chastised expressions at their captain’s reprimand. Alastor doesn’t see the boy as the type to do that sort of policing often, so when it does occur it must be a particularly shameful thing. Zoro sneered and averted the gaze of his singular eye, while Sanji winced both at Luffy and at the various displeased expressions of the ladies behind him. They murmured in accidental unison, “Sorry…”
After nodding in satisfaction, Luffy turned back towards Charlie, who was touched at the boy’s protection over their “treasures” of the Pentious painting and Dazzle’s statue, and Vaggie, who’s squinty-eyed scowl had only deepened. Lucifer, still next to his daughter, switched from wincing at the interior and wall to wincing at the scar on Luffy’s chest. It was the first time he’s been around since Alastor had removed the boy’s bandages.
“Awwww~ Thanks Luffy, that’s so sweet of you!”
“You really couldn’t do that until AFTER they destroyed almost the entire lobby?! Or without destroying the wall along with it?!?!”
“Oh… my bad,” glancing down at the rubble again, Luffy turned back to Vaggie with a grin as he suggested, “It’s okay Veggie, Franky or Usopp can fix it when they get here!”
“And when’s THAT going to be?!”
“Now now, dear– I can simply fix it up as usual,” Alastor chimed in. Tapping his cane on the ground twice, he summoned a number of shade minions who got right to reconstruction efforts. As he glanced back at where the two unruly pirates were getting up and brushing debris off themselves, though, he felt his grin pull taunt as his eyes narrowed in displeasure. “I must say, though… I have the sinking suspicion bringing the captain’s crew into the fold is not going to result in the reprieve I had been hoping for.”
Cherri Bomb strut over to give him a doubtful side-eye as she snarked, “Ya think? How many more ‘a these guys are there anyway?”
“Not including these two and the captain himself, seven more to go.”
“SEVEN?!” Husk cried in outrage while withdrawing from his hiding place. Slapping a hand over his eyes, he groaned, “I don’t know how else to say this Princess, but I think this new hotel of ours ‘s gonna need some more remodelin’ in the future again. There ain’t no way it’s gonna survive ten ‘a these dumbass pirates!”
“The free rent was nice while it lasted. Knew it was too good ta stick ‘round forever…” Angel sighed in preemptive mourning.
Blinking at the group in full innocence, Luffy spoke up, “Huh? Nah, you guys got it all wrong. Zoro ‘n’ Sanji are the worst when it comes to fighting! No one else’s gonna break anything! Most of the time!”
“Except for yourself?” Alastor questioned knowingly, raising an eyebrow.
“ …Yeah!” At least he’s self-aware.
“So in other words, by having all three of you right off the bat, we’ve achieved the worst possible starting order of gathering your crew?”
“Yeah, probably!”
Placing both her hands over her face, Vaggie let out a long, pained groan.
With a mocking hum of consideration, the King glanced over at Alastor with a smirk that had his gaze sharpening once more. “You know… I’m kind of impressed. You somehow managed to find yourself a group of people who may actually be even more of a nuisance than you are! Good luck with that I guess! Ha!”
“How curious, I was just about to say that my distaste for the swordsman and especially the chef almost rivals my distaste for you! Almost, but not quite. Despite them being as annoying as buzzing insects, you are somehow still worse!”
“ …Oh!” Luffy’s shout of realization had everyone looking over at him. He pounded his fist down into an open palm as an idea seemed to strike him. And when he directed an excited grin straight at Alastor, he quickly braced himself to dread whatever inane thought would come from that mouth. “I knew you and Lucy reminded me of somethin’! You guys ‘re like Zoro ‘n’ Sanji! Except ya don’t actually fight fight! Isn’t that funny?! Haha!”
Alastor balked in synch with Lucifer, the both of them instantly horrified by the comparison. What was even more enraging was the resounding hum of consideration and agreement of the rest of the hotel residents.
“Now that ya mention it…”
“Ooooh…”
“Well ain’t that a fuckin’ riot!”
He found himself on the defensive, “I beg your pardon? No, certainly not! After all, we’ve never destroyed hotel property in our very reasonable disagreements.”
“Hate to agree with this guy but he’s right. I would never inadvertently cause Charlie this much distress by starting a fit!” it only took Lucifer three seconds before he realized what he’d said was a completely provable falsehood, and he quickly shifted tactics, “ …I would never start an actual fight with the busboy unless he started it first!”
“Can you be more unconvincing?” scoffing at the King’s pathetic efforts, Alastor bolstered his own stance, “I’m sure that with certain circumstances, me and His Majesty here would find ourselves aligning on some shared goal. Despite those two supposedly being on the same crew, I can’t see them doing the same.”
At that, Sanji stepped forward to complain, “Oh please, what do you think we were doing when our captain was risking his life against every other megalomaniac on the sea? They called us the Wings of the Pirate King for a reason!”
“We also both agreed on the returning to the living world to kill Akainu thing,” Zoro casually stated this as though that was a completely normal thing to find common ground on, before shifting to speak to the captain, “Oh by the way, Luffy, we met up with Trafalgar down here. Helped him with another kill Doflamingo plan. We called him up with where you are, so he’ll make his way over eventually.”
Beaming brighter than a shooting star, it almost seemed like Luffy’s eyes gleamed with actual stars at the news. “Traffy?! Really?! Wow! Thanks Zoro!”
“Hey! I was there too!”
“ …Just ta be clear, are ya thankin’ ‘em for the meetin’ this person thing, or the killin’ people thing?” Angel asked in a drawl, his head tilting in confusion at the mixed messaging.
Face scrunching up, it seemed like the captain had to actually think about the answer. “Uh… Both I guess!”
“Course ya were…”
“YES!!! It’s a bad boy!”
When Niffty came scurrying through, the cook moved out of her way in consideration. Leaning over to coo, “Look at this little Miss! Such a cute lady– ”
“I don’t like you.” The shut down was as brutal as it was immediate. Sanji seemed to freeze over, stuck in his doting expression even as Niffty quickly bypassed him to head straight towards Zoro. The swordsman pulled out one of his swords again in jolting alarm.
“Now you– You’re a bad boy, aren’t ya? Eheheheh~ ”
Alastor just managed to dissolve and remanifest out of the shadows in time to pick up his wayward maid and pull her away from the sword that embedded itself in the spot she would’ve run into directly in front of the wary man.
“Darling come now, this brute is not a bad-bad boy, but a good-bad boy. He has to be if he’s part of the captain’s following.” Ignoring Niffty’s whine of disappointment, Alastor smiled pleasantly at the trigger-happy swordsman, who examined the both of them in obvious suspicion. “I do apologize on dear Niffty’s behalf, but I must request that you restrain yourself. Lest you find battles you did not intend to start… Perhaps you can cool yourself down with a refreshing alcoholic beverage provided by Husker over there?”
“It’s Husk!”
After an extended stare off, Zoro tsked as he deemed the conflict not worth keeping up and made his way to the bar. Only to have to duck at one last kick by Sanji at the offense of having targeted a woman. Alastor placed Niffty down with a quick pat on the head to raise her mood and get her back to scurrying around the place. It was then that she noticed the state of the room and began screeching about the mess. Meanwhile, satisfied that the place was getting cleaned up and the wall fixed, Charlie and Vaggie hesitantly left to prepare some rooms for the new arrivals.
While the swordsman demanded beer from the very annoyed barkeep, the cook finally stopped bickering with the other man to familiarize himself with the kitchen. He cursed at Alastor to follow him to get started on learning his recipes and cursed at Luffy to not follow.
With great hesitation, Alastor manifested the recipe book he had complied for himself. Only handing it over with an explicit threat, “If you lose or damage this item in anyway, the dear captain won’t be able to find your body because it’ll be in my stomach!”
Sanji leaned back with a curse at the sight of Alastor cracking his neck to the side as his form distorted for a split moment to match the distortion of his voice. Not scared, but startled by the sudden jump scare. He scoffed at Alastor once he took the book in hand and the demon’s appearance returned to normal, “Shitty demons with their shitty posturing– I’m not gonna do anything bad with it!”
After the cook began reading through the pages, however, a gleam of genuine interest caught in his eye. Sanji didn’t look away from his rifling as he questioned, “This is food from where you were when you were alive, right? We have similar dishes but not quite the same style. Did you put these together yourself?”
“Not quite. They are derived from what I remember of my mother’s recipes. Though I do confess I’ve never been able to get anything just right. She must’ve had a secret ingredient or two.”
With how confrontational the other had proved, Alastor halfway prepared himself for some sort of jeering about being a “mama’s boy”. But instead, Sanji just nodded at the comment. “Alright. In that case, can you tell me what you remember from her cooking that you think your version is lacking in? I can try making some adjustments to see how it turns out.”
“…If you insist.”
Along with grilling him about the recipes –what an unintentional knee-slapper that one is– the cook also thoroughly asked after how Alastor would take his venison. Specifically, he had Alastor clarify what exact parts of the carcass he would consume outside of the meat itself –no need for the skin, guts, antlers, hooves, or larger bones, but he did enjoy snacking on the eyes, tongue, heart, and thinner bones, and the brain was a delicacy. He also liked drinking the blood on occasion. When Alastor questioned why the other needed to know, the cook firmly stated that nothing that need not be wasted went without use in his kitchen. Sanji also asked after any food allergies –none that he was aware of.
He finally directed Alastor out of the kitchen after that, stating that he’d try making a venison broth with the marrow but that it wouldn’t be ready until tomorrow. In an attempt to gain an upper hand, Alastor conjured a fresh, unbutchered deer carcass onto the counter, pestering a mock of a question asking as to how he’d expected to prepare venison without a deer to work with. However, instead of getting annoyed, the man actually looked pleased to have received the corpse. When he casually thanked Alastor for the contribution, the demon was quick to divert himself from the situation.
A couple hours later, supper was called. Everyone was vaguely surprised to find that the chef had cooked for them too, Charlie insisting that it hadn’t been necessary and grateful in turn. After going stupidly gaga for a bit, Sanji brushed off the idea of not cooking for everyone as though the thought was a crime against humanity. Noting the plethora of chicken, beef, fried foods, and Luffy’s starry-eyed drooling face, it was clear to Alastor that the man had whipped up a collection of his captain’s favorites without having been asked, along with a proper balance of more healthy side dishes to go along with the meal. The captain wasn’t alone in his excitement, everyone except for the swordsman were gazing at the spread in obvious desire. Even Vaggie’s previously unimpressed visage wiped away into blank shock at the delectable dishes.
None of this surprised Alastor, but what was shocking was when the chef carted over a particularly large tray along with a couple of smaller dishes to place directly in front of him. Catching his curious stare, Sanji just shrugged it off. “I don’t usually prepare separate meals like this, but you fed Luffy while I wasn’t able to. This is my thanks for that. It was a good chance to try out how to make the kind of food you like anyway.”
One by one, the chef uncovered the dishes and listed them off. While the other two pirates and Niffty had already moved onto shoving food onto their plates and into their mouths, the rest of the hotel residents were unabashedly staring at Alastor’s custom meal.
“Lightly marinaded venison tenderloin, flank, shoulder, neck, rump, and upper leg, bone-in where appropriate and left blue. Venison backstrap tartare. Venison brain tartare. Venison eye, tongue, and heart marinated in a blood-based sauce. Juice made of clarified venison blood, bloody mary style sans alcohol. And lastly, jambalaya prepared as indicated with the exception of slight variations. You better be able to eat as much as you say you can because I don’t allow leftovers. This is almost as much as Luffy eats, you know.”
“How… How does it look so horrifyin’ yet good at the same time???” Angel’s whispered commentary was shushed by Husk, who was too caught up in watching Alastor’s reaction to participate in the byplay.
Alastor had to keep himself from gawking at the marvelous display. Feeling the pressure of many eyes on him, he cut a piece off of the main dish, which while the deer had clearly been deboned in most areas, had been carefully preserved in the shape of a skinned corpse. Just the way Alastor preferred but hadn’t bothered specifying when explaining everything earlier, seeing as the vast majority of people wrote that preference off as an unappealing taste of his. He took a bite of neck meat. Then of the two different tartare. Then cut off and tried a bit of the heart and tongue and half an eye. Then ended the venture with a gulp of blood to help smooth it all down his throat. Gently placing the glass back on the table, he stared at it all for a brief moment.
This is the best meal he’s ever had. The only thing to possibly top it was his mother’s cooking, and Alastor recognized he may be biased in that judgement.
Belatedly, he realized that Luffy’s comment of “almost as good as Sanji’s food” was actually a very, very high bar for a compliment. He also realized that the chef declining cannibalistic meals is a huge loss. Oh, what this man would’ve been able to do with human flesh. Dear Rosie would’ve been ecstatic!
The food is so good that he has to concede, “This is… quite impressive. Very impressive, dear chef. I’m honored by the efforts you put into providing such a high-quality banquet for myself. I’m also impressed that the good captain actually managed to recruit such a skilled chef for his little pirate crew.”
With an uptick of a lopsided grin, Sanji replied, “Thank you. I enjoyed the challenge, actually. I don’t usually get to use most of these cuts, so it was nice to be able to put them to good use. Let me know if the jambalaya isn’t what you’re expecting, though, and I’ll make a note of what to change for next time.”
“Based on the venison I’d say you likely couldn’t have gone too far off the mark…” Even still, as he brought a fork full of the equally delicious looking dish to his serrated teeth, Alastor prepared himself to find anything, absolutely anything down to the most minor detail that he might be able to nitpick about.
He took a bite, then another. Then sat there for a second.
Abruptly, Alastor stood from his seat, stepping away to push the cook by his back to leave the dining room for the privacy of the nearby hallway.
“Wait wait wait– Don’t kill ‘em! This ’s the best chicken I’ve had in– in ever!!!” Angel cried out as he stood up from his seat, reaching out dramatically with multiple hands. Apparently, he had sampled some of the main course while Alastor had been in the midst of his own taste testing.
He growled back without patience and without stopping, “I’m not going to kill him! I just want to talk!”
“ ‘M pretty sure that’s what they all say,” Lucifer snarked just before taking his own bite. His exasperation immediately melted into awe as he looked down at the beef skewer he’d just tried to say, “Holy shit…!”
“It’s ‘kay,” Zoro spoke through a mouthful of food. The cook did a 180 to yell back fuck you mosshead! before Alastor was able to fully push him into the shadowy hiding spot.
With a heavy, irritated sigh, Sanji brought out a cigarette while probing, “Alright, what’d I do wrong to get you into such a shitty mood?”
Alastor clawed at his hair by the roots, face likely falling into the beginnings of insanity.
“Nothing! It’s PERFECT! Exactly how she used to make it! What black magic is this?! How did you do this when you’ve never even tasted the real thing?!”
In a slow blink, the chef lowered the cigarette he’d been about to light, annoyance wiping away into an empathy. He switched out his choice of addiction with a piece of paper that he handed to Alastor. Accepting it without thought, Alastor saw that it was a copy of the same recipe he’d provided the other with additional bullet notes on the side.
“Usually I wouldn’t be able to get it so close, you’re right. It’s only because your explanation of what it tasted like was so detailed that I could make strong estimated guesses based on the flavor profile you described.” When Alastor’s wide-eyed gaze finally moved back to Sanji, the chef gave him a somber, sincere look.
“I know the value of food, Alastor. I know the value of a homecooked meal, and I know the value of a mother’s love. I would never even contemplate trying to cook something so cherished without the full intention to do right by your memory of them. As soon as you handed me those recipes, I was dedicated to fulfilling them to the best of my ability. And the reason why I’m able to do that is because they’re important to you. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve done to land yourself in this shitty Hell; if Luffy says you’re crew, you’re crew, and I have an obligation to my Nakama to make sure they never find their food wanting. Even for Zoro, though he doesn’t appreciate it damn well enough…”
He… didn’t know how to respond to that.
After giving him a short moment, the cook turned Alastor around to guide him back into the dining room, sighing, “If you need to take the jambalaya to go, that’s fine. Just finish everything else for now. I was serious about the no leftover food thing.”
“ …I don’t imagine that would be an issue with the captain around.”
“It’s not,” the statement was spoke with such an obvious grin, Alastor didn’t even have to glance over at the other to see it in his mind, “When I first met that idiot, I hadn’t seen myself leaving the Baratie to join a still no-name pirate crew, but I have to say… There’s nothing a cook likes more than when a person wholeheartedly enjoys their food and asks for seconds. Or at least that’s what it’s like for me.”
Alastor cleaned up the rest of his plates, after that. Ignoring the borderline inappropriate sounds most of the hotel residents made as they devoured the feast. At one point, Angel Dust called out asking if Luffy’s crew got to eat like this for every meal of every day, and if so, ‘s yer crew lookin’ ta recruit a whoreboy– He didn’t get to finish the line, Vaggie using the staff end of her spear to tilt the spider’s seat to clatter onto the floor along with the spider himself. When Luffy asked after what he’d said, both Charlie and Husk pretended like there was nothing that’d been said. At a later point, Cherri Bomb posed the genuine question of if I let ya bang me will ya cook somethin’ this good for breakfast for me? To which Sanji flew back out of his seat in a concerningly large spurt of a nosebleed and promptly passed out in the most pathetic manner possible. Zoro scoffed that as long as she asked, the idiot cook would do that for her regardless of if she slept with him, which Cherri looked pleased with.
As supper wound down, Alastor moved through the shadows to head back to his quarters, taking his last remaining dish with him. Even as he set it on the small table in front of the fireplace and sat down, though, he hesitated. Staring down at the jambalaya… it did look exactly as his mother’s had, now that he really looked at it.
It’s just a plate of food, how could this possibly be so daunting? What is he even waiting for?
His frustration was interrupted by the sound of the door slamming open. Alastor jolted upright at the sudden disruption to the previous silence, ears twitching back and straight once more in a blink of a movement. He turned to see, as he would’ve expected if he’d given it a thought, Luffy stroll in like he owned the place. And apparently like he owned Alastor’s food as well, considering the empty plate and clean fork he held out with a confident grin.
“Can I have some? It looked sooo good and I saw ya take it all up here with ya!”
“Are you not full? Do you commonly steal the food off other’s plates after having already gorged yourself?”
“I can eat more! And yeah! I don’t usually ask though, I just steal it!”
“Even for you there should be limits to being a spoiled brat…” while drawling his complaint, however, Alastor used a tendril to shift the second plush high-back chair of the set so that it was placed behind him rather than in front of the table. He knew the boy wouldn’t complain about the strange seating or lack of table to use. When he wordlessly raised a hand to accept Luffy’s plate, the other beamed brightly at him.
After moving over a generous half of his serving, Alastor handed back the plate and Luffy sat down on the seat behind him, such that they were back-to-back with a tad of space in between. At the sound of the boy happily chowing down, Alastor sighed, before finally taking a bite of his own plate.
The savory flavor drew out memories of earlier, simpler times. A mealtime favorite. A mother’s smile. The young boy who smiled back at her. One who had yet to fall into depravity…
–She’d be disappointed, wouldn’t she? What did she think of him once the police investigated the circumstances of his death and found all the remains of his victims? It would’ve been deserving for him to have never tasted her food again …–
When he took another bite, and then another, his eyes stung. Vision slightly blurred by wetness, not enough to make full tears but enough to bead at the corners. Alastor had to remove his monocle to roughly wipe a sleeve over both his eyes, utterly annoyed at the reaction.
“By God– it’s just some jambalaya! Am I truly such a pathetic creature to be brought down by this?!” Slamming the hand in a fist down beside his plate hard enough to rattle the table, his other went back to feeding himself. “He’s just a lecherous womanizer! How can that cook have such an awful personality and manage to make her food?! How can he cook her food when I can’t?! And I can’t even kill him for it since it means I would lose out on his future meals!”
Half-way giggling behind him, Luffy chimed in so happily Alastor could hear the smile in his voice, “Sanji’s weird sometimes, but he’s always really kind! You can taste it in his food!”
“Yes yes, I’m well aware of how much you prefer his food over mine! I can no longer hold it against you now that I know what I’m being compared to.”
“Huh? That’s not what I said. I like Sanji’s food cause it’s Sanji’s, and I like Al’s food cause it’s Alastor’s! I like it when ya cook for me too! You’re still gonna make stuff for me sometimes, right? I’ll be sad if ya stop!”
As he finished spooning the last of the meal into his mouth, Alastor again rubbed at the tears budding in the corners of eyes. His cheeks ached at the forceful pinch of his stiff smile.
And just when he’d gotten himself under control again. This boy pulls at his strings with such ease, perhaps he truly is not but a ragdoll within his hold…
“You don’t gotta smile if ya don’t wanna.”
“Don’t lOoK at me. Why are you even here?”
“ ‘M not! I just know you’re smilin’ cause Alastor always smiles. And why wouldn’t I be? Food always tastes better when ya eat with friends! And cryin’ alone is the worst thing ever…”
Alastor tensed at the feeling of the monkey’s tail curling lightly around his abdomen. Glancing over his shoulder as much as he could without actually twisting his neck, he saw that the boy was leaning back into his seat with his hat pushed forward so it was partially over his eyes.
“Gonna take a nap now. Food’s makin’ me sleepy…”
“ …Your bed is right over there, you know.”
It was a halfhearted protest at best. Taking a deep breath as the side of his head brushed against his chair’s backrest, Alastor’s hand ran itself over the furry black tail in his lap. It left a soft, warm sensation against his palm.
If the boy didn’t wake up in twenty minutes, he’d move him over to the bed anyways… But only after twenty minutes.
Notes:
Some background info for the beginning of the chapter that wasn't fully explained because Blitz was not the right narrator to give the explanation (lol). In the context of this story:
There was a faction of the Marines (SWORD +others) that rebelled against the world government for the final war, so instead of the Straw Hats fighting Akainu and his marines it was mainly Koby with assistance from Smoker, Tashigi, etc. Akainu lost, managed to flee after the fact, and regrouped with marines that weren't for the new government that was being set up.
Impel Down is still a thing even after the government turnover because the guards just accepted the turnover. Ideally the government would want to reform the practices of the prison/examine all the cases to free anyone they would consider unjustly imprisoned, but they got a lot going on so they haven't finished that part of things (its only been like 2 weeks in the post-war timeline at the time they go there lol) and they can't just immediately shut down the place either since there are still legitimate criminals being secured there (such as Doflamigo).
Bepo didn't take Law away from their confrontation with the Blackbeard Pirates, so Law and all his crew died in that battle and he's been in Hell for a while now.
I'd like to formally apologize to Law for separating him from his family, crew, and Corazon by sending him to Hell while they're all in Heaven, but I do feel like he would've gotten up to his worst stuff while his crew wasn't around, so I think it'd make sense for him to end up in Hell but not them... T.T
Sanji's design took so long to decide on, literally every other Straw Hat I knew basically immediately but for him I kept going back and forth between like three different options... The ultimate deciding factor was that if Zoro gets more arms Sanji needs more legs to balance it out and bugs are easier to do that with, so grasshopper it was lmao
Chapter 8: Pride and Prejudice
Chapter Text
Filthy, trash-filled alleyways were a common sight in Hell. Almost as common as the wretched sinners that inhabited the cesspool. They scurred about the place like disgusting insects, fully indulgent in their hedonism and vice. This Hell is the exact image of a world abandoned by Heaven and its justice.
The pitiful suffered. The powerful thrived. The people feasted upon each other in ways that were both metaphorical and not, some even falling to the utter depravity of consuming human flesh. Condemned to Hell for their sins, this most damned fate was most deserved.
But it is not enough. How could it be, when the wretched have their run of the place?
The system for their order could hardly be considered such a thing, sinners allowed to rise to the level of lords as the ruler of the world deigned to seclude himself. But what else could be expected of a failure who’d fallen from grace? No, it was clear there was no true order to this world. No true justice.
And thus, Sakazuki knew the exact reason as to why he’d been sent to this place upon his miserable death. Because his purpose could not be in the wrong– it could not be.
What had previously been a filthy, trash-filled alleyway had been melted down into molten asphalt and brick, rendered down by red-hot magma that had only just begun to cool. All that had been in the alley had melted down with it, whether it be the metal of containers overflowing with trash, the trash itself, or the flesh of sinners worth no more than the garbage they produced. Sakazuki had come to learn, however, that this method of purging was not enough. The dead could only be completely killed via the means of metal produced from the Heavens, lest they remanifest themselves to continue their evil for all of eternity.
The main distributor for weapons made of this metal was an Overlord of great renown. With enough time, Sakazuki could have earned enough to purchase the high-priced contraband, but he would never lower himself as to dealing with criminals. Certainly not. Instead, he subtly combed his way through various small or mid-time gangs as to ensure his prey remained ignorant to his intentions, enacting what limited justice he could by melting them all down into burning sulfur and ash that matched the lingering scent of Hell itself that permeated every inch of the city. Until, finally, he’d come across sinners in possession of a couple swords made of angelic steel.
The weapons were wasted on the riffraff. What may have been a danger in the hands of the strongest swordsmen of Sakazuki’s world was hardly a weapon at all in such unskilled hands. He made quick work of them, burning their warehouse, the alley beside it, and all the panicking garbage that had attempted to either fight or flee down into the molten pit that he now stood in the center of.
With three long blades of the precious metal now at hand, he melted those down as well. Blazing liquid metal mixed with the magma of his claws, and then melded into serrated teeth when his maw bit into the luminous ichor. What should be unbearable, scorching heat was nothing to his body. The melding of molten rock and metal only just sharpened into its new form, still red-hot to the touch when he reached out to grasp the neck of the only sinner he’d left alive; the leader of the pitiful excuse for a crime ring. The demon screeched in pain as burning metal claws blistered and scorched its flesh, weakly clawing at Sakazuki’s arm in vain.
The reaction just prompted him to tighten his grip even further. He ignored the demon’s cry to begin the interrogation, “Are you familiar with the Radio Demon? The Overlord who broadcasted an interview with Straw Hat not long ago.”
The boy’s voice had been just as much of an annoyance in death as Sakazuki had remembered it to be in life, an unpleasant surprise to have heard it once more. With various interrogations he’d conducted before this raid, he’d learned enough to know his most likely location, should he still be in association with the Overlord that had interviewed him, was at the hotel Princess Morningstar owned on the edge of the city. For a moment, he’d considered the benefits of invading this Hazbin Hotel, before checking himself and his rage enough to accept the fact that waging battle against the King of the Pirates was enough of a fight on its own without inviting the Morningstars into the fray. Not only that, but even with the thought of purging the family in mind, he wasn’t fully convinced of doing so. For while he provided little order, Lucifer did act as the basis of the ruling system for all of Hell even outside of the sinners. It would be remiss of Sakazuki to attempt burning down this system when he had nothing to replace it. He was not of the same ilk as those criminal Revolutionaries.
He was not in his world, without his marines to command or the world government to back his efforts. A Fleet Admiral must not only be a force of power, but a strategic mind. Though Sakazuki would admit he was not as adept at that end of things as Fleet Admiral Sengoku had been, he cannot embarrass himself by acting without common sense.
But he must wage his war. And he must initiate it now, now, now– before Straw Hat had time to gather his full crew, for Sakazuki also recognized taking on all of the Straw Hat Pirates at once was also too much of a fight, and he refused to lower himself enough to recruit any of the damned to join his cause. He knew they weren’t already all together, or else they would’ve left much more of a mark on the place. Though perhaps the Pirate Hunter and Black Leg, being the ones to have returned from the dead to strike revenge upon him, were already at their captain’s side.
Therefore, proper weapons in enact his justice now in hand, his next goal was to gather more information as to Straw Hat’s new apparent acquaintance, the Radio Demon. An Overlord who from stories told was among the most feared in all of Hell, though he would likely not be of the same level as the Morningstars or Straw Hat himself. A sinner deserving of punishment just as any. He would have more ties to this Hell than Straw Hat or any of his crew would have, with the more recent occurrence of their deaths. If Sakazuki found the right string to pull on to gain the Radio Demon’s attention, he could also gain Straw Hat’s attention in turn and lure the boy away from the implicit protection of the Morningstars.
Choking out through his sobbing, the sinner stammered, “I– I don’t know the guy but I know of him! Doesn’t everyone?! Wh-what about ‘em?!”
“Do you know of any others the Radio Demon is associated with besides the Princess? Any that are in his favor?”
The sinner shouted out an acceptable answer, so Sakazuki thanked him for his contribution. Then, he melted his claws into metallic magma, burning through the screaming demon’s neck and killing the insect for good. Because even if he’d done as Sakazuki had requested, none of the damned would face mercy at his hands.
That was the way of his Absolute Justice.
When Luffy officially retired for the night, rather than stay with Alastor, he bullied the cook and the swordsman into staying in the same suite to have a sleepover with the both of them. Alastor had half-way expected himself to be bullied into such a fate as well, but after his instant, firm rejection when Luffy asked him to come, the boy just shrugged it off and didn’t press the issue. Which he was quite thankful for. Sleeping in the same room as the captain was one thing, but throw in anyone else and he’d just end up waiting for everyone to fall unconscious before taking his leave. That being said, he’d already been getting more sleep than usual with Luffy previously insisting on his presence constantly, so Alastor didn’t feel the need to sleep that night anyway. Or the night after that, when Luffy stayed in the first mate’s newly designated suite, or the one after which was spent with the chef next door to that.
While Alastor had internally questioned whether the boy would simply choose to spend all his nights with his crewmates now that some were present, he also wasn’t surprised when Luffy showed up at his own quarters the next day. With the captain and his expectations having returned, Alastor deigned to sleep that night as well, and found himself still comforted by the added presence. Somehow despite their arrangement not having gone on for very long, he’d already become accustomed to it. Though he wouldn’t admit to that fact easily.
Throughout this time, the new additions of Zoro and Sanji, while not as destructive as they had been the first day, continued to prove themselves nuisances with their constant bickering. The cook continued to be the more irritating and distasteful of the two, but made up for the fact through his progression through Alastor’s recipes as well as the rest of his delightful meals. The rest of the hotel residents seemed to share a similar sentiment. Charlie remained discomforted by any ogling to the same amount Vaggie became enraged over it while Niffty and Cherri Bomb couldn’t care less about the man, and he’d almost lost his head when Lucifer happened to be by on one of the occasions he was interacting with the King’s daughter. But as soon as supper was called, they allowed the chef’s presence for the sake of their stomachs.
Husk switched between snarking, bickering, and being irritated at Sanji’s attitude, while Angel Dust had made some initial attempts of seduction that were fairly light-handed when it came to the porn star’s usual scale of escalation. Upon the cook’s visually disgusted reaction, however, the spider switched to angrily questioning Sanji if he was a homophobe, to which Sanji angrily snapped back that he just hated men and bugs. When Angel then snarked back “have ya looked in a fuckin’ mirror recently?”, the cook gave a very depressed “yes”, so it seemed the aversion to creepy-crawlies wasn’t feigned. Which was actually hilarious! The irony was well deserved as far as Alastor saw it, considering the man had clearly been an annoying pest to women in life as well. Death had just made the sentiment more literal. Though somehow that interaction had still managed to be the preferable of the two compared to when Angel had enquired the swordsman as to how he, quote-unquote, “got those fuckin’ enormous fat-ass man titties”. To which if it had not been for Husk’s quick maneuvering, the spider would very well have lost his head over.
Still, Alastor also tolerated the cook for the sake of his cooking. When the morning for beignets arrived, he even offered his own assistance with their making, something which excited the captain immensely. Sanji accepted the help, grumbling about how he usually didn’t permit others in the kitchen whilst he cooked but that he’d make an exception for him, unintentionally stroking Alastor’s ego with the comment.
While they began preparations, the chef posed a partly sarcastic inquiry about how he’d been shocked that the kitchen remained well stocked and that Luffy hadn’t rifled himself any rations from it. Alastor had a pleasant laugh about how that was thanks to me, you’re welcome, due to his magic hiding the kitchen from the boy’s findings. Rather than roll his eyes at the boasting, however, Sanji instead eagerly approached to shake one of Alastor’s hands, much to his own confusion.
“Welcome to the Straw Hat Pirates. I take back every shitty thought I had about you joining. You hear that, mosshead?! This guy’s already more useful than you and he’s a literal cannibal demon who’s only been on the crew for less than two months!”
“Well we wouldn’t need him to hide the food if you protected your own damn kitchen!”
“YOU try keeping enough stock for ten people at sea while having to switch out the locks on the fridge and pantry every two shitty weeks when the captain finally breaks them! You’re lucky I don’t let you starve!”
“It’s not like I ever asked ya to feed me!”
“You shitty piece of– ”
“Very not sorry to interrupt, but I must say while I have the chance– I’ve not been part of the captain’s crew for that long. It’s been less than two weeks rather than months,” becoming annoyed by the shouting match occurring through the kitchen walls with one half of the offenders not even present at hand, Alastor found that point as good as any to interject about.
Sanji blinked back at him in slight surprise, clarifying, “I thought Luffy said he met you the first day he came to this shitty place? Did he not ask you right away?”
Somewhat amused that immediately recruiting an obviously malicious demon was expected behavior for the boy, Alastor drawled, “Well yes, but I certainly didn’t accept such an inane request! I only became obligated to agree once he’d won my soul from a certain person, you see, and that occurred not but two weeks ago.”
“Huh… You actually lasted a while longer than most do, then. Though not the longest technically, I think. Guess I can see you being a hard sell,” seemingly not seeing the winning his soul portion of the statement as anything of interest, the cook bypassed it to ask with a curious look, “What poor sap did Luffy beat up for that then? He must’ve been a strong one to leave a mark on him like that.”
Mockingly, Alastor chimed back with an uncomfortably sharp grin, “Has no one taught you as to the pitfalls of making assumptions? The matter will likely come up at a later date, so I might as well just tell you now; your captain defeated the Mother of Humanity Eve, who’d been in possession of the Queen of Hell’s body. From what I’ve heard she’s still on the mend, ha!”
The man stared at him blankly for exactly five seconds. Before rushing so fast out of the kitchen he moved in a blur.
“YOU SHITTY CAPTAIN!!! YOU BEAT UP THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN HELL AND THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN OF HEAVEN AT THE SAME TIME?!?! I WON’T FORGIVE YOU FOR THIS– ”
“ –And I won’t let you make a fuss concerning this matter you wretched, pathetic simpleton of a human being! Cease your incessant screeching!”
Alastor emerged from the darkness, antlers growing larger while shadowy tendrils lifted him off the ground to loom over the now fiery cook –literally speaking, as in the man was literally on fire– as he attempted to get a hold of him with more writhing shadows. It proved to be quite a difficult challenge. The other was not only absurdly fast, but also seemed to know just how Alastor would plan to move. He was only able to keep the cook from progressing by blocking off the exit of the hallway with a strong shield. The Radio Demon was a minute or two away from taking more drastic measures in his frustration when the swordsman finally deigned it worth his time enough to assist. His attacks successfully maneuvered Sanji to be cornered by Alastor’s many shadows, and once he got ahold, the still inconsolably raging man’s flailing and flaming was of no use.
All the while, Luffy just laughed his stupid little head off at the infighting. Vaggie, at the sight of the hallway having decidedly more holes and scorch marks than its previous none, was very much not laughing. Needless to say, there were no beignets that morning.
While Alastor often found himself vexed with the cook, the supposed first mate of the Straw Hats was a much more aloof character. The muscle-brained man didn’t do much outside of drinking, sleeping, training, and fighting with the aforementioned cook. The most amusing thing he’d seen the man get up to had been a drinking contest with Husk in which the cat actually had to throw in the towel to then go throw up, a rather humiliating defeat for a certified alcoholic. Especially considering Husk had obviously agreed to the trial in the first place with the intention of impressing Angel in mind. Lost the gamble on that, he did! Aha! So rather than reveling in the cat’s victory, the spider had been relegated to pitiful consoling. All the while the swordsman had just smirked at his own victory and kept drinking. Alastor was rather certain that, even if he should gain the chance, he would not wish to consume the man’s surely diseased and overworked liver. Overall, Zoro was a textbook example of a creature of simplicity.
Other than the fact that not too long after his arrival at the hotel, the man had gotten himself utterly lost in the various hallways of the building, to the point where Luffy had prodded Alastor into helping him hunt the swordsman down so he wouldn’t miss that night’s dinner. The fact that he’d been asked to do so a good five hours prior to suppertime didn’t bode well.
When he’d found Zoro all the way back in Imp City, complaining about how he supposedly hadn’t even left the hotel and demanding that Alastor fix his hotel so it made more sense to traverse through, the Radio Demon had a sudden understanding of Sanji’s unending desire to kill the idiot.
Because there was being an idiot, case in point the captain, and then there was being such a moronically inept imbecile that when someone pointed towards where the restroom was, instead of walking even in a remotely similar direction the man would straight up walk in the opposite way, then have the absolute audacity to get angry at the directions having been wrong. There must be something wrong with his brain, surely. The booze had already killed all his brain cells? Or perhaps he’d been dropped on his head as a child? Alastor would accept any sort of reasoning at all over the horrible possibility that the swordsman had just been born this stupid.
The first thing Alastor did upon finding Zoro was slap a magical seal onto the back of the man’s main neck to act as a tracker, then preemptively moved out of the way to avoid the predictable sword brandishing that followed. The building that had been behind him was not so fortunate, but that wasn’t his problem. He didn’t care how much the man barked about the matter, Alastor had no plans to play this unintentional hide and seek a second time.
He then dragged Zoro down into the darkness to reemerge in the hotel. The man once again went off about how he could’ve made it back on his own! Which at this point, not a single soul inside the building would agree with.
“I always knew we should’ve told Franky to make something to tag you with. You’re a hopeless idiot mosshead…”
“Aren’t you the hopeless one here swirly brow?!”
“Not right now I’m not! I mean really! Did you even manage to find your way up to Heaven for them to give you the offer to follow Luffy here, or did you just get lost on the way?! Actually, never mind. You were probably sent straight to Hell! You were a total shithead in life after all!”
“I didn’t get lost! The universe just put me in the wrong place!”
“ …Fucking excuse me?”
“You heard me!” Zoro scoffed back like this was a reasonable issue to get angry about, crossing two sets of arms over his chest, “I was just wandering around in this weird place where nothin’ was at, and this angel woman comes down all upset like ‘How did you get here?!’ Fuck if I know! Fix your goddamn afterlife! After that she was pissy and said Luffy was here and so I told her to send me down here, and she did a damn awful job of it since I got put right next to you!”
Alastor glared at the multi-headed man, teeth grinding together just short of audible as his smile pulled taut with an eye twitch. Part of him wanted to laugh hysterically at the absurdity, but the other half was just utter annoyed by the fact–
“You… Your shitty soul… actually managed to get lost on the way to THE AFTERLIFE?!?!”
Shaking the hopeless idiot by his labels with full violent intent, Sanji lit on fire once more. Presumably combusting of sheer frustration that Alastor empathized with.
“If you ever go anywhere alone ever again I’ll kill you myself, you shitty DUMBASS! And I’ll damn well FEED YOUR CORPSE TO ALASTOR if only so that you’re at least useful in death, you useless piece of shit!”
The Radio Demon’s mood lifted significantly at the offered possibility. Glancing over the imbecile with discerning radio dial eyes, Alastor made a show of his sharpened serrated grin. “Hmm… Too much muscle and not enough fat. But as I know the policy with leftovers, I would still gladly consume every bite to not let it go to waste! Except for the liver! Hahaha!”
“Like hell ya will!”
With a pleased grin, Luffy declared with a laugh, “Shishishi! I’m glad ya guys ‘re all gettin’ along!”
“Like hell we are!!!”
“You’re blind shitty captain!”
“I think not.”
“With every day that passes watchin’ these four, I question more ‘n’ more how this pirate crew’s supposed to be in any way functional with ‘em. And the most concernin’ part ‘bout that is it’s actually not all the serial killer cannibal Overlord’s fault…” Husk muttered to Angel at the bar, who snickered back in agreement.
Decidedly done with these people until supper, Alastor planned to head back up to his tower after this incident. Only for someone to start following him down the hall, and not the usual suspect that was the captain, who had begun pestering the cook for a pre-dinner snack.
Grin pulling sharp once more, Alastor turned his head around in a crack to look back at the man he’d just spent no less than two hours in search of. Zoro eyed the 180 head adjustment with slight disgust, but didn’t react otherwise, maintaining a mostly neutral scowl. Alastor turned his body around to match his head and took a single step towards the swordsman before stopping to rest both his hands on the mic-head of his cane set directly front and center of him. His gaze narrowed part out of curiosity and part in light intimidation. “How convenient of you to regain the ability to follow people only once your presence is no longer desired. To what do I owe this pleasure?”
Zoro just stared back at him, the gaze of his single eye narrowing in turn. The two mouths on his other faces fell into deeper scowls. “I don’t know how much Luffy’s told you of the rest of us, red ears, but I was the first person he dragged into his crew. Technically the first mate, though it’s not exactly a formal position with the kinda crew he’s set up.”
“So I’ve heard. You don’t have any delusions of me referring to you as vice captain or anything similar, do you?”
“Nah, don’t care about that crap,” the man said while rolling his eye at the suggestion, ignoring Alastor’s tittering short chuckle of a reaction to continue, “The only reason I bring it up is that part of what I do is keep an eye on things that Luffy doesn’t give a shit about.”
Alastor brightened in a dark sort of way, maliciously amused such that antlers grew just a tad and his sclera darkened in contrast to the glow of his radio dial pupils. He felt the small red X on his forehead light up as he rose a hand to tap a sharp claw against his cheek in fake thought, chiming, “Oh~ In that case, let me guess– You wish to keep an eye on the very suspicious demon your captain has recently contracted! Yes, I’d say that’s a smart idea! Much smarter than I assumed you capable of considering the day’s happenings.”
“You’re the one who looks dumb here, calling me stupid when ya haven’t even figured out where you’re heading,” the reply held an undercurrent growl of irritation. Alastor’s smile pulled tighter at the insult.
Closing his eye with a sigh, Zoro’s tone leveled out once more, “Look, I know you’re supposed to be some creepy demonic Overlord or somethin’, not exactly a team player kinda guy. So no shit I don’t trust you. But Luffy’s word on who’s crew is the only one that matters, and we all trust in our captain more than anything. If he’s managed to convince you this far, you should at least get something about that. He got that wound fighting for you, didn’t he? And that must’ve meant something to you for you to fix it up for him.”
Alastor didn’t respond, merely shifting his visage back to a more normal state even as his eyes narrowed on the other. The swordsman went on unfettered, “I can tell you don’t have your full pride set on this, though. Even from that first creepy message you were calling him our captain, not yours. His crew, not yours. And let me be the first to tell ya– you’re not the first person to join that took some getting used to things after the fact. You’re gonna get there at some point. I’m just gonna make sure you don’t try anything stupid until that happens.”
“…What a confident stance you have. Almost foolishly so. The dear captain is one thing, but I couldn’t possibly commit to a promise of enjoying the rest of the company that he keeps. Especially when the first two of the set have already proven to be quite irritating,” Alastor made a show out of inspecting the sharpened tips of his claws in apparent disinterest as he sighed, “And while, yes, I will admit to having been contracted onto this crew of his, a significant part of that is out of obligation. As I told the cook previously, he won my soul in that fight he initiated, and therefore it is in his possession. So you needn’t worry of me trying anything stupid in consideration of that. Is it not enough that I respect him as a legitimate captain and God?”
“You sure like yappin’ a lot without saying shit.” Alastor failed to keep his hum of displeasure contained as he flashed a glare back up at the smirking swordsman, the man looking particularly bullish and smug. “You wanna know what I heard from all that bullshit? That you agreein’ to join wasn’t all bullshit obligation, and that if he owns your soul, it’s because you’re letting him, cause Luffy doesn’t fuck with that kinda shit.”
“Again, such confidence for matters you know not– ”
“Shut up for a second! Stop being all pissy, I’m not tellin’ ya that as an insult or anything! It’s the opposite! That’s what you don’t get! We’re all like that with him. There’s no bullshit Contract, but he basically already has my soul. Cause I’ve already dedicated everything to him. Myself, my life, my ambition; I entrust them all to Monkey D. Luffy with pride, in life and in death.”
Eyes going wide, Alastor couldn’t keep the shock of his reaction from reaching his expression. Zoro stared at him in full conviction, just as full of pride for his proclamation as he’d claimed to have. The unwavering certainty of it has Alastor… taken aback, if that was the right way to phrase it.
In Hell, it is a shameful, horrid thing to find one’s soul under the service of another. For such a state is to be powerless to protect oneself from the whims of the demon set above them, to be marked as the lesser. To see such a prideful man direct that pride towards his placement under another is a foreign sight, indeed.
“Ask any of the others, and I guarantee they’ll say the same thing. Did ya know what the cook was talking about before, saying how he’d been given the offer to follow him down here? That’s cause he was supposed to go to Heaven, but like he always does Luffy got his way and made it so we have the freedom to go to him instead. And I know that they all jumped after him without a second thought. Why the hell would we go anywhere that he wasn’t? He’s got us all actin’ stupid for that dumb grin of his, and none of us would have it any other way.”
Evidently reaching the end of his point, Zoro turned his back towards Alastor to head back the way he’d come, calling out the last nail of the coffin, “I don’t know ya well enough to say whether you haven’t reached that point yet or just won’t admit to it out loud, but it doesn’t matter. Cause either way, it’ll be the same for you, too. Just don’t get so freaked out over. You’ll have a whole crew full of people that feel the same way as you… Oh, and thanks for taking care of him while we were gone.”
He was left to watch the man’s fleeting back. Alastor had to contain an annoyed tsk at the sight of the first mate taking a wrong turn after they’d simply walked in a straight line to get to this area. He tried telling himself that it wasn’t worth his time to fret over the words of such a proven imbecile… But such denials were ultimately without merit.
After the somewhat daunting conversation, Alastor deigned to not attend dinner. Wanting to avoid the pirates his mind now turned over. Only for, in a move he should’ve seen coming, Luffy to come barging into his tower to drag him back down anyway.
He purposefully directed Alastor to a seat that was between the Straw Hats and the rest of the hotel’s residents, forcing Alastor to face the stare of the first mate as Luffy happily sat himself beside the Radio Demon in turn. Alastor attempted to keep the uneasiness in his chest bitter. However, upon seeing a main course of venison and side of tartare placed down on the table as well as beignets for dessert, he mentally cursed his own weakness as the spite increasingly dissipated.
It could not be a coincidence. The swordsman must’ve informed the chef he’d be in a bad mood, and since when could those two work together over ANYTHING? Let alone anything concerning Alastor himself? This was the very definition of conspiracy!
Not too long after, however, he would no longer find his thoughts stuck on such trivial matters. For there was a brewing storm on its way.
Right before the end of the dinner service after Lucifer had come and gone to acquire some of the cook’s meal for himself and Lilith now that his wife was awake, the entrance to the hotel burst open. Multiple people jolted in the seats at the sound, as well as the sight of the unfamiliar cannibal that ran into the dining room. When his searching, panicked black pits for eyes landed on the Radio Demon, Alastor stood up from his seat in a graceful motion.
“R-Radio Demon! Please! Overlord Rosie calls upon your aid! Cannibal Town is in crisis!”
Even in the face of the cannibal’s fretful state and news, Alastor calmly questioned, “Why, this isn’t a common occurrence. Whatever could have happened for my dear friend to send out such a drastic notice?”
“We’re under attack! At this rate, he’s gonna burn down the whole town! Madam Rosie tried dealing with him alone but– but we can’t even get close anymore with all the lava he spread through the town square! And then he took some of the kids as hostages and he’s got angelic steel– said he’ll kill them if we don’t bring Straw Hat Luffy to him!”
Alastor’s closed mouth smile pulled taunt at that. Shock resounded through the hotel residents, Charlie raising a hand to cover her mouth with a horrified expression. Three chairs scraped against the floor as all three of the Straw Hat Pirates rose in a single movement. When he glanced back at the captain, the boyish face was set into an uncharacteristically heavy glare.
“It’s Akainu,” Sanji was the one to say while lighting a cigarette, face cast in a more familiar glare of irritation, “Or at least that was his Admiral designation before they made him into Fleet Admiral. Used to be the Red Dog of the government before everything turned sideways. Just like the shitty bastard to take some damn kids hostage. He’s the one we killed off before meeting up with you guys.”
“Well, evidently he didn’t appreciate the assassination very much,” the sardonic retort was more of a sigh than quip.
“No, he would’ve gone after Luffy anyway,” Zoro interjected, tone fully serious as was his scowl, “We figured he’d make a move sooner than later, but why would he do it by goin’ after one of your allies instead of just finding Luffy?”
“I don’t believe I’d thought to mention it prior, but I did hold a publicly broadcasted interview of your captain here. If he’d heard it, he’d have known he could reach the captain through me and would likely be averse to attacking the hotel directly in consideration to the Princess’s presence.”
Baring a shark-toothed, sharp grin, Alastor had to keep his displeasure from bleeding into a growl, “How foolish of him. To think that accosting the territory of the Overlord I’m in alliance with would be the preferable of the two options! New blood indeed! Dear Charlie here is much more inclined to mercy than Rosie and I. He shall not survive the night.”
“Do– Do you need help, Alastor? Rosie and the cannibals helped us, so we should help them too!”
The Radio Demon blinked the demonic nature out of his eyes before setting them on a concerned looking Charlie, having stood up from her seat as well to make her offer. Vaggie stood next to her, nodding in firm agreement with her spear already in hand. Before he could make a decision one way or another, the captain spoke, “It’s fine. He came for me, so me and my crew will take care of it. Is that okay Al?”
It took him a second to realize Luffy had honestly requested his opinion and wasn’t just looking for a default affirmation. Alastor tried to think of how to quickly explain the politics of the situation in a way the boy’s simple mind could comprehend, “While usually I would agree… Even if he’d asked for you, he is attacking my interests as well as Overlord Rosie’s. If you are the one to take him down rather than either of us, it places us two in a rather weak light. I don’t believe tangential help would be an issue, but I’d like to request that you leave the fool to me personally.”
Luffy stared back at him blankly as he replied, “That’s fine. I was already includin’ you when I said my crew would deal with it, and since it’s your friend’s town he’s attackin’ her fightin’ is fine too. You can handle him. Zoro and Sanji already got a turn anyway. Can ya get your mystery shadow to take us there?”
“Of course.” With a streak of something dangerous and mean curling into his grin, Alastor allowed the darkness to swallow the now gathered crew.
While his original intention had been to rise them up from somewhere on the ground like usual, he quickly sensed the land to be rather inhospitable, and reformed from the shadows atop Rosie’s nearby emporium instead, beside the woman herself. As Alastor stepped forward to gaze over the edge, he had to take a moment to comprehend the chaos before him.
The messenger cannibal’s description of burning down the town, as dramatic as it’d sounded, didn’t paint nearly enough of a picture as to the disaster zone that used to be the town square. The ground was lava, like the children’s game except entirely and dangerously literal. The square itself along with the charming gazebo that had taken center stage was destroyed, the image of a volcanic pit that was still growing. The ominous glow of its molten heat cast upon the buildings closest to the epicenter as it spread, eating through homes and businesses alike to set them aflame and melt them down to mix with the liquid earth. There were only a few remains of people from what he could see, though the sight brought the assumption of greater casualties due to how quickly the flesh lit on fire, burned to ash, and melted down just the same as anything else. Anyone who’d been swallowed up earlier would’ve already been rendered to ashes by the time of their arrival. Some cannibals were in the midst of fleeing in terror, carrying young and the less abled elderly as well as they could in a run. Those closer to the encroaching magma were trapped, having climbed up to the high ground of rooftops and left to swelter in the heat, holding each other close to cry together as foundations burned and melted, death looming from below.
At the sight, the Radio Demon’s dangerous irritation evolved into murderous fury, the rage clawing at his chest and his grin. And even then… he knew his anger was likely nothing compared to the Overlord who stepped up to stand beside him. The one who’s most treasured town and people were in the midst of volcanic decimation.
“This that Straw Hat Luffy the bastard was askin’ for, Alastor? It’s good you brought ‘em, but make sure he knows who’s fight this is. I’ll be damned if this DOG thinks he can get away with using my town as his damn middleman!” Rosie’s tone was much curter than politeness dictated, outright snarling her words. The glare of her black eyes was akin to a void, staring down the attacker raised in the center of the magma without even turning to acknowledge Alastor or the company he’d brought with him, and her fists were tight by her sides, trembling with restrained rage.
The reason for her restraint, along with the difficulty of maneuvering that the lava posed, became apparent at the sight of the besieging soon-to-be dead man. With his lower half connected to and rising out of the magma, the sinner before them seemed to be made entirely of molten earth. Skin made of hardened obsidian rock was laced with cracks that showcased the red magma turning just underneath the surface, and his eyes were but the glaring glow of red. The upper portion of his body that wasn’t melded to the pit took the form of animal-like features, a long snout with sharp fangs and large hands ending in claws, both the fangs and claws gleamed the same shine that angelic steel featured. The demonic wolf held two children, one boy and one girl, under arm, claws shining angelic white with the under glow of red heat dangerously close to their crying faces. Their bodies were red and blistering in the sections the wolf was holding them, burning in from the heat even without the direct contact of the lava.
Akainu, looking up not at either Overlord but the boy that came to stand next to Alastor, snarled back like the dog he was, “Straw Hat Luffy! So you’ve come! No surprise to see the most wretched pirate of our times has decided to play nice with the damned of this realm. If you wish for me to release these hostages, you shall engage in single combat with me on the honor of your title as the King of Pirates! You escaped justice in life, tearing apart the very order of our world and those who stood atop it! And I will not allow you to escape it again in death!”
“Don’t care. Already promised Alastor he could have you, so no,” Luffy’s response was quite muted for the circumstances at play, still as blasé as ever even as he scowled at the dog.
Before Akainu could respond either with a repeat of his threat or going straight to following through, a blur of black rushed past him in time with a slicing cut of wind. The long-distance sword strike cut off the arm and side of the invader enough to cleanly pass by the children without them being touched. And in the same blink of a moment, a multi-legged fiery kick pushed back the arm while Sanji took both children into his arms, bounding away in a rushing leap onto a roof on the opposite side. Once at a relatively safer distance, he paused to shake the steaming heat and fire from his black-clad feet, but otherwise seemed relatively unharmed. Unsurprising, considering the man apparently regularly set himself and his legs on fire.
On the other side of Luffy, Zoro sheathed two blades he’d taken out. He gestured a nod towards the reforming magma man as he looked to Alastor and asked, “You got any angelic weapons you can use on him? It doesn’t seem your style.”
“Because it’s not. But I’ll get by, the mystical arts have much utility,” he dismissed the concern before speaking up to direct his words to the heated annoyance, “You’re relatively new to things down here, so allow me to explain one thing before you perish– it is most rude to ignore the Overlords you’ve directly attacked in favor of another, and the price of such an insult is your undead life!”
With a wide sweep of his mic, tracing a sigil into the air that was reflected onto the edges of the lava pit, Alastor used his shadows to feel out the edge where molten rock intermingled with the still hard ground beneath. The magma had been created from the top layer and did not permeate all the way through, though it seemed to be in the process of spreading downwards as well. He had to cut the darkness through a good number of feet into the ground to form a layer underneath.
Void set in place, magma sunk down, being swallowed up by the vastness of the dark such that neither its light nor its heat could escape. With how much of the stuff infected the town, however, Alastor recognized that even as they could see the edges of the pit retracting, eliminating all the lava would cost them some time. Especially as it seemed the man could indefinitely produce more.
The dog was evidently angered by his counter as well as the removal of his upper hand, growling wolfishly before barking out, “This darkness…! It’s like Blackbeard’s fruit, how horrid! Such is the nature of the absence of light. How curious that you would associate with a demon of a similar ilk to your rival, Straw Hat! You would truly choose to give up on a fight with me in favor of someone like him?” Is this dog still ignoring him? He truly has a death wish!
Snapping back in anger that’d only made itself known before Eve, the captain yelled bullishly, “Alastor’s nothin’ like that bastard! Blackbeard’s fruit is his, and Al’s mystery shadow is his! They got nothin’ to do with each other! And course I’d let him have the fight, he’s part of my crew!”
“You’ve recruited a demon Overlord to your crew? I shouldn’t be surprised. You were the very worse our world had to offer, born of the worst of the generation prior! Just the same as Roger’s boy! Surely he’s hiding somewhere else in this pit. I’ll find him and the previous Pirate King once I’m done with you!”
“Are you dumb? Ace’s in Heaven obviously! You wouldn’t find ‘em anyway even if ya had the chance to look!”
Bellowing out a short mock of a laugh, Akainu jeered, “You’re deluded if you truly believe that. That’s not possible! His soul was damned from the start! He should’ve never been born, just the same as how you never should have been born, Monkey D. Luffy! You’re designated an enemy of the Gods themselves! The most wretched of the damned! Your very existence itself is an unforgivable sin! One that cannot be remedied until it is erased from this world entirely! Even more than the previous Pirate King and your criminal father, there is not a soul more deserving of hatred and revilement than you!”
Each word the dog barked yanked at another string of anger inside Alastor’s chest. Yank, yank, yanking until the sound of his brewing scorn and fury laced into his radio waves. Emitting most awful ear-piecing screeches of feedback that the idiot animal down below could most definitely ear and yet still ignored.
In all his life and afterlife, Alastor cannot recall a moment of ever having heard anything more wrong than this revolting bullshit the wolf so easily spewed from his wretched mouth.
“Change of plans. Sorry to impose, dear friend, but I’LL be making the kIlLiNg BlOw this time. There are some insults that cannot go iGnOrEd.”
“ …As long as I still get my fill ‘a him.”
With that agreement in place, the Radio Demon rose into prominence. Antlers and limbs elongated to cast a looming presence, blood red radio dials set into the void of darkness stared unblinking at the rabid animal as tendrils of shadow shot out both at the magma man while lifting Alastor off the rooftop in turn. Magma was still sinking into the void beneath, but there was still enough around that he had to keep himself clear from the ground.
Akainu clawed at the darkness, but it had grown too pervasive. For every tentacle angelic claws tore through, there were already three more in place of the fallen. Until the man failed to counter them in time. As darkness wrapped itself around Akainu’s arms and claws, he formed more arms from the magma, though without angelic steel laced through their claws, and Alastor produced more tendrils from his back to wrap around those as well.
“I’ll gladly kill you in front of your captain the same way I killed his false brother! If the Son of the Sea hadn’t stepped in, I would’ve finished killing Straw Hat back then too! Just as he’d deserved!”
When the Radio Demon tried to wrap a tendril like a noose around the dog’s neck, his maw snapped at it, severing the demonic shadow with the cut of angelic steel fangs. A spurt of magma in the shape of a fist shot out at Alastor just a second later while more spurts burst out to surround him.
“The King of the Pirates Monkey D. Luffy! The Overlord killer Radio Demon! All the cannibal trash of this depraved town down to every last man, woman, and child! All the souls of the damned in all of Hell– You must all face Absolute Justice! That hotel of yours and Morningstar’s is but a pipedream! There exists no such thing as redemption! For if pestilence remains unpurged, it will infect its rot into the entirety of the world! Justice must prevail even in death!”
“Justice? What a curious concept to bring down into this pit. You, ReD dOg, must be the most deluded creature I’ve yet to encounter! What else could you be, to so completely ignore the obvious? What story have you heard of where the wolf was in the right?”
With the twirling spin of his mic, a shadowy shield laced with veridian power encased the Radio Demon. The molten earth battered against it to no avail, not even the heat being permitted to pass. Light of his sutures in full prominence, a too-stretched smile bared its fangs at the dog as a mid-sized tendril of darkness looped its way around the snout of the beast, snapping its idiotic, annoying maw shut for good.
“You were not sent here for some grand purpose. Heaven already enacts its own Exterminations as it pleases. No, YOU were sentenced to this Hell just the same as all the wReTcHeD, fIlThY sInNeRs you scorn! You are no different than any other of the DaMnEd! The true enemy of God here is YOU! If ReDeMpTiOn does not exist, then YOU are also out of reach of such mercy! For the predator has become the prey!”
Skeleton fingers clawing into the wolf from behind, the Cannibal Demon’s enlarged, fang-tooth maw swallowed whole the head of the writhing beast. The magma scorched the bone with ash gray, but with her flesh having been discarded in her transformation, her skeleton form held up its resistance to the burn. The taste of red-hot liquid rock was likely an unpleasant one along with being caustic, but his dear friend has bitten into worse during her more adventurous days.
Her fangs easily cut through the magma that made up the neck, tearing the head off entirely as she jerked back with her captured prey. Still, even with the beheading, the dog would reform if left be. And they most certainly couldn’t allow that–
“To have the insolence to call for a battle against the captain? What a miserable excuse of a joke! You are not WoRtHy to stand before such a GOD! Which is why you must instead deal with your own demonic ilk such as mYsElF. Therefore, I shall deliver onto you what it is you believe yourself to be most deserving of…!”
The Cannibal Demon had yet to swallow her mouthful because there was something in the mix she needed to be rid of before she could do so safely. In rapid succession, her skeletal bared teeth spit out the wolf’s angelic steel fangs, allowing the Radio Demon to collect them with his shadows. And on his own end, one by one, thin, dexterous inky tendrils tore off the wolf’s fingers, until each piece of his intermixed Heavenly weaponry was accounted for. 42 teeth and 10 claws total.
Therefore, 52 makeshift daggers total stabbed through the Red Dog’s chest.
The creature did not seem to bleed, only more magma spurting out to make for a strange type of gore. As each tendril of darkness carved their weapons through the body, the Radio Demon laughed and laughed and laughed, ending on a most hilariously morbid punchline–
“ –This is aBsOlUtE jUsTiCe!!! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!”
Up until this point, their spectators had been watching in silence. In a tone of slow realization, the swordsman still up on the roof behind plainly spoke,“ …I get the feeling maybe we should’ve actually been more worried about this guy before.”
“Mosshead I swear if that psycho looks at us right now because you’re talking I will end you before he does!” the chef unsuccessfully whispered back harshly.
Entirely unconcerned, Luffy just responded at his normal louder-than-average volume, “It’s fine guys! Alastor just got mad is all. He’ll feel better after he’s done.”
“ …How could I forget I’d signed up for a crew who’s shitty captain is also insane?! It’s not like Akainu didn’t deserve it, but how does this crazy-ass behavior mean NOTHING to you?! His friend even ate his head!”
“That cannibal’s the woman who was up here with us before.”
After a quick beat where the man presumably double checked the second Overlord on the battlefield, that was all Zoro needed to say for Sanji to do a complete 180, “Such a strong, fair lady! She was fully in the right! Oh– I hope she didn’t burn her tongue biting off that shitty bastard’s head!”
“ …I don’t think she had a tongue anymore when she bit him. And now that I’m comparin’ the two of ya directly, I can say this with certainty– You’re still crazier than red ears.”
“What the HELL did you say– ?!”
Soon, all the magma was consumed by the darkness, and Alastor banished away the void. Having returned to his more contained visage, he reappeared from shadow back atop the roof of the emporium.
And after having replaced the clothes that’d gone up in flames, Rosie made her way back up with a fresh face as well. She stood before the captain with a charming smile, politely ignoring the heart-eyes of the cook and the way the first mate scowled at the reaction despite the two pirates flanking him.
“Apologies for my poor manners before, young man. Auntie Rosie here was just in a bit of a tiff. That dog-bastard said your name enough times for me to know it, but how about we have a more proper introduction as to how ya know my darlin’ Alastor here? And what’s this ‘bout him bein’ on your pirate crew?”
“Allow me the honor my dear. You see, this lad here is the captain of his crew, the somewhat unusually named Straw Hat Pirates of which these two not-quite gentlemen behind him are a part of! He also happens to be a divine being of some kind!” Standing to the front and next to the young man in question, Alastor pointed the mic-head of his cane at the dimly smiling boy, sending the look his own pleasant smile as he happily explained, “I have recently found myself contracted to him after an extended story you likely won’t have the time to listen to today, with the summary being that the Mother of Humanity had been possession of my soul for some time and he defeated her in battle for the right to it. Worry not, for I don’t mind my current position. Though I ask that you not speak of the soul side of business around less than friendly parties.”
After a split second of hesitation, Alastor forced himself to give a proper introduction as requested, knowing that the ‘soul side of business’ would appear poorly to his friend if he didn’t confess in full, “…My dear captain is a man I hold the highest regard for, even when his youthful bullishness occasionally challenges my patience. He is someone worth following. I trust that he would never let me down should I have need of him. And to top it off, it has been quite entertaining to have him around! He brings with him the most inane sort of chaos that simply cannot be matched by any other, and I have come to revel in the discordant waves he leaves in his wake. I do not see myself leaving his company any time soon, so it is my hope that you will get along with him. Extra baggage of the other two notwithstanding.”
He could feel both undesirables smirking at him. So as was his right, Alastor covertly manifested a small tendril by the swordsman’s foot to pull out his leg, causing him to trip into the cook. They tumbled off the roof together, and a fight instantly broke out at the ground level. But that should be fine considering there was only burnt rubble and ash for them to ruin in the immediate area.
He ignored the discord to point his mic towards the cannibal, turning towards Luffy, who’s grin and eyes were practically shining with all the praise Alastor had given him. “This charming Madam here is the leader of the Cannibals and the most darling, delightful, and dangerous Overlord this side of the Pentagram– my longtime friend and ally, Rosie! We bonded over a similar sense of taste, meant in the context of various aspects such as demeanor, style, and literal. Should you do anything to embarrass me in her company and prove false the extended accolades I’ve granted you, I will be most displeased.”
“I won’t!” Luffy pouted with a bit of a whine, before he went back at beaming at the woman, “Hi! I’m Monkey D. Luffy, King of the Pirates! I’m glad I get ‘a meet one of Al’s friends! I wasn’t sure if he had any before me! Sorry ‘bout what happened.”
“And you were so very close to not immediately failing my request…”
Chiming a laugh while Alastor’s eyes narrowed in now familiar exasperation, Rosie clasped her hands together in delight. “Oh Alastor~ You’ve found such a swell fella here! Even more moxie than Princess Charlie in this one! Why– I don’t think you’ve ever spoken so highly of someone before, and we both know how much of a charmer ya are! But with the way you got angrier at the dog bastard shit-talkin’ this boy than ya had at the guy insultin’ yourself, it can’t be denied how much ya must like him. You two get on just like a house on fire, don’t ya! …Though maybe that’s not the best phrase ta be throwin’ ‘round at the moment.”
She spared a moment to glance over at the damaged town. Alastor gave his own examination, noting that the rest of the cannibals have already begun reorganizing to provide assistance to the survivors who’d had a close call. And also…
“ …Susan survived? That ugly mutt truly was a complete good for nothing. Couldn’t even kill the one cannibal that no one would’ve missed before he bit the dust! Such a shame,” Alastor sighed with the shake of his head.
“Course Susan lived. Ya could put that woman in the middle ‘a Pompeii and I’ll bet she’d just be screechin’ at the volcano for the entire eruption,” Rosie quipped with a dismissive wave and tilt of the hips, though Alastor knew she didn’t mean her sarcasm in truth the way he himself did. Any additional casualty brought on by that dog would be a bitter pill to swallow for her.
As her gaze came to narrow on him, Alastor’s frame tensed just a bit under the judging glance. “And don’t think I’ve forgotten that Eve had yer soul bit. THAT’S what’s been goin’ on when you were gone for all that time? And ya didn’t tell me?! You got some explainin’ to do after I clean things up, mister!”
He withheld a wince as he granted, “I’ll stop by for a luncheon some time. Can you blame me though, dear? It’s a rather shameful predicament to admit to.” –And while he wouldn’t admit to it, along with being hesitant to involve the woman in that sort of danger, he also had been hesitant to trust her with his weakness to such an extent– “In contrast, the matter with the captain is… a different sort of circumstance, so I have no issue speaking of it among closed circles.”
“That so…” With one lingering suspicious glance, Rosie turned away from Alastor to give an apologetic look to Luffy. “No need for the sorry darlin’. If anything, I apologize for us needin’ ta take your kill like that. It was personal for ya, right? You probably wanted to avenge that brother the bastard brought up.”
Despite the topic at hand, Luffy’s expression didn’t dim, his charming grin still in its shining full bloom. “That’s alright. I didn’t need to fight him cause Alastor was fightin’ for me!”
An inexplicable burst of satisfaction thrummed inside. It killed off the last of the animosity lingering within the dark void and dissonant static. Alastor couldn’t help but stick his chest out slightly as he twirled his mic in a showy demonstration before planting the end of it in front of himself once more, smile set onto his face with ease. “Why yes indeed! It was nothing a proper helping of extraordinary demonic violence couldn’t solve! Ahaha!”
Rosie stared at his expression for a moment, her face softening at the sight. It seemed like she was about to say something before she, as well as the rest of them, were promptly distracted by a familiar swirl of gold-red magic.
Lucifer materialized with a polite smile and twirl of his apple-top cane, starting cheerfully, “Why hello there! Char-Char called me up sayin’ you guys might need some help with repairs after some fight with– Oh– Oh SHIT! Why I’ll be damned! …Again!”
The King of Hell winced as he examined the destruction of a good portion of the town. It truly did look like a natural disaster had torn through the place. “I know she said something about a magma guy, but seeing remnants of a volcanic eruption in the middle of the city is… something else! You took care of that guy, right? Cause otherwise I’ll definitely need to…”
The antithesis of sensitive speech, the captain was as blunt as ever, “They killed him yeah. Al helped fix up the place too! If his mystery shadow didn’t suck up all the lava, it would’ve stayed. That’s what happened at one ‘a the islands we went to. Akainu fought there a long time before we got there and it was still all volcano-y!”
“That would’ve been very not good, yeah! …I’m gonna have to check the rest of the city to make sure he didn’t leave any other lava pits, aren’t I?” Lucifer awkwardly responded with another wince. Alastor agreed with the sentiment. Hell had enough fire and brimstone without the addition of volcanic activity inside the city proper. In a different part of the city, maybe, but not in a place as charming as Cannibal Town.
With a slightly miffed sigh, Rosie had to concede, “I think we’ll have to use that favor we earned from helpin’ out Charlie and her hotel last Extermination, Your Majesty. We’ll be busy enough tryin’ ta get a headcount of who died without the remains to go off of and waitin’ for ‘em all to regenerate, never mind headin’ into weeks of reconstruction if we tried fixin’ it all on our own.”
“No problem, that’s what I came for after all!” Slowly regaining the confidence he’d arrived with, the King’s smirk once again faltered when he caught sight of the two pirates on ground zero, still in the midst of clashing swords and kicks. “Why don’t you get your guys and head back to the hotel, Luffy? The big scary Radio Demon would never admit to it, but he’s probably tired from using so much power. I could hear his radio static from halfway across the city!”
With a tinge of a growl, Alastor drawled, “I’ll ask that you not speak for me– ”
“Okay!” Luffy didn’t think twice before stretching out his arms to reel in his wayward crewmates. They clipped part of the roof off as they went flying over the monkey’s head, causing them all to tumble head over heels to fall off the roof once more on the opposite side. Withholding an enduring sigh, Alastor didn’t even bother looking over at them before he swept them all away into the dark.
After reemerging in the lobby of the hotel, the group somewhat dispersed as the residents approached to ask after what’d occurred. Alastor took the opportunity to purposefully cross in front of the first mate’s path on his exit out, giving the man a side-eye and thin grin that was met with a neutral scowl.
“I hope that was enough of a demonstration for you to see that, even when I am more inclined to keep such sentiment understated, my pride for the captain is worth no less than yours…”
After a brief silence, there was only a scoff, “ …That message was sent loud ‘n’ clear when ya tore off Akainu’s fingers and teeth to use ‘em as knives, yeah. Just go back to whatever cave you crawled out of and get some sleep, Al. Luffy’s not gonna let you get away without it tonight.”
As expected due to Lucifer’s unneeded comment, the captain insisted on spending the night with Alastor. And despite having seen proof of his tendency towards insanity today, neither the swordsman nor the cook put up a fuss about it. Even still, as Luffy’s soft snoring evened out and Alastor made himself comfortable underneath his own covers, there was indeed some magical exhaustion seeping deep-seated in his form. He prepared himself for a very deep sleep that night.
So it was only natural that he’d be unexpectedly stirred into bleary wakefulness but a couple hours in. The one night he truly needed rest and it was withheld from him. No rest for the wicked, as they say…
Even more annoyingly, his involuntary consciousness had been brought on by someone squirming their way into his bed. Jostling not only the mattress but even pressing against his back and brushing against his usually hidden small tuff of a tail. Alastor shot upright in an instant at the touch, his ears shooting upright with him. He turned a simmering glare on the boy. “I made you your own a bed for a reason…”
He trailed off at the sight of Luffy rubbing at his eyes, tear tracks only dimly reflecting off the low ambident light of an otherwise dark room.
The boy sniffled before mumbling, “Sorry, I didn’t wanna wake ya. Just had a nightmare ‘bout Ace… It felt lonely by myself.”
“ …Don’t get your unsightly fluids on my covers.” Conjuring a handkerchief, Alastor took Luffy’s face in hand to wipe it properly before handing it over for the boy to blow his nose. Then waved away the soiled tissue to discard it into nothingness.
Alastor reset the bed so another pillow was in the proper position for a second person. Pulling the blanket over the boy properly, he endured Luffy shamelessly cozying up against his neck and chest. The monkey threw an arm around his torso while his tail curled around one of Alastor’s knees. “Mind yourself. My chest area is a bit tender, shall we say.”
Without a thought to rudeness or invasion of privacy, Luffy shameless leaned back just enough to pull back Alastor’s sleep shirt to look inside it, seeing the sutured diagonal slashed scar he’d gotten from Adam. He slapped the boy’s hand away just a tad too late. Luffy was evidently satisfied with his snooping though and just went back to positioning himself against Alastor. “We match! Shishi!”
“ …Almost, but not quite.”
It wasn’t quite comfortable on his end of things. Alastor’s frame was strikingly tense in comparison to Luffy’s noodle-like limbs. He’s fairly certain he has never let another person into his personal space to this extent. However, even his withered heart couldn’t find the cruelty needed to turn the boy away. Anyone else, yes, but not him…
With the lower half of his face now brushing the top of messed soft hair, Alastor murmured, “This is only for tonight and if I hear you speak of it with anyone else, I’ll never allow you into my quarters again. I question the logic of seeking comfort from a nightmare-inducing entity after having had a nightmare.”
Thankfully, Luffy’s actual crying had already seemed to come to an end before he’d tried to infiltrate Alastor’s space. He didn’t sound too upset as he hummed back, “ ‘Mkay. And Alastor’s not scary. ‘M safe with you.”
Something about those words struck a chord in him. An unfamiliar feeling born of unknown depths lit up with warmth, matching the warmth his body slowly became accustomed to brought on by the added presence.
Alastor allowed his own arm to wrap around his captain. His hand smoothed up the back of the other’s sleeping shirt. Luffy snuggled in further at the gesture.
He found himself asking about a thought he’d had earlier, almost absentminded, “ …That burn on your chest was left by that man, wasn’t it? Was it in the same battle in which he felled your brother?”
What should be a touchy subject was addressed as plainly as anything else Luffy spoke of, though the words were more muttered due to him speaking into Alastor’s shoulder and collarbone, “Yeah. Don’t remember when he did that, though. Passed out after Ace died… I was weaker, before. I couldn’t save him…”
“ …I’ve often regarded weakness as something of a sin, especially my own. Though, I don’t think it quite right to truly consider it as such. If being weak was something worthy of being condemned, after all, then the entirety of humanity would be barred from Heaven’s gates.”
Alastor trailed his claws up higher, carding them through the back of Luffy’s hair with ease that the usual presence of his straw hat wouldn’t have allowed. Minding his sharper than average fingers, he scratched at the base of the boy’s furry ears in a light massaging movement. The sensation was often soothing for those with more mammalian-derived features, though Alastor typically doesn’t allow anyone to pet his own ears in such a manner. Excluding very short and very infrequent sessions he permitted to Niffty when she became inconsolable over more drastic happenings, always the exception to the rule, that one. Though the captain was proving to be even more of an exception…
His tone hardened in an unintentional contradiction to his gentle actions, “Finger removal, fifty-two stabbings, and a beheading, and somehow it still wasn’t enough. I should have tortured that mutt until he begged for mercy when I had the chance…”
Laying waste to a good portion of Cannibal Town, insulting Rosie, insulting himself, insulting the captain– Any single one of the man’s actions that night all on their own would’ve been deserving of death. But of them all, it was this current posthumous crime which stoked Alastor’s desire for bloodshed the most. All that nonsense the Red Dog spoke of the captain’s existence being an ‘unforgivable sin’! As far as he’s concerned, the true unforgivable sin is bringing Luffy to tears! The mutt should count his lucky stars that Alastor had no method for reviving the double dead, or he would’ve truly brought the bastard back simply to torture and kill him once more!
“Akainu would ‘a bit his tongue off and died before asking for mercy from a pirate,” Luffy rather bluntly stated before he mused in honest curiosity, “Al gets mad a lot, huh.”
“Quite,” was his reply to the understatement. Though after a brief moment of reflection, he found himself adding, “ …I have been much less prone to enmity in more recent days, however. I used to never be wholly without it.”
“I’m glad I help ya feel better. You help me feel better, too,” was the captain’s liberal interpretation of his statement. Frighteningly acute in that way Alastor still found himself somewhat wary of, but not to the same extent.
“ …Do you regret choosing to come down to Hell? You can likely still choose to rejoin your brother in Heaven once you’ve rounded up the rest of your crew to bring them with you.”
“Nah. Ace knows I got my own adventure. I couldn’t have it up there, so I’m at where I’m supposed to be.”
As the boy shifted minutely to press into Alastor’s ministrations, he could feel the brush of a small smile against the bare skin at the junction of his neck and shoulder. While he could recognize it wasn’t meant to be a kiss, he had to keep himself from startling under the sensation, finding it starkly unfamiliar. But he didn’t quite wish to pull away from the embrace. The warmth and weight of the boy pressed against him had also been an unfamiliar feeling, but after not too long, the thrumming of another heartbeat became a calming presence.
“And I wouldn’t regret it anyway. If I didn’t jump down here, I never would ‘a met Alastor. I wouldn’t go anywhere you couldn’t. So even if our adventure ended or somethin’, we wouldn’t leave to go somewhere without you. Promise.”
An abrupt intake of warm air caught in his throat. It cloyed at his chest, pulling at the edges of his mouth in an attempt to get his smile to waver.
Moving his hand to a more comfortable position cradling the back of Luffy’s head, Alastor turned his head such that his cheek rested against the crown of the soft hair, his ears falling into a relaxed position. He forced himself to release his stilled breath, “ …You talk too much for a person who should be sleeping.”
“That’s just cause you were talkin’ too.”
“In case my point wasn’t clearly stated, that was me telling you to be quiet.”
“Fiiiine. You’re grumpy when you’re embarrassed, ya know.”
“I still do not hear the sound of you shutting up.”
“Fine! G’ night, Al… You always get up before me, but wait ‘til I wake up this time?”
“ …I will, yes. Sleep well, Luffy.”
After that, the other’s breathing soon evened out once more in sleep.
He felt as though he was both encased by and holding a warmth and gravity that could match the intensity of a star. Shining brightly in the dark of the void, pulling wayward souls out of the solitary vastness of space to keep them within the reach of its orbit. One could so easily be destroyed by the strength of its heat, crushed by the weight of its unrelenting pressure, but he wasn’t. Both left adrift in the sky and kept tethered to the world like a celestial body of the night. Perhaps such a place could be compared to the Heavens, if Heaven was truly such a beautiful place to be.
Comfort settling into his soul, Alastor wondered if this was how it felt to bask in the Sun. What used to be a common place sensation in life was not but a faint memory down in the pits of Hell. He hadn’t missed it when he’d known not what it felt like, but now that he holds the knowledge, he couldn’t imagine going without it once more.
It was with these purposeless musings that his mind drifted off, sleep finally bringing him into rest.
Chapter 9: Oh Deer
Notes:
Can't believe I got this chapter out before the Helluva Boss Fullmoon episode came out. My fic won the race but at what cost...
Chapter Text
It’s been a week since Stolas had exchanged his grimoire for the Asmodean Crystal with Blitzø and he was, franking speaking, spiraling into a deep dark depressive hole he questioned the possibility of ever climbing out of.
Octavia has been with her mother during this time. He’d thankfully thought to plan it that way in the case things did not result in a happily ever after, which is exactly what had occurred. Looking at things from one side, he did not believe things to be totally hopeless. There had been something to Blitzø when he’d explained that their official deal was concluded, an expression of striking loss. While it had somewhat come as a shock, it had also given Stolas a thimble of hope that the imp would agree to his follow up offer to try out a legitimate relationship. No strings attached, no business obligations, just a chance to feel what they fully feel and be by one another’s side. And he could tell Blitzø had thought about it. But he’d turned it over in his mind, head buzzing with something unknown to Stolas but clearly immensely distressing to Blitzø himself, face falling further and further. Until he outright stumbled away. Running away from Stolas and his palace in an attempt to run from something that was clearly stuck inside himself.
The Prince had simply watched as his love left him, knowing that no amount of persuasion on his part would be enough. Because he could likely count on one hand the number of times he has been enough.
Which left him in his current position in bed, aimlessly staring at the ceiling in a half-drunken stupor. Watching his dramas held no appeal. Food held no appeal; he couldn’t remember the last he’d eaten. Based on the way his vision had been wavering upon the start of this drinking session it had likely been a while, though. With how easily he fell to pieces, is it any wonder Blitzø couldn’t trust in him, in his love…
What had become a familiar nighttime ritual, however, was interrupted by the crash of something breaking somewhere down the hall from his bedroom suite. Slowly blinking in whatever sort of surprise he could manage at the moment, Stolas stumbled over to open his door a crack. He heard hushed, panicked whispers from the same direction.
…Whoever could be STUPID enough to attempt to rob a Goetia??? The thought wasn’t even of anger, Stolas was genuinely baffled by the idea. To steal from a Hellborn as high ranking as himself and get caught was a death sentence, so for one to even have the thought to try they would either have to be immensely skilled in breaking and entering –evidently not– or be a sinner so newly fallen they’d been in the Ring for less than a week. His mind took a turn to consider the possibility of Blitzø returning, but his horrid mood squashed the useless hope easy enough.
Somewhat hesitantly, he quietly made his way to the scene of the crime. As he approached, the hissing stage whispers grew louder and louder…
“Sorry sorry sorry– !”
“Ch-Chopper, calm down! It’s okay! Just please be quiet– ”
“I knew I shouldn’t have taken either of you! I could’ve been in and out no problem! Take responsibility for this!”
“Hey! You’re the one that wanted to steal from this highborn mansion and asked us to be your backup! We could be looking for Luffy right– AHHH!!!”
The man of the group shrieked at the sight of Stolas stepping into the living room. The culprit for the crash was evidently some vase he hadn’t even realized he’d owned that was in pieces beside a tiny, frightened looking fuzzy creature. A deer sinner of some sort? The woman that had been badgering the other two in hisses also startled with a yelp.
After an awkward moment of elongated silence, all three of the eclectic trio dropped to their knees to bow their heads for forgiveness. We’re so sorry mister demon lord sir– Please spare me at least, cute girls don’t deserve to die twice– I don’t wanna die please don’t kill us–
“For goodness sake, shut up will you! My head cannot take this at the moment…” Stolas groaned as his claws rubbed at his eyes, the hangover beginning to set in.
While he was in the midst of trying to decide if killing the robbers would better or worsen his headache, there was a tiny gasp from the tiny creature. Dropping his hand to look down at the thing, Stolas’s eyes shot open wide when the creature drastically increased in size to be a fair amount bellow his height and much more muscular than its previous cute physic. Though rather use his changed form to attack, it seemed he was just trying to get a better angle to look over Stolas’s person. The changeling held up his hands in an obvious show of non-combativeness. “I’m a doctor! What’s wrong? Can I take a look at you?”
…Well, this is a tad embarrassing. Forcibly steeling his expression in that way all Goetia are taught to do to keep sheepishness from overtaking it, Stolas replied shortly, “There’s no issue. Not that it’s any of your business, but I’ve simply had too much to drink tonight.”
The young changeling’s eyes narrowed as he looked over Stolas in his disarrayed robe with a discerning examination. He glanced back up to ask in full professional seriousness, “And for how many nights now have you had too much to drink?”
Shocked once more, the Prince couldn’t keep himself from averting his glare with a wince.
The doctor just continued, matter of fact, “When was the last time you had water? The eyes of your kind are a bit different than what I’m used to, but they seem dehydrated. When was the last time you’ve eaten? Your hand was trembling a little when you raised it just now. Have you been throwing up? Have you been drinking while still taking medication? Nami said no servants or anyone have been in or out of the house for a while, do you have anyone to check in on you?”
“Stop…! Stop asking questions. I don’t know, I don’t know, yes but not recently, I don’t remember, and no. Are you satisfied? I’ll let you all live if you leave now, so will you just go?”
“No.” His beak went slack jawed at the rejection. The changeling who, no less than three minutes ago, had been cowering before him now stared at him without falter, refusing to take leave. His companions were also clearly shocked, turning their horrified faces towards their him.
“Ch-Ch-Ch-Chopper! Please, he was gonna let us go– !”
“Just leave the scary demon to do what he wants– !”
“No!” the changeling declared again, shifting back to his smaller form with the stamp of a foot. The tiny creature had to crane his neck to stare up at the much taller owl demon and he stepped forward with small hooves to push at the very bottom of Stolas’s leg. After allowing the leg to take a step back, he realized the boy was attempting to lead him to the nearby couch.
“I’m a doctor, so I help people when they aren’t well! Why would I stop just because I’m dead?! Usopp, get some water and crackers! Nami, go to the store and get a drink with electrolytes! Doctor’s orders! And you, sit down and list all your medication and approximately how much alcohol you’ve consumed in the last 12 hours!” While the other two jumped to attention and ran off in a mix of confusion and exasperation, the deer blinked at Stolas after he’d jumped up to stand on the cushion beside where he’d seated himself. “Oh, and uh– who are you?”
Stolas blinked back slowly, hesitantly responding, “Prince Stolas of the Ars Goetia...”
“…Huh?! Nami had us stealing from demon royalty?! Please don’t kill me!”
“I believe we are rather past that point…” ignoring the creature’s shift back into terror and tilting his head in owlish curiosity, Stolas decided he might as well get some answers of his own, “Your form is… of a deer, correct?”
The innocuous question seemed to settle the boy once more. The aforementioned Chopper calmed down to reply, “I’m a reindeer!”
“And… you are a sinner, but you were not human in life, correct? Your soul does not quite feel the same as your compatriots. Did you somehow gain human sentience in life?”
“Oh– you can tell? Yeah, I ate the Human-Human Fruit, so I’m a reindeer who became part human.”
The mention of such a fruit brought to mind a separate world besides Earth, one Stolas knew of but was less familiar with. With a vague sense of confusion, he then questioned, “And then… you became a doctor??? Of human or animal medicine?”
“Yeah, and both– Wait a minute, you’re supposed to be answerin’ my questions, bastard! Stop distracting me!”
After some henning by the reindeer, Stolas found himself sobering up with careful sips of water and slow fed plain crackers. He was told not to take his medication until at least half a day from then to give the alcohol some time to properly pass through his system, and had to take a hard stop on the alcohol itself.
Perhaps he should have argued more against a strange young reindeer dictating his life, but it’s not like the young one was wrong. He was self-aware enough to realize things were getting out of hand. And admittedly… he was quite lonely, and the promise of lively company was a desirable one. And thus, that was how a set of robbers ended up as his newly hired servants and live-in doctor.
It turned out the lot of them really had only been in Hell for around a week. Along with Chopper monitoring his health, Stolas also became more familiar with the other two stooges, Nami and Usopp. They all claimed to be from the pirate crew of a newly made and deceased Pirate King, and upon learning of Stolas’s passing knowledge of their world, Usopp was the one to begin spinning seemingly wild tales of the adventures of the Straw Hat Pirates, speaking of his experience as a “brave warrior of the sea”.
A mountain in which water travels uphill. Islands full of lava and ice and lightening and sweet treats and bubbling groves. A train that floats atop the waves and the city of canals and shipyards it led to. Islands of ancients and giants. Mermaids who lived on an island at the bottom of the sea. Islands in the sky with seas made of cloud home to winged people. A haunted pirate ship the size of an entire island drifting through eternal fog. A hidden island of legend holding the first Pirate King’s treasure that lied at the end of the world, discovered by the successor. And the corrupt government that stood atop the world, torn down by the same Pirate King, who’d eaten a Devil Fruit which was thought to be nothing much and awakened the blessing of the divine– Each tale was more unbelievable than the last, and yet, Stolas could recognize the long-nosed man believed them all to be true, fully passionate and boastful with his stretching exaggerations. His adeptness in helping Stolas tend to his demonic plants certainly lent credence to his familiarity with exotic flora.
When Stolas decided to use his grimoire to take a closer look at that sea-covered world of theirs, he confirmed the tales were at least partial true. The lands of their Grand Line were just as varied and wild as had been claimed. Society was still in the midst of being reorganized to form a new unified government where no species or people stood atop the rest. The Pirate King, once the title of the most infamous pirating criminal, was now hailed as the one who’d won the freedom of the world. His unofficial tour guides all turned bashfully prideful upon overhearing the state of things. Beaming about how Luffy would hate to hear them calling him a hero and Vivi must be doing a good job!
Stolas had thought he’d known how the universe was. He’d at least somewhat known of their world, and he knew of all the planets and the stars and Earth and everything else that lied in the vastness of space of multiple planes. And yet… when he heard of these tales, when he traversed to one of the strange islands he’d been told enough just to see it for himself, he came to realize that he hadn’t known. Not truly.
To learn from books of how things worked at the broader level and take count of all the stars as his duties dictated was not the same as running his fingers through the misty yet buoyant cloud of the seas in the sky. It was not the same as traveling through a jungle of prehistorical times to take delight in creatures long extinct on Earth. It was not same as enduring the chill of a snow-covered land surrounding an abandoned frozen laboratory, only for the threshold to be crossed and to have to endure the sweltering heat of magma not too far from the surface of the barren land. It was not the same as watching seasoned sailors catch the wind in the sail of a small boat, the same fresh, salty wind ruffling his feathers as they went out to sea just to let Stolas try fishing from the open ocean, basking under the warmth of the sun. Knowledge, as he’d come to realize, was not the same as experience. It was not the same as living in the world one knows.
While the pirates had to conceal themselves as to not spread tales of the dead rising, Stolas had come to realize he didn’t even need a human disguise in this world. The people simply assumed he’d eaten a Bird-Bird Fruit of the owl species. No one knew him as Prince Stolas of the Ars Goetia, with the image and power he was meant to uphold with that title. He was simply Stolas, one strange looking traveler among many. He found it was quite nice, not having to put on any airs or adhere to the hierarchy he'd seen himself as having a permanent, unchangeable place in. Fate and life and everything else having already been decided upon being born.
Each new sight was a wonder. Each short-lived trip was a thrill. He doesn’t remember ever feeling this alive, before. Ever feeling this free. Like a bird having flown off the perch and out of his gilded cage.
Belatedly, Stolas realized that this might have been the point to having been told those stories. Or at least, the goal in telling them had shifted once they’d learned Stolas had the ability to open portals back to their world. The crafty pirates had enticed him into not only leaving his house, but into journeying to brand-new places in a brand-new world. He wasn’t inclined to hold it against them, however. Not when everything was now so exciting and new in his previously constrained and boring life.
Of course, when Octavia had first met the pirates her father had suddenly invited into their home, she was rightfully suspicious of the lot. He tried to reassure her to no avail, before realizing what a lovely family outing it would be to explore some sky islands together. It was the first time they’d gone to that type of location since it was one of the more adventurous trips. And he’d been delighted to see his daughter found the strange scenery to be just as full of wonder as he did. None of that Loo Loo Land fiasco. The young were always filled with curiosity, even as those on the cusp of adulthood attempted to cover it up to pretend to have everything figured out. The pirates had decidedly caught her interest, but even still, Octavia hesitated to turn to them to ask the many questions she surely had.
That was when Nami took her aside for some quote-unquote “girl talk”. When it wasn’t a matter concerning anyone’s health, the cat burglar was the one to take charge over the other two. She had a suitable head for all manner of planning excluding the temptations of monetary value, in which case she was much too eager to take big risks for big rewards. After learning of Stolas’s ability to traverse into their world, she was quick ask after the island in which the monetary portion of the Pirate King’s treasure had been left behind with their deaths. The place had been left in slight disarray from the battles which had taken place, but curiously, there were no signs of any remains –thankfully, as it would’ve been quite morbid if they’d come upon their own bodies– nor the ship they’d left moored at the bay. Just two simple grave markers despite no graves having been dug, one listing the Straw Hat Pirates and the other the Blackbeard Pirates they’d apparently defeated. The three Straw Hat Pirates present had been spooked by the rearrangements to say the least.
Still, though, the treasure was where they’d left it. And so while Usopp had showed Stolas around the area and explained the rather convoluted means in which they found Laugh Tale –what an interesting name for an island– Nami had ordered Chopper to help her collect all the gold, gems, jewelry, or anything else which would maintain its value in Hell to bring back with them. He’d never seen her look so money-hungry or ecstatic than that trip, Berry signs literally flashing in her eyes, and subsequently noticed that the woman was much nicer to him after having agreed to the scheme. Perhaps that was why she’d deigned to personally assist Stolas with his affairs.
Stolas has no idea as to what she spoke to Octavia about other than perhaps the strained relations she had with her divorced parents, but by the next day, Octavia was comfortably asking Nami about how she charted her maps, to which the navigator happily drew up a copy of the world map she’d completed in life. Seeing all the islands there were to be had even below the sky, Octavia practically ordered Stolas to tell her the next time a trip was being planned. He was so overjoyed he began to weep, much to his little girl’s embarrassment.
It was his turn to be embarrassed though when the woman cornered him for quote-unquote “girl-gay guy friend talk”. Apparently she’d been sleuthing around enough to learn of the affair he’d been having with an imp, and rightfully seeing the signs of a broken heart, demanded details. After explaining as much as he could without getting into the details of their illicit activities, she seemed to ruminate on the situation before offering some rather intriguing advice–
“While its good you want to make sure he has the right to make his own decisions, when people are holding themselves back from something they’re scared to want, sometimes you just have to... drag them kicking and screaming, in a way.”
“That does not seem to be a sound basis for a relationship...”
“It’s not, but I’m not trying to say you should force him or anything. It’s just…” with a fond look setting her expression, Stolas knew even before she started speaking again that she was thinking of her captain, “If Luffy’s shown me anything, there are times when people need help realizing they want to take that next step for themselves. It can seem impossible, the entire world could be against you, and he can just make it as easy as taking his hand. It’s not quite the same for your situation, but I think that idiot imp might take the chance if he can figure out he can take it.”
“ …I’m not quite sure I can be the one to show Blitzø such a thing. I can still hardly manage my own life right. There was a part of me which relied on him too much as an escape from the more undesirable circumstances of my life, and I wonder if perhaps that was part of what scared him. To be used and relied on too heavily would be a daunting thing to anyone. But… I will consider talking to him again some time, if the opportunity permits,” wanting to turn away from the more sorrowful matter, a wistful smile came upon Stolas beak as he remarked, “Every time I hear of this Monkey D. Luffy, he becomes more and more larger than life. I fear he may not live up to your tales at this rate!”
“That’s impossible! Our captain has to be the most absurd person in all the worlds for how much trouble he gets us in! No matter how high your expectations, he’ll go past them one way or another. And that’s not always a good thing,” even as Nami huffed in annoyance, she couldn’t wipe the grin off her face. The feeling of it helped to lighten Stolas’s own mood.
His life had shifted drastically. A month in and he’d yet to pick up another bottle, much to the doctor’s satisfaction. It seemed as though every time the temptation reemerged, he’d be distracted away from the thought with another trip. Even when they weren’t constantly traveling, the promise of a new miniature adventure waiting around the corner made the mundanity and rigidness of Stolas’s position much more bearable. Which is why, of course, his bitch of an ex-wife attempted to ruin it.
Apparently Stella had picked up from Octavia’s mood that Stola’s mood had improved recently, and she couldn’t have that! Or at least that was his assumption of things. Sensing things were going to take a turn for the worse, Octavia sulked to her room immediately after Stella dropped her off –which Stella never personally attended to unless she wished to harass him, by the way! With the harpy screeching at him to come to the door, Stolas geared himself up for the worst–
Only to be caught by the arm. He glanced over and down at Nami, whose face was already full of stubbornness. “Want us to turn her away?”
“ …Pardon?”
“You can take a break from this mess once in a while, Your Highness. Let us take the load from you this time!” Usopp was the one to speak this time, standing directly beside Nami with a reassuring smile.
Chopper hopped up and down from his much shorter stature to catch Stolas’s eye, chiming, “Overwhelming stress isn’t good! We won’t always be around to help out, so let us deal with it this time while we can!”
He really should tell them no, but for some reason… he didn’t feel too worried, placing this sort of burden on the pirates who clearly planned to meddle in his business whether he wished for it or not. After he winced at another high-pitched screech, he gave a nod of agreement, and planned to watch things from the sidelines just to make sure none of them were endangered.
As it turns out, there was someone under the threat of being endangered, but that person was not any of the Straw Hats…
“Excuse me Ma’am, but we’re Prince Stolas’s temp security crew. His Highness is preoccupied at the moment, so we must request that you leave.”
“Ex-fucking-cuse me?!”
“You’re excused, Ma’am,” the only one to stand directly before the doors, Nami retorted in obtusely false politeness, echoing the story Usopp had declared from his place of relative safety on the balcony above the entry way stairs leading up to the mansion. She smirked at Stella’s glaring attempts to cow them. “The Prince is too busy for someone of such little importance, so we cannot permit you further onto the premises. Either willing take yourself off the grounds, or you will be moved instead.”
Stella was gawking in full outrage, beak snapping with her shrieks, “Why I never! Me?! Of LITTLE IMPORTANCE?! You lot are just a bunch of lowly sinners! And you DARE ORDER ME?! A Hellborn GOETIA DEMON! I don’t care if that imp-dick-sucking piss excuse for a prince hired you! One of your kind are NEVER to command me– !”
When she’d taken one step too close to Nami, Stella stumbled as a small explosion forced her back. The snipper had shot it with his slingshot from his place above.
Raising her head once more to surely start an even worse tirade, Stella’s outrage faltered as her gaze went skyward. She stumbled back down the steps in fear instead of pressing forward. Just as Stolas could mentally question what the Hell could be causing such a reaction, he startled at a rumbling thump. With the assistance of a small magical window, Stolas was able to gawk at what it was Stella saw from her perspective.
A gigantic creature loomed over the mansion, casting a shadow as it leaned fully over it such that one of its hands was crushing some of the driveway pavement to hold up the rest of the monster’s weight. With looming antlers and glowing red eyes shadowed under the brim of a hat, this was undoubtedly another form of the usually small and adorable reindeer doctor.
“Leave, or you will be forced to leave.”
And as the icing on a cake, the heavy clouds that had been forming above much too rapidly began to boom with thunder. With the wave of her now extended staff, the navigator guided a bolt of lightning to strike at the step of the stairs, once again forcing Stella to stumble back with a frightened shriek.
The Straw Hats ignored the now pouring rain as their navigator spoke once more, “We’ll give you ten seconds. That should be enough time to decide if you want to take your chances.”
“…You– You– My HAIR!” Stella cried at the utter travesty of her head feathers being frizzled by wayward electricity of the lightening and then further messed by the rain. Clutching her head, she sneered one last time at the pirates before fleeing to the safety of her limousine, “This isn’t over, you freakish welps! Let Stolas enjoy his kept monsters while he can!”
As the car screeched away at a faster than safe speed, Nami pinched at the bridge of her nose. “Of course it was the hair that did it. She can’t even pretend to be any less of a vapid bitch…”
Rain clearing up as abruptly as it’d began, Stolas absentmindedly stepped outside in the same moment Chopper returned to his most frequently used adorable form. Usopp caught the boy as he fell from the sky then jumped off the balcony to stand next to Nami. The Prince found himself as a loss for words, but managed to slowly get out, “ …Well, this is a bit of a what the fuck moment. Even knowing your crew had fought many a battle, none of you seemed quite… the image of such a force. Until now, that is.”
“What the fuck…” Octavia hissed a whisper from a window upstairs, staring with wide eyes at the literally out of this world pirates.
Rather than react with offense, they seemed to laugh off the reaction, Usopp boasting, “I know! We’re kinda known to be the cowards of the crew. I’m the weakest one too, but I’ve gotten strong enough to stand beside everyone else!”
“If you’re the cowards and on the weaker end, that just makes me even more curious about all the rest…” A teasing grin formed on his beak as he allowed the elation of what he’d just witnessed to flow through him. “Though that does explain why you all immediately began pleading for your lives upon being found attempting to rob me.”
“Hey! You’re a big scary powerful demon! Of course we’d be scared!” Chopper protested from Usopp’s arms with what could now only be taken as an accusation of unintentional irony.
“While it’s true it’d be difficult for any of you to defeat me, at the very least you would’ve likely been able to flee.”
“Yeah, well, we probably would’ve gotten to that if you didn’t send Chopper into doctor mode!” Nami concluded the matter with her typical striking attitude, “I guess things turned out for the better though. Who knows where you’d be without us!”
While the remark had been in jest, Stolas found himself echoing back with a softer smile, “Where would I be, indeed…”
All good things come to an end one way or another, however. The very next day after that farce, the doorbell had rung to reveal an antique radio speaker had been set upon the doorstep…
“Salutations to Your Highness, Prince Stolas of the Ars Goetia! This is a special localized broadcast brought to you by the sinner Overlord, the Radio Demon! Perhaps you’ve heard of me? Regardless, I have a message for the three Straw Hat Pirates currently under your employ; Your captain is waiting in anticipation for your arrival at the Hazbin Hotel in Pentagram City! I must say, with you lot keeping to the area exclusive to nobility, it might have taken some time before I’d found you. The short but intriguing performance you had the other day helped catch my eye so to speak– ”
“Al! Ya found someone again?!”
“ –such impeccable timing you keep. Yes, I am currently speaking to your doctor, sniper, and navigator– ”
“Chopper, Usopp, and Nami were all together? That’s funny! They’re all scaredy cats, haha! Nami, Veggie keeps tellin’ me to keep Zoro and Sanji from fightin’ but I don’t really care, so can you do that when ya get here? You’re a ton better at it!”
“Oh yes, please. Anyone that could curb the irritable behavior of those two undesirables I welcome with open arms! And perhaps an open stomach as well. Aha!”
“Al sometimes fights with ‘em now too, so it’s really fun ‘round here! Shishishi!”
“I would not call that fighting so much as it is me giving them the amount of respect they deserve; absolutely none. Anyway, farewell for now!”
“We haven’t even met up yet and he’s already giving me a headache! What’s wrong with that boy…” even as she complained, though, Nami’s face was lit up in an exasperated sort of fondness.
“Luffy! It’s really him! Haha!” Chopper began to wiggle about in excitement before his face suddenly fell into shocked realization, “Wait! What’s that bastard doin’ callin’ us scaredy cats?! …Even though it’s true.”
Proving the changeling right, Usopp skipped over the joy of hearing from their captain to bite at his nails while stammering, “I-I-Isn’t the Radio Demon the Overlord who’s murdered tons of other powerful Overlords live on air?! And is also a CANNIBAL?!?! Why’s Luffy with a guy like him?! Do we really have to go to where he lives?! Why don’t we tell Luffy to meet us at a café or somethin’!”
Wincing at the thought, Nami commented, “If he’s at the hotel, Luffy probably lives there too. Especially if the Radio Demon’s been arguing with those two idiots. They had Zoro and Sanji there with only Luffy to watch them? They’re lucky the building’s still standing!”
“ …H-Hey guys, what if… the reason why the Radio Demon was looking for us for Luffy is because– ”
“Don’t say it!”
“You’ll jinx us! Don’t speak it into the universe!”
Chopper yipped a particularly deer-like sound as he slapped his hooves over his mouth, properly warded off of finishing the thought. Though from Stolas’s view, the reindeer speaking the possibility of their captain having recruited the Overlord wouldn’t change the reality of things.
Using their banter as an opportunity to steel himself, Stolas put on as much of a smile as he could to chime, “I’m glad you all were able to find your captain. I know you have wished to reunite with him and the rest of your crew since you’ve gotten here. Just let me call Octavia down, and then you can leave posthaste– ”
He was cut off by Nami lightly slapping the back of her hand into his chest, a tap more than anything as she interjected, “What are you talking about? You don’t have to pretend like you won’t miss us! And we don’t have to leave immediately. If their hotel’s lasted this long with the three idiots, it can go one more night. We promised to go stargazing with you and Octavia after all!”
Shock came over Stolas as his beak dropped open slightly. He tried to parse out, “You… I know you dearly miss your friends, though. I wouldn’t wish to keep you– ”
“A promise’s a promise! We gotta go!” Chopper exclaimed as he jumped up and down, evidently still brimming with anticipation for the stargazing as he had been previously.
Before he could find a response, Usopp jumped up himself to throw an arm around Stola’s neck to pull him down into a crouch and level out their heights. The man had apparently recovered from the potential fright of the demon Overlord, as he winked and began speaking with conspiratorial mischief laced in his voice, “Come on Stolas– you don’t really think we’re gonna just leave and never come back, do you? Once Luffy hears that you’ve got a ride back to the Grand Line, the three of us will practically have to fight him off to keep him from harassing you! You won’t get to see us as often, yeah, but we’ll still have our adventures together! You’re basically a part-time pirate now! As your friends and the professionals here, we gotta keep showin’ ya the ropes!”
“ …T-Truly? Friends? And me, a part-time pirate?” eyes going owlishly wide at the thought, he couldn’t keep the hopeful delight out of his reply.
“Course we’re friends! It’s no lie! Cross my heart and– well, not the last part… And yeah! As a brave warrior of the sea I can tell, you’ve got a heart meant for adventure! That’s what bein’ a pirate’s all about! Luffy would just tell ya to stop doing things ya don’t wanna do and just head out to sea, but we’re a bit more practical than that. Ultra powerful demonic Prince on business days, adventuring pirate on weekends– Or maybe every other weekend? I think that should be doable, right? And then when you retire, you’ll be fully trained and can set out to sea for good!”
“Oh! I– That… Most of that sounds wonderful, but I can’t do the last part. We Goetia don’t actually retire unless we’re dead…”
“…You will. You can let me take over for you, after all.”
Stola’s neck cricked with a concerning crack as he whipped his head around to see Octavia approaching. “O-Octavia! There’s no need– ”
“I want to, Dad…” His daughter smiled up at him so very softly. Stolas felt tears begin to well in the corners of his eyes. “Or well, maybe we can switch off once I’m trained enough in your job? That way I can go too sometimes. I just want you to know that you can rely on me. I’m not a little girl anymore…”
Now he really was crying in full, tears streaking down his face as he pulled away from Usopp to forcefully bring Octavia into a hug that had her huffing. “That’s not true– You’ll always be my baby girl, sweetheart! Even when you’re old and aligning the planets of the solar system!”
“Daaaad, not in front of the others…”
After a night of stargazing out in the middle of the universe, Stolas and Octavia bid the strange Straw Hats a farewell the next morn. However, as the three of them waved back while walking out of mansion gates, he knew this goodbye was not an end to the story.
If anything, it was only the beginning to another chapter of his life. One that, for once, he looked forward to reading.
Alastor will admit that he hadn’t anticipated any of the pirates mingling amongst the Goetia of all demons, especially one relatively higher up such as Prince Stolas. Those Hellborn were known to be snobbish elitists despite not being at the very top of the ladder where the Morningstars comfortably sat. Though he did vaguely remember hearing something or other about gossip surrounding the Prince’s divorce and likely affair with an imp, he didn’t pay any personal interest in such matters. The only thing of relevance was that, once again, the Straw Hats had made themselves very conspicuous, and that was all he needed for a shade to have located them.
The trio arrived the day after he’d sent his message, and after seeing their approach, Alastor gleamed at least part of the reason for the slight delay. They slowly inched forward for the gates, crouched into each other with the same air as young children approaching a particularly haunted house on Halloween. It actually took them an entire five minutes to cross the front lawn at the rate they’d gone, shivering with each step taken.
Once they’d arrived at the doorstep, they squabbled over who would knock. The long nose man had attempted to push forward the reindeer only for the boy to transform into an actual, fully grown reindeer. Strong antlers rammed into long nose together with the woman’s push. The weaker of the group had clearly been chosen as the sacrifice. His forehead banging against the door was as good of a knock as any, Alastor supposed.
His grin curled mean at the sight of their struggles. Oh– he likes these three MUCH more than the other two already…
Alastor informed Luffy about the arrival, and the captain managed to beat Charlie to the door once more. Stretchy arms pulled the lot of them inside to form a pile on the living room floor, and it seemed that for a moment their spell of fear was broken. They were all ecstatic to see their captain. Most of the hotel residents gathered a good ways back, wary to approach too close considering how the last reunion had turned out. But overtime, even they lost some of their tension the longer things went without issue. Even the arrival of dumb and dumber didn’t provoke too much of a problem, their bickering having been put on hold with the joy of their coming together.
“Woah! Nami! Ya got your map on your back now! That’s so cool!”
“Right? Now I can wear my treasure around too! The Four Blues are kinda squished on the back, but the Grand Line’s stretched all along my arms!” the woman started with a beaming smile, moving her hair out of the way and holding out her arms so that Luffy could see her back better.
Only for her to snap at the other two men when they approached to take a look as well, the look from the cook being concerningly intense, “Hey you two! I heard you’ve been causing these people trouble! Isn’t enough that they’ve been looking after our troublemaking captain for us?! The next time you get too worked up, expect a smack to the head!” Nami then glanced at where Charlie was cooing over both the heartfelt reunion as well the particularly cute new arrival who resembled a stuffed animal more than a sinner, “Sorry about them. Thanks for being so lenient with these idiots, Your Highness.”
While both the bickering duo was of a similar height to Alastor himself, all the new arrivals were shorter to varying degrees. The navigator was about the height of Luffy, and while having been described to be something of a cat burglar, death had made that literal. Her long tangerine orange hair was topped with cat ears that matched her voluminous fluffy cat tail, the rest of her body covered in a lighter orange fuzz with patterns of dark blue on her shoulder that looked similar to a tattoo. There were also similar tattoo marks on her back and the backs of her arms, the aforementioned map that Luffy had pointed out. Her attire of a sleeveless green halter top and jeans left those areas in display. Along with her somewhat ample chest-fur…
The cook, of course, immediately began falling over himself, sobbing at her disapproval, “I’m so sorry, Nami! I tried my best, really! It’s just that this mosshead has been unbearable after all this time! I had to go an entire month with only him as poor excuse for company! I’ve missed basking in your iridescent visage and chest– ”
“Yeah yeah, I missed you too Sanji, but not that part of you…”
Charlie snapped herself out of her gushing over the ‘cute’ creature to wave away the issue, “Oh, it was no problem! Luffy’s been such a great help to us, of course we would welcome his crew here! And Sanji’s been so kind to share his meals with us all!”
“And by ‘no problem’ she means the wall, living room, and hallway they broke have already been replaced… The food is good, though. The only good thing about that guy actually,” Vaggie muttered flatly just to set the record straight, arms crossed over her chest. It did little good as the cook began wiggling about with heart eyes at the compliments.
“Don’t tell me what to do witch– ” the swordsman had to cut himself off at the smack of a staff to the back of all three of his heads, delivered just as promised. Clutching at them with one hand each, Zoro growled under his breath with a glare, but evidently had learned enough to keep any commentary to himself this time. So he can learn, how curious!
“Luffyyyyy~ We missed you so much! It’s so scary here! Everything’s too creepy! Sinners are stabbing each other or getting into shoot outs in every other alley! It’s been Hell tryin’ to get around without any of the others to protect us– oh, that was kind of a pun, right? Brook would ‘a liked that one…” the sniper trailed out of clutching the captain in terror as he mused at his unintentional humor.
The man, while taller than the captain, was still a good amount shorter than the swordsman and cook. Usopp’s nose had been as noticeably long as Luffy had claimed it to be. And to top it off, his demon form seemed to theme itself around the feature. As a puppet made of brown wood, the resemblance to the famed tale of Pinocchio could not be denied. The only notable differences being the little green leaf that stuck out of the end of the nose, the curly dark green-black ponytail the puppet kept his hair in, the bandana and unique set of googles atop his head, and the yellow sun-design mask set askew on the back of his head to match the yellow wideset pants with suspenders that went without a shirt similar to Husk’s style. It seemed his torso was mostly flesh of the same tone as the wood with some panels distributed around the areas where flesh met wood. Is it a thing for pirates to just leave their chests out in the open for stabbing? More than half the present members had them prominently displayed…
Smiling at not only Usopp but the other two new arrivals in full boyish charm, Luffy boasted, “What’re ya talkin’ ‘bout? You three ‘re plenty strong enough to get around here! You can take most ‘a these demons no problem!”
The praise was well received. They all fidgeted to differing extents as they pretended to humbly accept Luffy’s word while their egos visibly inflated, grins stretching from ear to ear not too unlike the captain himself. Having stayed in the captain’s arms for the whole affair, the bipedal reindeer began nuzzling Luffy’s nose in a notably animal-like gesture before moving down to cuddle into the captain’s chest like a teddy bear.
The creature donned an oversized hat with an X design set between two curved antlers, a tiny body of Niffty’s size with tiny hooves in place of hands and feet, and a small set of pants and vertical striped shirt. With his big wide eyes set above a red button nose, small snout, and fluffy pastel pink fur in a similar shade to candy floss or flower petals, the creature was much too adorable for Alastor’s tastes. Meant in more ways than one. However, the reindeer soon spooked when he became eye level with Luffy’s chest.
“Luffy! You’re hurt! Or– you were hurt, technically. I’m glad you found someone to patch you up without me here…” Doctor Tony Tony Chopper pulled back to look over the sutured scar in a careful examination, placing both hooves on either side of the X. “It looks like it was a really deep one. Did you need surgery for your lungs or heart or anything else? For it to last like this, it was made by angelic steel, right? The stitching is neat and tight, they did a good job pulling a wound this wide and of this shape back together, but the scarring is going to stay if you keep it like this. Let me finish the healing for you! Look at what I can do now!”
Jumping out of Luffy’s hold, Chopper approached the swordsman in tiny steps that had Charlie squealing in as restrained as manner as she could manage. Before it abrupt cut off in a choke as the reindeer suddenly grew into his big sasquatch-like form, his fur shifting into dark pink at the change. Placing an enlarged hand on the back of Zoro’s heads one after the other, cherry blossoms bloomed under the touch covering where he’d been smacked by Nami. Zoro gave an appreciative hum of slight surprise as the tension of his shoulders relaxed, the pain seemingly alleviated.
Chopper shrunk back into a pastel pipsqueak to face his beaming captain with pride, puffing out his tiny chest as well as he could with hooves on his hips. “Lots of people down here can learn or gain abilities related to their strengths and new forms. Along with not needing my rumble balls anymore, I got something new! I can directly heal injuries now in a process that’s more restorative than the body healing on its own! It’s perfect for a doctor like me! I could cure any illness in life, and now in death, I’ll be able to cure any wound! I just gotta keep practicing with it to improve my skill!”
“That stuffed animal’s a doctor?”
Husk quietly sighed at Angel’s poorly concealed stage whisper, “I mean he’s small and cute, now, but he’s gotta just be a sinner like the rest of us… I think the ‘can cure any illness’ and that ability of his are the real things to get shocked about here.”
Husk was correct in his assessment, though wrong in his assumption of the doctor being a human sinner. Even bypassing the apparent feat an animal who’d attained human intelligence had accomplished in life, it was a rare thing indeed when a demon of Hell developed magic specialized for healing purposes outside of their general regenerative ability. Alastor can’t recall ever having come across a sinner with such a power. Then again, this creature assumedly was meant for Heaven and chose Hell over paradise to be with his captain, so the doctor wasn’t much of a “sinner” in the first place along with not being human.
The only demons that came to mind concerning healing capabilities were Belphegor of the Seven Deadly Sins and some of their Hellborn kind, the Ring of Sloth being where the vast majority of the Hellborn medical services resided. In comparison, the medical treatment accessible to sinners was much more pitiful, almost exclusively taking the form of seedy underbelly clinics where one would gamble their luck as to the quality of care and then be charged an exorbitant amount for it should the treatment actually be decent. Though, Alastor had heard through the grapevine that a clinic with a surgeon of proven skill had recently cornered the market on that end of things.
Laughing joyously, Luffy chimed, “Shishishi! That’s great Chopper! But it’s okay, I like it like this cause it matches Al.”
He really can’t leave this boy alone for more than five minutes… Deciding it was about time for his grand entrance anyway, Alastor moved his shadow from where it’d been hiding in the corner to watch over the happenings to slink on the floor directly behind the reindeer in the midst of the group. Then, he emerged from the darkness with a flourishing twirl of his mic and wide smile. “Why thank you for your compliments to my handywork, good doctor! It’s high praise coming from a professional of your accomplishments. I can’t be considered more than a witch doctor after all! Haha!”
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!”
The reaction was even more gloriously hilarious than he’d been anticipating. All three of the new arrivals jumped back towards the fireplace with a unified shriek. The puppet, having been on the side closest to the mantle, was accidently pushed into the fireplace by the navigator in her rush to flee. He saved himself from completely falling into the flames, but the hand he stuck out to catch his fall did not share this fortune. Usopp pulled it back out with another shriek to reveal the wood had caught fire.
Violent shaking the appendage in the air in an attempt to blow it out to no luck, the puppet cried, “ON FIRE ON FIRE SOMEONE HELP AAHHHHH– ”
“Usopp! Hold on, I’ve got it!” The situation apparently pulling the woman out of her fright, Nami was quick to conjure her staff once more to trace a circle of clouds above Usopp’s head. Once the ring was complete, dark clouds filled the center to pour down on not just the hand on fire, but the entirety of the puppet. She only waved her creations away once the flames had fully extinguished, leaving behind a rather depressingly wet crewmate.
“SOMEONE GET A DOCTOR!”
“That’s you.”
“Oh… right!” the doctor snapping himself out of his panic at Sanji’s reminder, he made his way to the still frozen in place puppet to shift into his taller form once more to take hold of Usopp’s hand, the burn blossoming over with flowers. “Nami put it out before it could spread too much, so it should heal quickly.”
Alastor, after staring at the entire farce without a blink or losing the pleasantry of his smile, had to drawl, “ …Wow. A most impressive reaction. I haven’t even done anything yet! Ahahaha!”
“AAAAAHHHHHHHH!” there was a second outburst at the reminder of his presence, though of a lesser intensity than the previous disaster. The cowards huddled together, this time ducking behind their captain for protection before setting wary eyes on Alastor.
“That– That’s the Radio Demon, right?” the reindeer, having shrunk once more to better hide himself, hissed in a whisper.
The puppet’s harsh whisper was even louder as he spoke into Luffy’s ear, “Luffy– that demon’s bad news, you know that right? You haven’t done anything to make him made us, right?! I heard Zoro and Sanji have been picking fights with him even! You guys can handle him but if he catches one of us alone, we’re the ones who’ll end up on a platter!”
“Haha! What’re ya guys gettin’ all scared for? Ya don’t gotta worry about Al like that,” much to their distress, the captain laughed off their terror, leaving the trembling trio to go stand next to Alastor and throw a friendly arm around his shoulders to all too happily say, “Alastor’s part ‘a the crew now! Isn’t that great?! Shishishi!”
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO– !!!”
Usopp fell to his knees in total despair, Chopper in his arms as the two of them cried together in horror. “I don’t wanna be killed ‘n’ eaten! I’m nothin’ but sticks now, I promise! It’s not worth the indigestion!”
“I don’t wanna be emergency rations!” the reindeer cried in commiseration, before he momentarily snapped out of his sobbing as he realized, “Wait… If he eats humans, that means I’m safe then, right?”
“Venison is a close second favorite of mine!”
Chopper fell into hysterical sobs once more, “NOOOOOOOO!!! I don’t wanna be emergency rations!”
On the other end of the spectrum, after her contribution to the resounding cry of horror, the navigator stomped over to the captain. She violently shook the boy by pulling the lapels of his shirt back and forth as she yelled in terrified anger, “Luffy you DAMN IDIOT– Out of all the demons around you had to ask this one?! I didn’t give up seeing Bellemare in Heaven just to be murdered in my sleep to be cooked and eaten!!!”
“I actually prefer my meat rare, dearie!”
“SEE?! He’s obviously lying to you! He’s just waiting to stab us in the back and eat us alive!”
“No he’s not,” that was the beginning and end of Luffy’s ‘comforting’. Ignoring the forceful jostling, he immediately moved on to gain a vaguely confused expression and posed, “And what’re ya sayin’? You wouldn’t like it in Heaven. You know you can’t steal from people there, right?”
Luffy’s shaking came to an abrupt halt as the navigator considered that statement. Before she plainly responded, “Oh, that’s right… I wouldn’t have lasted up there. It’s better I ended up in Hell anyway, since I can steal as much as I want here.”
“That’s your reasoning…?” Zoro’s exasperated deadpan was appropriately timed. Alastor, meanwhile, began a hardy laugh at the trio’s terror at his mere presence and the byplay that’d come with it, causing the swordsman to shift his side-eye away from the woman and over towards the Radio Demon. “You better enjoy this while ya can, cause these guys are the only ones on the crew who’ll act like this.”
“Ahahaha~ Oh, I most certainly will my good man! I most certainly will. Why, this is even more amusing than all the orphans that came about from the stock market crash of 1929! Absolutely splendid!”
Right on que, Alastor slunk back down into his shadow such that the cook’s kick went through nothing but air. The man cursed, “Shitty red ears, how dare you scare Miss Nami like that!”
Notably staring at the still sobbing sniper and doctor, the swordsman snarked, “I don’t think she’s the one to be worried about right now…”
“What was that mosshead?!”
“ …It’s official, this crew is fucked!” Husk hissed at a wincing Angel Dust and snickering Cherri Bomb from the sidelines, “It was bad enough with Al and the two bitching dumbasses, but with these three? They’re pissin’ themselves just bein’ in the same room as the guy! There ain’t no way this pirate crew’s functional now if it ever was at all!”
Angel countered, “I mean yeah, but they’re the only ones who’re actin’ how people normally would ta the Radio Demon. It’s the other three idiots that got their screws loose…”
“I know! Cause he’s the fuckin’ Radio Demon! That’s what I’m sayin’– everyone on the kid’s crew includin’ the kid himself is either too insane to care, or when they are sane, they can’t deal with that bastard’s shit! How the Hell is this gonna work?!”
“Forget thinking about how they’re gonna work! How are we supposed to work out having them all around like this?!” Vaggie dismissed Husk’s point to bring up her own groan of concern. From beside her girlfriend, Charlie winced in wordless agreement.
Cherri, meanwhile, posed a more casual observation, “You guys ‘re already gettin’ your panties in a bunch over that? I’m still stuck on how Monkey here somehow managed to snag not one, but two deer guys! And they’re on the complete opposite ends of the deer spectrum! Can ya imagine that cute little pink flower doctor bein’ friends with the blood-red man-eatin’ cannibal murder Overlord? I’d bust a gut just thinkin’ about it! Haha!”
“Well… now that ya mention it…”
“I’m a reindeer dammit!”
“What the fuck is the deer spectrum supposed to be?” Husk was the one to question, ignoring the aforementioned reindeer’s cry of objection.
“Ya know, like doe-eyed baby Bambi on one end and eldritch forest watcher and/or wendigo creature on the other! They’re the perfect examples for it!”
Seeing a chance to impose his presence, Alastor rematerialized from his shadow directly behind Husk and Angel, startling the two of them when he leaned his head forward in between them to point out, “I feel as though I should elucidate one detail that seems to have been lost in translation. You see, when that creature says that he is a reindeer, he means that in a literal sense.”
“No shit. He’s got reindeer demon parts, yeah? Straight up a Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer rip-off,” Husk was the one to snark back as though it was obvious.
However, after his clarification, Charlie’s eyes focused on the doctor before they blew out wide. “Oooh, wait… Alastor’s right! He doesn’t have a human soul! He’s– some kinda…”
“Animal who became part human. Not the other way around,” Alastor finished the conclusion on the Princess’s behalf.
“ …How the Hell did a reindeer get in ta medical school???”
“THAT’S the part you’re questioning?!” Vaggie shot back at Angel’s genuine befuddlement.
And then, as non-sequitur as always, Niffty completely ignored all the current points of interest to instead scurry back into the wall from wince she came, whining in a miffed tone, “Why’re there no bad boys on this pirate crew? That should be illegal! They deserve the gallows! Walk the plank!”
After the three arrivals calmed down upon the Radio Demon removing himself, they got to settling in. The cook made what Alastor assumed was all their favorites that night, the table featuring an assortment of fresh fruits including tangerines the navigator helped herself to, various seasonal fish the sniper happily gorged on in addition to the usual meat-based dishes, and a more extended array of desserts than usual. It was almost too predictable that the candy-floss colored creature went starry-eyed at the candy-floss machine Sanji pulled out –when did he even get that contraption? Alastor would think the spread to be rather haphazard, but the chef had proved to be as skilled as expected in his choosing of alternatives and side dishes that somehow turned the meal into something more cohesive.
Charlie also got to settling the newcomers into their arrangements. She’d previously given the cook and swordsman multi-room suites with the thought in mind that some of the crew might prefer staying together much like Luffy does, and she’d been right in her assumptions. The doctor set up in Zoro’s room while the puppet in Sanji’s, while Nami was given a new suite. Notable beside Zoro and Chopper’s room rather than the pervert’s. Though Luffy stuffed them all into one room for the night so that he could have a sleep over with all of them, once again inviting Alastor and being declined. He then cycled through the two boys’ rooms and even Nami’s room for one night. One would assume illicit intention if not for the idea of it being so laughable in the context of the captain. However, Alastor did note that Luffy did not seem to have blanket permission to stay in the woman’s quarters, as she didn’t allow the boy to stay over after that initial occurrence. Thus, Luffy returned to his usual cycle of switching between Zoro and Chopper’s, Sanji and Usopp’s, and Alastor’s rooms after the special occasion of the reunion had passed.
Things became livelier with the new additions, this time in ways Alastor found favorable. The navigator was quick to snap any of the men into shape, being much more of a direct dictator than the careless captain himself. And the three continued to spook whenever Alastor deigned to grant them his presence. The reindeer outright fainted upon first catching sight of how Alastor took his venison. And even when he wasn’t physically present, the sniper always seemed to feel when his shadow was watching and would thus panic over the sensation despite Alastor himself not being around. It was great fun to lie in wait for the perfect moments to induce the terror he so rightly deserved. He’d gotten so accustomed to the captain’s and bickering duo’s lack of a reaction that having people close in hand to mess with was a renewed breath of fresh air. And in addition, Chopper and especially Usopp seemed inclined to playing with Luffy, giving the boy a non-violent outlet for his rambunctiousness with their various antics that relieved Alastor of some of the more unpleasant intensity of Luffy’s clinging. Finally, it seemed that his attempt to alleviate his own burden by conducting such an extensive search for the Straw Hats was beginning to pay its dividends.
Still, while provoking fear was a favored pastime of his, Alastor was also aware that on some level Husk’s assessment was correct. In the long run it would be a hassle if he was unable to even speak with the trembling trio due to their –mostly– self-inflicted terror. But he was content to let things play out as they will for the meantime, not making any plans as to improving his relations.
That is, until, one of the trio somehow struck up the courage to approach him first. It was upon the conclusion of a casual but satisfying jazz broadcast not too long after the new additions that Alastor had a surprise guest in his tower. A now familiar set of antlers and hat poked up out of the trap door, only to hesitate in obvious fright.
“I’m off air now, dear doctor –why isn’t that a proper knee-slapper, haha! If you’ve bothered coming all the way up to my abode, you might as well commit to the decision and come inside. I won’t bite. Probably.”
There was a particularly deer-like high-pitched squeak, the antlers visibly trembling for a moment. It seemed that the doctor indeed had come for some greater purpose, however, as the creature forced itself to slowly crawl up into the studio.
As soon as the boy’s hooves were settled, he rushed to the nearest cover, which in this case was the second chair Alastor never bothered to put away and left abandoned on the other side of the room from his control system. Though the hiding spot was a useless one considering that, rather than have his body behind the chair to peak his eyes out from, the reindeer’s body was instead left in plain sight while the eyes were hidden. “I do believe you’re supposed to do that the other way around.”
After another yelp, Chopper switched himself around such that he was partial covered by the chair while he stared like a deer in headlights at Alastor. “There you go! Now, to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”
Chopper visibly fidgeted in place for a bit, glancing away in obvious nerves. But it wasn’t too long before the creature managed to settle himself and look back at the oh-so frightening Radio Demon.
“U-Um… Sorry. I just… wanted to thank you, Mister Radio Demon…”
With a curious hum, Alastor leaned his cheek into his palm and followed the implicit trail of logic to finish the thought, “I see. For tending to the captain’s wounds while you were absent, I presume? Your two lesser-minded crewmates had a similar train of thinking. While I appreciate the gesture, I must admit I was obligated to helping the man, seeing as he’d only gotten injured in defense of myself. Therefore, giving me gratitude for such a thing is somewhat misplaced.”
“No! Luffy is– I don’t know exactly what happened, but knowing Luffy, he would’ve forced his way into things anyway, right? So him getting hurt wasn’t your fault, and it’s still good that you– you helped him…” the interjection was unexpected, not quite bold but also not a simple withering, obligatory politeness. As the doctor trailed off in his hesitation, Alastor took the brief respite to give the creature a thorough once over.
“Hmm… You don’t seem too concerned as to how the injury actually occurred. Are you truly so confident in your assumptions? For all you know, I’m merely putting on airs and did indeed have some kind of hand in orchestrating the matter.”
For a moment, the reindeer spooked, ears flashing straight as he retreated further behind the chair. But it wasn’t too long before his eyes peaked back out again. “Wait, no… That doesn’t make sense. Luffy wouldn’t invite you if you were a really bad guy.”
Alastor had to blink the slight bewilderment out of himself, before clarifying, “While I understand why you would have such a perspective… the stories of me eating Overlords and broadcasting the screams of their murders was not an exaggeration in the slightest, dear doctor. If I’m not a really bad guy, I’m not quite sure what sort of scale you’re making comparisons to!”
The reference to his more amusing escapades earned an outright yelp from the reindeer, leading to another hiding session. Only for Chopper to again gather his courage enough to pop his head out and stare at Alastor once again. He truly does have the temperament of a frightened but curious fawn. “That’s! Well… That sounds really horrible, yeah.”
“Because it is.”
“But– But still! Luffy has really good instincts for a human! If he felt like you would hurt him or one of our Nakama, he wouldn’t have asked you to join. And– And you did help him! That wasn’t an easy wound to treat, but you took care of him anyway! That’s not a coincidence or accident, that means something… You saved him when I couldn’t…”
While Alastor mentally took note of how casually the reindeer distinguished himself from the “humans” through that reference to his captain, the bewilderment came back in even greater force upon seeing that, for no apparent reason at all, Chopper began to cry. Rubbing large weeping eyes with slight wrists while turning to take cover behind the chair.
He didn’t even do anything! How has a creature this pathetic and fragile lasted on a sea-faring pirate crew for any extended amount of time?! Without making a move to approach, Alastor glanced everywhere around the room and back towards the trap door. It would be just his luck if a certain Monkey decided to impose his presence in such a compromising circumstance. He made sure to keep his tone carefully level and lackadaisy, “Come now deerling, let’s not get overemotional. I feel that the captain would get rather upset should he misconstrue that I’d brought you to legitimate tears. Whatever could be ailing you to such a degree?”
“It– It’s because– You saved Luffy when I couldn’t– !”
“As you’ve already attempted to establish, yes. How ever could that be a distressing thing?”
“Because– Because that’s my job! That’s the role Luffy trusted me to do! And in the end, I– I couldn’t save any of them because I got too hurt! They all died, and I’m supposed to be the DOCTOR!!!”
Alastor was taken aback by the furious cry the creature ended on. Clearly, this issue had been festering for quite some time, the seeds having been sown since the doctor’s death.
Why the boy had ended up losing his composure while talking to the Radio Demon of all people rather than doing the sensible thing of confessing to his much more familiar or sympathetic crew or even literally anyone else before he’d gotten to this point was a matter of contention for another day. Since regardless of how the situation had come to align itself, it was clear that in the current moment, this had become his problem to deal with. Unfortunately. If he attempted to abandon Chopper to one of the Straw Hats, they’ll surely assume him to be at fault somehow. Therefore, he could do nothing but attempt to react accordingly.
It really was tactless to ask such a thing right now, but Alastor just had to question, “…How old were you, exactly? You seem younger than even the captain.”
The sobbing went on for a short while longer, before momentarily dying down as Chopper seemed to consider the query. Having a more tangible topic to focus on was apparently beneficial to his mood. “H-Huh? O-Oh… I guess I was– 18? Set out to sea with Luffy and the others after I’d been alive for 15 years or so…”
…If he’s so young, it’s no wonder he’s taking this so hard. Not only the matter of his death, but having to live up to such responsibility. It was a cruel irony to be granted the ability to potentially cure any wound only after having failed to do so in life.
Alastor tried his best to plainly state the most likely words of condolence one would give for this sort of case, “To hold the power of life in one’s hands is a heavy burden, indeed. Whether that be to end it or to preserve it, it matters not. I’m sure the captain knows that whatever your efforts were, you did the best you could.”
“B-But I– If I just held back a bit– I should’ve thought ahead and not pushed myself that far!”
“And if you’d employed such a strategy, your crew would’ve been down a considerable fighter, isn’t that right?” He thought back to the looming, dark red form that he’d seen through the shade’s eye, the one that had cued him to the trio’s location. “I saw that much larger transformation of yours that you’d taken at Prince Stolas’s manner. If such a monstrous force had been left on the brink of death, you must have been in quite the battle.”
“Well, there was– I was kind of in two fights. There was this really horrible doctor on Blackbeard’s crew, but I was able to cure all the diseases he tried to use on me or the others. Then there a really big guy. Way bigger than even my Monster Point. I helped take him out, but we’d just finished fighting the world government only a couple days before that– I knew none of their wounds could handle it! I knew… knew my body couldn’t… But we had to protect everyone and Luffy’s dream.”
“So your efforts were clearly indispensable. You can curse your weakness all you’d like, but such despair won’t change events that have already occurred…” trailing off slightly in thought, Alastor decided to speak a musing aloud. The conversation seemed to be helping Chopper calm down, so it was best to keep it up even when the topic was more morbid than politeness would dictate, “While I can understand the implicit guilt that would come from a doctor failing to save his patients, you seem to be trivializing your own death quite a bit, are you not? Most would’ve considered dying at your age to be a tragedy all on its own.”
“I– I guess, technically I was young, yeah. It’s weird for me, though. Most of the herd at my age would’ve died or been close to their time. My aging is probably closer to a human’s than a reindeer’s now so I know I could’ve lived for longer, but I don’t feel like I lost any time...”
By this point, the crying had stopped. Chopper had placed himself into a less tense position, seated on the floor with his short arms holding his knees to his chest. He was about halfway out from behind the chair and facing the side wall rather than Alastor himself.
Despite the uncomfortable lead up, Alastor found himself rather intrigued as to the creature’s perspective of things. It left the impression of a mind distinctly inhuman, but at the same time, paradoxically filled with humanity.
“But– But for the others, humans can live for a long time if they take care of their health! They all could’ve lived for much longer! But Luffy never took care of himself! Even before the end, I was worried what I would do about him! He was always taking risks that damaged his body… If he never did any of those things, if he just stayed on the island he’d grown up on and lived a safe life, maybe he could’ve lived five times the length of time that he had.”
The inhumanity of a deer-like human and the humanity of a human-like deer, such an interesting inversion the captain had somehow managed to find. It was funny, really.
“…And if he’d chosen to live such a life, he never would’ve encountered you or any of his motley crew. So wouldn’t you say it’s for the better that his whims took him onto the path that they had?”
At that, large fawn-like eyes turned to look at Alastor in muted surprise. From his distance, he smiled down at the boy to say, “I realize this is a horribly insensitive thing to state, but I do feel that I must make my opinion on the matter clear; I am rather grateful the captain died when he did. Waiting around any longer to meet him would’ve been a trial to say the least. So while I understand the entire endeavor was an awful tragedy in the eyes of you and your lot, from my perspective, it ended up being a stroke of great luck! Haha! It’s rather amusing now that I think of it. That was not the opinion I had when the boy first fell down from the sky right in front of me and began pestering me to join his has-been pirate crew, let me tell you! How the times change!”
“ …That’s …I guess I get what you mean, but it’s still weird to say that.”
“It is indeed, yes! Oh, while I have your attention, there is another matter concerning you that I was curious about– ” pointing at the reindeer with a finger rather than his mic which had been left to lean against the side of the panel for the time being, Alastor pondered, “Why is it that you stay in this tiny, weaker form of yours when it seems you have many more to choose from? I understand your largest form would be a hassle, but the other two I’ve witnessed would be perfectly acceptable for indoor use.”
“Oh, um– It’s cause this is my Brain Point, it maximizes my brain size so I think the best in this form. I also noticed after I started traveling with the others that humans tend to like it the best, too. It’s annoying the marines thought I was their pet for so long though!” after the brief snap of anger, Chopper looked down at his hooves where his legs were now stretched out before him, before looking back up at Alastor to question, “You saw me in my Monster Point, then? I guess since you’re so scary you wouldn’t be scared of something like that, huh.”
With a careless wave, he cheerfully laughed off the very thought of it, “Ahaha! Of course not! I can handle that transformation of yours perfectly fine! People often see me as something of a monster as well. I even have a similar sort of transformation, though it’s simply an enlarged demonic version of myself rather than becoming more bestial as it were. My tastes are rather different than the normal humans’. While I can see how it is most would favor your more palatable ‘cuteness’, I don’t share such sentiment. Personally, I much prefer your monstrous physic. Perhaps some other day you’ll have the chance to take it around town, so to speak. I’d like to see that.”
“Really?” the boy began fidgeting a bit in excitement, shifting out of the last of his distress. Though his mood seemed to stumble slightly as another thought came to him.
“Oh… I’m sorry I was scared of you. That wasn’t nice of me to judge you based on rumors.”
…How did they arrive at this point in the conversation exactly? Alastor finally allowed his gaze to narrow on the other in displeasure. “What nonsense is this? I’ve already said the rumors are true, and I do in fact like scaring people. I prefer being feared, even! It’s entertaining and tends to make an easier time of handling others.”
“ …Even if that’s true, it’s also true that it can’t always feel good for everyone to be afraid of you.”
The statement caught his attention, forcibly shifting Alastor out of his previously more judgmental stare. The creature continued without much pause, “At least for me… it was very lonely. Neither the herd nor the humans of the village wanted me. It wasn’t until I met one of my teachers, Dr. Hiriluk, that I first began trusting humans. And it wasn’t until I met Luffy that I decided I was okay being a monster, if it meant that I was his monster. From the very beginning, he looked at all the parts of me that everyone except Dr. Kureha and Dr. Hiriluk thought were scary and… thought they were cool. You were right that, even if the ending wasn’t perfect… I’m lucky that I met him. That he went out to sea, found me, and took me with him.”
It brought to mind Alastor’s own first meeting with Luffy. From the very beginning for himself too, whenever he tried frightening the captain through distorting his image or his voice, it was to no avail. ‘Woah! That’s creepy! Cool!’ and with that, his attempt had been dismissed with ease. It brought to mind the pride he’d felt when Luffy had happily spoken of Alastor fighting on his behalf. Still having not been concerned in the slightest with the Radio Demon’s should be concerning murderous rage.
It brought to mind how Luffy had had to pester him to the brink to finally earn even a mocking agreement to trust the boy to fight on his behalf. Of how Alastor had refused to trust anyone with even the slightest request for genuine assistance, whether they be the good-natured Princess of Hell or his own supposedly most trusted Overlord ally. Of how easily he’d given up on whatever sort of bridge he had built with that previous Overlord ally of his, as soon as the winds seemed to change against his favor…
Because if you never truly trust another, you will never be disappointed. You will never be the one unknowingly caught on the poorer end of the deal. And if you intentionally provoke another to fear you, there is no need to concern yourself with how they perceive you. For you will always be the one in control of their image of you. Therefore, if being alone is the best way to protect yourself, it’s simply a matter of course. Is it not?
–But it’s been nice basking in that Sun, hasn’t it? Being amongst that warmth and held in the pull of that gravity. Perhaps, the empty void that had been in the place of that prior could be considered ‘loneliness’…?–
“ …Lucky indeed. I suppose I understand some of that sentiment. I also appreciate the fact that the captain is a man who appreciates monsters, after all.”
Chopper looked at Alastor in careful consideration when, speak of the God, he spooked back onto his hooves with a yelp at the slam of the trap door opening. Hands over his head, Luffy was quick to pull himself up into the studio.
“There ya are Chopper! I was lookin’ for ya when I felt you were up here with Al! What’cha guys doin’?”
“L-L-Luffy!”
“We were merely having a chat, dear captain,” Alastor replied for the both of them, making sure to keep his smile carefully casual as not to belay who their topic of conversation had revolved around, “I find this little deerling to be a rather interesting fellow. An intelligent mind both human and not, it makes for quite the intrigue! If only his preferred physicality wasn’t so unappealing. A shame, it is.”
Closing his eyes with a shining grin, Luffy laughed, “Haha! I told ya you’d like him! It’s cause you’re both mystery deer!”
“I’m a reindeer!”
“I do not believe that is as related to the matter as you are assuming… And you’re putting words in my mouth once again.”
Seemingly already over the deer generalization, Chopper sidestepped closer to Luffy in an extremely suspicious manner. He waved the captain to lean down to whisper without any sort of subtlety into his ear, hoof blocking his snout, “Luffy– Alastor’s actually pretty nice, isn’t he? I’m glad you invited him!”
“I can hear you still…” the comment caused the creature to jolt back, taking cover behind the still delighted captain.
Luffy, of course, ignored him to gladly agree, “He’s really nice, yeah! But only if he likes ya!”
With a high-pitched gasp and hooves flying up to his cheeks, Chopper began to joyfully wiggle in place as he took the bait and ran with it, “So he really does like me?! Aw~ he shouldn’t, the bastard! I’m nothin’ special! Eheheh~ ”
“I am still right here without having stated any of what is being assumed of me…” Even as he withheld a sigh, however, Alastor recognized the lost cause for what it was. Neither of the two would listen to what he had to say about the matter, as Luffy had already decided the truth he believed in. He really should’ve bitten the bullet and simply abandoned the creature as soon as the tears had begun…
If nothing else, though… If anything could be gained from this, perhaps it was the possibility that there might be some of the captain’s crew that Alastor would enjoy being in the company of, at the very least.
Chapter 10: Cost of Living
Chapter Text
“ –listen Ma’am, if ya expect me to just be able to waltz onto the actual royal family’s property, kill a couple folks, and leave all fine ‘n’ dandy, I think yer really underpayin’ me. I’m good, but not that good. And if I fail it’ll be your head on a platter, won’t it? So let’s try to set some more reasonable expectations here.”
“Don’t you back talk me IMP! But fine! Ugh. It would be horribly inconvenient I had to face actual consequences for once in my life– ” The more this harpy bitch talked, the more he questioned if the loads of cash were actually worth it, like fuckin’ Christ… “ –Just wait outside until they leave or something! You can do that much as least, can’t you?!”
“Yeah, but the time for the stakeout’s gonna cost extra.”
“Does it sound like I CARE? What’s even the point of being rich if I can’t pay other people to kill for me!” Like seriously, Jesus Fuckin’ Christ… “You’ll get your damn money, but only after you’ve killed at least one of those welps. You understand me, Striker?! I want those sinners DEAD!”
“I hear ya loud ‘n’ clear, Ma’am…”
Even as he agreed to the job, it was times like these Striker wished he had a partner to work with. Not the blue-blood fucking bastard imp who kept getting in his way, but someone would have been helpful. Two people to take on the long shifts are better than one.
But it’s not like he hasn’t done stakeouts by himself, it was a common staple of his line of work. Staking out the Princess’s hotel until a certain set of sinners were off the premises was different, he’ll have to be careful ‘bout where his watch out is to make sure that creepy-ass Overlord didn’t notice, but in theory it should be just like any other job. And as much as he hates the highborn, they pay well. So… a job’s a job.
“Oh, and also– when you get the job done, I want you to leave a note that says, ‘To the imp-dick-sucking Prince Stolas, FUCK YOU!!!’ With not one, not two, but three exclamation marks exactly! And then you need to spit on the body, take a picture, and leave it at his door! Got it?!”
“…”
…A job’s a job, but by God does he wish he were unemployed whenever he worked with this woman! If she didn’t pay so goddamn much he’d be gone with the wind already!
However, because she does pay so goddamn much, and because money is money… he agreed, speaking into the phone, “You got it. There’ll be an extra service charge for that.”
“Don’t care! If you get the chance to kill more than one of them and get it in the same picture, I’ll double the pay!” Now THAT’S what he liked to hear…
It’s been a little less than a week since the trembling trio had arrived at the hotel, and the various Straw Hats were still updating one another as to what they’d been up to before reuniting whenever specific topics came up in casual conversation. On their own part, most of their happenings involved Prince Stolas apparently allowing them access to their living world and “the Grand Line” specifically, much to Luffy’s excitement. It was clear that, at least eventually, there would be some follow up with occasionally venturing back to the living. Something he was certain Heaven would majorly disagree with, but of course, that just made the thrill all the more enticing for the captain. Alastor was certain he would be dragged along on these not so minor outings at some point, but wasn’t too put off by the idea. On the contrary, it’d be quite intriguing to see for himself the areas Luffy has only poorly explained to him before. Though he also doesn’t see any of these ventures occurring in the near future, which suits him fine.
The topic of invading the land of the living, however, later brought up the discussion of how the swordsman and cook had also made their own murderous ventures, and in the process completely ignored any sort of attempts at concealment. Much to Nami’s frustration. The two made a clear attempt to avert the argument by bringing up their assassination of the Red Dog and Alastor’s subsequent tiff with the mutt at Cannibal Town, which was admittedly successful to a certain degree. The navigator along with Usopp and Chopper became rightly terrified upon hearing how Alastor and his friend had brutalized the mutt.
However, it wasn’t completely effective, as Nami didn’t exactly forget their conversation and just brought up her ire once again at a later point. The diversion tactic that time had been for them to bring up what they’d heard of the captain’s battle for Alastor’s soul, which was surprisingly much less effective. Apparently, the boy challenging and beating the regional authority in the process of his recruitment was much too predictable of a trend...
In the midst of the swordsman’s and the navigator’s argument, however, the matter of how exactly the two were conducting their living assassinations came up, and Zoro thus –as always– unintentionally stumbled upon the conversation derailment he’d been vying for.
“What?! You were working with Blitzø that whole time?!”
“The hell? Fuckin’ calm down witch! Yeah! You know the guy or somethin’?”
“Or something– Sanji, do you have his number?!”
“Right here Miss Nami~ !”
The navigator switched from shaking Zoro back and forth to pry answers out of the man to snatching the cook’s offered phone. The group who happened to be in the lobby at the time consisting of the bickering duo, Usopp, Angel Dust, Cherri Bomb, and Alastor’s shadow creeping on the far wall watched as the woman angrily dialed the saved contact and stormed off while beginning her demands.
“Blitzø from IMP? This is Sanji’s crewmate, Nami, one of the ones who were with Prince Stolas for a while– Yes, THAT Prince Stolas! Who else is there?! See, this is why I’m calling! You’re clearly too stupid to fix this, so I’M gonna fix it for you! If you ever want to eat Sanji’s cooking again, you’ll do exactly what I– No, YOU listen to ME! That bastard loves you! Stop being a coward and dumbass! No, I’m not fucking with you! And if you love him even half much as he loves you, you’ll shut up and do what I say! If I can navigate a ship around the entire world without a map, I can navigate this dead-end relationship! You understand me– ”
The yelling faded away along with the still angry steps down the hall. After a moment of silence, Usopp commented, “Wow… Glad I’m not that guy.”
“ …So, dollface gives girl-gay guy friend relationship advice huh?” Angel asked with a squinted look of genuine consideration, one side of hands resting on his hips.
Cherri gave a slightly offended eyebrow raise at that. “I can give ya plenty of advice, Angel babe!”
“I think ’m gonna need more ta work with than ‘Just fuck ‘em’, Cherri…”
The swordsman ignored the byplay to scoff, “Guess so. I’m just surprised she cares enough to bother at all.”
“Oh, that’s cause– uh…” after a quick glance around, the puppet came in closer to whisper, “She doesn’t want Princess Charlie or her girlfriend finding out cause she’s afraid they’ll charge us for rent and all the food Luffy ate, but Prince Stolas let us use his book to go back to Laugh Tale and get our– sorry, HER treasure. Since then, she’s been helping him out with some stuff to pay him back, though it’s not an official thing… He’s a really nice guy and we’re friends, so I’m glad she’s looking out for him! We were gonna sneak Luffy into the Noble District next weekend to introduce them.”
“ …For real? So she’s absolutely loaded now and still trying to con me into paying off the fake-ass damn debt I owed her in life?! And of course we’re not gonna see a single beri of that! That woman– ”
“Don’t you dare talk about Miss Nami that way swords for brains– !”
Later Angel did, in fact, approach the woman. Presumably looking for guidance as to how to initiate an actual relationship with Husk instead of merely staring at the man and hoping that the coward would figure out he was allowed to make a move. Alastor found the matter to be immensely boring, with the only point of interest having been the spider’s cry of outrage at hearing Nami charged for her informal service, to which he bartered Cherri Bomb’s and his own silence concerning her reclaimed treasure. Much to Nami’s displeasure. That was certain to become another argument between her and the three Straw Hat men who’d been in the vicinity for that conversation. After their conversation which Alastor didn’t bother listening in on, he did notice that the navigator didn’t remain upset with Angel for the con, instead becoming more partial than she had been previously with his underlying flirtatious attitude. So Angel’s story must’ve drawn at least a bit of sympathy from the woman.
Regardless, there was some information of value Alastor had gained from his watchful eye over happenings concerning the navigator. The first being that the captain’s previous statement of the woman “liking money” had been a vast understatement. Her greed was so extensive, a fight had nearly broken out when she’d caught Husk cheating in a poker game against her and when Husk hissed back about how the woman herself was also cheating. It had taken Angel Dust excitedly calling out for a “cat fight” and thus redirecting both participants’ ire at his person to avert the potential weather damage to the lobby carpet.
The second thing to note was that the woman was one of the more intelligent of the crew along with being the savviest. While the doctor had proven to make for intelligent conversation and had more wisdom than one would assume, he also almost contradictorily possessed a child-like naivety about more worldly matters. Even with Chopper having lost enough of his fear towards Alastor to approach his tower for subsequent conversation, the Radio Demon still finds it all too simple to joke about having eaten an orphan or two before the other’s arrival, allowing the deerling to freak out for a good twenty seconds before clarifying that he had, indeed, been joking. And perhaps one instance of falling for this deceit would have been understandable, but truly, the third time of falling for it is two too many… Not that Alastor minded all too much, as he’d yet to lose his amusement for the jest, but still.
Therefore, in consideration that there were still some questions Alastor was looking to investigate… he decided that Nami was the most favorable Straw Hat to question.
“Salutations, dear navigator! Or perhaps you would prefer to be considered the treasurer? Aha! I do so amuse myself sometimes.”
The woman gave a particularly cat-like shriek, having been caught off guard by Alastor’s sudden presence in the hallway directly behind her. Her ears stood on end as she whipped around to face him.
Rather than continue the fearful display, though, Nami switched to crossing her arms. She forced an irritated suspicious out into prominence in a notably attempt to regain ground. “D-Don’t do that! I may be in charge of the money, but I’m the navigator through and through. You don’t have to call me that instead of my actual name though… What do you want?”
Finding a striking resemblance in attitude between the two cat-form sinners on the premise, Alastor found himself commenting, “Hmm… Cats have a tendency towards being testy, don’t they.”
“You’re really going with THAT– ?!”
“Oh shush now, no need for that,” he allowed his voice to drop into feedback for just the short word, radio dial eyes flashing in time to properly intimidate the other.
When Nami promptly dropped her snap of anger to retreat back towards the wall with a quiet eek, Alastor immediately resumed his casual pleasantries, “There we go! I’d like to state for the record that I’m not usually one to raise my tone against a lady, but attempting to treat me in a similar fashion to those dunderheads is no good at all! It seems that we’ll be working together for some time, so let’s try to get along, shall we?”
“More like we’ll be working together forever…” the word was spoken with a distinctly distressed sort of exasperation, before Nami pulled herself together enough for a cat-eyed glare, “If you aren’t looking for a fight, don’t say things that’ll start one! Now what is it already?”
With a pleasant hum, Alastor went straight to the crux of things, “You see, I’d like to inquire as to some background knowledge concerning our dear captain. Specifically in the context of his apparent divinity. I assume you’re aware of it? None of you lot bother to speak of it, but whenever I’ve mentioned him being a God in passing, the statement is accepted without any confusion. Well, outside of the captain himself that is. So as the brightest of the group, I thought you may be the best to ask after!”
As he expected, the woman gained a pridefully pleased gleam to her expression at the compliment, but it wasn’t quite enough. She also predictably gained a slyly cattish smirk as she ‘innocently’ offered, “Oh– is that so? Well, I guess I may know something about that. But it just wouldn't be good practice to give that kind of info out for free.”
“I have no issues with providing proper compensation.” Frankly, people that vied for monetary compensation tended to be the easiest to deal with. Without missing a beat, he manifested the piece he’d acquired previously for this exact purpose, a shining golden chain necklace ending in a brilliantly scarlet, sizable gem pendant.
“Did you know that in Hell, Blood Diamonds are a literal expression? I thought it might suit your tastes…”
Nami’s eyes were practically sparkling as he held the jewelry out to her. It was snatched away in an instant, the navigator jumping right to tapping and scratching at the diamond to apparently test its validity, before moving onto the gold chain itself. She then quickly deemed it to be of an acceptable quality and stowed away the treasure into the sizeable storage of her fur cleavage. When looking back at Alastor this time, Nami’s expression had shifted to one noticeably more approachable, though also somewhat sheepish. Like a cat who’d been caught with a canary that was supposed to be off limits.
“It’s great, thanks! You should’ve started with this! Though, uh… I was kinda playing up how much I really know about that stuff. Robin would be the best to talk to about it once she’s here, but I can tell you the basics.”
It seemed that she feared the possibility of him either retracting his payment should he find her response lacking or of him expressing his disappointment in a more violent manner, so he reassured her, “That would be sufficient for now. All I have to go off of are my own assumptions, so some concrete information would still be better than none.”
Nami’s face then dropped into one of careful thought as the woman considered how to phrase her explanation, “Well… Actually, I should start with this– You know about Devil Fruits, right?”
“Yes, but only vaguely so. I’d heard about them prior to meeting the captain but only in passing. He stated his rubbery properties were due to one, and then later mentioned descriptors for those of his crew who hold such a power. After prying into some more gossip from sinners of your world, I’ve also learned that those who eat these fruits are unable to swim, it’s mentioned as a common cause of death for those types, and that they seem to be categorized into three distinctions that cover animal transformation, elemental fusion, and what has only been described as everything else.”
“That’s about right yeah. So I don’t need to explain all of that part then thankfully. Well… you know how Chopper is a reindeer who ate the Human-Human Fruit? It’s kind of complicated, but essentially we all thought Luffy’s Devil Fruit was one of those everything else types, the Paramecia Gum-Gum Fruit that turned his body to rubber. But after he awakened it, which is kind of like unlocking a Fruit’s full abilities that’s really hard to do, it turns out its technically a Mythical Zoan that also features Paramecia-like properties, the Human-Human Fruit, Model: Nika. Nika used to be known as some kind of Sun God who was a warrior of freedom with a rubbery body, so after Luffy actually awakened the power… he kind of transforms into Nika, I guess. Does that make sense?”
…Well, that explained basically everything. He figured the freedom aspect but missed the Sun, despite having already made numerous mental comparisons. Can’t get them all though...
Mind tracing back the line of logic, Alastor found himself giving a non-committal hum, “So a human who’d consumed a Human-Human Fruit modeled after a God… How intriguing! I do believe you failed to give your own knowledge enough credit with that hesitant lead in, my dear. That was a perfectly plentiful explanation! I’m assuming where your information is lacking, then, is concerning details of the God Nika in question…?”
With a slight nod, Nami confirmed, “Yeah. We’d actually never heard of that legend before it was explained to us by someone who knew about Nika and saw Luffy in his Gear 5th. Robin was the one who caught most of the info on that since she was the most interested and then tried following it up as well as she could. She’s the archeologist, so anything research or history related is all up her alley.”
“I see. I still find it rather peculiar that a pirate crew would even have an archeologist, though the captain had mentioned she was needed to find ‘the One Piece’ which I’d heard is what Gold Roger’s treasure is referred to. May I also inquire as to how a historian is required to find a pirate’s hidden stash? If it was an older one that would be understandable, but as far as I could tell the man was in infamy only some two decades ago.”
“ …Oh wow, that’s right– You have no idea about all that stuff, do you?” At the tensing of his smile and slight narrowing of his gaze, Nami quickly course corrected, waving her hands at him as she nervously insisted, “N-No, I don’t mean that in a bad way! What you gave me is enough payment for this too! Especially since you should really be told anyway as part of the crew… So anyways, let me tell you about how we got to Laugh Tale, what we found there other than the treasure treasure, and how Luffy deposed the ruler of the world and dismantled the world government– ”
“What was that last one?”
“You heard me right the first time…”
Needless to say, it proved to be a very, very enlightening conversation. Worth every penny of that necklace he’d given her, though his perspective was of one who didn’t really care for accumulating wealth outside of having enough to tend to his own comforts. The new information turned in his mind for some time, considerations for new plots brewing along with it.
It wasn’t too long after their conversation that the navigator declared to the Straw Hats that it was time for a shopping trip, and if they needed to get anything they should do so now while she was available to check the necessity of their purchases as the holder of all their fortune. Luffy just saw it as an opportunity for a group outing, excited to be out and about with even more of his crew on hand. Alastor predicted that he would be invited by Luffy, but had not anticipated that the doctor to come up along with him to additionally extend the invitation. Still, though, he declined the offer much to both their disappointment. He not only had no provisions in need of attaining, but also did not wish to spend any extended amount of time with the two undesirables who would also be going. And the sniper and navigator would likely feel more secure with his lack of presence regardless.
However, he recognized the wonderful potential for unbridled chaos in this outing, and thus sent his shadow to stalk the pirates. He was not disappointed in the slightest.
The affair had begun harmless enough. It seemed that they had been able to get most of their shopping done. The cook perused the food options of Hell, Nami browsed through the fashion for pieces that suited her tastes, the puppet investigated the various gadgets of VoxTek much to Alastor’s own displeasure, Chopper bought some sweets, and of course the swordsman just bought more alcohol, though it was a particular sake Husk likely didn’t feature at the bar rather than his usual beer. The pirates had the sense to ensure one other member was with Zoro at all times to prevent the man from becoming inexplicably lost again.
Alastor hadn’t expected the captain to get anything, or if he did it would merely be a turkey leg snack or something along those lines. So he’d been somewhat surprised to see Luffy enter the same shop Usopp had taken interest in. However, rather than come out with any sort of shiny new device, he instead procured a rather retro-looking radio, the style much too outdated for anything of VoxTek’s brand.
“These’re one ‘a those radios right? So I’ll be able to hear Al now when he’s talkin’ on his!”
“Right. Though, uh… I’m not sure you’ll actually want to listen to his station. He hasn’t done anything as bad as what he used to yet, but what if he plays the screams of the eternally suffering and dying again someday?! It’d just come on and we wouldn’t be able to turn it off! It’s terrifying just imagining it!”
“I don’t think he’ll do that unless he gets really angry or somethin’.”
“That doesn’t help!”
From up in his tower, Alastor couldn’t help the way his smile grew into something particularly pleased with a brief chuckle, leaning over his control panel with his elbows set on the surface and his chin propped up by his hands. The captain hadn’t needed to buy a radio, he would’ve gladly conjured one of his usual style for the other upon his request, but the fact that Luffy had independently wished to get one in the first place simply to listen to the Radio Demon’s station was… Well, it was downright endearing. Perhaps some chocolate-filled beignets for dessert tonight would make for a good reward? The deerling would also enjoy them…
Just as he’d initially predicted, though, the relatively peaceful shopping trip soon came to an abrupt end. This occurred in the form of a mass of gangsters pulling up out of the alleyways and nook and crannies of the streets in a clear hit attempt. An extravagant one at that, seeing as they numbered up to a good hundred or so total, multiple gangs likely having been hired. They bore guns not of Carmilla Carmine’s make, but the sleeker designs of Vox’s covert under-the-table non-brand associated weaponry. Which while they failed to provide the angelic ammunitions Carmilla had an essential monopoly on, still had perfectly functioning normal bullets along with some more taser-like options. Among their many numbers, there was likely only a handful baring non mass-produced holy arms.
The trembling trio promptly freaked out at the sight of the many, many guns pointed their way, diving behind the nearest dumpster. Zoro and Sanji, in contrast, both stepped forward in clear anticipation, smirks growing onto their faces. Brandishing his swords including the blade of heavenly steel and white handle he equipped to his main mouth as usual, the asura demon was the one to pose, “Wanna let us take a stab at them instead of you thinning them out, Luffy? It’s been too long since I had anyone to go against other than the idiot cook here.”
“Right back at ya, mosshead! My legs could use the exercise!”
“Okay!” the captain joyfully agreed.
The mob open fired at that point. Clangs of steel blocked bullets headed the swordsman’s way while the cook leaped high into the air. Luffy’s elastic body caught any bullets attempting to pierce his person as usual, though he did noticeable shift his head and frame to avoid the shining flash of a couple heavenly bullets that were hidden amongst the mix, seemingly being able to distinguish them with ease.
“Tch. With only this many, it’ll take less than ten minutes to kick the shit outta these bastards.”
“Are ya gettin’ slow, swirly brow? If we don’t have this done in less than five minutes, you must really be losing your touch!”
“I’ll show you who’s slow! Whoever finishes off the least pays up!”
“I’ll take that bet!”
And with that, the two were off. Alastor truly hoped the Vees had not anticipated any actual success with this hit and this was merely a method to gather more information on the captain via the VoxTek drones hovering about, because if they had expected anything else, Vox was even dumber than Alastor had given him credit for. He hadn’t been so stupid as to only arm the gangs with guns considering his main target’s immunity, but it was clear that the variety of knives, swords, and other forms of blade-based weaponry would be of no use. Even just the captain’s self-proclaimed wingmen tore through the lot of them like paper. And with the captain himself excitedly tossing himself into the fray to partake in the fun, Alastor believed the swordsman’s estimate of the fight taking less than five minutes to be fully accurate.
Upon seeing their opponent’s doomed fate for themselves, the other three slowly crawled out of their hiding spot to simply stand at the sidelines and watch. They hosted commentary amongst themselves.
“So… do we know who Luffy pissed off this time?”
“This is probably from that Overlord Valentino and his allies, right? Angel said something about Luffy beating the guy up for him.”
“Ahhh that would do it, yeah.”
“I… I feel kind of bad for these guys, actually. They really didn’t know what they were getting into.”
“You could say that again! Even I can take out these chumps! Heh– they should all be thankful the great Usopp has a sore wrist to– ”
Suddenly cutting himself off, the sniper showcased a set of incredible reflexes as he immediately pivoted to face the building off to the side of them with a large slingshot in hand. One shot exploded midair, colliding with the bullet that only just shot out.
The follow up shot landed home in one of the upper windows of the building. Rather than setting off into an explosion, a burst of green shown from the window that left the presumed sniper inside cursing. Alastor was rather taken aback by the happening. His shadow had been so focused on watching the show, he hadn’t thought to check the surrounding area for backup. Admittedly a rather foolish mistake…
“Green Star: Devil! Oh damn, that was kind of a close one!”
“Someone shot at us?!” Chopper cried while falling back behind the sniper. The navigator sent the window a similarly wary look.
“So… who’s gonna be the one to go get the guy? Cause it’s definitely not me!”
“You can literally shoot people with lightening.”
“That doesn’t mean I wanna be the one doing the dirty work! What if some of the stuff I bought gets messed up?! That’s wasted money right there!”
Oh for goodness sake– Rather than endure the squabble any further, Alastor’s shadow slunk its way into the room with the sniper. What greeted him was the rather interesting sight of a giant venus flytrap taking up the majority of the space. There was a muffed cry of a person attempting and failing to fight their way out, until the attempt was no longer a failure. A handy knife cut a hole from the inside out of the plant to release a now wet-looking imp onto the floor.
“FUCK!” the imp’s tail shook with a rattle-like sound in time with the curse as he began to clean himself off, before he caught sight of Alastor’s shadow, and then Alastor himself as he materialized from the darkness to stand over him. Spiraling eyes trailed up his form to stare at the serrated teeth of the Radio Demon’s grin. “ …Fuck.”
“Fuck indeed,” was all he said a tendril bodily tossed the western-looking imp out the window.
Alastor ignored the shrieking cries of the trio as he materialized once again in front of the imp hitman that was now slightly splattered onto the ground, but seemed well enough for his arms to push himself back up. Alastor’s shadows were quick to wrap around the other in a bind. In an act of consideration, he placed himself between the three shocked pirates and the imp despite the enemy likely no longer being a threat.
He then blinked down at the sight of Chopper stepping up to hide behind the back of his legs while taking a look at their attacker, though by hiding his face rather than the rest of his body.
“Other way around, deerling.” With a yelp, the reindeer corrected his form. Alastor gave him a short head pat. “There you go! Now, as for our little miscreant here– Who do you work for? Not only do you bear angelic bullets, you were much too smart about your strategy in comparison with the efforts of the other gangsters to be actively working with them, and you clearly weren’t targeting the Straw Hat Demon like they are.”
“He used angelic bullets?! That could’a killed us killed us!” Usopp belatedly cried in fear, moving to hide behind Nami who hissed in a cat-like manner at the puppet for attempting to use her as shield.
Now kneeling over the ground, the imp threw his head back to push his cowboy hat out of his eyes, glaring up at the Radio Demon in a show of defiance. He spoke with a Wrath-Ring western drawl, “Ya really expect me to be givin’ up my clients like that?”
“Not necessarily. But fair warning that if you do not, I shall instead be forced to consume your flesh live on air with the hope that your client happens to be listening to my segment, such that I may properly send a message to them. I don’t particularly care which path you take in that regard.”
There were three resounding high-pitched squeaks from behind him. The reindeer released the hold he’d had of Alastor’s legs to fall back head over hooves and land into the crouching huddle of Nami and Usopp, the three once again trembling together this time in fear of the Radio Demon rather than the demon who’d just attempted to assassinate one of them. Smart of them, really. He was the one much more deserving of fear between the two.
“ …Yeah, I don’t care nearly enough ‘bout that bitch to be makin’ a stand for her,” the imp quickly gave up his veil of professionalism to spill the tea, “Stella of the Ars Goetia hired me to kill some ‘a Prince Stolas’s ‘temp security crew’, is what they called themselves. To send a message, as ya can guess.”
“Stolas’s ex?!” the puppet cried out in time with Chopper’s wordless yelp, the two crouching together further. In contrast, the cat abruptly stood up to shout, “That harpy bitch?!”
…That wasn’t totally unexpected, but the answer was somewhat disappointing. He’d been hoping it was another Overlord or other potential sinner enemy the Straw Hat’s had gained in life, such that he could confront them more directly if he so desired. But dealing with the Hellborn Goetia always came with it a bothersome amount of politicking that usually wasn’t worth the hunt. He’ll just have to make sure he leaves a strong impression, then.
“Is that so? Well then, how about in exchange for allowing you to leave here with your life, you send a message to your client for me…” Using the mic-head of his cane, Alastor forcibly tipped the imp’s head up by the chin such that the hitman could do nothing but sneer at him. The Radio Demon greeted the look with a sharp sort of smile.
“This temp security crew is actually part of the following of a divine being who is now amongst our kind. Should an attempt be made against them again, if you are lucky, the God will be the one to deal with you.” Alastor gestured his head back towards the laughing Monkey behind them, who was very clearly at the end of beating up the helpless gangsters. “And if you are not lucky, I will be the one to deal with you. This goes for both you and your employer. Do we have an understanding?”
The imp’s eyes blew out wide at the mention of the divine, before wincing at the threat. Though not yet cowed enough to keep from quipping, “Why the fuck were ya even out here with ‘em? They left the hotel hours ago!”
“Ha! Are you truly so daft? Very well, allow me to spell it out for you. I am not here on the behalf of the Hazbin Hotel or even Princess Charlie Morningstar herself– ” leaning down such that the imp was unable to look away from the Radio Demon’s ever-sharpening grin, he quieted his tone to emphasize his words and their distortion.
“I am here on behalf of the God. An attack upon his following I consider to be the same as an attack upon my person, and I am truly doing you a great kindness by allowing you the chance to act as my messenger-imp rather than simply killing you amidst your pathetic groveling. Now, do we have an understanding?”
“ …I hear ya loud ‘n’ clear, Sir.”
“Now that’s what I like to hear!”
When he released the blanching hitman, the imp quicky rushed onto his feet. He scurried off into the alley like a frightened rat, and the Radio Demon let out a short burst of laughter at the amusing sight.
At the feeling of something clutching at his legs once more, Alastor’s laughter trailed off as he looked down to see the reindeer was holding onto him again, though this time looking up at him with a warm smile.
“Ch-Chopper?!” the now proven sniper called out in confusion. Winning an unseen surprise quickdraw against a gun using a slingshot was a fairly significant demonstration of skill, despite the man’s tendency for cowering.
“Stop being a scaredy-cat, Usopp! Al helped us! Thanks, Alastor!”
He plainly responded, “There’s no need for such pleasantries. I was annoyed that the imp had made past my notice.”
Usopp interjected with concern once again, “Hang on, since when did you get here?! Was that you I felt watching us that whole time?!”
“It was indeed.”
“You were literally stalking us?! That’s too creepy!”
“He was watching out for us though! To protect us! Awww~ ya really didn’t need ta Alastor~ We can handle ourselves ya know!” caught up in the assumptions of his own importance, the reindeer began that bashful wiggling of his. Alastor withheld an unimpressed sigh at the sight of it.
“I truly wasn’t. I was watching because I’d rightfully believed that you lot would provide some entertainment.”
The navigator gave a withering sigh, “That really is creepy, Chopper. You’ve got the wrong idea… But Alastor’s not too bad, Usopp. You should give him more credit than that.”
“Huh?! Since when was that your take?! Actually, since when did Chopper start liking him?!”
“He pays well.” That was the beginning and end of the woman’s reasoning.
“THAT’S the logic you’re going with?! I don’t know why I expected anything else!”
On the other hand, the doctor somehow managed to give a reasoning even more inane, “We talked a couple days ago and found out we actually have a lot in common! More than the deer thing– cause I’m a reindeer dammit! We bonded over how Luffy accepted us both as lonely monsters.”
Alastor’s grin pulled taunt in displeasure. “I have literally never said ANYTHING even remotely resembling that statement...”
“You implied it! And I could feel it, cause we’re both deer! …Wait, no! That’s not right! Dammit!”
“I mean, you’re both a type of deer– no wait why am I adding to this?! And even if he’s part deer, he’s still a human! He’s not an actual deer like Chopper!” the sniper rushed to pull himself out of Chopper’s line of thought.
And, solely because he saw an opportunity to fuck with the man, Alastor leaned forward just slightly towards the other to pose with a smile, “Are you certain about that?”
“ …Oh god don’t mess with me like this, PLEASE!!! Also, was it really a good idea to talk about Luffy being a God like that to some random hitman?! I know it’ll scare the guy and Stella off more, but that seems like it could cause more trouble in other ways…”
With a noncommittal hum, Alastor just turned away from the fretful looking puppet to watch as Luffy excitedly approached them, the ‘battle’ now decidedly over within a grand total of three minutes. “It’s of no concern. It won’t be long until all of the Ring knows of the captain’s being, regardless.”
“H-Huh? What do ya mean by that– ”
Usopp was promptly cut off as the captain’s arms wound themselves around Alastor’s upper torso above where the reindeer was still clinging to him, calling out joyfully, “ALASTOR! You’re here! Shishishi! Can ya get Zoro for us?”
“Hey, good timing red ears. That shitty swords for brains got himself lost in the middle of the goddamn battle, that piece of shit! It hadn’t even been five shitty minutes with him being out of sight– ”
“But of course he did,” he interrupted the cook before the man could get further into his complaints. Dissolving into shadow to retract out of the bothersome hugging, Alastor rematerialized but a couple feet over before tapping the end of his cane to the ground three times. From the spot the cane had made contact, a pool of darkness swirled about to spit out the missing swordsman. Zoro at first looked surprised by the sudden change in location before gaining an annoyed scowl.
“Huh? Oh, there you guys are. Can’t believe you just wandered off like that in the middle of a fight– ”
“THAT WAS YOU DAMMIT!!!!”
Rather than echo the resounding anger, Usopp instead exclaimed in awed shock, “W-Wait, Alastor can summon Zoro back from being lost? For real?!”
In a very matter of fact tone, Sanji momentarily calmed down enough to affirm, “That’s right yeah. We finally put a tracker on that shitty mosshead! Al’s even been keeping Luffy out of the kitchen by hiding it from him with magic or somethin’.”
“Seriously?! That’s incredible!” Nami gasped while raising a hand to her mouth, evidently impressed, only for her tone to lower down into a forlorn sigh, “If only he wasn’t a serial killer cannibal, he would’ve been the perfect recruit otherwise…” What happened to ‘he’s not too bad, he pays well’…?
Ignoring the back and forth, Luffy just threw an arm around Alastor’s shoulders to lean into him with a laugh, “Yay! With Al here we can have even more fun now! Haha! Take us somewhere, Alastor!”
While he permitted the less restrictive hold this time, Alastor declined the suggestion, “There’s no need for that. I merely dropped by to handle the matter those other three had gotten themselves involved in whilst you were preoccupied. I’ll just be on my way now, and you all can go back to your– ”
“No! I want you to join us too, Alastor!” Chopper exclaimed with insistence, stepping forward to give a pathetically pleading fawn-eyed look, “You’re supposed to be part of the crew now too, but you haven’t been able to spend any time with all of us together. That’s not right!”
Narrowing his gaze on the little deerling, he kept his tone politely level, “Well you see, it’s not a matter of capability so much as it is willingness– ”
“None of that, Al. Chopper’s right you know,” to his surprise, this time Sanji spoke up, speaking plainly as he lit a cigarette for himself, “Luffy’s not just gonna let you be off by yourself all the time, so you better get used to dealing with being around all of us together. It’s not even actually all of us yet since we’re still missing the beautiful Miss Robin and those other guys.”
“Everything’s more fun when we’re all together, right?” the captain chimed in as though to prove the man’s point.
Before Alastor could press his rejection, Zoro scoffed at the other’s efforts, “Come on guys, just let red ears do what he wants. If he’s too scared to be around us, that’s his own deal.”
The sound of a loud record scratch cut through the air, causing the trembling trio to cover their ears and step back and away from the Radio Demon with a fearful wince. Alastor’s grin was now pulled fully taunt and sharp as his eyes quickly darted at the swordsman with a twitch.
“That. Is an absurd notion. My withdrawal from participating in your inane activities is not a show of fear.”
The annoying swordsman just sent a rather irritating smirk at him, shrugging. “Really, huh? Then prove it.”
“I will not fall for this poorly concealed farce!”
“Who said anythin’ about this being a ‘farce’? I’m being serious when I say I think you’re a damn coward for being too nervous to hang out with any of us other than Luffy! Do you even know how much special treatment he’s given you cause of how damn sensitive you are? He definitely wouldn’t let any of us skip out on all going out together just cause we wanted to be moody about it!”
After a series of too many eye-twitches as the idiot progressed further and further with his bullshit, Alastor finally had to growl, “Oh you infuriating imbecile– Fine! Very well, then, if you’re so insistent on retaining the grace of my presence, I have the perfect place for us to enjoy the rest of this wonderful day!” It was with the thought of that place in mind that Alastor transitioned out of his fuming rage and into a mean grin of anticipation, knowing very well that a certain portion of the group would come to regret that the swordsman had put up so much of a fuss.
Upon hearing that they would be headed to Cannibal Town, the fearful puppet cried out that he’d contracted the “I’ll-die-if-I-go-to-Cannibal-Town Disease”. Alastor merely chimed with false cheer about how fortunate it was for the man that his crew’s doctor was one capable of curing any disease, with the doctor in question too busy crying in fear to contribute to the point one way or another. He then forcibly dragged Usopp into the darkness with even more fear inducing shadowy tentacles. The navigator, who’d been in the middle of attempting to flee in panic, was pulled in next.
The captain simply jumped into the shadowy pit with a bark of inane laughter, not even having to be asked to make his way yet. When a stronger set of tendrils dragged in both the cook and the swordsman together, they were too preoccupied with pushing the others’ face out of the way in disgust to redirect their anger towards Alastor where it rightly belonged. And with only the still crying reindeer left, Alastor was free to lean down slightly and plainly explain to the creature that in the case of the cannibals of Cannibal Town, they truly did only consume human flesh –or rather, human-derived flesh considering the wide variety of hybrid forms demons tended to showcase. Ironically, the puppet’s mostly wooden form was one of the few that the cannibals would find not worth the effort of the hunt, not that he planned on informing the amusing coward. This consoled Chopper considerably, though the boy was still clearly disturbed to some degree.
“Um, Alastor… I’m sorry, but I’m still kinda scared to go into your, uh– shadow portal thing… Can you hold my hand and go together with me?” He held up a hoof towards Alastor at the request. The Radio Demon just stared at it for a brief second.
“I would think you old enough to handle being in the dark, at least.”
“It’s not that, it’s just– scary in general! P-Please?”
“ …I will release it immediately upon our arrival, you understand,” with a sigh, Alastor accepted the small hoof, still finding the situation to be somewhat ridiculous even as he went with the path of least resistance.
“Yay! Thanks Alastor! I knew you liked me, ya bastard~ ”
“Are you trying to provoke me into rescinding my offer?”
“S-Sorry!”
Once in Cannibal Town, the three cowards huddled together while the three muscle-heads strolled about the place. Alastor was glad to see that Lucifer had kept to his word and the town was already fully repaired from the Red Dog’s magma, left in better shape than it had been before the siege. He dropped by the Emporium to collect Rosie for a surprise late lunch, then they all made their way to a charming café that was at the edge of town, one of the only places that survived other food items besides human remains in consideration to visitors.
He introduced the Overlord to the three new additions, and while they were all initially wary of the cannibal, tensions relaxed throughout the evening. The only real sticking point had been how the majority of the Straw Hats relocated to a separate table upon both Rosie’s and Alastor’s order of a multitude of human body parts being served, unable to stomach the sight. He was pleased to see that, along with the captain, the reindeer actually decided to stay at the table despite his distinctly uncomfortable expression and non-human meal. Chopper usually couldn’t handle being around Alastor when he was partaking in venison. Upon the creature’s explanation that technically, to him the consumption of human beings was just somewhat more unsettling than eating any other animal besides his own kind, Alastor conceded that the logic made sense even as the puppet cried out in despair.
When Luffy had quickly finished his own order of beef ribs, Rosie offered him some of their human ribs, which the boy declined though with a somewhat surprising response…
“Oh yeah, no thanks. When Al talked about eating people when we first met, after he left I tried some ‘a the meat he left behind, and it was kinda weird. Wasn’t really sure if I liked it or not.”
Upon hearing the clatter of a chair screeching back to fall to the ground from behind him, Alastor preemptively turned to the now standing stone-faced cook to defend himself, “Just to be clear, the emphasis of my cannibalistic tastes was intended as a form of intimidation, not as a suggestion.”
However, even as he explained the circumstances, he still turned back to the boy once again to tempt him, “But dear captain, the selection I brought out that day was a quite a poor one. If you are truly interesting in trying human flesh, you should try some of the selections here– ”
“You are NOT turning our captain into a shitty CANNIBAL, shitty red ears!!!”
“Oh my– I know it’s not for everyone, but there’s no need ta be rude ‘bout our preferences, young man!”
The simpleton outright flinched at the woman’s reprimand. “I– I sincerely apologize, Madam Rosie! I just… really don’t want to have to cook that kind of food…”
Leaning just a bit closer to his friend to gesture a hand towards her, Alastor chimed with a mean sort of joy, “Is that so? That’s most unfortunate, then. You are quite the chef, after all! I’m sure darling Rosie here would have loved the chance to partake in some of your cooking, and while she can technically eat other types of food, human flesh is the only type which truly nourishes the cannibals. Would you not consider the possibility of trying your hand at such dishes for the honorable purpose of hosting such a delightful lady?”
Rosie’s miffed expression turned into one of curious anticipation at Alastor’s suggestion. He relished at the sight of the crisis flashing through the cook’s eyes, the man’s mind being torn back and forth between his distaste for cannibalism and his refusal to disappoint a woman and even worse, let her go hungry. Perhaps it was a mercy that the decision was taken from him in the form of Nami knocking Sanji unconscious with a powerful staff strike to the back of the head. Though Alastor himself was a bit disappointed in the outcome. Given long enough, he’s certain that the chef would’ve caved!
Overall, Alastor was somewhat shocked that the outing had gone as well as it had, and that after a considerable adjustment period, even the timider of the pirates were able to settle in enough to enjoy the other selections the café had to offer and even the pleasantry of Rosie’s company and conversation. And while he himself didn’t care for Chopper’s ‘cuter’ form, he could take appreciation in his friend’s enthusiasm for the adorable creature. When Rosie cheerfully invited them all to return for another luncheon sometime, none of the others looked discomforted by Luffy’s eager agreement. After whisking away the others with a swirl of darkness, however, Alastor took one extra moment to make a certain request.
“My dear, this has been a more splendid evening than I had anticipated, so I do so regret spoiling the mood by asking something of you…”
“Oh, none ‘a that now, Alastor! Ya know you can ask lil ol’ Rosie for anythin’! So what is it ya need?”
“Well you see, I will be making a certain announcement on tomorrow’s broadcast that may not be taken as seriously as it should be. I was hoping that you might assist in influencing the public’s opinion to sway in my favor? You and your cannibals are quite adept at getting the word out on these sorts of matters.”
While she sent him an intrigued glance, Rosie readily agreed, “While I can’t make any promises ‘til I hear exactly what you’re announcin’, I’ll do my best with whatever it is. Ya got me curious now though, Alastor. It’s been a while since ya made any big broadcasts!”
“Thank you, dear. I’d hate to ruin the surprise! Though I do admit, it will not be one of the more exciting segments I used to favor. Aha! But I believe it will lead to some entertaining happenings, regardless,” and with a vague, curling grin to match the uncertainty of his intentions, Alastor bid his fellow Overlord a proper farewell.
If the events that had occurred earlier that day had proven anything, it was that he’d been right in his belief that the captain’s presence had yet to make as many waves as it should have. If those hitmen had known better, they never would have even made an attempt against the divine being and his following no matter how much money was being promised to them. While the sinners at large knew the boy to be a figure to watch for due to his public defeat of Valentino and infraction upon the Vees, knowledge as to the God’s defeat of Eve was unfavorable to the Morningstars and thus kept purposefully under wraps. Alastor himself would hesitate to make that matter publicly known as well, considering it intrinsically involved the context of his own enslavement. But not even the detail of the captain being capable of breaking Soul Contracts was known, since obviously the Vees would never advertise such a thing even with the conspicuous absence of their famed porn star.
Alastor is aware, though, that the respect his captain was due would come to him eventually. He’s certain that given enough time, Luffy would end up either using his divine form in the city proper or breaking another Contract in a more public setting. But as far as he was concerned… there was nothing wrong with speeding up the timeline of things, so to speak.
“Salutations my dear listeners, your favorite Radio Demon is on the air once more with a bit more significant news to share than usual,” he began as he usually would, keeping his tone purposefully light despite knowing where the segment was headed. Though he was fairly certain he failed to keep the smirk of his grin out of his words, “Now, I know what many of you may be thinking– Something even more momentous than what I usually deign to speak of? What a frightening thought! And I can assure the more cowardly sinners now that this will not be a return to the screams of prior broadcasts. At least not for today. Haha!”
Turning in his seat to lean fully into the backrest, Alastor’s claws curled against his mic in a similar manner to the sharp curl of his smile, his tone twisting with them, “No. Because today, dear listeners, I have the pleasure– nay, the honor of speaking as the herald of the coming age! Though many have failed to realize it yet, a new era is upon us! And it is one worthy of celebration!” His other hand stretched out wide in a grand gesture, the words moving through him even when there was no one to see.
“For a savior of the Heavens has come to join us down in this pit of Hell. Not a being of such hopeless concepts of redemption or mercy, but one of a truer force. That of Freewill. The very thing that brought upon the temptations which led humanity to suffer in damnation, and yet in turn is often somehow paradoxically out of reach to most people. In death, falling under the restrictive control of those more powerful is even more common than in life. Therefore, those of you who happen to be amongst the contracted should be filled with joy! There now exists the chance that your pathetic soul may yet be saved! For the Sun God of freedom has come to bring upon the missing dawn to the darkness of this Ring and the sinners who inhabit it!”
Through the radio waves, the Radio Demon felt out the reactions to his declarations. The radio of the God in question was easy to locate, with the captain himself merely still in blank confusion while a mixture of his crew and the Hazbin residents gathered around the device in a frenzied spectrum of shock. The radio Vox had assumedly procured to replace the one he’d broken was also easily tracked, the Overlord having spit out that disgusting instant brew he attempted to pass off as coffee when he choked on his drink.
All around the city, sinners stopped in the midst of their day to listen to his words, ranging from not yet comprehending surprise, to shock, to disbelief, to that ever so fragile feeling of hope– The Radio Demon had the full attention of any who was within hearing range of his broadcast, and he relished in that spotlight.
“Now, there are likely some of you who merely assume I’ve finally fully lost my mind. And to that I say, I have indeed been insane for quite some time! But that doesn’t change the truth of my words. This Sun God does in fact exist, those of his world may even know the originating legend of Sun God Nika as well as the title he earned in life as King of the Pirates. He won the freedom of that world, and his power has only grown in death even when he’s taken to using a mortal form. Here in Hell, he has already in fact proven himself capable of forcibly breaking the Soul Contracts of Overlords. If any of you are in need of a testimony, the recently retired spider of the night Angel Dust can attest to this, along with his previous contractor Overlord Valentino of the Vees. Aha! Yes, you heard that right! For Straw Hat Luffy not only delivered a sound defeat to that moth man, he did so for the sake of the spider, freeing him and his soul from the pimp’s control! It was quite the showing I assure you, no matter how far-fetched it sounds! Though, if you would prefer to wait and watch what happens next, that should also be sufficient. There should be at least one soul willing to stake their chances on this endeavor, and I’m certain that will make for quite the show as well.”
Spinning to the side to lean further towards the mic, the Radio Demon’s antlers curled out as stretched as his serrated smile, the bittersweetness of temptation flowing freely in his words, “Regardless, sooner or later, you will all come to know this God’s power. And when you do, when you are ready to take that small step towards freedom, all one need simply do is come to the Hazbin Hotel! What a conveniently accessible location! Ha! Plead your case to the Sun God, Monkey D. Luffy! And should his whims sway towards your favor, with just the acknowledgment of your future lord and savior and perhaps some minor bribery, he will handedly take care of any messy soul business entrapping your person! A stupendous deal if I’ve ever heard one! Ahaha!”
He again rose one hand into the air, and then the other in time with his words. “So to the pitiful and suffering, rejoice! And to the powerful and thriving, beware! The winds of change will blow like a hurricane through this underworld! Centuries worth of foundations and order will break and fall under the pressure! The new era is already dawning upon the eternal night of this Hell! …No matter whether you desire it or not,” with a short cackling trill, Alastor shifted out of his more ominous tone to end back on his showman’s joviality, “And with that said, that’s all I have for you today, dear listeners. So farewell until next time! I’m sure that whenever that time comes, there will already be matters of interest to discuss. Hahahaha!”
With rather impeccable timing, as soon as Alastor disconnected himself from the air and pulled his visage back into order, the trapdoor leading up to his tower slammed open. Rather than the usual suspect, however, the orange hair and ears of the clearly fuming navigator popped up out of the opening. He wasn’t surprised by the change up though, turning in his seat with a smile to face the woman who stomped up to him. So overcome by her ire, she lost all sense of fear regarding his person or power.
“What the hell was THAT?!?! Are you crazy?! It sounded like you’re trying to make a cult out of Luffy or something!”
Alastor kept his tone deceptively casual as he explained, “That’s because I did indeed speak with the purpose of kickstarting his church down here. Yes.”
“…Wh– What?!”
“How did you phrase it previously? That’s right– You heard me right the first time…”
“ …You’re serious. You actually– are starting a CULT???” anger cutting away to bewilderment, cat eyes rapidly blinked at him for almost a solid half minute before Nami cut away to exasperation once more, “WHY?!?!”
“What God is without a proper following? And I’m not starting it. It’s not like I intend to lead the sheep or even have the captain himself do as such or anything of the sort. I foresee this organization being entirely tangential and separate to us, much like how fans flock about their celebrity of interest. Once enough people are taken by his power, I’m sure they’ll sort themselves out,” before Nami could start on a tirade at the non-answer, Alastor waved the issue away with what he knew was an irritating amount of carelessness, “The captain would have come to bring more widespread liberation at some point, I’m merely expediting the process. The Soul Contract system of Hell is much too contrary to his philosophy to have lasted with his extended presence. The fact that the captain is not up here himself to object is a testament to this. Do you disagree with that notion?”
Nami visually had to sort out her buzzing thoughts. “Well– yeah, but not like that! He doesn’t want people to see him as some kind of God!”
“Even if that’s the case, they will in fact see him as one regardless. You all may not stake much importance in his divinity, but down here amongst the sinners of the other world, that will be regarded as his most prominent characteristic. Just as it is impossible for the damned to look upon Lucifer without seeing the fallen angel and King of Hell, they will not be able to look upon his light without seeing a figure of divinity. We might as well accept the inevitable and take control of the narrative from the start,” at the woman’s further shock, Alastor merely gave a neutral shrug to go along with his assertions.
“There’s no need to fret too much about this, dearie. The way I see it, this is a win-win-win!” he counted off his points with his fingers as he spoke them, “The dear captain will get a proper start on his unintentional revolution to rid the place of something he detests and perhaps face one or two promising battles to entertain himself with in the process. Dear Charlie will benefit from newly freed sinners possibly considering the impossibility of redemption as they forge a new path forward, and many may not have anywhere to go after their deal is cut and will accept the hotel’s offering anyway. And as for me, well– if I can’t own anyone’s soul, then certainly no one else should be able to either! I am not above petty sabotage in regards to my so-called fellow Overlords! Haha!”
Shifting his gaze down to his claws in an obvious show of dismissal, Alastor concluded with a drawl, “But in any case, there’s nothing you can do about the matter now. Knowledge thrust into the public sphere cannot be retracted. Ask for forgiveness rather than permission, as they say. I do hope you understand. I’m simply playing the game to my favor.”
Ironically, he had thought the woman would be the most likely to take offense to his independent action. She was used to taking charge when both the captain and the first mate didn’t care enough to do so. He couldn’t care less about the swordsman’s opinion or even the navigator’s outside of her potential meddling, and as for the captain himself, he wouldn’t have attempted the venture if he’d thought Luffy would disagree with the principle.
There was a tense moment of silence. Alastor didn’t break his careful show of certainty no matter how long it went on for.
Until the navigator spoke in a low, severe voice, “ …Even for something like this, you have to give a selfish reason to do it? Honestly… Maybe that is the case… Maybe Luffy will end up helping these people, and maybe they will see him as a God for it, and maybe things down here will make a turn for the better for it. And maybe you really don’t care about that as long as you’re getting something out of it too. Whatever. Even if all of that is true… there’s just one thing that I absolutely won’t stand for– ”
He had to contain a jolt as a hand suddenly slammed down on the surface of the panel beside him. Alastor’s attention was forcibly drawn up its arm to look back at Nami, who fully stuck her face into his space without hesitation, expression cast in a scowl of unmoving determination.
“ –I won’t accept us taking money from these people! We cannot charge them for their freedom!”
He stared almost blankly at the woman, fully convinced he’d misheard her. Until he slowly realized that his sensitive hearing hadn’t failed him.
Alastor’s response was somewhat hesitant, not quite certain what to say, “That is… not the opinion I believed you would have, as it pertains to that matter.”
“Because I’m greedy? Yeah, I am! So what?! People’s lives are worth more than any currency of any world! It doesn’t matter if other people can and will put a price on it, I’ll pay their price when I need to, but I won’t acknowledge it! And neither will any of the others! It’s not right!”
Slamming her hand down onto the panel once again, the cat’s claws dug into the metal, a sign of her internal fist-clenching tension. Though Alastor couldn’t be bothered to glance back at the damage when he was still caught under the woman’s scornful glare.
“It’s awful… There’s nothing worse than working down to the bone, for years upon years, just to pay off some bullshit debt someone stronger decided to charge just because they can! Nothing worse than not having enough money to have the right to live! I’ve been there, and I won’t do that to anyone else! The only reason why Luffy isn’t up here to say the same thing is because he knows I won’t allow it! Do YOU understand ME?!”
There was another moment of stunned silence, this time from his end rather than the other way around as it had been previously. Nami didn’t break her display of complete certainty.
After the staring dragged on just a bit too long, Alastor conceded, breaking eye contact first to glance in a vague direction out the window to the side. “…I believe you are misunderstanding the intention behind my suggestion for sinners to bribe their way into the captain’s good graces. While collecting a fee would have some amount of practicality, the money itself is not the goal. It need not even be money, truly. The captain would certainly prefer people pay him through the offering of food, should someone think to do so.”
“What did you mean by it, then?” she questioned with a clear twinge of doubt.
“Well, consider this… If someone were to offer you full-fledged freedom, to give your very soul back to you with no conditions and no strings attached… Would you believe them? Without knowing Luffy, having met him for the very first time– would you believe him?”
He purposefully did not ask ‘did you believe him’, knowing it would be crass. It was safer to keep the question purely hypothetical. Then, in additional concession, he looked back at her to confess, “Because I know I didn’t. Certainly not. He’s such an outstandingly impossible person, I couldn’t believe in him until it was impossible for me not to.”
And with that, a gleam of pensive understanding slowly came upon Nami. Her claws unclenched themselves from the tracks they’ve left on the control panel.
“ …No. It’s too unbelievable, not without getting to know him.”
“Precisely. As unfair as it may be, nothing in life is free, and that statement only becomes truer in death when it comes to Hell. Our target audience are all people who’ve already found themselves caught on the end of one unfavorable deal, one that very likely happened upon them in a deceitful or underhanded way. If I were to have said they could claim their freedom for absolutely nothing in return… I doubt even the desperate would show up. By asking for something up front, even a pittance, they will feel more secure that we won’t ask for anything worse later on when their guard is down.”
“ …I guess that’s true.”
With a deep, somewhat exhausted sigh, Nami fully pulled away. “Fine. Luffy won’t mind if they bring him food, and it doesn’t have to be a lot. I guess in the sense of that damn God story you’re spinning, it wouldn’t look too weird to ask for food either. That’s a thing they do sometimes, right?”
Alastor finally allowed some of his own internal tension to bleed out now that the conflict had seemingly been resolved. His smile relaxing with it, he casually chimed, “Quite right. Though, I do have to admit, while I’m not one to tend towards collecting wealth for the sake of it, it will be somewhat of a missed opportunity. While from my understanding our funds are plentiful at the moment, the captain’s request to have a ship that can somehow traverse across the landbound Rings… Hopefully the Franky he mentioned will have some inventive way of accomplishing the feat without too extravagant of a cost! I suppose it doesn’t matter too much either way.”
“ …That’s his plan?!”
He found himself staring curiously at Nami, who by the tone of her exclamation, likely would have turned pale if not for the fur coat. “Yes? Has he not informed you all of that yet? He quite clearly outlined that he wished to, in this exact order; find his crew, find a ship, ‘adventure’ across the Pride Ring, and then ‘adventure’ across all the other Rings. And that having a ship specifically was an obligatory expectation regardless of the lack of ocean.”
Her hand coming up to cover her mouth in heavy consideration, Nami had another moment of silence. Her mind likely turned more from mental math and price estimations than thoughts.
She then hesitantly posed, “ ...I mean, surely most people could afford to pay like, what, $20? We can even lower it if we need to. It can be a– a donation, that’s right! And if they bring food, only $10! Even if it’s only a little, when enough people start coming through it will add up!”
“…”
Alastor gave it his best effort, he truly did. But as it was, after another pause of bewilderment, he couldn’t keep himself from falling into the most obnoxious laughter he had to offer–
“AHAHAHAHAHAH~ ”
“H-Hey! Stop laughing! I know it’s a bad look for me, alright?! But if we’re gonna need the money and don’t charge too much, it should still be okay!”
Leaning back with his hand covering his eyes from exertion, he did his best to cackle a response, “I– HAHAHA– I don’t understand– how you expect me to not find that entire farce of a conversation utterly hilarious now! AHAHAHA! You’re just as inane as the rest of them!”
“You think I don’t know that?! I said stop laughing already! At least I’m not the one trying to start a goddamn cult! Asking for $20 per person is much more reasonable in comparison!”
“If you’re trying to set the standard to the Radio Demon, the Overlord who gained infamy via public murder and eating people, you’ve already lost considerable moral ground!”
As though to add icing to the cake, back from the still open trapdoor where he’d had his head stuck out since around the woman’s switch up, Luffy cheerfully decided, “See, Zoro? I told ya Nami had it handled fine!”
Nearby the captain, Zoro groaned back in full exasperation, “You call this handled? She went up here to tell him off and ended up deciding the flat rate! I don’t know why I expected any better from the witch though– Ack– !”
“SHUT UP!!!”
The fiery redhead cut off the swordsman with the adept throw of her staff, hitting the first mate’s many heads to send him falling down the ladder leading to the trapdoor. Luffy just stared wide-eyed switching back and forth from the still irate woman down to where Zoro had fallen, before slowly retracting himself and closing the trapdoor after him.
Alastor just laughed all the harder for the utter absurdity of it all. He then dissolved into shadow before the predictable cat-claws to the head could land their blow. While he’d give the navigator the amount of respect due to her, he still wouldn’t permit her more forceful attempts at ordering him around.
Chapter 11: Divine Ordainment
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
As Alastor expected, his radio broadcast had pushed things into motion. Though it’d drawn someone to the hotel sooner than he’d anticipated, coming within an hour of the broadcast. The type of person that had arrived was also entirely unanticipated, not even being a person stuck in a Soul Contract, but a man that had apparently known the Straw Hats in life.
Or at least Alastor assumed that with the way the guy immediately began prostrating himself at the captain’s feet as soon as he’d barged his way into the lobby. The hotel residents that happened to be around including Alastor himself were rather taken aback by the sight, but all the pirates looked upon the scene with exasperated acceptance. Zoro huffed under his breath, “Course Bartolomeo would show up for this…”
“Barto? When’d you die?”
“LUFFY-SENPAIIIIII~ I’m so happy I get ‘a see ya again!” the man sobbed, tears streaming down his face in total elation. His hands were clasped together as though in prayer as he knelt before Luffy, gazing up at him as one would their God. As was appropriate.
Alastor noted that while Bartolomeo did not seem to be of the cannibal race, he did exhibit cannibal features, having round solid black eyes, serrated teeth with protruding incisor fangs, and sharpened claws. Other than that however, his form was rather eclectic, with green hair styled in a mohawk that resembled a rooster’s plume and upon a second glance, seemed to be made of water to match the also green and watery thin tail that wagged behind him –a monkey tail like apparent his idol? Is this supposed to be a pun on Sea Monkeys? And the last detail cementing the man’s loyalty to the captain in both life and death, an outright tattoo of the Straw Hat jolly roger set within a simply designed sun that took up the entirety of his bare chest.
“I kicked the bucket pretty recently! The way I died was actually… kinda embarrassin’. We were in the middle of erecting the Sun God Luffy statue for the church when the Pirate Empress yelled at me for settin’ it crooked ‘n’ pushed me off my barrier platform. We happened to be by the sea, so I fell in and drowned… I knew she was out to get the title of Monkey D. Luffy’s #1 Fan from me!”
“You were erecting the what for the what now? And Boa really killed him just for that?!” Usopp incredulously whispered amongst the pirates.
Sanji scoffed at the notion, “Of course she would! He’s just an ugly man, she’s the most beautiful woman in the world! She can do whatever she wants! As she should!”
“I really don’t think you should agree with her killing someone just for something like that…”
“But I’m ashamed to say… the statue had definitely been crooked! I’m distraught at havin’ sullied yer memory, Luffy-senpai! I deserved death for such an offense!”
“YOU definitely shouldn’t be agreeing with her killing you!!!” Usopp outright snapped at the still sobbing fan.
It seemed that with how caught up in the moment he was, Bartolomeo either didn’t hear the reprimand or was ignoring it, moving on to explain to a somewhat befuddled looking Luffy, “But it’s clear to me now that I’d been meant to die at that time, because that means I can be here now! When I heard the Radio Demon’s broadcast– Oh, the chills! It was so beautiful, it brought me to tears! You can tell the guy really understands yer greatness and majesty, Luffy-senpai!”
Luffy spoke up for the first time in a while, “I don’t know what ya mean by that, but Alastor’s radio is cool yeah. He’s part of the crew now!”
“He is?! The birth of a new Straw Hat!!! What a momentous occasion! Of course Luffy-senpai would win over the worst and most dangerous of the Overlords! It’s only natural!” literal sparkles radiated from the man’s eyes at the news, before he seemed to force himself back on track though with no less enthusiasm than previously, suddenly standing up to declare, “But after I heard his words, I understood why it was that I died– It’s to help ya spread yer will to all ‘a Hell, Luffy-senpai! Just like how I helped ya bring yer new era in life, of course I’m meant to be by yer side as ya start a new era in death, too! Just tell me what it is I can do for ya, and I’ll commit my entire being to it!”
The more the man spoke, the more that the three other hotel residents Charlie, Vaggie, and Husk, slowly backed away to the other side of the room from the weirdo. As for Alastor though, while he did find the fanboy to be extreme to the point of creepiness, he did also appreciate the enthusiastic respect he’d shown for both the captain and his broadcast. Can he really be blamed for having good taste? And just the type he’d been looking for! Thus, it was with that in mind that Alastor stepped forward from where he'd been lingering at the side of the room to lean towards the newly gained pawn.
“I’m glad you enjoyed my broadcast so much, good sir. As it happens, I do believe there is a role you can fulfill which you would be perfect for!”
Despite only having just learned of Alastor’s new status as one of the captain’s crew, Bartolomeo turned his starry-eyed gaze onto Alastor to fan over him as well, “A-Alastor-senpai– ”
“You’ve gotta be shitting me…” Husk rudely hissed from clear across the room.
“ –Of course! I’m the one who should be thanking you for telling me where Luffy-senpai is and spreading word of his power! What can I do for you?”
He explained with a smile full of pleasantry, “Well you see, as the sinners of Hell come to realize the truth of the captain’s divinity, a religious institution will inevitably form amongst those wishing to worship his name– ”
“Are we seriously gonna just stand back and let him make Bartolomeo worse???”
“If Barto already started doing this cult stuff in life, I think it’s too late for that, unfortunately…” Nami answered the cook’s exasperation with a sigh of her own.
“ –Now of course, while he would never lower himself to organize such efforts directly, it’d be shameful for anything of insufficient standing to be associated with the captain’s good name. Therefore, if a person as devoted to the captain’s honor such as yourself were to take charge of those efforts, it would be a great convenience to us. What do you say?”
If anything, the sparkles in Bartolomeo’s eyes just got brighter, to the point they were almost blinding and Alastor suspected this was another proper feature of his demon form. Clasping his hands together once more, the man cried out, “I’d be honored to be the leader of Luffy-senpai’s church! Actually, I had a person in my crew who was our missionary for Luffy-senpaism that would do sermons for us ‘n’ everything! Once he dies too, he can also help out a lot!”
“Is it too late to kick this guy out…?” when Charlie’s wincing in Bartolomeo and Alastor’s direction shifted into a muted pout of reprimanding at Vaggie, the ex-angel was quick to defend, “It’s an honest question! Do you want someone as delusional as him around?!”
At the mention of Luffy-senpaism, Alastor finally had to draw a line in the sand. Narrowing his eyes, he deadpanned, “ …That. Is a horrendously awful name. You’re changing it immediately.”
“O-Okay! Um… Oh! In life, Luffy-senpai’s fleet was 5,640 strong– this can be the new Straw Hat Grand Fleet! Uh– The Straw Hat Grand Hell Fleet! How ‘bout that?”
“…Acceptable. Using the terminology of a fleet should make it more innocuous of a cult to join rather than something people would be wary of, along with suiting the captain’s image better.”
“Are none of ya concerned about this?!” Husk hissed this time in the direction of the other Straw Hats.
Nami hissed right back, causing Chopper and Usopp to duck behind the swordsman and cook respectively in fear of her ire, “Does it look like we aren’t concerned?! What’re we supposed to do?! He basically already advertised this to all of the city and Barto already had his Luffy-senpaism in life! We were doomed from the start!”
“Uhh… I guess it’s good Al gets along with Barto?”
“NO IT’S NOT!!!” several people including the set of both cats snapped back at Luffy’s simplification of the situation.
Once again up in the rafters, Niffty scurried away in miffed disappointment. “Ew! A bad boy into religion? That’s disgusting! Where are my real bad boy pirates?!”
Bartolomeo moved into the hotel that day, absolutely elated to be staying in the same building as the Straw Hats. Though it seemed that he actually had trouble looking at them all at once, apparently finding the sight of more than half the crew together too blindingly brilliant for his weak eyes to handle. Charlie notably set up the man’s room on an entirely separate floor from the pirates. A judgement call which Alastor privately agreed with. No need to tempt the potential stalker by placing the objects of his obsession too close in hand. He already has one of those after all, and that was one too many. The irony of his own tendency towards lurking about people notwithstanding…
The morning of the next day, the next visitor arrived in the form of Rosie. Who, as Alastor had predicted, had come to complain about not having gotten a warning as to what exactly Alastor had been asking for her support in when he’d asked her to bolster his word prior to the broadcast. He knew that among the Overlords, she should be the least inclined to dislike the principle of breaking the Soul Contract system of Hell due to her power over the Cannibals being purely based in mutual agreement. Which was why they’d been in agreement for her to defer potential Contracts of non-Cannibal souls to himself. She had no need to leverage control over their souls when the community had already all unanimously agreed to her leadership, a form of power which with the coming change will shift into being the more secure of the two.
That did not mean that Rosie would have agreed without hesitation to Alastor’s scheme if she’d been notified beforehand, however, and thus he’d been purposefully vague with her. He did apologize for the rudeness, but not his actions, to which she scoffed at him with the full might of her socialite exasperation, “Why’re ya like this?!”
It was only later that same morning when they finally reeled in the very first contracted soul looking to test the waters. Though, the context for their contract was still not one he would’ve anticipated as being the first to arrive. Initially he’d believed another soul caught in the Vee’s web, particularly Valentino’s, would both take more stock in the story of Angel’s contract breaking given his visual departure from the company as well as be desperate enough to take the chance. Having observed the state of the Vee’s enterprise, however, it seemed that they’d initiated something of a lockdown in terms of the souls under their control. They likely explicitly forbid any of the Soul Contracted from leaving the building for now, and as their Contracts were facsimiles of employment contracts, so long as their people were on the grounds the full force of their restrictions were in place. It was admittedly smart of them to immediately take such countermeasures given they’d already experienced firsthand the captain’s power and its legitimacy. That did not diminish the annoyance of knowing that putting the upstarts in their place would be more delayed in terms of the timeline of things, however.
Instead, the first soul to take up their venture was a man with a three-colored cat demon form, unknown to any of the pirates or the hotel residents. The two Overlords present though did recognize the sinner, though only in passing.
“You… are one of Zestial’s souls, are you not?”
“That’s right, Sir. Calico’s the name,” was the simple but gruff reply. The calico stood a couple feet back from where Luffy was seated in the center of the sofa. Optics were fairly important to these sorts of dealings, and thus Alastor had carefully arranged the group such that the God was center place with himself seated on the armrest to the right of the captain, his hand resting on the mic-head of his cane at the side of him. To which the first mate had taken stand behind the sofa on Luffy’s right side while Sanji as his second wing stood behind to the left. As a less affiliated party, Rosie stood off towards the side Alastor was seated, while the rest of the spectating crew and Princess gave the makeshift receiving room a good berth even as they stood to watch in curiosity.
With a slight hum and raise of the eyebrow, Alastor had to admit, “It’s rather brave of you to take the chance on coming into my den to break your contract when your contractor is on good terms with me. Usually I’d see it as a mistake, but in this case it wasn’t. I’m assuming Zestial must know of your arrival here? He’s not one of the careless sort…”
Hesitation entering his voice, Calico affirmed, “Also right, Sir… He noticed I was thinkin’ ‘bout comin’, and… said it was okay. Said he wants ta test the God ya decided ta fall in line with. So guess I’m askin’ on his behalf along with my own.”
Alastor had to take a second to withhold his internal shock from reaching his expression. “I had not thought Zestial to be so… boldly direct with such matters. He typically does not act without a good amount of strategy in mind.”
“Well if ya think about it, Alastor, this ain’t exactly a typical situation.” He glanced over where Rosie stepped closer to him, expression making it clear she believed the situation to be obvious. “It’s only cause I’ve seen ya ‘round Luffy before that I’m not freakin’ out ‘bout your broadcast! The Radio Demon decidin’ ta throw his cards in with someone of the divine? That’s crazy talk! Of course Zestial wants ta see for himself the kinda stuff the kid’s made of! He probably can’t decide whether ta take this seriously and expect big things outta the guy or if yer just messin’ with everyone.”
Thinking that over, he conceded, “ …I suppose that’s fair. But I did ask for your assistance in assuring everyone that I’m being quite serious for this exact reason.”
“Well maybe I would ‘a sped things up on that if ya actually explained the plan beforehand!”
“Hey Cat-Guy,” Luffy unceremoniously cut in to finally respond to the newly dubbed ‘Cat-Guy’. Husk actually took a second to realize he wasn’t the one being referred to, and then gained a particularly smug look at the name having been fully passed on. “So why’d ya wanna leave this Vest-Guy anyway? It’s always good to be free, but what do ya really want?”
Calico looked caught off guard by the question. But soon, an expression of full rumination fell over his face.
“ …Yer the new Pirate King, ain’t ya? The one after Gold Roger? I actually died before that guy hit his peak, and even then, everyone knew he was crazy strong. In comparison, I was just some washed up dime-a-dozen bandit. A crook who never even bothered goin’ out ta sea and leavin’ my little mole hill. When I ended up on the slave market, I was only worth the amount of labor they could put me ta work for.”
Alastor’s attention was properly drawn back to the calico at the story, intrigued that the matter of the captain’s piracy had become relevant. The cat continued, gaze drifting off to the side of the room in remembrance, “Sir Zestial’s a frightenin’ guy ta work for, don’t get me wrong. If ya don’t stay in yer place he’ll kill ya easy. But he makes what he expects of ya very clear, and he doesn’t expect much more than that. In comparison…” The man’s still adrift gaze hardened into a full glare.
“Those fuckin’ Celestial Dragons are the real demons. If yer a man, they’ll work ya til yer dead if they don’t kill ya for fun first, and all the guys in the labor camp knew that women had it even worse. So when I ended up makin’ a deal with Zestial, I thought it wasn’t too bad a deal, ya know? Better than the pit I died in at least! But if there’s one thing… I thing I really regretted ‘bout my life… it’s that I never tried stakin’ it out on the sea. Cause the sea’s where the real freedom lied. If I was gonna die a miserable death, it might as well have been while I was a pirate instead of as a slave… And then I just ended up a slave again in death anyway. Talk about pathetic…”
Clawing at his chest, the cat sighed with clear underlying frustration as he lifted his gaze back to the captain, “And when I was a slave… they’d tell stories, ya know. Of that Sun God Nika. The warrior who fought for freedom. But I’d just scoff at those whispers, just tall tales of people tryin’ ta keep the delusion that they’d someday be free. And then I heard the Radio Demon talkin’ ‘bout ya, the new Pirate King who’s also the Sun God who won the freedom of the world? That’s the tallest tale I’ve ever heard! So I guess… What I really wanted was ta just see ya for myself, too. Is any ‘a that even true?”
With all his usual casual belligerence, Luffy plainly answered, “I’m the Pirate King, yeah! And me ‘n’ everyone else took down the Celestial Dragons! I don’t really know anythin’ ‘bout being some God, just that people keep callin’ me that. Guess if Al says it’s true it must be then.”
As Alastor snuck in a side-glance at the change up to Luffy’s predicted rejection of his godhood, the captain stood up to stand before Calico, who took an unsteady step back at the approach. The boy held out his hand to him with a smile as bright as the Sun.
“Ya don’t gotta keep the regret ya had in life though! It’s never too late to start bein’ a pirate! If you still wanna be one, then just be one!”
Wide cat eyes glancing down at the hand, Calico forced his gaze back up to inquire, “How much will I owe ya for this, exactly? Ya don’t want my soul, do you?”
“Naw! Course not!”
“It’s a $20 general fee, with a 50% discount if you offer food,” the navigator took the chance to call out from her place to the side. At the multiple looks of bewildered exasperation she received from that, she snapped back, “What?! He asked!”
“ …That’s it???”
“Yes. While it’s not a requirement, you may also consider joining the Straw Hat Grand Hell Fleet that one of the original fleet’s founding members is starting up,” Alastor replied this time. He gestured with the hand not holding his mic towards the fanboy who quickly flocked over at the obvious que.
Bartolomeo burst into excitement, his energy causing Calico to take a sidestep away from the man, “If ya wanna be a pirate, the Straw Hat Fleet is the place ya wanna be! I can tell ya all about how Luffy-senpai won the war against the World Government! After ya hear that story ‘n’ see him in action for yourself, you won’t be able to help yourself from wantin’ ta follow him!”
The cat shifted into an obvious look of interest at Bartolomeo’s mention of the war. The residents of the hotel only just seemed to comprehend the talking point that had come up multiple times, with Husk and Angel Dust muttering amongst themselves different variations of wait what– Rather than immediately take up the offer though, Calico showed practical restraint in looking back to Luffy to take his hand in a shake. “Let’s see how ya do with Sir Zestial first. While ya clearly got people backin’ you up, ya don’t exactly look like any God either…”
“I did say he preferred to keep to his mortal form,” Alastor felt the need to remind their first taker, before turning to look at Luffy’s curious glance, “Zestial will be a worthy opponent for you to showcase your strength against. He is regarded as the oldest and potentially most powerful of the current Overlords of the day– once you best him, it will send a proper message to all the other Overlords along with all the sinners of Hell.”
“Don’t really care ‘bout that, but I’ll fight him cause Cat-Guy asked me. So he’s strong?”
“On the scale of things, he is much stronger than the Vees, but it should not as difficult as your battle with Eve. I would like to request that you use your– how did you refer to it? Yes, make sure to use your Gear 5th against him. He is initiating this conflict solely to judge the prospects of your ability and my confidence in you. It would be rather rude to hold back even if he will not be able to match your full power.”
“Okay. I’ll take Chopper and he can fix Vest-Guy up after!” That did not bode well for Zestial’s post-combat state. But if the Overlord felt the need to test the worth of Alastor’s word regarding the captain’s power, he got whatever would be coming to him as far as the Radio Demon was concerned. While he had a fair acquaintanceship with Zestial, he also regarded him with an equal amount of caution due to the other’s power. It will be interesting to see how the showing will change the state of things.
And interesting it was. A group consisting of the captain, the doctor, the first mate, Bartolomeo, Alastor himself, Rosie, and somewhat unexpectedly Charlie, Vaggie, Husk, and Angel Dust all followed Calico to the edge of the city. It seemed both his Overlord friend and the Hazbin residents who’d been around for the meeting were curious to see the God in action. Alastor looked forward to witnessing their reactions. The spider even called up Cherri Bomb from wherever she’d been to join up midway, bringing with her popcorn for the both of them and an air of excitement at the prospect of watching some entertaining violence. Alastor ignored the tailing VoxTek drone that followed them from afar. Zestial had wisely chosen a mostly empty portion of the city to wage their battle, being directly beside the circular edge where nothing but wasteland resided on the other side outside the city proper. Alastor was also pleased to see the Overlord hadn’t set the battle outside the city limits either, as it would be counter to his own intentions of allowing word to spread from the sinners who happened to be around to witness the battle.
Upon arriving at the newly designated battlefield, they were met with not only the sight of Zestial himself, but also a stone-faced Carmilla Carmine flanked by her two daughters as well as a much more casual looking King of Hell. There were already sinners hanging around amongst the surrounding buildings. Alastor recognized that they were not random bystanders, who would usually flee at the sight of both Zestial and himself together, but they were all in fact sinners under Zestial’s command. He must’ve allowed them to come witness for themselves what the conclusion of the battle would be.
Alastor deigned to speak first as their own group approached, keeping a blasé tone, “Well, what a surprise! You’ve already collected a referee and audience for us! This is why I appreciate working with you, Zestial, you very much know how to keep things efficient and honorable. Aha!”
“Fair day to thou as well, Alastor. ‘Twas only due diligence appraising the King as to potential destruction brought upon his kingdom in consideration of the scale such combat is well due to escalate, now that we enjoy the pleasure of his presence once more,” as Zestial stepped forward to meet Alastor in the middle of the divide, his voice echoing in that intriguing way of his, Luffy stepped up to stand beside the Radio Demon in time with Carmilla moving to stand beside Zestial. Her steely eyes examined both Alastor and the captain with obvious suspicion.
Off to the side, Lucifer scoffed at the lot of them even as he moved back to stand next to a still mildly surprised Charlie, making his supposed role as a bystander clear, “Yeah, no thanks to you, bellhop. You can really learn somethin’ from Zestial’s manners, ya know! Especially when it comes to respecting my royal authority…”
Alastor gave the statement the respect it deserved, ignoring the man outright to continue speaking to the two other Overlords present, “I believe some introductions are in order. No need to get right into things without a proper greeting between our combatants, haha!” his radio echoed his laughter for just a short bit, before he gestured a hand towards Luffy, “This is the captain of the Straw Hat Pirates, Monkey D. Luffy. Also known as the Sun God who fights for his divine concept of freedom. As it happens, I decided to try my hand at a life of piracy and am now in allegiance with him.”
At that, Carmilla was the first to speak, voice brimming with indignation, “That’s the story you’re going with? You don’t expect any of us to actually believe you’ve decided to work for the benefit of a God, do you? Let alone this fanciful story of becoming a pirate. You know as well as the rest of us such a status has no meaning in this underworld, there’s no point to it. What are you really up to, Alastor? What’s the true purpose you wish to use this boy for?”
Making sure to keep his displeased radio feedback muted, Alastor merely tightened his hold on his mic and narrowed his gaze on the woman before fortifying his position, “While it may have been true in the past that it mattered not which living world the sinners fell from, I believe you will find that the times are about to change, Carmilla. And I say this as one with a preference for keeping things old-fashioned. I’m sure you have been keeping appraised of the talk on the streets enough to know that others of his world have begun carving themselves out a place in the Ring. But of them all, the captain here is the one most worth regarding. What can I say but that I like to bet on the winning team and keep things entertaining for myself? It’s only natural to try mixing things up once new opportunities present themselves!”
Holding out a hand in front of Carmilla before she could give a likely irate response, Zestial gave a curious tilt of the head as he intoned, “Certainly, there is weight in turning the barrel anew when times art ripe. But on the contrary, thy delivery of souls in thy possession, ‘tis most unusual. Indeed, if thou art truly without deception regarding said God and instead doth speak words of truth… One may’st draw conclusions of thy own soul having fallen in jeopardy, for thou hast greatly depart from thy previous inclinations.”
Before Alastor had to muster up a response, the captain thankfully chose that point to interject his own truth of the matter, “Al’s just doin’ whatever he wants to do! So what if it’s different than what he was doin’ before? …Or at least I think that’s what you were talkin’ about. You speak weird, Vest-Guy.”
Zestial’s multiple eyes narrowed on Luffy at the address in a rare show of irritation, while Carmilla outright sneered at the boy. Alastor, on the other hand, allowed himself a brief moment of hardy laughter, “Ahaha! Well said, captain! Though your memory when it comes to people’s names can still use some improvement.”
The boy just gave him that blank look of his. “I’ll learn ‘em if I need to.” Which, wow– what a set of unintentional fighting words that is!
Alastor laughed a second time as Carmilla’s expression just twisted further. Before he cut himself off abruptly, raising at brow at Zestial to conclude with a sharpened grin, “If all you wished from this encounter was the chance to question me, I suggest you call off the bout now. But if you are truly interested in testing this God, then by all means, start your match!”
“ …‘Twould not hath called upon both King and mine own to take witness if ill-prepared for the commitment of mine word. If thou assert thyself to hath become this boy’s herald true of heart, then ‘tis of even more importance to evaluate prospects of bespoken divinity.”
“Well, good luck to you, then!” he first bid his adieu to Zestial, before glancing back at Luffy’s grin, already brimming with the excitement brought on by his divinity, as he walked away, “Do make sure to enjoy yourself, captain. I dare say after this fight, every other Overlord will become most disinclined to putting up a fight against your will.”
“Aw– that’s no fun!”
“Indeed,” was his last word before lining up in between the present pirates and Charlie, with Lucifer sending him a shifty-eyed glance from her other side where the other hotel residents were flanking. At the sight of Carmilla and her daughters marching over, however, the Morningstars took a good couple of sidesteps to make room for the still brewing conflict.
Noticeably standing directly beside himself while her wary children flocked behind her, Carmilla’s sharp gaze accompanied her whispered hiss of a warning, “While Zestial is giving your claim of this boy being a legitimate divine being some credence, Alastor, I am not so inclined. You do realize that if he fails to win in this moment, you may actually come fully lose your position as an Overlord, do you not? The only reason people still regard you as one even after losing possession of so many souls is due to the reputation you’ve earned and fear of your power. The boy failing would prove you to have fallen into a lower position from what you once had.”
Alastor couldn’t help but chuckle at the attitude. After tapping his mic against the ground to encase the haphazard group of spectators within a strong shield, he sent the woman a knowing smile. “You know, I never truly cared for such a position. It was only happenstance the assertion of my power came with the title. But even so, I have no need to worry about losing it. You will come to find that betting against the captain is not a winning hand.”
The Overlord narrowed her eyes once more, but someone beat her to a response. Alastor had to keep himself from startling at the unexpected feeling of tiny hooves clutching at his leg. He glanced down in vague bewilderment to see Chopper looking up at Carmilla with a rather “cute” glare, notably holding onto Alastor from the side rather than attempting to hide behind him. “Alastor’s right! Luffy won’t lose to anyone! So stop talking down to him like that!”
Carmilla blinked down at the creature with an almost absentminded shock at having been spoken to in such a way by what looked like a completely non-threatening possible child. Her daughters even looked like they were withholding themselves from cooing over the reindeer as they peaked over their mother’s shoulders. Still a couple feet to their side and being visibly held back by a much more frightened looking Calico, Bartolomeo proved himself to be ever the fanboy as he hackled, “That’s right bitch! Luffy-senpai’s gonna beat this guy’s ass! Don’t ya talk down the Straw Hat Crew like that! Each one of ‘em ‘s worth more than one hundred men!”
“Listen lady, if you’re gonna speak like that to one of us, there’s one thing you gotta understand– ” In contrast to the fanboy’s mostly expected response, Alastor then had to keep himself from tensing at the surprising feeling of one strong hand grasping his shoulder while another place itself on his upper arm. He adjusted his stare to see Zoro leaning forward from his side to send Carmilla three proper smirks, the woman once again returning to her more irate expression at the unwanted commentary.
“We’re the crew of the King of the Pirates! Your hierarchy and your King mean nothing to us, because the only so-called King we believe in is our captain. Why do ya think we’re the only ones that bothered to come out here? It’s cause we all know Luffy’s gonna win anyway, so only the crew that needed to be here came! Compared to just being some self-important Overlord, being on our crew’s the highest position anyone could have! It’s definitely not lower. As far as we’re concerned, Al here has already surpassed that fancy title you and that Vest-Guy are so proud of.”
“Excuse me?! Why– You outrageous– ”
Alastor couldn’t keep his stare from going wide at the first mate’s unquestioningly firm stance of support. After flinching back in full outrage, Carmilla outright snarled as she prepared to snap back. Only for the tremoring of the ground and blinding light that the God was now putting off to startle her attention away. Her eyes darted back to the battlefield unconsciously.
In an attempt to keep the situation fully diffused, Charlie notably slid herself between Alastor and Carmine with an awkward smile as the weapons dealer stepped forward to stare unabashed at Zestial clashing with the ever-grinning Sun God. Zoro pat his shoulder and arm once with a huff before letting go to grant him his space again, while Chopper seemed content to stay by his person.
After a quick once over at either side of him, Alastor reached a hand down to pat the reindeer’s head, to which he felt Chopper fidget in his delight at the reward of affection. Alastor retracted the hand to rest it atop the one already placed upon the mic-head of his cane, deciding not to pay the other’s presence anymore mind as he watched what was already trending towards a one-sided beatdown, as well as the entertaining reactions that were sure to come along with it…
Along with Carmilla Carmine’s total shock, the gobsmacked faces of Husk, Angel, and Cherri were an amusing sight. The popcorn had even been abandoned and dropped on the ground once the God began stretching Zesital’s body and the surrounding buildings and ground just as well as his own did. While Rosie covered the lower half of her face with a fan, it did little to hide how wide her eyes had become. Bartolomeo looked as though he might start a sermon on the spot with how brightly his eyes shined at the divinity of his idol and God, and next to him, Calico was staring at the fight in an awed bewilderment. Alastor would bet good money on the sinner’s conversion by the end of the day.
On the other side of Charlie, a notably unsurprised Lucifer was wincing quite a bit. Though whether that was at Zestial’s fairing, the damage to the city he would inevitably have to fix, or due to his mind’s own connections as to how his wife ended up in the state she had remained to be seen. More unexpectedly, his daughter, while staring with her own wide eyes and slightly agape mouth as the now gigantified Luffy carelessly threw Zestial’s full eldritch horror demon form through a nearby building with laughter bordering on madness, did not look as shocked as he would’ve anticipated. And Vaggie, while somewhat more affected, was seemingly reacting more towards the absolute absurdity that defined the God’s abilities rather than the God himself.
Without looking away from where Zestial was now opening a portal to the cosmic horrors of the otherworldly, Alastor tilted in a slight lean towards Charlie. He kept his volume muted as he mused, “Am I right in my assumptions that your belligerent father has finally learned a thing or two about keeping you in the loop concerning your unusual visitors?”
Charlie jolted in place at being addressed, eyes flashing towards him before they were drawn away just as quick at the wondrous phenomena that was the Sun God taking a newly summoned creature of unworldly visage to stretch out and… use as a jump rope? That move took even himself by surprise for a moment. It took the Princess a good minute to figure out how to use her mouth again.
“Uh– Um… Right! Well, he kinda had to, since I… kinda demanded that he let me visit Luffy’s world so we could try and learn more about him. He’s not able to leave Hell himself, so he had to let me go instead, and I took Vaggie with me…”
The answer was a fair surprise, but a good one. “Is that so? How remarkably bold of you! Very nice. Was the trip truly so elucidating with the captain himself no longer being around to showcase himself?”
“ …I, well …we couldn’t talk to anyone directly, of course, but the way people talk about him there… The way people mourn for him…” as she spoke, the light of the God reflecting in her large eyes, Charlie’s expression shifted into a soft, gentle sort of smile. One Alastor hadn’t quite expected her to look away from Luffy to direct instead at himself. “It seemed that wherever he went, he left a larger-than-life mark. The way he touched the hearts of the friends he made– whenever someone would talk about him, even when they were sad he was gone, they just couldn’t stop smiling. Even if they were crying… It sounded like he saved a good number of kingdoms in life too, since there were some rulers explicitly trying to set up a new system that he would’ve approved of. Even the new head of their marines was crying about him, and those guys are supposed to be the ones fighting the pirates! He changed their entire world! It made all the stories that were being spread about him somehow believable. Not to mention what dad mentioned about some of the baddies that he fought.”
That mention peaked Alastor’s interest. He inferred, “You’re referring to those Elder Stars and the hidden figure who governed them all, correct? They sounded rather demonic in nature, so I had been wondering how they hadn’t ended up down here. Surely they didn’t seem like the type to not make themselves known…”
“Oh yeah, uh– basically dad found out about this deal the big baddie made with King Paimon in exchange for their soul, and dad got really mad about it and forced Paimon to give up his right to them in death. So they just… didn’t have a soul anymore when they died, meaning they couldn’t pass on to the afterlife and just… stopped existing.”
“Eight! Hundred! Years! Eight hundred years of what was essentially demonic rule over those poor people! All because Paimon thought it would be funny and wanted some more fucking servants– Why can’t he just hire people like everyone else! Hell, he has enough children to make some of them into his own servants! Not to mention the rest of the Goetia! All I knew was that I was NOT dealing with those assholes in death! No siree! Souls that garbage go in the universal trash bin where they belong!!! Do not pass Go! Do not collect $200! Straight to the ether for you!!!”
Both Alastor and Charlie glanced over to her other side to watch as her father came down from his ranting, huffing from his remembered anger. After shifting his eyes over towards them, Lucifer tried to clear his throat and straighten his posture and coat, pulling himself back together, “Yeah, I’m… still kinda mad about that… No wonder that place had a fruit that could escalate to a God reincarnating just lyin’ around, cause by God did they need the divine intervention! Aha– ha…”
“…I do believe that every time I speak with you, Your Majesty, I question even more as to how Hell isn’t in an even worse state than what it currently exists as.”
“What the Hell is that supposed to mean?!”
“I’m just saying that I’m downright impressed that the captain saving your wife from her possessed state is somehow the second time he’s cleaned up a mess on your behalf.”
“Hey! What happens in the overworld is not my jurisdiction! You tacky piece of– ”
“G-Guys! Please! Can we all just calm down for a bit…”
It wasn’t too much longer after that conversation that the battle came to an end. Rather than make a stupid stance to fight to the death, Zestial was smart enough to properly surrender and throw in the towel once he’d expended all his energy and his body was too damaged to move.
Frankly speaking between the two of them, Carmilla was the Overlord left more shell-shocked while Zestial seemed to be taking his defeat fairly well. He didn’t even put up a fuss when the captain, after reverting back to his mortal state, waved at the doctor to come over. Not that he would’ve been able to physically contest even if he wished to do so… Zoro followed the tiny steps of the bipedal reindeer, only to have to be pulled over by a rubbery stretched out hand when he immediately started walking perpendicularly to Chopper’s path. After giving the idiot swordsman a very judging side-eye, with a great sigh of preemptive exhaustion, Lucifer departed and just got right to fixing up the area.
Alastor himself was about to make his way over. But before he made to do so, Charlie gently tugged at the sleeve of his coat, drawing his attention back to her gentle smile.
“Sorry to keep you! I just wanted to say… Well, there’s kinda been a lot of jokes about the scary Radio Demon joining Luffy and his crew and uh– starting a cult ‘n’ all, so I just wanted to make sure you knew that– the way I see it… I think being with him really suits you, Alastor. I’m really happy for you… I– I hope that was an okay thing to say…?”
After blinking the surprise away, Alastor found his own smile relaxing its usual sharpness at the warmth Charlie’s words left behind. On the average, he typically found the Princess’s tendency for touchy-feeliness to be fairly counter to his own tastes, but in this context… he found that he didn’t mind her genuine nature too much.
“There’s no need to fret, my dear. I appreciate the gesture. So allow me to give my own thoughts that you may have appreciation for– Luffy is indeed a person larger-than-life, and now larger-than-afterlife in addition to that. But as you inevitably compare yourself and your shortcomings to him…” His grin curling a tad mischievous, Alastor bopped the girl’s head with the mic-head of his cane, causing Charlie to drop her grin as she reached up to sooth her head. “…remember that you share aplenty of qualities with the captain, even with all the differences between your two persons. Just as he came into his own throughout his life, so too are you amidst the same process. Regardless of if your fanciful whims end up in the state you wish them to be at the end of it all, someway or another, you have your own remarkable potential for leadership.”
With that said, Alastor promptly turned his back on the girl and continued on his way. It took her a good half minute to take stock of what he’d said and call back out with a particularly tearful voice, “ …W-Wait! Alastor! That was, like– the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me! You can’t just leave right after– !”
“Zestial, my good fellow, what would you say are the results of your evaluation exactly?” Alastor began as soon as he was in range to speak without yelling in a boorish manner. He planted his cane into the ground to lean against with both hands, noticeably looking down in what was surely a very smug smile at the fearsome Overlord who was now covered in pink flowers by the doctor’s efforts. At the other’s side, Chopper gave a satisfied nod at how his patient was coming along, while Zoro yawned into his hand in boredom and Luffy curiously watched the proceedings with a more absentminded grin, hands planted on his waist in a confident stance. “Specifically, was it before or after the captain used your attack as material to jump rope with that you realized you were completely fucked?”
In some corner of his awareness, Alastor could overhear Angel Dust muttering a similar trail of thinking, though in disbelief rather than posturing, “Fuckin’– What the fuck did we even watch just now??? The fuckin’– The jump rope??? The pizza tossin’??? The hey-batta-batta-SWING?!?!?!”
“I think we changed genres for a sec there!” Cherri resounded in agreement.
“Hell if I know, but the more ya talk ‘bout it, the less sense it fuckin’ makes– and it didn’t make any damn sense to begin with!!!” Husk cried out, absolutely baffled.
With a hummed sigh of annoyance, Zestial intoned, “Alastor, thou art quite comfortable jesting at mine expense, now that thy God hath proven thy truth. Even one of mine nature must confess, much of those holy acts were… rather unanticipated.”
“I noticed that you didn’t properly answer my question?” he fully reveled in his own pestering nature, any façade of politeness dropped in favor of his conceited, mean smirk of a grin.
“ …‘Twas prior to the jump rope.”
“That’s what I thought! AHAHAHAHAHA~ ”
As though to purposefully reinsert himself as an annoyance, the swordsman tsked, “Damn– calm the fuck down, will ya red ears? You didn’t even do anything and you’re actin’ like you’re the one who beat the shit outta the guy!”
“I believe organizing this whole affair counts as anything. The real question is what are you even here for?” he didn’t miss a beat before answering, not even bothering to flash the man a proper glare as he instead turned his smile towards the still obviously shellshocked Carmilla Carmine as she slowly approached. When he spoke again, however, it was still to Zestial, “May I assume then that the calico’s deal is over and done with then? You haven’t even gotten to the part of witnessing that holy act yet!”
“ ‘Twas the implication…” Without any fuss, a Contract of yellow-green ink set on black parchment manifested. When Luffy took it in hand to tear apart and set aflame in white, Zestial didn’t even look surprised. And admittedly, he’d already witnessed much more shocking things throughout the fight by this point. When the chains broke apart from Calico’s form, the cat hardly even reacted, still processing the confusion he had regarding everything else even as Bartolomeo started his attempts at converting. Not only for the newly freed sinner, but also the others of Zestial’s employ that slowly approached with slack-jaw gazes.
Before Alastor could further rub in the captain’s victory, Zestial began to speak again of something more unexpected, “Indeed, the God hath proven true his power. Thus, deals of each mine own either will be decided anew, or released from mine bonds hence forth. There need not be a second act to this play.”
“Z-Zestial…?” Carmilla stuttered the name, falling to her knees beside her longtime ally as she questioned, “What are you saying?! You would really go that far? How can you just accept such an end– ”
“ ‘Tis not an end, but a new beginning. Just as Alastor hath foretold…” even while the elder Overlord cut the woman off, he reached out to take her hand in comfort, looking unperturbed by his own conclusions, “Take it from one as old as I– Fear not change. To live throughout ages is but same as accepting the new age time after time. If one doth not accept progress, thy shalt not progress. ‘Tis why I wished to test the meddle of such words for myself, rather than allow another to thus act in place of mine.”
With a careful heave, Zestial sat up from his previously position lying down. The flowers fell off his person on their own as he moved to reveal unblemished flesh. As Carmilla stared unabashed at the disappearance of his wounds, the elder examined his arm and hand while giving an intrigued hum, “ ‘Twould seem the God hath value amongst his following as well. Impressive magicks by far, and by the hands of such an unassuming creature. I thank thee for thy grace.”
In his usual manner, the doctor took to the compliment like a reindeer to the snow, smiling rather idiotically as he wiggled in place and rubbed as the back of his head. “Aw shucks~ Ya bastard, flatterin’ me like that won’t work! Ehehehe~ ”
“Yeah! My crew’s the BEST!” the captain readily agreed. Alastor had to catch himself from stumbling when the boy launched into his side, wrapping his arms around his neck and shoulders to hang like an actual monkey from him. Smile going taunt, he pushed at Luffy’s head to no avail, his neck simply stretching out half an arm’s length. “Vest-Guy wasn’t as strong as Horn-Lady, but it was more fun! He had a bunch ‘a cool creepy stuff!”
“So I saw– One would think more of your rambunctious energy might’ve been expended throughout such a trial…”
“Huh. Usually I always get real tired after usin’ Gear 5th, but not as much anymore. Wonder why?”
Alastor gave the observation some actual consideration, “Death likely has brought you to a state closer to attunement with the divine and its afterlife.”
“Oh… Is that why I only started bein’ able to do that after I died once?”
“ …How you’ve managed to make it this far is the true mystery here.”
Fortunately, the rather obnoxious interaction did not seem to shift the other Overlord’s opinions. When Rosie sauntered over with a growing expression of amusement, she was the one to pose, “So Carmilla, what’re ya planin’ to do after this? Gonna have your own lil’ tiff with Alastor’s darlin’ here?”
While Zestial didn’t give an opinion, his silent glance was clear enough. With a ruminating look of dissatisfaction, Carmilla’s eyes shifted over to where her daughters watched in worry, before looking away entirely. “ …No. I’ve seen enough. I must work my way through my own Contracts. What a hassle this will be.”
“Oh! Uh– ” in a bit of a startle, Bartolomeo jogged over from where he’d been preaching to his crowd to explain, “Nami-senpai put me in charge of collections! Tell all your folks that the rate’s $20 marked down to $10 if they add a food offerin’ on top ‘a that.”
“What the hell– we’re seriously doin’ that? Luffy didn’t even fight for those other guys!” the first mate incredulously exclaimed with a multi-hand gesture swung out towards the ‘other guys’ in question.
“Nami-senpai said to say in case this happen –she’s so smart!– ‘The fee still counts cause their souls ‘re only bein’ released due to Luffy-senpai intimidating their bosses.’”
“So we’re taking the place of the extortionists instead?!”
At that, Zestial chimed in unaffected, “Hardly a pittance of a fee, incredibly gracious the will of the divine be in this instance.”
“Luffy didn’t decide shit about this! And this is from the witch’s greed not any graciousness!”
The captain sounded off with his own opinion on that, “If I get food it’s a good thing right?”
The swordsman slapped a hand over his eyes, and then another atop that one. Alastor allowed a chuckle to sound deep in his throat, previous irritation transitioning into a grin at the reaction.
Now that this matter was settling itself, however… it was about time he got around to sending out his next localized broadcast.
Hell sucks. Like, he knew it sucks, but it fucking SUCKS sucks! Whichever motherfucker invented the concept of rent better have died in one of the Exterminations because holy shit, that guy fucking deserved to die again! Heaven doesn’t have any of that damn BULLSHIT!
When Adam first reincarnated in some dirty as shit alleyway after the battle at little miss Morningstar’s hotel, he’d been shocked. Then in denial. Then prayed up to God and the angels for them to say sike right now please. When nothing happened and he’d had to vacate the alley in disgust when a drunk-ass sinner started pissing on the dumpster, he just yelled to the Heavens Well fuck you guys too! Not that any of them heard it, those fake-ass bitches.
And that was when he realized he didn’t have any legs, because he was a fucking snake. No, not even just a snake– They made him a fucking CLOWN too! With stupid-ass jester hat lookin’ horns and a black face that was just another version of his Exorcist mask but with white paint marks! Who the fuck ever heard of a CLOWN SNAKE DEMON?!?! Like seriously, FUCK YOU TOO!!!
After the initial shock and indignation died down, though, Adam soon realized that he actually had no idea how to do shit around here. He needed to eat and find a place to live, but he needs money to eat and pay rent, and to get money, he needs a job. He got by fine in the beginning just by stealing from some weakling sinners, but even these fuckers were smart enough not to carry a ton of cash around in Hell. If it was just about the food he could’ve probably gotten by just with that, but rent– is SO FUCKING EXPENSIVE?!?! And they have the fucking nerve to ask for THREE MONTHS RENT IN ADVANCE?! AND a safety deposit?! Who the FUCK has that kinda money immediately upon dying and ending up in the pit?! It's bullshit is what it is!
So he’s been able to feed himself but, shocker, was literally homeless. And of course no one wants to hire a fuckin’ homeless bastard with a godawful attitude. And its not like he wants to hang around these filthy loser-ass sinners or fuckin’ Christ, take orders from any of them. So, after however long it’d been since he died his second death, he’d just been… getting by, basically.
The only fucking mercy that had been granted to him was that his cool as fuck electric guitar weapon-thing was remade with him, though without the would’ve been very useful property of being an angelic weapon still. As a way both to kill time and earn some chump change to go along with his regular muggings, he’s taken to playing at the side of the street. Of course, none of these stupid asshole sinners would bother to appreciate good music if it bit them in the ass, so he never made anything more than change totaling up to a twenty at best. But he played more for himself than anything else.
It was something he liked to do, and he could do it, so why not, right? He’s the greatest dick the world’s ever seen, but he wasn’t exactly an aspiring musician in life or even Heaven. His awesome guitar solos were a hobby at best. One he’d only started after God gifted mankind the blessing known as AC/DC. So as much as he would never admit to it out loud, there was room for improvement in his skill. He apparently had all the time for the rest of his damned afterlife now, so might as well do something he liked with it!
–And he knows, he fucking knows that fucking hotel is known to be rent free as long as the sinner coming to simper at their doorstep promised to try for fucking redemption, but he doesn’t care if he ends up dying in the streets for it; he REFUSED to beg for forgiveness from Lucifer, his bitch of a daughter, Vagina, that red fucker, or any of those other fuckers! He doesn’t need them or their fake-ass redemption, so fuck ‘em all in their tiny fucking asses!–
It was during one of these days, though, that something different happened. While he’d been in the middle of an awesome riff, someone stopped in front of him to watch, and stayed all the way to the end of the song to clap.
“Yohohoho! Oh, very good! You’re self-taught, aren’t you? You’ve come along stupendously!”
“Yeah yeah, if ya really liked it you’d cough up some dough and put your money where your mouth is…” Adam ended up trailing off when he glanced up to see a damn full-blown skeleton, looking at him with empty eye sockets and clapping with boney hands and everything, “ …Well damn. Guess I really could have turned out worse than a clown snake. At least I still got a dick, two dicks now even! Who would’a thunk it. Unless ya got some weird as Hell skeleton dick in your pants or somethin’…”
The skeleton waved him off with a laugh, “Oh, it’s not so bad once you get used to it. Though looking in the mirror had been a shocking fright to see at first… Not that I had any eyes to see with! Yohoho– Skull Joke!”
“ …‘K. Assumin’ you’re missin’ yer brain on top ‘a that with how cray-cray ya are.”
“I am indeed!” the skeleton once again dismissed what should’ve been a concerning detail and instead, seemed to conjure his own electric guitar into his hands. Adam couldn’t help but take interest when the other came up beside him to start playing.
“I think I can tell the kind of sound you’re going for– something like this, right? Here, watch me and then try for yourself! I was a musician in life, along with being a skeleton. I can teach you anything you’re interested in!”
After a solid three minutes of listening to the guy play –he couldn’t deny the guy was good. How the fuck is he even playing with bones instead of regular fingertips? It’d taken him fuckin’ forever to figure out how to work the strings with his claws!– it was only then that Adam took in the full sentence. “ …Wait. The fuck do you mean about being a skeleton in life???”
“Oho? I suppose that’s still unusual down here. That’s too bad…”
“Brook, there you are! I know you’re got a better sense of direction than Zoro, but we should try to keep from wandering apart too much.”
A fishy-looking new guy came over, kinda a big one at that, and despite obviously coming to meet back up with the now named Brook, he stopped in front of Adam to give a polite smile and introduction, “Hello there, sorry to bother you when you two were enjoying playing together. You can continue as you were. My name is Jinbei, known as the First Son of the Sea in my previous life. Brook and I are both members of the same crew, the Straw Hat Pirates captained by Straw Hat Monkey D. Luffy.”
“You guys were pirates?” at the mention, Adam vague remembered those other kinds of souls that came from Not Earth, a place that had a name but he didn’t care about enough to remember. They were in the middle of that damn pirating era or somethin’ though, right? Sera had talked about it when he wasn’t paying attention. That’s why that guy who showed up in Heaven that kept calling himself the Pirate King was a thing. “Sick. Guess it’s not like I have anything better to do, so I’ll let Jack Skellington here show me what he’s got for a bit longer.”
“My name’s Brook!”
“It’s a joke? Ya never watched– nevermind… Just know there’s this other musical skeleton guy in a suit who had a movie and is kinda a thing.”
“Really?!” Brook sounded a little too excited at the sound of that, “Oh, you must show me! Can we watch it after our lesson?!”
Balking in reflex, Adam snapped back, “This is a fuckin’ music lesson?! I never asked for that! I don’t even got any money to pay ya!”
Starting up the melody once again, Brook just laughed at the suggestion like he’d said a joke, “Yohohoho~ Why would I ever charge money for teaching someone music? Songs are the sound of the soul, good man, teaching a person how to play out the melody which their soul vies to sing is something every musician should take pride in offering! If you are willing to play, I am willing to play with you! …Oh, it was rude of me to go so long without asking, though– What’s your name?”
“Adam! The– uhh… Just Adam, now. I guess…”
Brook hadn’t been kidding about his offer of lessons. They played in the street for a while, with Brook playing certain riffs and melodies and Adam doing his best to copy after, and by the end they even played one song together. Before he knew it, there was actually a good amount of change that’d been left in the bag he’d set out for tips and a few sinners had even stopped to clap for Brook. The guy was so good even the godawful sinners had to take notice. Jinbei clearly noticed that he was a homeless shlup and was the one to offer for Adam to come by their new apartment to continue the sesh. How the fuck did two newbies figure this shit out before him?! Goddammit! He usually wasn’t one to accept pity, but there was just this one rhythm he wasn’t getting quite right at a certain part, and he knew it'd annoy the fuck outta him if he never fixed that shit. Since it was a fuckin’ crime they didn’t get his reference, he had them swing by a rental place to get a bootleg version of that Halloween movie he’d mentioned before they headed to the cheap-ass apartment. And from there… he kinda never really left.
Because actual running water? Whoever invented that shit is in Heaven for sure. It’s a good thing Brook Skellington didn’t have a nose cause Jesus Christ, he would not have come up to Adam otherwise. And having an actual teacher, who would’a thought, really did help with some of this music shit, and Brook knew everything. The guy was nuts but he knew his shit. The theory shit, composing shit, and he even knew how to play a whole bunch of other instruments. The guy was basically a one-man band, but still let Adam have the guitar solos, as he rightfully should.
While Jinbei wasn’t a music guy, he was a chill dude who seemed to be the only one between the three of them that could actually function like a normal adult who lived in a society. After Adam had gruffly and hesitantly admitted and then immediately brushed off his shitty attempts to get a job, the guy actual sat him down and helped him go over his resume and shit! –“You shouldn’t use ‘I’m fucking Adam I can do anything’ as an example of your qualifications…”– They had fake interviews and everything! –“It’s not professional language to say ‘shut up bitch I’m talking’ to the interviewer…”– Adam usually got pretty pissy with people, especially when they don’t realize that he’s much better than them and more deserving of attention than anything else they could have going on in their pathetic lives, but it’s like the guy just had lofi ‘n’ chill vibes radiating from him. It was hard for Adam to work up the attitude necessary to tell him to fuck off when there was nothing to get confrontational about. When Adam had come back slightly shocked that he’d managed to get a part time job at some store, Jinbei and Brook had both been excited for him.
And he’s used to being important. In Heaven, he’d been used to people mind-hiving with whatever he said, and he’d liked it that way. But something about having someone be honestly happy about him achieving something that should be the bare minimum to be considered an actual functioning person, regardless of who he was… was just kinda nice.
But he didn’t spend all his time working, he spent most of it on improving his playing. And then on him and Brook playing together. And then, they got to the point where Brook suggested they look for people to play for other than Jinbei. They did some street performances again, but Jinbei also looked around for lowkey events they could play at, the kinds that just got dime-a-dozen indie cover bands to play for a day or night, and it was after they got their first real gig that things kicked up.
Brook was good enough that word started getting out as they did more and more sets. Venues would book them again after hearing them once and knowing they were worth the money. And at one point, a scout for a concert venue in Imp City offered them a slot. After he’d come down here, he’d learned that apparently the Hellborn had a thing for clowns. It was creepy to the max but worked in their favor, this time, since that made him a bigger crowd puller than he would be as a non-clown he guessed.
After that they made an official band, Bones of Man, fuckin’ awesome name right, going back and forth between gigs at Pentagram City and Imp City with Jinbei acting as their sorta manager. And in a time that seemed shockingly short for how long Adam would guess this stuff would usually take, they got to the point where they had actual fans.
“Hell is forever whether you like it or not! Had their chance to behave better now they boil in the pot! Cause the rules are black and white, there's no use in tryin' to fight it! They're burnin' for their lives until we kill 'em again~ YEAHHHH GUITAR SOLOOOO~ ”
The crowd went wild. This song’s so awesome, course everyone loved it! He knew Morningstar was just a tasteless bitch! It was their biggest show yet in Imp City, with many of the crowd actually having come specifically for their set. Adam was at the mic with his guitar, Brook with his base guitar, and the skeleton’s cool-ass magic playing the drums for them. When he finished with a grand stroke of the last chord, he let the sound hang in the air until it faded into the cheers, before announcing into the mic, “If ya liked that one, here’s another certified banger for you all! Not as good as my song but almost! New World by the fuckin’ awesome Soul King Brook here!”
Another round of cheers. Adam moved over to let Brook have the mic. And as they geared up for the song, the skeleton asked Adam’s favorite question–
“Thank you yohoho! But first, to the ladies in the crowd who are having fun… May I see your panties please?!”
“Awww yeahhh flash ‘em girls!”
The chicks went wild. Adam smirked something sleezy and let himself get an eyeful of all the Hellborn women readily throwing up their miniskirts or pulling down their pants, some of them clearly not even wearing underwear or only lacy strings that barely counted as it –Hell sucks, but SOME parts of it were fuckin’ sick! Concerts in Heaven didn’t nearly go this hard!
But the moment was ruined by a sudden jet of water blasting through both Brook’s and his head and face that left only Adam a coughing mess, fuckin’ skeleton and his fuckin’ no lungs Skull Joke!
“I apologize to the crowd, but it looked like those two just needed a chance to cool off…” Jinbei spoke over the sound system from where he stuck his head and torso out from behind backstage, before retreating with his job decidedly done.
A certain portion of the crowd started going even more crazy at that. A section that looked like it was filled mostly by loan sharks called out, “We love you too Daddy Jinbei!”
“Number One Manager Jinbei!”
“Marry me Jinbei!”
“This cannot be fucking normal. How the Hell does a band manager get more bitches than the rockstars…?” Adam had to whisper at Brook.
The skeleton just shrugged. “Jinbei is a very reliable and handsome man, it would make sense for women to find him attractive. In comparison, I’m merely skin and bones… but no skin and only bones! Yohohoho– Skull Joke! Now, it’s time for the New World!!!”
There was nothing like the high of playing a hype set. He was practically made for the spotlight, soaking in all the attention and glory he rightfully deserved. But somehow, it was even better than the glory he’d gotten from being known as the First Man. Cause while he still would fully assert that all of humanity owed themselves to his balls, it was also true that he’d been created to be that. Start the human race, that’s what the Big Guy had made him for and all. But this? Getting to go up on a stage to fans waiting in anticipation for him to show up and shred guitar as much as he wanted– he’d worked for this.
It was the result of hours of practice, hours of Brook’s time spent teaching him, hours of playing on the street and dead stages, all things that should have sucked ass but ended with a payoff greater than all that effort combined. Not just the spotlight, but the feeling of the rhythm and waves of a song and the way it moved through his body and arms and fingers in a way that was just so good. Like even his heartbeat was beating with the drums. Knowing that the afterlife could be like this… Adam thought that he might actually not mind being stuck in Hell, if it could always be like this.
So of course, a certain demon had to go and ruin a good fuckin’ time only a day after that–
“ –This Sun God does in fact exist, those of his world may even know the originating legend of Sun God Nika as well as the title he earned in life as King of the Pirates. He’s merely taken to a mortal form when not in need of his power. And he has in fact proven himself capable of forcibly breaking the Soul Contracts of Overlords. If any of you are in need of a testimony, the recently retired spider of the night Angel Dust can attest to this, along with his previous contractor Overlord Valentino of the Vees. Aha! Yes, you heard that right! For Straw Hat Luffy– ”
Adam spit out the soda he’d been in the middle of drinking, choking on it while clawing at his throat. He didn’t have long to pull himself together, though, cause Brook and Jinbei began making their way back out from the store they’d gone into to run some errands.
Immediately upon the store door opening, Adam had his guitar in hand and stared strumming as loud as he could, maxing the amp effect of it. To further drown out the radio broadcast playing on the other side of the street, he started yelling as though he was trying to speak over his own playing, “HEY BROOK! WHAT YA THINK ABOUT THIS RIFF HERE?!”
“Oho! It’s quite energetic! Oh, is there something playing on the speakers over there– ”
“JUST THE BITCH-ASS RADIO DEMON! THE GUY’S A CREEP! DON’T WORRY ‘BOUT HIM, WE GOTTA WORK ON THIS NOW BEFORE I FORGET– ”
Somehow that fucking worked, luckily the broadcast didn’t last for that much longer. But it was already the beginning of the end. It was only the afternoon of the next day when the doorbell for the apartment rang, and Jinbei opened it to reveal an old-as-the-fucking-dinosaurs radio had been placed on the doorstep. Adam immediately cursed at the sight of it.
“FfffffffffffffffUCK!”
“Fuck indeed. Salutations to the two Straw Hat Pirates at this residence and only the Straw Hats! This is a special localized broadcast brought to you by the Radio Demon! I know you’ve heard of me at least once, due to your lesser company trying so desperately to dismiss me. Regardless of your questionable choice of bandmates, however, I have a message for you both; Your captain is waiting in anticipation for your arrival at the Hazbin Hotel! You would have heard of his location sooner had the reincarnated First Man Adam, former head of Heaven’s Extermination Exorcist army, not kept you from listening to yesterday’s broadcast! Quite foolish of him to not have realized I would be aware of that rudeness. And with that, I believe we have about 3… 2… 1– ”
“Al! Who’d ya find this time?!”
“Punctual as always! It’s your musician and helmsman– ”
“Brook and Jinbei? That’s great! Brook, ya gotta come soon and play some music for Al! He likes it a lot and sings nice!”
“Perhaps that would be amendable, but make sure when you come, you leave behind the stray you picked up. Will you? As it happens, he killed a former resident of the hotel and the others are still rather upset about that. His presence is certain to ruin the mood of any performance here!”
“Ah– Yer mad at the guy too? Did ya lose in a fight or somethin’?”
“He used to be a notable figure in Heaven and I was quite constrained during that battle, the odds were simply not in my favor! I can handle him easily now. For he is but an insignificant, foolish jester! A bonafide has-been as they say– Ahahaha!”
“Oh! That was a Skull Joke! Haha!”
“ …I’m not quite sure what that is, but either way, you missed the mark on the actual pun I was going for. Anyway, farewell for now to the Straw Hat Pirates! And as for the has-been angel… wElCoMe To HeLl!!! It’s forever, whether you like it or not~ AHAHAHAHAHA– ”
The radio cut off into distorted, buzzing static at that point. Adam kicked away the thing for good measure with another curse, “That fucking too much red fucker! FUCK!”
A large hand grasped at his shoulder. He turned back with a scowl full of serrated teeth to see Jinbei’s level expression. “There’s no need to get so angry, Adam. While I realize you may have bad blood between you and the Radio Demon, you should try to keep control of yourself.”
“Why the fuck should I?! And why the fuck should you even care?!” Adam slapped the hand off himself to turn back around and look away from the guy and the skeleton behind him, crossing his arms and growling out, “I’m not dumb, ya know! This band is OVER! You’re just gonna go back to your oh-so precious captain and shack up with the Radio Demon and leave me in the fucking dust! So don’t you bullshit me and pretend you actually give a shit about what I do and how I act!”
This time, Brook was the one place his boney fingers on Adam’s shoulder. The timber of his voice insistent yet soft, “Just because we’ll be going back to our crew doesn’t mean things have to end, Adam. Even if we don’t get to see each other as often, we can still play our music and play our shows. So don’t say such things. Of course we still care for you! There’s no need to be sad.”
Adam couldn’t keep himself from tensing at the words. This time, he glanced back over his shoulder to give the skeleton face an incredulous grimace that matched the doubt of his tone, “Really? Yer just gonna ignore the fact that I used to lead the killing of a fuckin’ shit ton ‘a sinners for fuckin’ years?! Don’t bullshit me! I liked it, ya know! I loved fuckin’ laughing at their suffering! And by now I know the both ‘a ya enough to know that that shit ain’t cool with you! And you’re sayin’ ya wanna keep our band going?!”
“Oho, well, that is… very not good, yes. But you’re sorry for what you’ve done now, right?”
“NO! And what does that even fucking matter?!”
“Of course it matters!” Jinbei’s deep voice cut in, stepping to the other side of Brook to give Adam another considering look, “And are you truly sure you hold no regret for your actions? Say for example, if Heaven were to offer you another chance to do one of your Exterminations, would you take the offer? Would you truly kill aimlessly and without care, aiming to kill me and Brook along with everyone else?”
Taken aback, Adam found himself averting his glare down to the ground, brows furrowing together further. “I mean… Yeah? No? I don’t know! It doesn’t matter cause that’s never gonna happen! …But I wouldn’t kill you guys at least, cause you’re cool …And I wouldn’t wanna kill anyone who’s a fan of Bones of Man either, cause they’ve got good taste.”
“You may see us as exceptions, but it’s a sign of a greater shift in thinking than you realize. The souls who fell to Hell likely meant nothing to you, correct? You saw them as being different than those of Heaven, their lives not holding the same value. But despite that, you have come to regard us as people you value. You value the people who enjoy your music despite their status. You still value yourself, who met the same fate as the rest of the sinners you believed to be far beneath you. If you place these truths out before you, do you not find that there is meaning to them?”
“So– So fucking what?! Huh?! Even if you’re right and it does mean something– What then?! Nothing fucking changes!”
“You change, Adam. And even if you’re quick to discard the significance of that, it does mean something.”
A hiss of a breath caught in Adam’s throat, like it was trying to choke him. Jinbei continued without faltering at his lack of response, “You can’t change what you’ve done. You can’t change who you were in the past. And you can’t bring back the lives you’ve ended. But at the very least… you can change who you are now, and who you are in the future. Do not shackle yourself to the man you once were because you fear admitting your faults– You were wrong, stick out your chest and declare that fact without hesitation! For you can become a better man, and that’s a good thing! Some people go their entire lives without changing, content in their ignorance, and they remain all the worse for it. Do not allow your pride to condemn you to the same fate when you have the power to choose your own path.”
“…I don’t– I don’t believe in fucking redemption. Once you’re out of Heaven, you’re out. Just like how it was with Eden… It doesn’t matter if you’re fucking sorry about it, they won’t let you back in!”
“And why does that matter? Is it not enough to simply change for the sake of yourself? It’s not like you to take stock of other people’s opinions more than your own.”
“ …I guess not, yeah. Fuck. I don’t know…” Still without looking at the two, Adam stepped away from the doorframe and back in, passing them. He kept his back to them as he called out, “I’m stealing the damn apartment. Just get lost already, will ya?! I’m not used to thinking this much! My head fucking hurts!”
He ignored Jinbei’s hand momentarily patting his shoulder again. “Take care, Adam. I hope next we meet, you will have come to a better understanding of things.”
“Fat chance ‘a that, yeah!”
When Jinbei moved away, a skeleton hand replaced where his larger one had been. Brook’s voice was still soft, “You will not be alone, friend. I promise you that. We will come back. Perhaps rehearsal next weekend will be a good time?”
“ …Not like I’m gonna stop you from coming. Don’t come cryin’ to me when your captain doesn’t like ya hangin’ out with me though.”
“I do not believe Luffy is the type to care for such things. He allows us much freedom in how we spend our time. Until then, Adam. We’ll be back, alright?”
Their footsteps and the door closing after them sounded so loud, making a racket in his brain like the worst kind of mic feedback. He huffed under his breath at the sound and stomped around the place to pace off the frustration that just built right back up. Until he found himself crossing the path of the mirror in his room.
His room, because even though this was only a two-bedroom, Brook just moved his stuff right over to Jinbei’s room to let Adam have the one he’d been using without being asked. He hadn’t even thought it was a nice thing to do at the time, because he’d thought that of course he should be the one to get his own room, never mind he hadn’t paid any rent until he finally landed a job and was just mooching off the two. Because he was Adam, the best and most important guy ever, of course he was the more important between the three of them and deserved the room. Of course it was his right to have everything he could ever want–
He crossed in front of the mirror and glanced up at it just by chance. And there he was, the fucking clown snake. With a clown face with painted tear drops underneath his eyes. How fucking sad and pathetic was that. Nothing at all like his cool and awesome angel form, with his awesome wings and halo and mask.
–The way he looks now is the real him, isn’t it? How long has it been since he deserved those wings? Had ever even deserved them, really? It’s a wonder Lute gave enough of a shit to cry for him–
His hand flinched into a fist, about to ignore the way it’d fuck up his hand to punch the thing. But he stopped himself when he, almost absentmindedly, remembered that he only had this mirror cause Jinbei had bought it for him. Cause he didn’t have enough cash and wanted it. And instead he just ended up turning his back to it as well.
Flopping face first onto his bed, Adam groaned out the ever-eternal words of Heavenly wisdom.
“Fuck my life, uuuuugh…”
Notes:
Just wanted to note two things. Calico's name is based off the real life pirate Calico Jack, since I needed a relatively unimportant OC for his role I just figured giving him a pirate's name would be fitting along with lending to him being a calico cat. Secondly for those who aren't as deep into the SBS One Piece lore, there was an SBS where it was stated that Barto's crewmate Gambia the Missionary is their missionary for "Luffy-senpaism" (or at least that was one English translation for it), so I wasn't just making that up it's actually canon lmao
Chapter 12: From Sea to Shining Sea
Notes:
Since I've been able to maintain consistent weekly updates for a while now, I wanted to give a heads up that the update schedule for this fic will be slowing down and/or changed up somewhat. I know for the next two weeks I won't be available to post any chapters since I'll be on a vacation, so it seemed like the right time to adjust the schedule anyway. Just wanted to give a warning so that you guys aren't surprised when you don't get your fix next friday lol
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Somehow the situations of the various scattered Straw Hats just continued to get more bizarre. A traveling rock band? Truly? The captain had mentioned his musician’s dalliance with stardom once before, but it was still rather unexpected to have discovered that not only was the skeleton giving live performances, he was doing so with the reincarnation of the First Man. How did they even cross paths in the first place? Let alone somehow get along well enough to start a band? Even Charlie had nothing good to say about Adam’s personality, and that was truly saying something.
Ironically, if Alastor had been the type with a tendency towards social media sleuthing, he may have come across at least their band name at a prior opportunity, though it seemed they’d only just begun their earnest trending into social awareness. And with the knowledge that he was searching for a skeleton, the name Bones of Man would have at least been worth a follow up. But he must digress. They’d been located in a fair enough timeframe. He doubted Luffy cared whether he’d taken the most efficient path to reach this point. And with them having been found, all members were accounted for even when not all were present. He was a bit curious how that little venture was going for the last two, but it seems they’ll conclude their matters sooner rather than later…
It was after Luffy’s battle with Zestial upon their return to the hotel that Alastor sent out his broadcast message, and then later that same day when the new pair arrived. Once again, his notice to the captain had the boy ambushing the two at the door upon their arrival. Luffy had to stretch out his arms wide to get them around the largest member of the group thus far, his hold somewhat crushing the much lighter skeleton against the other. But they both just laughed it off to eagerly return their captain’s affection. The rest of the crew were also quick to gather around to give their own joyful greetings.
Among the other residents, Angel Dust was the first to comment, “Is that a whole-ass skeleton? Didn’t know that type ‘a demon form happened!”
“Oh dear– how rude of us to ignore the rest of the room, our apologies!” said skeleton called back as he slipped out from Luffy’s hold. Standing tall at a good head above Angel Dust’s height, he brushed down his mixed-matched outfit consisting of a black suit coat, white undershirt, and blue cravat paired with a rather outrageous pair of flower-patterned pink pants and bright orange boa, with a crown set atop his black top hat that somehow managed to keep itself perched on his sizable circular afro. He approached Princess Charlie to give her a proper bow, tucking his cane against his side. The girl returned the gesture with a bashful smile.
“You are the Princess of Hell, correct? What a charming young lady! My name is Brook, also known by my stage name and bounty moniker of Soul King Brook. I have the delighted position of being the Straw Hats’ musician. Thank you very much for providing for my captain and our comrades during this time,” then, before Charlie could give her likely delighted response, he ruined the whole introduction to ask, “May I please see your panties– ”
Off with his head by a mighty sweep of Nami’s staff. The skull completely detached from the man’s neck as the woman rightly and furiously chastised, “YOU CAN’T ASK THE PRINCESS SOMETHING LIKE THAT! Actually, you shouldn’t be asking it in the first place! Stop doing that!”
The head flew in the direction of Vaggie, who unconsciously smacked it like a volleyball with a yelp of shock. When the head fell into Husk’s hands, he also reflexively spooked and tossed it back into the air. At that point, Luffy stretched out a hand to take it directly from the air. He clutched against his chest and giggled down at the skull, “Ya made Nami mad, shishishi!”
“It would seem so, yes. I lost my head there for a second… Literally! Yohoho– Skull Joke!”
“Now that’s some freaky shit,” Cherri remarked, more impressed than abhorred, leaning forward with a hand perched on her hip as though to get a better look with her eye.
“SOMEONE GET A DOCTOR!!!”
“That’s you, Chopper. But I believe I should be able to fix myself up in a jiffy!”
“Oh… Right.” At the decapitated Brook’s reminder, the deerling calmed down.
From his place still up in his tower, Alastor snickered to himself, having been amused by the beheading antics. The headless body took back its skull, twisting it back on in a motion that should not be congruent to how neck bones function before he released his hold in a victorious stance. “There, good as new!”
“I gotta say though, Brook, I’m kinda surprised…” Usopp started as he gave the other a thorough examination, “You haven’t changed at all! Like, at all!”
“Yeah! How come I ended up a bug when nothing changed about you?!” the cook demanded while pulling at his own antenna, as though him having ended up an insect was somehow Brook’s fault.
“Maybe it’s cause he already fits the aesthetic? Even if there aren’t many other skeletons around, he doesn’t really stick out too much…” Zoro mumbled in thought.
“Woah woah woah– Wait a sec!” Husk ended up being the first of the Hazbin residents to crack, gesturing a hand towards the rather cheerful looking skeleton with an incredulous glare, “Ya aren’t actually suggestin’ this guy was like this while he was ALIVE, are ya?! A fucking dead as dead SKELETON?!”
Brook spoke up at that, unbothered, “Oh! Well you see, that’s because my Devil Fruit was one that allowed my soul to return from death one time! However, my body was on a ship stuck in the Florian Triangle’s fog, so I got rather lost attempting to look for it. By the time I made it back, I was already decayed down to the bone. It was a horrifying sight! …Not that I had eyes to see it with, yohoho– However, my hair was intact, and that was part of real importance. Yohohoho!”
“ …I don’t know why I’m so surprised about all this after the kinda fight the kid just had, but somehow, I am. There’s so much goin’ on in that explanation, I don’t even know what to complain about first. What the Hell are Devil Fruits and why did that make you able to REVIVE FROM THE DEAD?!?!”
The rest of the pirates seemed to glance over at the cat in vague surprise. Nami started, “Oh? You still don’t know that? But Luffy’s been with you this whole time, he should’ve… Nevermind. That answers my question…”
Chopper raised a hoof in the air to speak, “I also ate a Devil Fruit, the Human-Human Fruit! It’s how I became part human!”
“That one sounds kinda horrifyin’… And to be fair, Monkey there did say somethin’ ‘bout his body bein’ like it was cause of some fruit. But we just thought he was batshit!” Cherri was the one to remember.
Waving her hand high in the air like a child in a classroom, Charlie eagerly offered, “Oh! Oh! I know what those are now, Husk! I can tell the rest of you about it after we get these guys settled in!”
“Ha– It’s nice seeing that things will be lively again! Not that they weren’t with Brook around, but in comparison, the two of us are just a couple of old men. It’s not the same without the rest of you all around,” the less eye-catching newcomer cheerfully spoke up. However, he was only ‘less eye-catching’ in the sense that he’d been introduced at the same time as the skeleton.
Size wise he was the opposite of subtle, standing the tallest of them all over even Brook and having a round girth to go with it. With muted blue skin, curly dark blue-black hair pulled back into blond curling sideburns that matched his deep-set eyebrows, and a scar crossed over a still functional eye, his form seemed to resemble something of a whale shark, if Alastor had to name a specific creature. There were large gills streaked over a wide neck, webbed digits, and small white dots beginning around his shoulders and neck that seemed to trail down his back all the way to the large shark tail that dragged behind him. He adorned a muted ochre robe-like attire similar to the swordsman’s with a long brown overcoat left draped over his shoulders.
He approached Charlie as well as the loosely grouped hotel residents to give them a nod of a bow. Even with large tusk-like lower fangs, his smile was of a good-natured sort as his voice resounded deeply, “Your Highness, many thanks for sheltering our crew. I am Jinbei, known by the moniker First Son of the Sea in life and born of the Ryugu Kingdom of Fishman Island, and I am but a humble crewmember of a great captain. I am sure you know by now that, despite his unending youth and boisterousness, Monkey D. Luffy is a man I stand beside with much pride. I only hope that whatever workings he’s messed with this time have not caused too much of a hassle for you and your following.”
After the introduction began and concluded without a similar bizarre incident, Charlie slowly returned to her bashful gratefulness, insisting with a wide smile, “Oh! Oh no no– If anything, Luffy has been such a great help to us! Thank you all for coming to stay at my hotel!”
“Accumulated damage to the building and upheaval of Hell’s society notwithstanding…” Vaggie made sure to get her deadpan in there.
“And, uh, technically these guys aren’t my following or anything like that– Angel, Husk, and Cherri are all friends of ours who stay in the hotel! And Vaggie’s my girlfriend!”
“A pleasure to make all of your acquaintances. I would say we won’t be too much of a bother, but I’m guessing many of these guys have already proved that sentiment false. Wahaha!” rather than gain any amount of embarrassment or shame at the predicted behavior of his crew, Jinbei just closed his eyes in a deep, hardy chuckle.
The fishman was the most normal of the crew by far. And while Alastor would usually associate normalcy as being a negative trait, in this case, it very much wasn’t. Having witnessed enough to get the lay of the land, Alastor emerged from his shadow in the corner of the room. Though before he could attempt a grand entrance, Luffy’s attention was caught onto something like a child who’d caught sight of something shiny, rushing back to his helmsman to latch onto his rotund stomach and poke at the man’s chest.
Of his already noticeable figure, in the upper center of his chest peeking out of his robes was another interesting feature of note; the design of a sun. Not a simple tattoo or marking, however, but one that shone with a glowing, inconsistent light. Like light filtered through the undersurface of the water rather than left in plain exposure. Based on the look of Luffy’s prodding, it would seem that Jinbei’s torso held a reservoir of water within it. “Woah! Cool! It looks like ahh– that mystery water tree!”
Jinbei looked down at the accosting captain with obvious fondness. He rustled the boy’s already messed hair once more before righting the his straw hat and joyfully agreeing, “The light of the Eve Tree on Fishman Island? Yes, the replacement for my Sun Pirates mark there does bear a remarkable resemblance to the lit waters surrounding it! It’s convenient too, I can conjure water from it with ease. It’s an addition I enjoy having.”
“Uhh… And I’m assumin’ we should just take ‘fishman’ as is ‘n’ assume ya guys also got a bunch ‘a fish folk in that wacky where’s waldo world ‘a yours?”
“You would be right, Angel,” Alastor startled the spider into a jolt and he passed the other from behind. Angel clutching at his chest with all four hands as he cursed under his breath.
The lightly grouped Straw Hats parted slightly to allow him a spot in the center before both the musician and the helmsman. With upright, proper posture, Alastor planted his mic front and center of himself to rest both hands on to give a smile full of pleasantries, though he slipped in one judging side-eye at the skeleton for his early act of perversion. Luffy quickly reoriented himself, jumping off of the larger man to rush back Alastor’s way and throw an arm around him to joyfully explain, “Brook, Jinbei! This ‘s Alastor! He’s part ‘a the crew now!”
Seeing as these were both the type for a proper introduction, Alastor made sure to return the politeness, “A pleasure to be meeting you, quite a pleasure! There’s no need to repeat yourselves as I’ve already heard your prior greetings. As the captain mentioned, I am Alastor, also known throughout this Ring as the Radio Demon! I do hope you don’t mind my intrusion into your little entourage.”
Both the cook and the swordsman sent him a disbelieving glare like he was the one with multiple heads now. It was hardly his fault that they precluded themselves from a proper greeting by starting a fight immediately upon their arrival. Both the puppet and the navigator regarded him with a wary glance, while the deerling seemed fully charmed by his words. Again, they were the ones to instantly start shrieking in terror at the sight of him, and the puppet fell into the fire all his own. He had nothing to do with that nonsense.
A complete departure from any of the previous reactions his introduction has garnered, the skeleton began to clap in a burst of energy that rushed out his words, “Oho! How exciting! And the captain mentioned before that you like music, correct? I’d love to play for you sometime, good sir! Welcome to the Straw Hat Pirates! If my eyes don’t deceive me, you seem like a proper gentleman as well! …Not that I have eyes to see with! Yoho– Oh wait. I just used that one, didn’t I… ”
Ever the grouch, of course Husk was the one to interject with a tone full of that cattish attitude, “Hate to burst your bubble, double dead guy, but this proper gentleman here is actually an insane maniacal Overlord. Just in case ya didn’t know that’s what he meant when he said he was the Radio Demon.”
Blank eye sockets glanced away from where they’d drifted towards Husk and back to Alastor’s person. “Aaah– He’s insane, is that so… So am I! We have so much in common!!! How wonderful! YOHOHOHO~ ”
That gained Brook a clear squinty-eyed look from Angel, Husk, and Vaggie. Cherri gave the skeleton another incredulous once-over while Charlie just awkwardly smiled through the strangeness. She winced sharply at the shrill sound of Niffty scurrying away with a cry of “How’re there still no bad boys?! This is madness! I need ‘a kill some bugs!”
Without paying the reactions any mind, the fishman gladly replied, “Looks like Luffy managed to find another interesting fellow. I welcome you to the crew as well, Alastor. How ever you found yourself pulled into our captain’s path, I’m sure it’s been lively journey one way or another.”
“Lively is certainly one way to put it, yes siree! Aha! The captain here never fails to provide an entertaining turn of events,” Alastor chimed back while giving a pat to the boy’s arm that was still around him. Luffy’s grin beamed at the gesture.
Things had been going perfectly fine, so of course the swordsman had to interject his boorishness into things, raising his voice to snark, “Ya know, I think I like you better when you’re acting like a bastard, red ears. Whenever you do this playin’ nice shtick it gives me the creeps.”
“I grant people the amount of regard they deserve from my person. It’s hardly my fault I lack the patience for dealing with an imbecile of your nature,” while he kept his tone light and his smile pristine, Alastor made sure to send a glare of a side-eye at the man. He also shifted the look towards the cook as well since, even if he refrained from agreeing to Zoro’s comment aloud, he’d glanced away with an obvious smirk of agreement.
Alastor quickly reoriented himself at the now familiar feeling of small hooves taking hold of his leg. He glanced down to see Chopper was pressed against him once more. “I keep trying to tell you guys that Alastor’s actually nice! You should try to get along with him better…”
Ever the opportunist, he was quick to capitalize, patting Chopper’s hat in a reward of approval while rubbing in, “See? Even the little deerling here agrees you’re the ones at fault in this matter. The eyes of the innocent are not ones to dismiss!”
“Since when the fuck did that happen?!”
“Holy shitcakes, it actually happened! He made friends with Bambi Rudolph!” Cherri cried in excitement in time with Husk’s outburst, shaking a similarly shocked Angel vigorously by the arm, “Husk owes me so much money! It’s a Christmas miracle!”
“It ain’t even winter yet and we’re in Hell!” Angel objected, before gesturing a couple hands towards Alastor while clarifying, “This ‘s obviously some kinda animal imprintin’ thing goin’ on. Ya know, like how baby ducks follow the mama duck ‘round!”
Vaggie cut in to deadpan, “Guys. You’ve been around Alastor and Chopper being friendly before? Literally happened today before the big fight?”
“Ya really expected us ta be payin’ any attention ta what was goin’ down on the sidelines when Luffers was fuckin’ playin’ jump rope with the cosmic horrors of the universe???”
“It was before that!”
“Sooo uh– would you two prefer to have your own set of rooms, or would you like to join the others in the suites we’re already set up?” Charlie finally stepped forward with that awkward smile of hers in a purposeful attempt to draw attention off the bickering and move the proceedings along. She fully ruined her own efforts, however, when she glanced Alastor’s way to give him a bright, wide smile of approval with two thumbs up, evidently pleased by his interactions with the deerling. He just returned the gesture with a narrow-eyed squint to turn his own smile into one of displeasure.
Jinbei ended up moving into Zoro and Chopper’s room while Brook into Sanji and Usopp’s. The dinner that night featured new dishes in the form of curry and seaweed along with sides of fruit which, again, Alastor presumed to be favorites of the new arrivals given the way the fishman readily helped himself to the seaweed and fruit while the skeleton somehow devoured a great helping of the curry despite not having a stomach. The Hazbin residents stared quite rudely at the mysterious sight of the food disappearing into the skull’s mouth. The chef also prepared some lightly caffeinated teas, both green and black, for the two to enjoy, and upon Alastor’s snarking complaints of coffee never having been served as an option, Sanji plainly responded that he’d make some to go with tomorrow’s breakfast. An answer which pleased both Alastor along with some of the more caffeine dependent Hazbin members, as whatever the chef was to make was certain to beat out the usually available brew. The night concluded with Luffy rounding up the now larger crew for a sleepover, which Alastor once again declined. The long stare the boy gave him after the fact, however, lent Alastor the impression that he wouldn’t let the matter go next time around, much to his own future ill-fortune.
The two additions continued to provide a more neutral contribution than the previous Straw Hat arrivals. While many of the hotel residents occasionally found Brook to be off putting due to the frequent eccentricity of his behavior, they all greatly enjoyed the music he would play in the lobby for any soul who happened to be around. Alastor found himself impressed by the musician’s breadth of talent, the dead man not only singing but switching between playing the piano, guitar, violin, and various wind instruments he can conjure at will depending on the piece, even using his newly gained demonic power to have the instruments play on their own in a sight reminiscent of a ghost band.
And while everyone waited with bated breath for the fishman to eventual show some trait of his own eccentricity, they eventually came to realize that, at least so far, he was the single crewmember to not feature some major personality detriment. Every conversation with the man was perfectly reasonable, instilled with wisdom, even, should it be asked of him. He was never overly loud or violent or easily cowed. The only thing that may be interpreted as a fault was his willful indulgence to the behavior and ill-manned antics of his crew, and even then, there was a certain point where Jinbei would attempt to straighten them back out in a much less forceful manner than the navigator’s efforts.
It wasn’t too long before Angel Dust found some video of their band’s concert floating around on some newfangled website, though. There was a predictable outburst upon learning of Adam’s reincarnation, Vaggie even having cried out ‘That dickhead’s ALIVE AGAIN?!’ in obvious outrage. Charlie, meanwhile, gained a rather pensive look as she thought the matter over with the weight it deserved. There had also been some back and forth between the hotel residents and Brook confirming that he indeed still was in the band with Adam, and their criticisms did nothing in terms of getting the skeleton to change his mind on the decision, ‘Because I don’t have a mind anymore! Yohoho– Skull Joke!’. Luffy, of course, did not understand what the big deal was about even with the given context of Adam having struck down ‘the Snake Captain’, returning the point with a genuinely confused question about what that had to do with Brook. Vaggie and Cherri Bomb, the two main complainers, quickly gave up the tirade as a lost cause with an eyeroll.
Ignoring his own simmering discontent about their association with the First Man, on Alastor’s part, he also found there to be an interesting contrast between these two and the rest of the Straw Hats. Even without having asked after the ages of the members outside of Chopper and Luffy, there was quite clearly a considerable gap in age between the two professed older men and the youthful majority which the fishman himself had made mention of upon their introduction. Jinbei was obviously the most mature of the lot, but even with Brook’s tendency to act out in ways that would be considered almost childish, there were often times the skeleton would also act his age, having a preference for the old-fashioned even when his musical variety included more modern genres along with classics. Alastor hadn’t put too much thought into his own difference in life experience compared to the others, either in consideration to the age he’d died at or the additional 90 years he’d subsequently experienced in his afterlife, but from either count his age was more in line with the new arrivals. And if counting his years in Hell in addition to his years in life, he’d likely be the oldest period.
While the Straw Hats tended to behave as though they were in their own personal world, external happens did in fact come to affect life at the Hazbin Hotel. Zestial and Carmilla, as promised, have been systematically going through their Contracts to release the souls in their ownership. As word spread about the God’s battle with the eldest Overlord both facilitated through Rosie’s social mechanisms, Alastor’s own boasting broadcast covering the matter, or word on the street, the other Overlords excluding the still secluded Vees slowly but surely began their own transitions into the new age. They all knew that if the boy was a God in truth, Alastor was fully aligned with the pirate while Rosie was keeping to neutrality in deference to their alliance, and Zestial had been unable to best him with Carmilla falling in line, that the rest of them stood no chance even should they attempt to combine forces. And even with the Vees, they were likely only getting by with their lockdown due to having a fair amount of non-Soul Contracted employees, though the contracted likely added up to more than half their base of power excluding their influence over the sheepish masses. Alastor was looking forward to when something would break in that regard, seeing as the captain had already proven his superiority over one of their supposed dastardly trio. It was simply a matter of lying in wait.
The missionary pawn that was Bartolomeo proved his worth through his enthusiastic recruitment methods –as well as his collection of donations that quickly found their way to either Nami’s possession or Luffy’s mouth, depending on the type. He cried actual tears of joy upon seeing that even more of the Straw Hat crew had arrived while he’d been out for the day. Alastor was almost hesitant to see how the man would react to having the crew in its entirety in the same room. Through the missionary’s recruitments, however, the hotel soon found itself with actual patrons. A shocking turn of events indeed!
Charlie herself had cried tears of joy upon their first convert Calico asking to stay, which the man regarded with uneasy hesitation. She seemed to be looking over that the reasoning for all her new residents lied in them wishing to find communion in their new supposedly a pirate fleet but actually a cult fellows with a strong helping of rose-colored vision. Not every new member of the Straw Hat Grand Hell Fleet came to live at the hotel, many choosing instead to keep their original places of residence, but a good number of them did as the converts trickled in slowly but surely. Compared to the size of the hotel and all its vacant rooms, the amount of sinners was still but a handful, but just the fact they’d managed to gain more sinners outside of Angel Dust, Cherri Bomb, and the legitimate pirates was a significant change of pace in and of itself.
Seeing how Adam had purposefully kept his two patrons from hearing Alastor’s broadcast, some of the other Straw Hats had to explain the situation to Jinbei and Brook when they began to realize what it was that Bartolomeo was up to. ‘Alastor literally started a cult and social revolution centered on Luffy as a God, can you believe that guy?! And he says we’re the hassle to deal with! Huh? Of course we’re charging for it, we have to build more capital for Luffy’s idiotic demands! But it’s okay cause we’re not asking for that much…’ And this inevitably led to one of them taking more of an interest in Alastor’s plans.
It was only a couple of days after their arrival that there was a polite knock on the trapdoor of his tower, instantly excluding a good number of candidates for who was on the other end. The call from beyond the thin barrier just cemented his previous suspicion as to the culprit, “Alastor, are you up here? This is Jinbei. If you have some time, I was wondering if we could talk for a moment.”
Seeing as he was off air, Alastor readily responded, though only after he’d given the trapdoor itself a glance of careful consideration, “The good helmsman, of course we can have a chat! However… I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but as a man of great strength and a size to match, will you be able to fit through the entrance to my abode?”
“ …Now that you mention it, I don’t think so. No one else here is as large as me, so it likely hasn’t been a problem for you before, correct? My apologies. Perhaps we can move elsewhere– ”
“Oh none of that now! Just give me a moment…” Deciding that he might as well attempt to start off the discussion pleasantly given Jinbei’s fair-natured levelheadedness, Alastor swiftly ran through a mental list of what to conjure with a couple flicks of his mic. The couch that he preferred to use as a more comfortable seating area, two side tables with one steaming cup of jasmine tea and his favored mug filled with some properly brewed coffee, and lastly, he enlarged the trapdoor and its opening a considerable amount. “There we are! How about you give it a try?”
A webbed hand pushed up against the door, soon followed by the rest of the fishman who was looking at the newly changed door with curiosity. Upon getting another look at the man, Alastor took the opportunity of the fishman’s lack of attention on his person to double tap the mic-head of his cane on the side of the couch, subtly extending it such that he could actually sit on it without being squished into the larger man.
“Thank you. That’s some impressive magic you have! Even as I’ve learned of the existence of such power here, I’ve not seen it used so casually before. Oh– Thank you for the tea as well! There was no need seeing as I’m the one imposing,” Jinbei was respectful as ever as he received the cup from Alastor, sitting down next to him on the couch while being considerate as to give as much space between the two of them as possible.
Sipping at his own mug and crossing his legs, Alastor waved off the matter with a smile, “Nonsense! My mother did raise me to have manners. It’s simply that such accommodations would be wasted on those simpletons. But enough of that– I’m much too curious to hear what it is drew you up here.”
“Ha! I agree Luffy and many of the others wouldn’t care too much for being greeted with tea as much as I do,” Jinbei cheerfully affirmed, before he soon leveled off into a more thoughtful tone, “I heard that you were the one to put things into motion regarding Luffy imposing on the Overlords to break their Soul Contracts. I knew something had to have happened, since Luffy isn’t the type to do that sort of thing of his own volition, but I admit I had been surprised to hear that you’d orchestrated the matter so directly.”
“Why yes indeedy, I did play a fair bit of my hand in that! I suppose you wished to ask after my reasoning?”
“Somewhat. Nami said that you mentioned you were thinking of how Luffy would likely wish to do something similar in the future, and that you personally had gain in it by reducing the power of your competitors.”
“I wouldn’t call the other Overlords competitors, necessarily. Outside of my ally Rosie, I tend to regard them merely as pieces on the board to be in consideration of. Either to be worked around, left be, or countered should they make a move that impedes my path,” Alastor allowed himself another sip as an excuse for a pause, smile carefully intact, before asking, “Do you find my motives unsatisfactory, then? You seem to be a gentleman of honor. Perhaps it displeases you that this undertaking was spurred through ill-pure intentions?”
Jinbei, who’d been taking a sip of tea, lowered his cup to look down at Alastor from his still considerable height difference to give a neutral yet sincere expression. “Perhaps some time ago I might have… But if I cared so much for intentions now, I wouldn’t have agreed to join Luffy’s crew. While our captain has great capacity for good, as evidenced by this scenario, he doesn’t become inclined to act on it until he has a personal reason to. It is undoubtedly better for the sinners of Hell that these Contracts are being broken, so regardless of what drove your own reasoning, it’s leading to a positive outcome. I have no reason to complain.”
Alastor took another drink as he turned the response over in his head. That had been his greatest assumption as to what the man would inquire about. He tried not to sound too anticipatory as he questioned, “Is that so? Then may I ask as to what you do wish to discuss?”
“Well, while talking about the situation with Nami, she had also mentioned that you used be under the bonds of a Contract yourself. Still are, technically, as it’s been passed off to Luffy.”
Alastor couldn’t help the way his gaze narrowed and his smile pulled thin. He used the excuse of looking down to examine the brew inside his cup to avert his eyes. “Both of those claims are true, yes. If you’re here to ask after the details, I’m afraid there’s not much more I’m willing to give that hasn’t already been said to one Straw Hat or another. Other than the confirmation that I have no issue with the captain’s place in the matter.”
“You don’t have to speak of anything you don’t wish to. It’s just that hearing about your circumstances made me think, perhaps, you would be a good person to discuss the topic of these Soul Contracts in general with. To be honest, when I first came to this place after declining Heaven to return to Luffy’s side and heard that such practices were afoot… It disturbed me greatly,” Jinbei’s expression darkened at the thought as he reminisced, “A slavery even more encompassing than the system that had been built in life. Fisher Tiger would have wept if he’d seen it. I’m very grateful it seems he passed whatever was required of him to be accepted into Heaven, though I am also not surprised as he was a great man.”
His stare shifted back towards the fishman at the mention of the unfamiliar name, the prickling of his irritation soothing down at the change in subject. “Fisher Tiger… Would it be considered a faux pas to presume that the man is a fishman much like yourself?”
“In this case no, seeing as you’d be correct,” Jinbei almost chuckled at that, before his face lowered back into its previous somberness. “Come to think of it, you don’t know about any of that history… Fisher Tiger used to be my captain, the captain of the Sun Pirates before I took over the title upon his passing. He was most well-known in life for his attack on the Holy Land to free the slaves owned by the Celestial Dragons. Many of the fishmen slaves joined his crew, and to ensure they wouldn’t be identified by the brand the World Nobles used on their slaves, the Sun Pirates began the practice of using their sun marking on each of its members to cover the brands. Making it such that it was impossible to tell who’d been a slave and who hadn’t. I myself had been fortunate enough to not have ended up in such straits, I’d simply been compelled by the boldness of his actions to join his cause.”
The fishman brushed his free hand against the dimly shining sun on his chest as he explained its origin. Displeasure turned behind Alastor’s smile for a different reason, now. Not upset at the man but the circumstances he spoke of. “The first sinner who came to ask after the captain’s help happened to be of your world and mentioned his own enslavement. From the little he’d said, those Celestial Dragons that’d been running the place sounded distasteful to say the least.”
“Very much so. Whether they be human or fishman or of any other race, every slave of the Holy Land suffered greatly. Due to the lineage they were born into, their word outweighed any other excluding those higher up within their own hierarchy. The marines as a system were built to protect them above all others. However, they were not the only ones to purchase slaves. Other humans of nobility would purchase people placed on auction.”
Having been looking away in remembrance for some time, the fishman redirected his gaze back to Alastor as he further explained, “Fishmen and Merfolk… Many humans didn’t see us as people. Close by above our island on the surface, there is an island grove with an amusement park at the base of the Red Line below the Holy Land, where the Celestial Dragons would sometimes frequent to attend the human auction house that had been present there. My kind were not welcome lest they find themselves becoming merchandise. It was a point of contention that we were unable to go to the surface world without being endangered. Despite the subjugation of many of our kind and our forced isolation, our Queen had rallied for us to attempt to achieve peace with humanity, such that both our races may live on land under the sun. And yet she’d been assassinated by one of our own kind who rejected her ideals, though it hadn’t been known at the time. Conversely, Fisher Tiger had died from wounds inflicted in an ambush orchestrated by humans following our crew's aid to a human child who'd been enslaved... I myself had to cast aside my own resentment for humans in an attempt to follow my Queen's and captain’s teachings. There is… much bad blood to be cleared from the water.”
It was considerable amount of cultural context to take in. Alastor found himself commenting even as his thoughts turned, “ …The captain had mentioned your kind now being able to live on the surface, before. I assume he had a hand in this to some extent?”
At the mention, Jinbei’s expression brightened a bit, the sun mark on his chest lighting up with his mood after it’d gone almost fully dark and murky. Though only dimly so, not nearly as bright as it had been upon his reunion with the captain and other Straw Hats. “Yes, that’s right. The Ryugu Kingdom is one of the founding countries of new World Government that is amidst a reformation process, and our King now has many allies amongst the other governance due to them having come together under Luffy’s banner during the war. One of the first things they would address are the policies concerning non-human races along with enforcing the ban on slavery. Someday soon, the children of the sea will have the chance to freely live on land and experience a new way of life. A simple amusement park full of glittering lights will no longer be considered a land of a far-off dream to them. And with this, hopefully, they will no longer learn the hatred that poisoned those who’ve come before them.”
Closing his eyes, Jinbei remarked, “Monkey D. Luffy… really did make that far-off dream a reality, the dream I inherited from my previous captain of achieving a world where fishmen and humans would be considered equals. When he saved our island, having no regard for how different its people were from him or the suspicions they cast onto him, I couldn’t help but believe he’d make it possible. I’m grateful that even in death, I can continue to be with him as he continues to bring freedom to others in need of it. But if only the worlds had been such a place where it hadn’t been needed to begin with…”
After a sigh, the fishman looked back at Alastor to ask in earnest, “I heard that the world you and most other sinners are from is one of only humans, a place where merfolk are but myths told by sailors. Was it different there? Without having such differences dividing the people…”
Usually Alastor reveled in the corruption perpetuated by humanity, but in in this case, he was not overjoyed to be the bearer of bad news. Even still, he kept his tone purposefully blasé as he leaned further back against the couch and bluntly responded, “Not at all! Even without the question of gills and fins, they merely came to focus on more minute differences between people based on physical traits associated with the various regional populations of Earth. The color of one’s skin especially has been a considerable factor in how humans treat one another.”
“That’s a shame to hear… And for something so minor?” Jinbei’s face fell into a muted, familiar sort of disillusionment.
“Indeed.” Closing his eyes while taking another drink of coffee, Alastor allowed himself just a brief moment of recollection to what he’d seen throughout his life before death. Seeing that the fishman had expanded to such an extent as to his people’s plight, he might as well return the favor. Alastor kept his gaze lowered on his cup as he reminisced, “My mother and father were of different races, with my mother being of a people who faced an extensive history of enslavement, a practice that had been deemed illegal a couple decades before my time. I’d been born in a time and place where, depending on who you asked, I was considered to be the product of a most unnatural union. They hadn’t even been married, seeing as interracial marriage was banned in their region despite the fact that there were a considerable portion of people whose culture had been built upon the intermingling of different ethnicities.” –Not that that man had been worth marrying to begin with, but the burden of a bastard child on an unmarried woman was considerable…
“It got worse rather than better as I’d grown older. The law had been expanded so far that even the two races living together under one roof wasn’t permitted. But a number of decades after I died, I heard from the grapevine that our nation did eventually come to legalize such unions… Nowadays they are commonplace, even,” with a considering hum, Alastor forced his eyes back to Jinbei’s face of heavy rumination to grin with the same unaffected attitude he’d started with, “I suppose all this is to say that the detangling of segregation practices is a tricky, lengthy affair even once the question of slavery has been dealt with. So don’t be too disappointed should you hear from newly fallen sinners of your world that things aren’t moving along too quickly in that regard. Though having your people be represented in truth at the table of governance puts them in a considerable leg up at least.”
“Hm. You have a point that, while many of the leaders forming the new World Government are aligned on this, there will undoubtedly be push back from other people and nations that are resistant to the change. Things have not been resolved in full. But simply the fact that our once unchangeable circumstances can in fact be changed is something I find much hope in. Thus, I will choose to trust in those who I’ve left behind to take care of the rest. Thank you for indulging in my curiosity as to how your world had been.”
“It seems a fair enough deal to trade information as such. I myself knew nothing about the circumstances you spoke of either. My– we’ve gone rather offtrack from the subject you came here to actually discuss, haven’t we!” Alastor ended on a chiming note as he raised his cup.
Jinbei waved the remark away with brief shake of the head, gesturing his cup in Alastor’s direction as he countered, “Not at all. Hearing the experiences of you and your people is most invaluable! And in any case, while I had thought to speak of Contracts, that isn’t necessarily what I sot you out for. It’s more just that it was a matter I thought I might learn more about you yourself from, Alastor. I wish to get to know our newest Nakama since I knew nothing of you other than your reputation. And I’ve found that, in many instances, it is much better to form an understanding of a person based on personal interactions rather than a view perpetuated by others. Therefore, the conversation we’ve had up until this point had been exactly what I’d been hoping for. Better than I hoped, even. It is my hope that, even with the dour topic we’ve been discussing, you are enjoying speaking with me as much as I am with you.”
With the careful control of his smile, Alastor reigned in any of his own internal surprise at that response from leaking into his expression. Instead, he allowed himself a short pause of a drink such that his thoughts could stir.
“ …It has been a rather intriguing conversation, yes. If you are looking for a long-term dialogue, I would not be disinclined to continue. Yes, another thing that might be of interest– Why don’t I tell you about not only details concerning the background of Soul Contracts, but also how that applies to how the captain is able to break their magic when such a feat is out of reach for every other soul. I feel as though your crew takes his capabilities for granted, but from my perspective as well as Husker’s and Angel’s, it came as quite a shock!”
“I would imagine so, that’s usually people’s first impression of Luffy. Ha! I’d love to hear some of the things our captain got up to with you though as well as your interpretation of his abilities, yes.”
The two of them ended up speaking for quite a while, moving on from various subjects of mutual interest. Alastor refrained from breeching into any information as personal as when he’d spoken of the social context of his living world, but Jinbei didn’t seem disheartened by him keeping his cards close to his chest so to speak, seemingly just happy to chat over anything at all with Alastor just to get to know him, as he’d claimed. Their back and forth was only interrupted once the deerling ventured up saying the cook had given him the task of bringing them to supper. Overall, Alastor would consider it an afternoon well spent, and from then on, Jinbei would seek him out on occasion to share similar conversations, much like how Chopper had gotten into the habit of frequenting his abode.
It was the day after that initial conversation, though, that Alastor had found himself thinking on the matters that had been spoken of. A familiar, bitter resentment coiled tight in his chest, constricting his breath and the broiling anger that simmered inside. Long brewed ire and venom breeching the surface after having remained hidden for quite some time. Out of sight and mind, but never truly dead and gone, as he was now reminded.
Usually, such a feeling would result in more violent impulses. But this time… a certain thought turned out of his head from it. One that he wasn’t inclined to. And yet, he couldn’t quite shake it out of his stream of consciousness.
So distracted was he by his conflicting thoughts, he’d been caught embarrassingly absentminded. One of the gate sections had been brought down by the cook and swordsman arguing over something or other, and while Nami set about punishing the two miscreants, Alastor emerged from his shadow to summon a handful of shade minions to fix the thing up. Rather than go back to his previous tasks, however, his gaze drifted without seeing as it was forcibly directed towards a certain area of the city. And it was in this state that he ended up blinking at the sight of Charlie standing directly in front of him, waving a hand in front of his eyes for good measure.
“ –Alastor? Hellooooo? Anyone home?”
“Dear Charlie, I had not thought you as the patronizing type despite many of your actions possibly being interpreted as such. I can see you quite clearly.”
“Don’t give me that! I’ve been trying to talk to you for like a whole minute now!” the Princess huffed at him shortly, before her face swiftly transitioned to one of concern, “That’s really not like you… Is something wrong?”
Grin pulling sharp, Alastor purposefully turned his cheek to the girl as he moved to buff out a speck on his monocle in a clear show of dismissal. “Not at all! I had simply been lost in my thoughts, as it were.”
“That just means there is something wrong! You can tell me, you know!”
“Nothing is wrong, so you needn’t worry your pretty little head over the matter,” he once again shut her down, though he couldn’t help but tack on a sardonic self-referential comment at the end, “It merely seems I’ve begun to show signs of the captain having rub off on me in certain, displeasing ways. Honestly. Such a stupidly unnecessary idea belongs in his head, not mine…”
He was jostled as he placed his monocle back on his face, Charlie pulling at his other sleeve as she pouted at him demanding, “Oh, now you’ve gotta tell me what’s up! Please? Pleeeease? Pretty pretty please?!”
Showing a grin full of serrated teeth and his antlers branching a noticeable amount, Charlie startled back as Alastor’s claws curled and his distorted voice chimed, “Are you sure about that, dearie? The matter concerns that little FAVOR you promised me, after all. The one which I have most certainly not forgotten about!”
The Princess stepped back from, properly cowed as intended. But before he could preen in victory, her wary gaze furrowed into something more akin to genuine consideration. She regained her footing once more.
“If– If you’re saying what I think you are. If you’re thinking like Luffy– thinking of using your favor on something you would think of as stupidly unnecessary… Then you should just tell me what it is you want anyway! I might consider doing it for you even without using the favor, depending on what it is!”
Indeed, it was a point of consideration. If he didn’t have to lose the favor he’d gained through his deal with the Princess of Hell over the matter, there would be no reason not to inquire about it. And he recognized it would be the sort of idea Charlie would agree to.
He looked back out towards the city rather than at the girl herself, even as he proposed, “ …Very well, then. In truth, I’d been wondering if it’d be possible to rent the entirety of your father’s dalliance of a theme park for a day without paying for it in true. Since I see very little chance of a certain treasurer-like navigator being pleased by the prospect of such a hefty payment.”
“ …Huh? You wanna rent out Lu Lu World???” the befuddlement was clear in Charlie’s tone.
Smile curling in miffed discontent and muted humiliation, Alastor did an about-face to start heading back to the hotel proper. “Yes, I am quite aware it is a stupidly unnecessary request. Which is why I had previously refrained from speaking of it to begin with! If not for your annoying pestering– ”
“W-Wait! I didn’t say no! I just– was surprised, is all! Really, just wait a second!”
Charlie managed to dive in front of him once more, huffing at her own effort to cut off his retreat. Looking up at him from where she leaned over with her hands on her knees, the Princess gave him a glance of honest curiosity rather than mocking. “If that’s all you want, sure! I can pull a few strings! I just want to know, uh… Why? I’d almost think you were trying to do something sketchy, but then you wouldn’t be so bothered by asking…”
Alastor forced himself to settle once more, straightening his posture and shifting his visage out of the demonic attributes it had begun transitioning into. He returned Charlie’s inquisitive look with a muted, still not quite relaxed smile and half-lidded gaze. He had to parse out how to explain the situation.
“ …It seems that the pirates’ world took after Earth in certain matters, in that there were islands and bodies of governance who imposed restrictions and subjugation against certain races. The helmsman spoke of an amusement park he and his people could not take part in. And even as things seem to be on the mend for them, now that he’s died, he shall not get to partake in the advancements he had worked for. You could say he’s been left on the bitter end of the deal, though he himself does not seem to see it that way. So I had the thought that, once the rest of his crew arrives, perhaps he might enjoy a trip to the one Hell has to offer. It’s simply a trivial consideration, nothing more.”
It was about more than just a visit to the theme park, though. After all, if that was the case, simply purchasing regular tickets and attending normally would be the easiest way to go about it. No, Alastor specifically wished for the petty satisfaction of inverting the circumstances of life such that they were permitted into the park, and no one else.
He conveniently left that detail out however so that Charlie wouldn’t become disinclined to the idea. The reaction was immediate. With a hand raised to her mouth, Charlie gained a watery-eyed, emotional expression that already had Alastor internally sighing and bracing himself for the happening. The same hand lowered to press against her chest as she sent him a disgustingly soft and wobbly smile.
“Oh, Alastor… That’s so sweet of you! Of course I’ll get you guys into Lu Lu World! And of course I wouldn’t make you use your deal for something like that! What’s a favor between friends, right? We can even make a hotel activity out of it with the others and all the new guests, exclusive access for a whole day! Oh my gosh, I’m getting excited just thinking about it! It’s such a great idea! A day trip at the amusement park– Why didn’t I think of that first?!”
“AMUSEMENT PARK?!?!”
Alastor just barely caught himself from falling forward onto the ground when a certain Monkey launched himself into his back, folding him over almost entirely with a pained grunt.
Slowly pushing back against the weight to straighten back up, his neck cracked as he whipped his head around to glare a sharp grin at Luffy hanging on his back with his arms wrapped around Alastor’s shoulders and his legs around his midsection in a most unbecoming piggyback ride. He hissed at the boy’s giggling excitement and sparking eyes, “Hush you. We’re not going anytime soon, Charlie and I are just considering plans for a future excursion. Now get off me!”
“No!” his very simple request was immediately rejected with glee, Luffy’s energy not dimming in the slightest, “Goin’ when everyone’s here ‘s a great idea, yeah! Jinbei wasn’t around when we went to Sabaody cause he joined later, and when we went with Camie, the day ended not fun when some guy took her cause she was a mermaid and we had to go get her back. Thanks Al! Shishishi!”
Making a mental note of the rather unsettling detail the captain mentioned offhand, Alastor placated with an undertone of exasperation, “Yes yes, very good. Just promise not to mention anything of this to the others yet. Let’s make a surprise out of it, shall we? And also not to mention my involvement in these plannings.”
Luffy happily complied, “I promise, yeah! But why don’t ya wanna let ‘em know about you? Ya don’t need ‘a be embarrassed! It’s nice that you’re nice!”
“I’m not being nice. I am addressing an injustice that I personally find to be rather infuriating! Intention matters in that regard! The others being aware of my hand in things will give them the wrong impression, as you are exemplifying now, that I’d prefer avoiding.”
“Huh? That kinda thing doesn’t matter. If someone thinks what you’re doin’ for ‘em is nice, then it’s nice! And as long as you’re doin’ what ya want it’s fine!”
“Somedays I truly believe speaking to a brick wall would leave more of an impact on the wall than compared to when I attempt to speak to you…”
Off to the side, Charlie was in the midst of giggling laughter. Laughing at his expense of course. Finally resorting to summoning a good number of shadowy tendrils to remove the captain from his person, Alastor once again found himself questioning if the newfound entertainment value of the boy and his crew was worth this hassle.
…Though, in the same vein, he couldn’t rid himself of the fondness of seeing Luffy’s beaming smile sent his way. Pleased to know he’d made a decision that pleased the boy. And if he stopped putting up a fuss once the Luffy had given up on hanging from his back to instead hug Alastor’s arm against his person, well, that was his own prevue to indulge the boy as such.
“So? What do you have for me, Hawkins?”
“ …There is a 100% chance of you returning to Straw Hat’s side within the week.”
Law scowled at the scarecrow-looking demon version of Basil Hawkins. Hawkin stared bad in a fully unemotive deadpan. “You didn’t even use your cards for that!”
With eyes that were somehow both stone-cold but also now gave off the impression he was looking at a particularly stupid man, Hawkins drawled, “Because I didn’t need them to know such an easy prediction.”
“But that wasn’t even what I was asking about?!”
“Does nothing to change the fact that that is your future, Surgeon of Death. Despite your protests, you are bound to the now Pirate King most willingly.”
Pinching in between his closed eyes, Law settled himself with a deep sigh before looking back up to glare at the fortune-teller. “If that’s the only thing you have to say to me, I’m not paying. You know that right?”
“Indeed. That was simply the easiest prediction to get out of the way, as I’d mentioned,” Hawkins had a shit ton of snark for a guy seemingly only capable of one or two facial expressions. Law had to keep himself from snapping back as he watched a hand made of straw finally reach for the guy’s damn tarot cards. As the cards shuffled themselves and Hawkins slid off the card now at the top of the deck, an ominous, dimly illuminated purple mist swirled around them.
“The Tower, upright. Wheel of Fortune, reversed…” Hawkins called as he placed down the cards. His eye flashed in a violet glow. “There is an 85% chance that the Vee Overlords will be provoked into make a drastic move as their order falls apart around them, though not in the immediate future, and a 70% Blackbeard will see this as an opportunity to give himself the advantage.”
“I can see him making that sort of move, yeah…” Law muttered under his breath, arms crossing over his chest at the feeling of it tightening.
“There’s one more…” Hawkins pulled from his cards, smoke-like magic wafting off the additions as he placed them on a separate section of his desk from the previous fortune.
“Judgement, reversed. Death, upright… and The Sun, upright. There is a 65% chance that Heaven will mount a considerable force for the next Extermination in an attempt to reassert their authority, and should this be the case, there is a 90% chance the Sun God shall act against them.”
Law nodded in agreement, sighing, “Can’t expect any less from him. I’d say 90% is a bit low, even… Are you really going to start calling him that, though?”
“It is how the cards described him, so in this instance, I shall follow suit.”
“And if the cards told you to jump off a cliff?”
“That could be said to be a metaphor for how I followed the path leading to my death, can it not? One must simply do the best with the cards fate has played for them,” Hawkins countered with that esoteric, echoing voice of his, before he fell back into a deadpan that matched his stare at Law, “Not all of us are fortunate enough to fall into the favor of a God.”
He couldn’t withhold his growl, at that, “You bastard– he wasn’t any God when I made an alliance with him, and I died too!”
“Indeed, you did. After you had parted ways. Perhaps if you had accepted the lucky card that had been dealt to you and stayed on his path, you would not have decreased your own probability of survival and led yourself into such a fate,” Hawkins’ long and spindly finger made of twisting straw tapped the upright Sun card as he said this, as though he really thought Law was stupid enough not to make the connection for himself.
“I didn’t come here to take shit from you…” Law muttered the irate remark in the back of his throat as he dug into his pockets to slam the owed cash onto the table, done with the guy. “You’re lucky I’m even giving you this much when you didn’t give me anything on Doflamingo!”
“The other predictions were of more importance, and thus revealed themselves to me more readily. If you are truly persistent as to hearing a fortune concerning that Warlord, I can attempt one more read for you. Though once again I cannot guarantee such cards will be played for you” the scarecrow quietly huffed, as though Law was the one being hard to work with here.
“Fine. Go on then!”
Passive-aggressively maintaining eye contact the entire time that he reorganized the money to a corner of his desk and off his cards, Law purposely rolled his eyes at the other Supernova even as Hawkin’s magic started up once more.
“The Moon, reversed… Interesting.”
While Law hasn’t used Hawkin’s services more than a handful of times, he’s done this enough to know the man has never referred to his reading as ‘interesting’ before. He also knows that the guy is more than just a hack, seeing as he’d managed to predict an ‘80% chance’ of Luffy ending up in Hell and that ended up being proved right despite the logic that should have been against it. Internally, Law braced himself, even as he kept his words short, “What is it?”
“ …There is a 50% chance you will be at odds with Straw Hat’s newest crewmate, the Radio Demon, and a 50% chance you will find yourselves in agreement.”
“ …I’m not fucking paying you for that.”
“I did warn you that a prediction concerning– ”
“That part of it doesn’t even matter. You’re seriously gonna give me a 50/50 prediction about literally the least important thing you could have picked? I could’ve just flipped a coin for this bullshit! The only useful thing I learned from that is that the idiot managed to recruit the Radio Demon, and I would’ve figured that out within five minutes after meeting up with him again!”
“ …Understandable. However, it is not my fault the cards are not in your favor. Your luck has certainly taken a turn for the worst, the longer you refrain from following the path meant for you.”
“Fuck you too, Hawkins! Stop poking at the damn Sun card! I’m not a fucking idiot!”
“ …If that is what you believe, let’s best hope the cards do not prove it a folly. Until next time, Trafalgar.”
When he left, Law made sure the door slammed behind him.
As he arranged and rearranged potential plans in his mind, Law had to tell himself that he absolutely was not, was not, moving up his timeframe for heading to the delusional redemption hotel of Princess Morningstar’s because Hawkins told him to. No– he just thought it was about time to bite the bullet. Nothing wrong with that, right? And so what if he’s starting to feel that invisible, imaginary pull that seems to always draw his attention back towards Luffy? He knows why he’s feeling it, and he already knew falling back into the guy’s pace was as inevitable as the Sun rising in the world of the living. No need for that snarky 100% prediction from a damn scarecrow!
As his thoughts begin to spiral over themselves in a mix of stubbornness and resignation, a distant part of Law found himself wondering if Corazon and his crew could watch him from where they were up behind the pearly gates. If so, he also wondered if they were laughing at him. Wouldn’t blame them, honestly. He knows that if this were happening to literally anyone else, he’d find it fucking hilarious, that’s for damn sure…
Notes:
From what I know of canon it's been stated that Alastor is mixed-race Creole of New Orleans and died in 1933, and appearance wise he's in his 30s-40s which would presumably be the age he died at. For his talk with Jinbei, I needed to decide some specifics in terms of his background since the timeframe for when he was alive featured the rampant establishment and escalation of segregation such that the actual timing was kind of relevant. So for the purposes of this fic, Alastor is half Creole of color (specifying this because some Creole were able to transition to being "white" depending on how trackable/recent their African ancestry was) and half Caucasian, and was born sometime between 1894 and 1900. I made him half because it provided a unique perspective in terms of the integration of races, which complements Jinbei's story of the Fishmen's struggle for equality since they are currently at the stage of both their enslavement becoming illegal and are trying to move away from their being separated from the humans and start integrating and living among them to some degree on the surface.
Based on the limited google research I've done, this is the context behind what Al was talking about; During the Reconstruction period following the Civil War, Louisiana repealed its interracial marriage ban in 1868. However, it was then banned again in 1894, and the Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson (a case that originated from Homer Plessy of New Orleans contesting Louisiana's Separate Car Act that was established 1890 btw) followed in 1896 which officially legalized laws implementing racial segregation, so Al was born recently after the time that the marriage ban went back into effect when segregation was being implemented. From 1900 to 1914 more laws enforcing the ban and broadening its scope were put in place including the one he'd mentioned prohibiting interracial cohabitation. It wasn’t until 1954 that Brown v Board of Eduction partly overturned the precedent set by Plessy v Ferguson, and the laws prohibiting interracial marriage remained in effect until Loving v Virginia in 1967, with Louisiana not formally repealing the ban until 1972. So it wasn't until a good 3 almost 4 decades after Al died that interracial marriage was legalized where he had come from.
Chapter 13: Dead Men Tell No Tales
Notes:
After much consideration, I decided to use the lyrics from the English dub verison of the Binks Sake lyrics. But of course feel free to listen to the original instead ;)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“LAAAAAAAW!!!!! You finally came! What took ya so long?!”
“I’m already questioning why I bothered showing up at all…” the man huffed from within the boa constrictor hold that was Luffy’s arms wrapped multiple times around his body. Even with the complaint, he didn’t look surprised in the slightest, merely scowling in exasperated irritation at his plight. There was a gleam on fondness in his eyes that he couldn’t quite conceal as he looked at Luffy’s beaming smile.
“Oh! Are you another one of Luffy’s crew? Or a friend?” Charlie eagerly chimed in while leaning forward in curiosity with an elated smile. The effort just earned her a sharp-eyed glare of assessment, causing the Princess to step back a good number of steps while Vaggie approached to stand beside her with her own glare.
“No. I’m the captain of a different crew, the Heart Pirates, and was in alliance with this idiot and the Straw Hats. The name’s Trafalgar Law, also known as the Surgeon of Death. If you’re looking for someone to put some limbs back on or sell your organs to, I’m available during normal business hours,” Trafalgar ended his introduction with a smirk of an unsettling grin, causing Charlie to lean back even further as she tried to keep her now awkward and tense smile. Vaggie just narrowed her eyes in even more suspicion than she’d started with.
Surgeon of Death was certainly an interesting epitaph for someone trying to make a living as a doctor, but Alastor supposed that was why it was intended for a pirate. His style most definitely matched the “edge” the name implied, though. While his form was clearly that of a snow leopard with spotted gray fur, furry ears and a tail and all, his eyebags looked like they belonged more on a corpse than a living body, and his shirt left enough of his chest on display to showcase the majority of a tattoo-like design of a large heart with an unusual and unsettling looking jolly roger in the upper center. Not to mention he literally had the letters of “DEATH” spelled out across the fingers of both hands. Not exactly the hands a patient would wish to see on an operating table. The considerably long sword scabbard stuck in the midst of both Trafalgar’s and Luffy’s arms just topped the whole image off.
Overall, Alastor diagnosed the man with a fairly common affliction: trying much too hard to be creepy. And this was from his perspective as a demon who does pay mind to keeping his own behaviors and image such that they uphold his more frightening reputation.
“Everyone look! Traffy’s here!”
“We see him, Luffy,” Nami sighed as she stepped forward along with the Straw Hats who happened to be present. She didn’t look extraordinarily happy, but her attitude was pleasant enough as she greeted, “Welcome back Law.”
Usopp nodded in a look of understanding, echoing the sentiment, “Yeah, good to see you again after– Well– Anyway, come to serve your time with Luffy again? It’s good to face the inevitable like that.”
“Hi Law! Have you done a lot of surgeries on demons since you’ve been here? Let me see your notes on them, please! I’m still learning the biology!” the Straw Hat’s own much more patient-friendly looking doctor chimed from his shorter stature.
“Still in denial about that alliance as much you had been alive, I see,” the cook sighed while lighting a new cigarette.
The swordsman scoffed his own addition, crossing his arms as he complained, “Of course he is. Just look at how long it took him to finally show his face! We told ya where Luffy was ages ago!”
The snow leopard simmered at both the greetings and Luffy’s responding laughter, “Did I ASK for your opinion? No matter what any of you believe along with your idiot captain, an alliance is an alliance. That’s all there is to it! Being in Hell doesn’t change anything! The game has just changed is all.”
“Shishishi! I’m so happy Traffy’s our friend!”
“Did you hear a single word of what I just said?!”
“Of course he didn’t! What nonsense is that? Haha!” Alastor chimed his own shorter laugh to match the captain’s, rising up from the shadows behind where Trafalgar was glaring at the opposing pirates. At the address, the snow leopard twisted himself in his binds to shift his glare towards the Radio Demon instead. Alastor’s smile curled a bit mean at the look, narrowing his own gaze in a tease.
“A pleasure to be meeting you, quite~ a pleasure. Perhaps an introduction is in order, seeing as you are familiar with the rest of these good fellow miscreants. I am the Radio Demon, Alastor. Perhaps you’ve heard one of my broadcasts recently?”
“Al’s on my crew now!” the captain of course took the opportunity to interject.
Trafalgar replied in a deep, flat tone, “I’ve heard you before, yeah. When you started up the damn Sun God cult especially. Since it sounded like things were getting more interesting over here, I thought I’d take the time for a visit.”
“Huh? But Traffy’s staying, right?”
“I’ve been down here long enough to have my own place to live, you know. So no…”
The man tsked as he averted his glare away from Luffy’s childish pout. Predictably, the captain continued to insist, “But even Barto’s staying here! Traffy’s gotta stay too!”
“What do I care about what your fanboy turned missionary is doing? I have clinic to run now, and staying in the apartment above it is useful for when emergency cases come in off hours. That kinda thing happens a lot in Hell, so it’d be bad for business if I stayed anywhere else.”
Alastor noted the way the navigator and sniper turned towards each other in a knowing glance. That was all the encouragement Usopp needed, apparently, to gain a smug smirk, raising a hand to call out, “Ohoho? I guess Traffy really doesn’t care Barto’s ended up taking his place as Luffy’s number one ally, huh? That’s such a shame. You held the title for so long, too! We would’ve thought you’d want to keep it still especially now that Luffy’s the Pirate King and all, but it sounds like you’ve moved onto better things, huh. Guess those pirating days are really over for you. I would ‘a never pegged ya to be such a dedicated doctor, though! This is an improvement in character!”
While his heckling came on quite strong, the coward ended up losing his nerve when the leopard’s glare turned piercing in a twitch, diving to hide behind Zoro’s relatively wider frame with a small yelp. Trafalgar’s words came out more as growl, “You wanna try me, Nose-ya?! Don’t be stupid! That kind of title never existed in the first place!”
Picking up the thread, Sanji pulled his nicotine stick away to blow the smoke from his smirk as he jeered, “So you’re saying that, if we were to rank our captain’s allies including the Fleet in terms of usefulness and strength, you wouldn’t be at the top of the list?”
“Of course I would! But that’s beside the point!”
Alastor had to keep his stare from being too obvious as he eyed the increasingly irritated man’s sudden change up. The snow leopard continued to growl out in full intimidation as though he wasn’t still within the rubber octopus trap that was the captain in question, “What Barto-ya is doing with this cult shit is completely unrelated to me, and it’s not something Straw Hat-ya would want in the first place! It doesn’t matter where I’m staying, I’m still the most useful ally he has!”
“Hmm? Are you quite sure about that?” Alastor couldn’t help but chime in with his own cackle, stretching out his curled grin with a tilt of the head as the glare once again settled on him. Gesturing his mic towards the innocently blinking Charlie, he cajoled, “From my perspective, it seems to me that our very own Princess Charlotte Morningstar is higher up in the running than you! After all, she has provided the good captain with, let’s see– lodging, food, a generous allowance, lodging for the rest of his crew, a grocery allowance for the cook, a point of operations for the growing fleet, all completely without asking for anything in return! Just to name a few things off the top of my head. In comparison, what have you done, exactly?”
Black electricity sparking through his fur, the man practically barked back, “We took on two of the Four Emperors in our alliance! And the only reason he even got that far was because I showed up at the damn war in Marineford and saved his life by operating on him! The Princess only gave Luffy stuff that was convenient for her to provide, it didn’t actually cost her anything! I’m the one who stuck my neck out for him!”
Charlie flinched at the accusation, expression falling in such a way that Vaggie immediately wrapped her arm around her lover in comfort. None of the Straw Hats looked pleased as well, all going tense at the mention of “Marineford”. Chopper even flinched inward in a tearful look.
While Alastor kept his smile intact, this time his eyes narrowed in displeasure as he folded his hands and mic behind his back. Like the demon he was, he continued to weave words of provocation and ill-intention, “That was in life. I’m talking about in death, good doctor. The bonds one makes in life do not necessitate their continuation down in the pits. If you wish to continue your association with the captain, I would suggest you make the effort to do so, lest you find yourself without the benefits of his power. Or at least, that is my assumption of why you wished for an alliance with him to begin with?”
“You think that’s why I’m putting up with this?! That’s not– ” Trafalgar cut himself off with a twitch, presumably catching himself before admitting to something he didn’t want to, “If you all won’t shut up about this, fine! I’ll stay for some days out of the week. Happy now?! This isn’t worth the trouble! Less than five minutes in and I’m already caught in your pace…”
Luffy cried out in joyful victory, “YAAAAAYYY!!! I knew Traffy would wanna stay with me! Hahaha!”
“Did you ignore literally everything that just happened?!”
Almost hesitantly, the deerling spoke up, apparently having recovered somewhat now that the pirates had properly bullied the other doctor into agreement, “W-Wait! That point you had about your patients was a good one, though. What will you do if any show up at your clinic on the nights you’re here?”
Trafalgar just gave an indifferent shrug, or as much of one as he could manage currently, “If they die on my way over, that just means I’ll be right on time to harvest their organs fresh.”
“THAT’S HORRIBLE!!!”
“He’s here… The pirate bad boy…! He even does medical malpractice! What a bonus!”
Seeing Niffty’s quickly approaching crawl, Trafalgar immediately decided he wasn’t dealing with that. A thin distortion in the air spread out in a circle surrounding him that spread across the entire lobby and partly into the walls. With his hands still pinned to his sides, his fingers shifted in an intriguing movement. “Room. Shambles.”
In Niffty’s place was now a bottle of top shelf bourbon. Alastor blinked as his stare redirected back towards the bar to see that the little maid was now trapped behind the locked cabinet shelf Husk stored the good stuff in, the man himself staring at the switch up with great concern. She tapped on the glass with a wide-eyed, disoriented gaze.
Alastor then let his focus drift over towards Nami, who raised her eyebrows severely at him to nonverbally confirm yes, Trafalgar can remove Luffy using the same method, and is choosing not to. The death doctor was so hilariously inconsistent, Alastor had to refrain from laughing in his face about it. Perhaps he’ll indulge the impulse another time, though.
When Trafalgar was eventually freed and got to catching up, asking after the rest of Straw Hats, to which Luffy explained Jinbei and Brook had also rejoin and were out for the day. They’d gone to have band practice, much to Alastor’s displeasure. The helmsman wasn’t even needed for such a dalliance considering he wasn’t a bandmember, but he’d taken the chance to go with the musician anyway to visit Adam.
And now with the new arrival, the captain along with a good number of the others were properly distracted. Seeing a chance for relative independence for the time being, Alastor thought to add something to spruce up the hotel that he'd been meaning to get to.
It’d taken some time to locate one of a sufficient enough quality, but as he’d recently procured it, Alastor was able to raise a beautiful grand piano out of the shadows into a sizeable corner of the lobby parlor area. Now that they had a proficient musician to play it, he considered the addition a necessity. Though of course he would play from it as well as the opportunity arose. It’d be a shame not to seeing as he was the one who picked it out.
With that same consideration, he also thought it only fair that he be the one to test it out first, especially seeing as with the musician gone it was the prime time for him to monopolize its use.
The piano keys felt smooth against his fingertips, minding his claws to leave them pristine and intact. And the sound was as exquisite as he’d hoped for. Debussy echoed in a grand resonance throughout the hall and rafters. And after the piece, Alastor cycled through a mental list of favorites, testing his muscle memory for the majority as it’d been a while since he last played. By the end, he was in the midst of an upbeat ragtime rhythm when the hotel entrance creaked open. He didn’t bother looking over or stopping, already knowing who it was, and thus finished the song with a flourish of his fingers. As the last chord rang out, he was met with applause, a mixture of polite and vigorous.
Turning in his seat, Alastor crossed a hand over his chest in a slight incline of a bow towards Niffty, who’d been listening to him for some time now, the helmsman, and the musician. While Jinbei’s clapping was appropriately contained, both the little gremlin and tall skeleton clapped with insistent energy, fully elated. “Thank you! Thank you– You’re too kind. I was breaking it in is all!”
“Your music’s so pretty, Sir!” Niffty happily chimed with sweetness that matched the tiny pitter-patter of her claps.
Jinbei joined in with a smile, “We only caught some of it, but you’re quite skilled! Do you know any other instruments?”
“I’ve also dallied with the violin, trumpet, and saxophone. Not quite as much of a repertoire as your crew’s musician, but I’d say it’s a fair enough amount,” Alastor glanced down at his claws before looking back up through his lashes in a show of casualness, intent on making his boasting come off with a sense of false humbleness.
If Jinbei noticed his efforts, it went unmentioned, “Certainly! It’s almost like we have another musician on the crew, right Brook?”
Before this point, Alastor hadn’t been quite sure how the musician himself would react to the Radio Demon’s musical inclination. From his own perspective, he would’ve felt threatened if he’d had that sort of official position within the group only to see someone encroaching on the skillset he was meant to be providing. But even in his pessimism, he recognized that Brook was likely too happy of a soul for such petty bitterness. And indeed, his assumption seemed to be proven correct when the clatter of skeleton hands continued even after the rest of the applause had ceased, not losing any of its excitement. Brook boasted joyfully to match, “Yohohoho! That was most wonderful, Alastor! BRAVO! Oh, why didn’t you tell me you could play?! Come to think of it, the captain did say that you liked to sing too, right?! Oh! How splendid! I have the greatest idea– !”
Alastor found himself a bit on the back foot when those same skeleton hands suddenly stopped to snatch out, taking both of Alastor’s hands into his own. Frame minutely tensing, he leaned back slightly when the skull face leaned down severely to encroach into his space. Brook didn’t seem to notice the discomfort in his excitement.
“We must perform a song together for the party! Once we’re all together, I’m sure Luffy will wish to celebrate not only our reuniting but also your joining! And what a better welcome than to take center stage for a song?! We can even compose one for ourselves! Oh! Yohoho! Playing with Adam has been a great time, but I haven’t played with another of my crew in so long! More than fifty years now, even! Oho, now– that’s a depressing thought… While I delight in playing for the others, I can’t deny I’ve missed the feeling so– Oh, but I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I? It’s much too rude of me to impose when you’ve yet to agree. What do you say, Alastor? Does the idea please you as well?”
While the musician had been considerate enough to backtrack for Alastor’s agreement, he’d rather played his hand in terms of how important he viewed the gesture to be. Just that wasn’t enough to pressure the Radio Demon into agreeing, of course, but it wasn’t as though he disliked the idea. He did indeed know the party would be inevitable, and it would be nice to take control over how the attention was being focused on him. Being one of the performers would also lend a hand in ensuring the party had an acceptable level style to it. Thus, even as he carefully slid his hands out of the fleshless grip, there was no reason for him not to respond, “Why, that does indeed sound like an intriguing proposal! I can’t promise I won’t be a hinderance to you seeing as I’m but a practiced amateur myself, but if you’ll have me, I’m sure we can throw something together.”
The clapping started anew, the skeleton hopping in place in a rather bubbly sort of happiness for a form lacking the softness of flesh. The featureless skull face somehow managed to beam at him. “YOHOHOHO! Oh! Oh! Wonderful! Just wonderful! I’m so happy, it feels as though my heart will beat out of my chest! …Only I don’t have a heart! Yohoho– Skull Joke!!!”
As they’d returned for dinner, they waited for supper with everyone else rather than get right into it as the musician clearly wished to. Brook sat himself beside Alastor at the table that night, forcing him to endure the skeleton’s poor manners as he banged silverware on the table in time with Luffy to demand the cook to bring out the food, much to Sanji’s displeasure. While Alastor usually wouldn’t agree with such a practice, in these cases due to the ire it caused the annoying pervert, it brought him much amusement.
Brook was filled with so much anticipation that even after they’d begun to feast, all his conversation was centered around their plans to practice a song together. Some of the Hazbin residents, Husk and Vaggie especially, sent Alastor a peculiar glance as though they were doubtful he’d agree to play nice to that degree, but Charlie along with Luffy and a good portion of the Straw Hats gained their own excitement at news of the collaboration.
In fact, all the Straw Hats seemed at least somewhat pleased to hear Brook’s rambling on the matter, which Alastor hadn’t been expecting. And it was very clearly a crew specific reaction and not some pirate-born attitude, seeing as the newly joined Trafalgar in his seat next to Luffy couldn’t care less. From his seat across the table, Jinbei made eye contact as he nodded in an unspoken sign of appreciation. Alastor just reacted with a quaint smile back, though he still wasn’t quite sure what about the situation garnered this amount of approval.
Immediately after mealtime, the skeleton fidgeted about in poorly contained enthusiasm as he followed Alastor up to his abode, seeing that the studio was the ideal place for musical business. Alastor conjured his usual piano against a wall, Brook manifested a variety of his own instruments, and they got into things without much prompting. The musician just asking him, “What particular type of music do you enjoy, Alastor? Perhaps we can start with the genre and build off of that?”
“Hm– Well in that case, allow me to give you some examples of the dancing tunes of the roaring 20s! It’s considered an oldies style nowadays, but I can’t deny my preference for the old-fashioned!” seeing as it was a somewhat important detail, Alastor also requested, “I do hope that, with your perspective on the captain’s tastes, you will have an idea as to how to make a song based off the music that he would enjoy hearing at a party.”
“Oh, Luffy’s no trouble at all for that sort of thing! As long as it’s got a good beat, he’ll cheer along with anything! I do very much love his love for music! But still, we’ll try to keep our audience in mind– such are the considerations of a true performer! Yohoho!”
The skeleton was as adept of an artist as Alastor had believed him to be. After a few sample songs and some of his own testing, he quickly picked up the basics that made up the music of Alastor’s era. And even as he was in the middle of trying out his hand, Brook’s playing still sounded quite good, becoming cleaner and more certain the more he practiced. Until it became clear to Alastor that, even concerning his own personal style, the musician would come to outperform him by a large margin.
Usually he might’ve put up a fess about such a thought, but as Brook asked Alastor if he had an idea of the lyrics he’d like to sing, because of course I’d love for you to be the singer, Alastor! I haven’t heard you yet, but I already know you’ll be brilliant! It was hard to feel too put out or threatened. Providing Brook with the first sampling of his voice for an old-timey tune just spurred his appreciation for Alastor’s voice even further, and the Radio Demon couldn’t deny that he took pride in the accolades.
On his own part, Alastor found the process to be more entertaining than he’d thought it would be, becoming fully engrossed in the back and forth as Brook composed the bones of the rhythm and melody while he merely provided critiques and suggestions as necessary. Before he knew it, after absentmindedly checking a conjured pocket watch, he was vaguely surprised to see their process had run into the late hour.
“Great Gatsby– would you look at the time! I apologize for keeping you this late, good sir. As one who only indulges in sleep on the occasion, I hadn’t noticed I’ve been keeping you up.”
Brook’s fingers didn’t falter in the slightest as he easily replied, “Not at all! If anything, I should be the one apologizing for keeping you! I actually don’t need to sleep, seeing as I don’t have a brain to rest or anything. Yohoho! I just choose to do so and enjoy the feeling of it. And good thing too! Why, if I had no choice but to be awake all hours of the day every day, back on that ship I would have– I– would have…”
He slipped into a discordant note, held in place for just a bit too long. The sound as well as the trailing words drew Alastor’s eye to him. But a face with no skin or features was quite hard to read.
Brook quickly reoriented himself, pulling his hands back as though a thought had occurred to him. “Oh, yes, that’s right. You are unaware of my history, aren’t you? Outside of me having died once before of course. It’s such a shame I can’t show you… Oho? Wait a moment– I can magic up all these instruments now, so perhaps even that…”
In a rather intriguing sight, the skeleton popped the top section of his head open. The empty head provided a compartment for him to stick his hand into to feel around, until he cried out in victory, “Yes! It is here! How miraculous! But it’s not the real one, right? That’d be bad… No, of course not! That’d be crazy! Yoho!”
“A shell?” Alastor asked with a slight head tilt, curiosity piqued at the unexpected item.
“A tone dial! They’re devices from the Sky Islands that can record and replay sounds, much like your record tapes and such.” Placing the item which still looked exactly like a seashell on top of the piano, a boney finger pressed into an indent on the side, and indeed, music sounded out from the inside of the shell. It was another old-fashioned sort of tune, though more of a cheerful sea shanty that’d be sung drunk in a tavern than a ragtime beat.
“Yo-hohoho, yo-hohoho~ Yo-hohoho, yo-hohoho~ Yo-hohoho, yo-hohoho~ Yo-hohoho, yo-hohoho~ ”
“Gather up all ‘a the crew, it's time to ship out Binks' brew! Sea wind blows, to where? Who knows! The waves ‘ll be our guide! O'er across the ocean's tide, rays of sunshine far ‘n’ wide! Birds they sing, of cheerful things, in circles passin’ by~ ”
“Bid farewell to weaver's town, say so long to port renowned! Sing a song, it won't be long, before we're castin’ off! Cross the gold ‘n’ silver seas, a salty spray puts us at ease! Day ‘n’ night, to our delight, the voyage never ends~ ”
Brook’s empty eye sockets didn’t stray from the shell as he explained, “You see, I had left the real copy of this tone dial with a dear friend of my former crew, Laboon, so that he could listen to it as much as he wanted. He was a young whale who followed our ship into the Grand Line that we had to leave behind at Reverse Mountain, knowing it’d be too dangerous of a trip for him. We all promised him we’d return… but it’d been left up to just me. Knowing that I would revive, we recorded this song so that I could bring it back to him. The last song of the Rumbar Pirates, a crew of musicians. The last song I played with all of them, before we all died…”
“Gather up all ‘a the crew, it's time to ship out Binks' brew! Pirates, we eternally ‘re challengin’ the sea! With the waves to rest our heads, ship beneath us as our beds, hoisted high upon the mast, our jolly roger flies~ ”
“Somewhere in the endless sky, stormy winds ‘re blowing by~ Waves are dancin’, evenin’ comes, it's time to sound the drums! But steady men, and never fear, tomorrow's skies are always clear! So pound your feet ‘n’ clap your hands 'til sunny days return~ ”
Despite the topic and context, the tone dial’s music continued with its joyful, playful melody. Leaning a hip against the side of the piano, Alastor couldn’t help but comment, though making sure to keep his tone light, “Rather lighthearted for a funeral dirge. But I suppose it wasn’t meant to be one.”
“Not at all. After all, music is meant to bring joy! We wished for our last farewell to do the same for Laboon. Though, it ended up being quite a while before I could deliver it to him. I’d been stuck in that sea of fog, the Florian Triangle, since our ship was too damaged to steer… My soul returned to find my own skeleton, but they were all with me as well. I had to put them to rest. And I stayed on that same ship for fifty years, until Luffy and his crew happened upon me. To think, if such a twist of fate had never occurred, I could still be there to this day…”
“Gather up all ‘a the crew, it's time to ship out Binks' brew! Wave goodbye, but don't you cry, our memories remain~ Our days ‘re but a passing dream, everlastin’ though they seem– Beneath the moon we'll meet again, the wind's our lullaby~ ”
It was a morbid tale, to say the least. Even he couldn’t deny the type of toll such a trial would have on a person. Decades of isolation in the equivalent of a graveyard full of one’s most treasured people. It could even be considered more of a Hell than the actual place.
Still Alastor made sure to keep a sense of levity in his response, “You can count your lucky stars, then. The dear captain was the perfect sort of soul to deliver you from your predicament! I assume he hadn’t been put out in the slightest as to your lack of skin and organs?”
“Oh yes! Yohoho! It was most delightful!” Brook’s tone took a noticeable upturn at the mention, “Every other who stumbled upon me fled at the sight of a haunted ship, but the captain was very amused! He immediately asked me to join his crew, actually!”
“I can see that happening quite vividly,” he thought back to his own meeting with the boy, smile relaxing in its previous tension, “He also asked after me joining fairly quickly, but I turned him down. I suppose you agreed right away though?”
“I did! I was just so happy to be talking to someone. But I actually had to decline as well, in consideration to a separate predicament I’d gotten into with one of the Seven Warlords who lurked around that region. I left to confront the situation, they followed me and Luffy defeated the Warlord, and then after hearing they’d met Laboon and planned to reunite with him as well, I knew it was meant to be! I could never thank him enough for saving me from that dark, dreary existence.”
“Ahaha~ Sounds like the captain, alright! All’s well that ends well, as they say.”
“Gather up all ‘a the crew, it’s time to ship out Binks’ brew! Sing a song ‘n’ play along, for all the oceans wide! After all is said ‘n’ done, you'll end up a skeleton! So spread your tale from dawn 'til dusk upon these foamy seas~ ”
“Yo-hohoho, yo-hohoho~ Yo-hohoho, yo-hohoho... "
“ …Yes, all is well now, isn’t it? That’s right. I am… so very thankful… I…”
There was a clattering sound followed by a thud. And then another. Alastor then realized it’d come from the tone dial, mixed into the sound of the music and laughter.
Instruments dropped off at random one after another, until it was but a quartet. Then a trio, then a duet. Until finally the sole piano remained. Until that ended in a dissonant mess of notes.
The joyful song had eventually ended on the morbid, unsettling feeling of the funeral dirge that it was.
“I do hope the actual copy doesn’t end like that. Not very conducive to the sentiment you wished to gift to your whale, I’m assuming…” he was only half joking about that.
However, the skeleton didn’t respond, merely staring down at where his fingers were resting against the piano keys. The silence that filled the void left behind by the music was deafening, so much so that even Alastor began to feel its internal constriction. Unconsciously, his radio began letting off a soft feedback just to cover up the quiet.
The sound seemed to spur Brook out of whatever trace he’d been in, his fingers twitching into the positionings for the first chord of the previously played song. He didn’t continue past that, though. Instead, he just let the sound ring out for another few seconds. Still not looking away from the piano.
“…Can I confess to you something shameful, Alastor?”
He did not like where this was going, and frankly, he’d been left with that feeling since the song began. Still, he tried to keep his efforts to turn the musician away from idea as delicate as possible, realizing that a sensitive hand would be needed, “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather give such a confession to another of your crew, dear sir? After all, you hardly know me. Surely you’d be more comforted speaking to someone like Jinbei, for example.”
“No. It’s because you weren’t with us in life that you’d be the only one I could speak to about this. I would never wish to burden the others with the knowledge. But… keeping it all to myself has weighed on me so. I’m sorry to bother you with something you’d never asked for,” and he really did sound regretful, truly apologetic to drag Alastor into the matter despite the way it was clearly tormenting him.
“ …If that’s how you truly feel, then I’m all ears. What is it?”
“ …It sounds like, from what the others have said, they were all grouped together based on order of death,” Alastor was somewhat surprised by the sudden segue, but he assumed it was related to the crux of the situation as Brook spoke in a quiet voice, heard just above the buzz of the radio’s feedback, “Luffy was first. Then as the most injured after him, Zoro. Then Sanji was awhile after that. Then Chopper, Usopp, and Nami in rather close succession. Then Robin and Franky, who I presume are currently together. And then lastly, as one with a particularly hardy body, Jinbei. I don’t think any of them are aware of this. Approaching their deaths, they usually fell into unconsciousness first. The only one who been aware long enough to realize the direction things were headed was Jinbei. He tried to ask me what had happened, after I met up with him down here, but I– couldn’t give him a sufficient answer…”
He immediately noticed who was missing from the list. Though he refrained from speaking on it, leaving the skeleton to weave his tale, “In comparison to the others, while I’d been quite battered, I wasn’t in a state I would have died from. My body had become one that was rather hard to kill. After I recovered enough I did what I could, but– I’m no doctor… You’d think after all my previous crew’s foray with disease and death, I would’ve thought to learn a thing or two. And yet I’d been content to keep to where I was most comfortable with my music. How bitterly I resented myself for such indulgence, in those few days where they went one after the other…”
Alastor found himself repeating what he’d told the deerling doctor, for what else was there to say? “You can curse your weakness all you’d like, but such despair won’t change events that have already occurred.”
“I know. I already know, death is no excuse…” The musician’s hands shifted without thought, repeating that first starting chord. “The Blackbeard Pirates had all died in battle, so their bodies were on the island with us. While they’d inflicted the wounds which ultimately led to my own crew’s death, there’s no point in resenting the dead. For the ones who hadn’t already met their fate in the waves, I made a pyre for them and laid their ashes to rest in the sea, then released their ship from the mor. I also made a tombstone for them, along with our own.”
“Then, I gathered everyone onto the Sunny, and set us out to sea. While she was damaged, she was workable enough for the last voyage of the Straw Hat Pirates. I thought they might have liked that… I took all the lighter fluid, gas, and oil we had available, spread it across the deck where the wood was already broken, and lit it aflame. So that she need not be left alone in such a state, and so that we may all sink into the sea and fire together. Then… I detached my soul from my body, and I followed the path of Jinbei’s soul to the underworld… Though it was a bit of a roundabout trip, seeing that he’d ascended to the gates first before heading down here...”
Jarring dissonance sounded once more when the skeleton’s elbow laid to rest upon a coupling of keys, raising his fingers to claw into his hair and against the front of his skull. Brook ignored it, not even seeming to register the sound, caught up in his mind as he was.
“I went crazy, didn’t I? No, I’ve been crazy, but it was even more than that– I didn’t even think as I did any of that or even as I relinquished my life. It was like my body just moved on its own. I didn’t cry for any of them, didn’t hesitate, I just– I just thought… This is the end, and that was that. Time for the funeral. Into the pyre everyone goes, myself included.”
“I endured for so long. For fifty years, forced myself to live for the hope of that promise and that I would once again see the Sun, even when days became weeks which became months and years and decades! Decades of seeing their ghosts in the corner of my vision and hearing the sound of their music when no one was there. If I’m playing by myself, I can’t even use the gift I’ve been given down here of letting the instruments play themselves without getting confused and thinking that I’m hearing them again. They all sound just like them. But I did it! I lived! And when Luffy found me, I was so happy I was alive! And– And I… I didn’t even make it a week, this time. I didn’t even think to try. I just couldn’t– I couldn’t…”
His second elbow pressed against the piano to add to the discordant notes. Brook fully collapsed his face into his hands, his head hanging over in a bent crouch as his shoulders trembled almost violently. Despite having no eyes or throat and being made only of bones, his voice cracked with tears and a sob–
“I couldn’t do it a second time. I COULDN’T. Not again. Not AGAIN. No– No no NO– ”
“Brook.”
His voice was all encompassing, reverberating throughout and against the walls of the studio. Deafening through the distortion of his radio even when it wasn’t a yell. The sound of it jolted the man out of his spiraling, the skeleton harshly jerking back in his seat to lift his tear-ridden face into the air as though gasping for breath.
Alastor carefully closed his claws around Brook’s still half-raised hands, pulling them towards himself and away from the piano to draw the musician’s attention to focus on him and the present day. To the blank voids for eyes and the tears that somehow streaked down from them, Alastor granted a smile, though tense against its sutures as it was.
“There we go. Do you remember where you are now? That was quite a frightening tale, wasn’t it. But you’re no longer in that place. No longer in that world. Dearly departed from up above you might be, but down here, you are here, are you not? Just as the rest of your crew are here.”
It took an extended moment to get the skeleton’s non-existent brain back on track, “ …They are… here. Yes. I… am here… in your tower… In Hell.”
“Yes– Yes! Precisely,” Alastor conjured a handkerchief, letting it clean up the skeleton face as he continued with his consoling levity, “Nothing you confessed to is worthy of shame. So you committed some arson and made your final journey back to the land of the dead– It happens to the best of us! Anyone who’d been in your position would have ended in similar straits. The fact you’d made it that far to begin with is impressive enough on its own. I’m not usually one to support suicidal ideation unless I’m the one causing it, but in this case, I’d say you made the right call. For now, you are right where you’re meant to be with Luffy and everyone else.”
Whisking the soiled handkerchief away, Alastor let go of one of the skeleton hands to summon his mic. He flicked it once to conjure his old-time radio on the top of the piano and set it to play his tunes, filling out the previous emptiness of the studio. He also conjured his couch. With the hand still holding Brook’s hand, he pulled at the man to guide him. “Up you go, yes– let’s get a bit more comfortable, shall we? I think you need a break from the piano for the time being…”
After leading the still distant-looking skeleton to sit down on the cushions, Alastor sat himself right next to the other, closer than he preferred. But it was his hope that the feeling of his side pressed against the lean frame, his arm wound around his back, and his hand coming to rest on the opposite arm would provide a grounding sensation for Brook to anchor himself with. It seemed to have the intended effect, as Brook continued to keep his focus on Alastor, tilting his head to look down at him. All the while, Alastor kept his smile perfectly in place.
“It was the end for all of you, yes. But as it turns out, you’re in luck! For death is not the end! It was not the end for your previous crew, whichever afterlife they may have landed themselves in, and it was not the end for you and your current crew. It wasn’t the end for me, I’ve lived longer dead than I have alive at this point. Aha! What an oxymoron that is! I suppose it was one you related to even in your living-dead life. Regardless, both in this world and the one before it, death is an inevitable possibility. So what can we do but live as we can, and dance with death,” he tapped the skeleton’s sternum at the line, flashing his brows to make his face a bit livelier.
Brook came a bit more back into his body, “Dance with death? The metaphor paints a frightening picture for weary eyes… Though I have none, since I’m a skeleton.”
“Hahahaha– Always the comedian, you are!” Alastor managed to force out a laugh as he bumped his shoulder against the other’s arm. It wasn’t that he found the skeleton humor to be totally without amusement, but ending half the jokes with Skull Joke tended to ruin the pun. Either way, it was worth the effort when the skeleton face began to lighten.
“But yes, we’re all dead as cadavers down here, and there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, if you’re willing to share a bit more room on your stage, I have an interesting idea– Why stop at making one song when we can make another as well? Indeed, a song about the joy of death would be an inspired collaboration between you and I. We can make it a real party tune even!”
“A– a party song about death? Can we really play such a thing without killing the mood? …Yohoho– Skull Joke!”
Alastor called back, “Ahaha– Skull Joke indeed! And of course we can! It’s all about how you present your tone. Your skeleton puns are proof of that!”
“Oho. I suppose you have a point about that… Then of course I’d love to make another song with you, Alastor. How exciting!” Brook finally gained some energy back in his voice and frame, his torso fidgeting in place beside Alastor’s as he clasped his hands together with a boney clack, “Does this mean you’d like to continue playing music with me, from time to time? To be honest… I’m rather shocked. This was probably the most awful impression I could’ve given you as to spending extended time alone with me! I mean, even I don’t like to spend time alone with me! …Though I guess that’s for a different reason.”
“Hahaha! For a different reason indeed!” he laughed again even knowing that wasn’t meant to be a joke. Alastor lifted the hand that was resting on the skeleton’s arm to pat the other’s boney shoulder, leaning in slightly to make a show of his grin.
“The torments and joys of madness are nothing new to me. I simply endeavor to maintain a certain level of control over such impulses when needed. And regardless, I’d much prefer you to be a crazy person than a boring one! I found our time together leading up to your catastrophic emotional breakdown to be quite pleasant. Thus, I have no inclination as to begin avoiding your charming personality.”
“Truly? I’d been thinking actually, despite the stories I’ve heard of you, you don’t seem too unreasonable or crazy.”
“Our individual brands of ‘crazy’ are not one in the same. You weren’t around to see what I did to the Red Dog or what I got up to in my heyday. Let me tell you, my place here in Hell was most definitely deserved,” he left the issue at that, not wanting to derail his efforts by going on a tangent about his own killer personality, “The night is still young! How about we take a brief respite from our musical business, and then once we resume, you can show me how to play the song from that contraption of yours. I believe I remember the lyrics well enough, but I’d like to take a stab at the piano instrumentation as well!”
As he conjured a cup of steaming black tea for the musician, Brook stared at him blankly when Alastor handed it over along with its saucer, before he took it with still slightly shaky hands. Rather than move to take a drink though, Brook quietly asked, “You… want to learn Binks’ Brew?”
“Of course, so that we may play it together! It is a song of great meaning to you, is it not? We can make a record of us performing it to go along with your other one, so that you have a version that is not so– intertwined with bittersweet sentiment, shall we say…” Five decades alone with only his own playing and that recording likely had not done the dead man any favors, something new was a must…
Blank eye sockets stared at him for another moment. Then, they began to inexplicably brim with tears once more. Alastor had a split second of internal frustration before Brook’s thin arms wrapped around him in a tight hug, pushing his face uncomfortably against the skeleton’s hard ribcage and sternum. He supposed he should just be thankful the man had at least thought to set aside his cup before acting out.
Brook cried out in a tearful cheer, “Oh Alastor– that’d be so incredible! Thank you so much! You’re such a thoughtful friend! We are friends, right? Everyone on the crew are friends since we’re all Nakama, but Zoro and Sanji have said you’re, uh– a bit moody about these sorts of things– ?”
“Don’t bring those two up, let alone any gossip they’ve spoken behind my back,” he forced out through grit teeth. Alastor allowed the skeleton his indulgence for a good fifteen seconds, before he pulled himself out of the hold, making a noticeable pause to smooth down his suit and shirt afterwards. to give himself some extra time to uestion of “friendship” hadn’t been explicitly brought up prior to the current moment with any of the other Straw Hats. Though in the same vein, Luffy likely didn’t see a point to asking of Alastor’s opinion as to their relationship when the captain could assert his own confidence in their friendship without a shadow of doubt. The Radio Demon typically wasn’t one to transition into an “official” designation of friendship until he’d spent enough time with the acquaintance in question to be comfortably certain in their standing and character. However, he also recognized that denying the label would be a particularly cruel act against Brook, especially given the current context. The equivalent of stabbing him in his non-existent heart, even.
And usually, acting with cruelty and stabbing hearts –both literal and not– wasn’t behavior Alastor was incapable of, or even shied away from. But in this case… he felt rather disinclined to the notion, faced with a fellow old soul whose music and story had managed to move something within him.
–To be pulled out of the dark and brought into the Sun, only for it to slip through one’s fingers and be left in the cold void once more… He couldn’t imagine anything more terrifying than that. Death and whatever Hell to come after would truly be a kinder fate–
Still, Alastor has standards, and so he had to make the point, “If I am to be in closer association with you, I insist that you cease your horrid requests for women’s undergarments! Not only is it an embarrassment to witness such behavior, but it’s also a shameful annoyance for everyone involved. Really now, have you no sense of propriety?”
The pervert shied away, properly chastised. “O-Oh, well that’s…! In truth, I often find that my actions have not shifted back into those considered the social norm. As it bothers you so, I can try, but I’m afraid the habit has yet to be broken even with Nami’s strongarm reprimanding…”
Alastor gave the query some brief consideration. Until he offered with false cheer, “Well, in that case, I would be glad to assist you in relearning your behavior. How about at every instance you make such a mistake, I have a radio play a horrid, painful screech as punishment. Then eventually, you will come to associate the action with a negative outcome, like disciplining an animal! I can even curse you such that this would occur when I’m not around, so it is a more encompassing punishment than when the navigator happens to be around your person!”
“Well, that’s– …That doesn’t seem like a humane method, exactly.”
“And that matters why?” he dismissed the valid concern without hesitation, “Now, start drinking that tea of yours before it goes cold! Warmth helps with rejuvenating the body, as I understand it. Though you do not have much of a body left in which to rejuvenate.”
“Yohoho– Skull Joke!” was the predictable reply.
They ended up whittling away at the hours of the night that way, until the morn dawned anew. And soon, it was around the hour that breakfast would typically be served.
Rather than managing a casual entrance back down to the lobby, however the two of them had been caught off guard when they walked in on a good portion of the Straw Hat Pirates shouting at each other in a panicked frenzy.
“What do you mean Brook never came back last night?! How could both of you fall asleep before checking where he was?!”
“It– it just turned out like that! I’m sorry, Miss Nami! Maybe he just caught a disease from mosshead and got lost? I can try and feel around for him with my Observation.”
“H-Hey! I really thought that Al wouldn’t eat him and he’d be fine! Since, you know, he’s only bones… But I’ll look for him too!”
“Alastor wouldn’t eat him, Usopp, but he could’ve let him make his own way back to the room. You know Brook doesn’t do well when he’s alone! I hope he’s okay…”
“I believe the man in question is doing just fine, considering he’s right here,” Alastor spoke up at the deerling’s worried fretting, pointing at the apparently missing skeleton with his mic. Brook echoed the gesture, pointing a finger up at himself with a confused tilt of the head as they walked forward. The four pirates all turned towards them with wide eyes.
“Huh? Brook! There you are!” Nami started, before questioning with her own vague confusion, “Were you with Alastor the whole night?”
Despite the unusual beginning, Brook was quick to regain his cheer, responding, “Oh yes! As we can both go without sleep, we ended up playing throughout the night! It was great!”
With a muted sigh of relief, the cook couldn’t contain himself from getting in at least one verbal jab, “Al does need sleep, though. He just doesn’t act like it.”
“I can do without it most nights, thank you very much,” he was quick to cut in, “Now don’t you have a kitchen to attend to? Or perhaps you’ve decided on an early retirement?”
“I’ll retire you! Don’t tell me what to do, red ears!”
“It’s too early to be dealing with you all screamin’ like this…” Husk outright grouched as he walked past them all to his bar.
Apparently, the musician had promised a follow up rehearsal with the First Man. It wasn’t too long before he finally forced himself out of his new incessant clinging and away from Alastor’s side. And while Alastor doesn’t enjoy the reminder of the other’s association with the ex-angel, he’d been rather thankful for the break.
He’d been of the mind to go the majority of the day without socialization, properly tired of the endeavor. But later that day, he somehow found himself pulled into a group with Chopper and Jinbei, who deigned to stay behind from visiting Adam this time. Seeing as it was only these two, Alastor didn’t put up too much of a fight when the deerling dragged him out of his previous path to pester eager requests to hear the Radio Demon play the new piano, wanting to see for himself. Any of the random newly added guests who happened to be loitering around immediately fled at the sight of his sharpened grin. From what he understood, Bartolomeo was in the midst of issuing a church and external campus to be built down the street from the hotel, and he looked forward to when the growing crowd would be thinned out by the addition.
Alastor played through a couple of his favored pieces, before starting on his newly practiced Binks’ Brew, drawing out delight from the mismatched duo. It also spurred a new topic of conversation. Chopper chimed up, “I’m really glad you’re getting along with Brook, Alastor! He gets lonely very easy, and none of the rest of us know how to play any instruments. We sing along with the songs, but he’s still the one doing all the music by himself…”
His fingers didn’t falter as he quipped back, “And I’ve heard the quality of the captain’s vocal capabilities, yes. Ha! What a dreadful choir you all must make!”
Despite his careless response, Jinbei enforced their insinuations, “Truly, Alastor, you are doing a great kindness in engaging with Brook. I have been concerned for him for some time now, after the sort of end we all faced. But it is difficult to address with him as he insistently uses humor to deflect away the pain he must be feeling inside. By playing music with him, you are able to provide a needed connection for him no one else is capable of fulfilling. Please know that your consideration is immensely appreciated by us all.”
“While I usually consider you to be a wealth of wisdom, good man, I do believe you are blowing things out of proportion– ”
He was cut off by the slam of the hotel door, song coming to a halt along with his words as his fingers fumbled. As all three of them glanced over in a slight startle, Alastor felt his smile curling into something tight and unpleasant, glaring at the intruder.
“A-Adam! There’s no need to– ”
“YOU!” Adam, once the First Man and now some hilariously awful combination of a snake and clown demon, first shouted back at the fretting Brook before he rushed to slither over and point an accusing finger in the Radio Demon’s face, “You! What the FUCK?!”
Ever the voice of reason, Jinbei approached the irate ex-angel to place a steadying hand on his shoulder, speaking first, “Whatever contention you may have, let us speak of it plainly. Calm yourself down.”
Adam pensively glanced the fishman’s way before forcibly redirecting his attention and glare at Alastor. “Don’t give me that! I don’t know what the fuck you just said, but it doesn’t matter! This– This RED FUCKER is the reason why my ears are BLEEDING!!! I’m shouting because I can’t HEAR SHIT!!!”
Both his hands pointed at his ears for emphasis, proving that they were, in fact, bleeding quite profusely. The eardrum likely ruptured and in the middle of regenerative repair. The sight of it brought Alastor much schadenfreude joy.
“Why the HELL would you set up a dumb-ass CURSED RADIO to play a sound worse than nails on a chalkboard for THREE DAMN MINUTES at MAX VOLUME whenever Brook does his panties shtick?!?! He does that all the fucking time! You red fucking– red nutso?!”
“OH NO! Someone get a doctor!”
“That’s you, darling deerling,” Alastor reminded the doctor, directing his narrowed gaze away from the fuming clown snake before giving a slight huff, “Usually I’d say to let him suffer a tad longer, but I suspect this conversation will get even more unbearable than it already is should he continue as he is…”
“Oh… Right!” Shifting to his larger form to reach Adam’s ears, Jinbei kept the man from retreating in suspicion to allow Chopper to heal his ears with his flower blossoms. Adam seemed rather befuddled by the demonstration, staring blankly at the once again tiny reindeer. He shook the petals out of his ears after they’d presumably completed their task.
Brook stepped up to ask, “Can you hear now, Adam?”
“Huh… Yeah. Cool party trick…” Suddenly remembering he was supposed to be mad, a face reminiscent to an exorcist mask jolted back into a scowl, looking back at Alastor’s still tight grin. “So what the fuck?!”
Purposefully glancing down at his claws in a dismissive expression, Alastor plainly replied, “It’s merely a corrective measure put in place to put an end to such unsavory habits via corporal punishment.”
“The fuck… He DOESN’T HAVE EARS, BITCH?!?! You’re fucking with the people around him, AKA ME, more than you are him!”
“Yohoho– Skull Joke! But hey now– the sound jostling my skull and bones so much hurts as well!” the skeleton objected, before consoling, “ …I do apologize for causing you such discomfort though.”
In comparison, Alastor was entirely unsympathetic, “Well I’d say in this case the collateral damage was perfectly acceptable! Ahaha!”
Before Adam could start on another rant, there was a sudden burst of movement. Jinbei’s hand shot out in front of the man to catch an angelic spear around the staff right above its blade, the point of it so close that just Adam startling to look its way left a thin trail of red blood in its wake. The final proof that the First Man had been brought down to a common sinner’s make.
Jinbei called out firmly, “There’s no need to start a fight, Vaggie! He has yet to put up an offense! Restrain yourself!”
“Fuck that! If he’s got enough nerve to show his face here, he’s got enough nerve to be at the wrong end of a bomb or two!” Cherri Bomb yelled back rather than the other ex-angel.
The two women approached to stand before Adam’s grimace with righteous indignation. And while they let them take center stage, Angel and Husk weren’t too far, giving their own mean looks. Vaggie echoed the sentiment with narrowed eyes, “You aren’t welcome here, Adam. I don’t care if Alastor fucked with you– leave.”
Adam’s glare turned into more of a simmering, consistent heat than its previous erratic broil. “So now you think you can order me around, huh? I do what I want, bitch!”
Again, Cherri shouted her own piece first, “And what about we do what we want, bitch?! We owe ya an explosion to the face! Or do ya not even remember that ya killed one of our own?!”
Eyes followed the trail of Cherri’s thumb pointed back at the portrait of Pentious. Adam blinked at it three times, before he exclaimed incredulously, “The bastard in that airship was a snake? Is that why I look like this now?! I thought it was just some cheeky reference to the devil bein’ a snake ‘n’ all! What the Hell?!”
“Oh for the love of– just leave already!”
“Wait, Vaggie…” the lot of them turned at the sound of Charlie’s voice.
The Princess entered the room with a heavy seriousness to her expression, which almost came off as humorous when directly beside the lackadaisy blank curiosity of Luffy, who walked in with her. Trafalgar’s suspicious examinations were a bit more in line with the girl’s mood as he walked in a step behind. And, nosy as ever, the four Straw Hats not already present hung back in the hallway to watch the show and listen in.
While Luffy and Trafalgar stopped short, Charlie walked all the way forward to stand in front of Adam, in between him and the two other girls. She crossed her arms over her chest, smile nowhere to be seen as she inquired, “ …Are you here to try to be redeemed, Adam?”
That earned her more than one shocked stare. The clown snake had to visibly buffer before he snapped back, “ –Fucking no? Why would you even think that?!”
“Because it’s possible, isn’t it? Redemption,” keeping her tone unsettlingly level, Charlie pointed a finger at Adam, before pointing it upwards, Heaven bound, “If an angel can die and land themselves down in Hell by being an awful person, it only makes sense that a sinner could do the same and end up in Heaven, if they do good in their afterlife. Maybe Sir Pentious is even there. He died protecting all of us from you, after all. That means if you want any chance of getting your old life back, you’re going to have to do better.”
“Ch-Charlie…”
Without looking back at Vaggie’s and Cherri’s gobsmacked faces, Charlie consoled, “I have to give him the option, guys. That’s what this… That’s what my hotel is all about. No matter what they’ve done, if someone wants to be better, I’ll give them the chance to do better.” However, even with the staunch moral stance, the Princess of Hell’s eyes narrowed into a glare on the shocked man. “But only if they want it. If that’s not what you’re here to do, then you need to leave. There’s no reason to let you bother everyone else if you’re not here for the purpose that the hotel is meant for.”
The moment of shock extended, almost to the point of Alastor breaking the silence to ask if anyone was home up in that surely lacking brain of his, before Adam shook himself out of his stupor. His sneer averted itself down to the lower side.
“Still delusional as ever I see, Morningstar. Didn’t your dear ol’ dad explain how any of this works to you? People falling out of favor with the upstairs is nothing new. But gettin’ back in after they decide you’re not good enough? There’s no going back from that! Redemption is as much of a pipe dream as it’s always been, me being here doesn’t mean shit!”
“Actually, I think you don’t know how this works, either. Why else would you have ruined your good graces by being bad enough to get kicked out of Heaven unless you didn’t know that that could happen.”
The barb struck home. Adam suddenly whipped his face back to Charlie with a snarl on his lips, “Shut the fuck up! Don’t you act so high and mighty with me, you– knockoff-brand Disney Princess! I ain’t here to beg for a place in your ‘good graces’, since it’d just be a waste of time anyway! I’m here because my bandmate was cursed by a demonic psycho who thinks it’s hilarious to blow out people’s ears! Why don’t ya try redeemin’ that guy if you’re so caught up on the idea, huh?!”
Done with the girl, the clown snake shifted back to Alastor to continue, “And don’t think I’m done with YOU, you– mister Radio Man!”
“What a cleverly inept insult you’ve granted me.”
“Shut up!” the man snapped back like it was the only phrase his tiny brain could think to say, before he set his hands on his waist and jeered with an outrageously smug titer, “Ya know what I think? I think that, first of all, you’re a fucking sore-ass loser is what ya are! Like seriously, you fucking lost! Get the fuck over yourself and your big-ass ego!”
“His self-awareness is literally in the negatives…” Vaggie fortunately snarked aloud what Alastor was already thinking.
“ –And secondly, I think that you’re just jealous that I’m in Brook’s band and you aren’t! He told me about your fun little play date last night, and I gotta say– letting the static-screech that you use as a voice be a main vocal is a total downgrade from the kinda music Bones of Man puts out. You’re lucky a rockstar as rockin’ as him is giving you the time of day, ya know that? Ha!”
That “static-screech” feedback became deafening for a split flash. Tearing through the lobby to echo off the walls as Adam crouched in on himself holding his still tender ears, along with a good number of the others.
At its conclusion, Alastor finally deigned to stand from his seat at the piano bench, stepping over the obstacle to stare slightly up at Adam’s larger figure with a grin sharp and thin enough to cut flesh. His tone began with deceptive cheer–
“Why yes, actually, I do consider myself to be quite fortunate to have someone as skilled as my dear friend acting as the musician of our crew! We all do love to listen to him play, and I am no exception to that. However, do I perhaps sense a bit of projection coming off your person? Is it not you who is jealous of me, for ‘stealing’ your bandmate away from you? After all, it seems clear to me that it is his talents which carried the majority of the burden to your call to fame, rather than your own merits. Because I have to say– you’re right to be worried! He almost certainly prefers to play with me over you!”
Serrated teeth almost snapped at Alastor in a literal sense, a snake-like hiss finally screeching out of Adam, “YOU TAKE THAT BACK, BITCH!!! Brook one hundred– no, one thousand percent likes rocking out with ME more than he likes playing your out-of-date snore-fest of a genre!”
“The vigor of your music isn’t enough to account for your piss-poor company!”
“Wh– Why are they fighting so much?” the skeleton of the hour hissed in a panicked stage whisper.
Chopper whispered back, equally as loud, “I think they’re fighting over you, Brook.”
“ …REALLY???” the whisper graduated into a legitimate shout, before Brook dissolved into an overly pleased excitement, “Oh my! This has never happened to me before! I’m so flattered! It feels as though my cheeks are on fire! …Only I don’t have any, because I don’t have a face– Yohohoho!”
“ –You guys aren’t even a real band! You don’t have a band name!”
“That’s because we’re a duet, and we do in fact have a group name– How does Radio Isn’t Dead sound to you, dear pal? That should be sufficiently puny,” Alastor called back to the skeleton in question.
After an elongated pause, Brook suddenly startled, “ …Oh, wait, are you talking to me or Chopper?”
…It’s a wonder he’s putting up so much of a fuss about someone so socially incompetent. “The context of the situation would suggest I am not using the word dear in regards to the animal. Yes…”
“Oh, then yes! It’s quite catchy! We get a name now too? How lovely– ”
Adam cut him off, “You literally made that up just now! And you fucking got it from OUR FIGHT!”
Lying through his teeth in the most amusing fashion, Alastor mocked, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s a common enough phrase, and we came up with it ages ago.”
“YOU’VE ONLY BEEN PLAYING WITH HIM FOR LESS THAN 24 HOURS!!!”
“Alright, that’s enough out of you both!” Having finally had enough, Jinbei stepped between the both of them, pushing them apart with a palm to their chests.
With another hiss, Adam leaned to the side to maintain his glare, “No! We’re settling this NOW! Brook! Who are you playing with, me or him?!”
Alastor’s mocking smirk tightened into something closer to a sneer. Brook startled once more, fidgeting with his hands as hesitantly responded, “W-What? I’ll play with both of you, of course!”
“NO! You gotta choose who you really wanna band up with! No half-ass you’re both winners pussy shit!”
“But– But I do really want to play with both of you… Is that a bad thing…?”
At that particularly kicked-puppy tone, Adam rolled his eyes as much as he could with eyes lacking pupils. He at least partially relented, “Jesus Fucking Christ– Fine! Then you gotta choose your favorite between us! Even if you wanna play with both of us, you gotta still have a favorite pick!”
“But that’d be so mean to whoever I didn’t choose! I would hate to hurt either of you in such a way…”
“Does it look like I give a shit?!”
“This is stupid!” completely out of nowhere, the captain stepped in to join the fray with a face that could only be described as confused annoyance, “Brook doesn’t gotta choose between ya guys! But if he did, course Al would be his favorite!”
The Radio Demon’s smirk instantly brightened once more. The snake turned on the boy immediately, slithering up to Luffy’s face to shout in it, “No one asked you?! You fuckin’ poser! You’re just siding with your guy!”
Staring at the ex-angel with no particular expression, Luffy was as blunt as ever, “But it’s true! Even if you’re Brook’s friend, Al’s his crew. I got alot ‘a friends too, but all ‘a my crew are my favorites! It’s the same thing!”
A wave of bashful pride washed through the pirates inclined to such a reaction, and the rest were left with a satisfied sort of look. Alastor allowed himself to preen a bit, pulling his bowtie straight with what was surely an extremely smug grin. When he caught Husk squinting a look of exasperation at him, he met the attitude with a serrated grin.
“You! Fucking! God– God! Monkey! Monkey God! You– ” Adam was clearly struggling quite significantly with this one, tongue tied in his fuming rage, “ –Your hat’s fuckin’ DUMB!”
He’d somehow managed to land an instant game over with that utterly horrendous attempt at an insult. A sudden double palm thrust sent the once First Man flying through the upper portion of the wall, and then flying through the air for a considerable amount of time.
“Gum Gum Bazooka!”
Then, with impeccable timing, Niffty fell from someplace in the ceiling to land in the spot Adam had previously been standing. The kitchen knife in her petite hands wedged into the floor. It seemed that the captain’s attack may have saved the man from a different sort of grievous injury. With her expression falling into disappointment, she whined, “AWW… I wanted to stab again!”
Alastor’s shadow dashed to the new hole in the wall to watch the clown spiral, and spiral, and spiral… until his path arched to land somewhere closer to the center of the city. Surely that had to beat some kind of record Hell had concerning longest distance cleared by a sinner via a single attack.
“Fuckin’ nice shot, Monkey boy! High five! Bring it here!”
“Aaand there he goes…” Usopp commented from his place still partially hidden in the hallway. Not questioning the request in the slightest, Luffy shifted on a dime out of his bursting anger to excited pleasantness, slapping Cherri’s double high five with a laugh. Charlie winced at both the disappearance of Adam as well as the hole he’d left in his wake, while her girlfriend reacted in her usual put out face palm. In contrast, Angel just grumbled under his breath as he passed a satisfied Husk a single bill of cash.
In his own sort of tiredness, Jinbei just sighed, “I apologize for his poor behavior. Adam can be a handful in his lack of consideration towards those around him. Though in this case, the provocation certainly didn’t help…”
“Does… this mean Bones of Man is over?”
“Surely not. It will be alright, Brook. I’ll talk to him,” the helmsman reassured his uncertain crewmate with confidence.
Chopper spoke up at that point, raising a hoof in the air, “Someone should go with you to treat his wounds, too!”
And in another contrast, Alastor stepped beside Luffy to throw an arm around the boy’s shoulders in what could only be interpreted as a reward, complete with a thumbs up. Smiling happily at the grin his received, he chimed, “For as much as I find it a hassle, I must confess there are also times when your total lack of impulse control makes for best sort of entertainment, dear captain! Good job! Your contributions to our disagreement made for a refreshing turn in what was previously a tedious conversation.”
“It’s like Al’s trying to make him worse…”
“You haven’t figured that out already?” at the dirty look that earned Zoro from the navigator, the man called out, “What?! You’re the one making yourself sound stupid– ”
A foot to the side of two out of three heads cut that statement short, slamming the swordsman’s head and torso into the wall of the hallway. The second instance of collateral damage barely a minute after the first. “Shut up, stupid mosshead! Don’t you dare call Miss Nami stupid, you shitty bastard!”
“STOP BREAKING THE HOTEL!!!” Vaggie finally snapped as she turned back towards the lurkers, her wings flaring out in her rage. The cook fell into disarray at having upset the woman, falling to his knees to plead.
“I’ll go instead, Tony-ya. Even if he’s fallen from his previous position, it may be useful to have him in my debt,” they were suddenly reminded of the surgeon’s presence, the man having been watching silently for the entirety of the farce. As Alastor’s eyes tracked the snow leopard walking towards the fishman, Trafalgar’s expression was set into a firm scowl of indifference.
“Oh– uh, if you want to, that’s fine…” was the deerling’s uncertain agreement.
However, apparently Trafalgar was not as unmoved as he appeared, since Luffy quickly gained a pout. “Why’re ya mad, Traffy? You’re not on the crew since you’ve got your own, but you’re still Nakama! You’re my favorite too!”
The snow leopard tensed at that, eyes briefly flashing wide. If Alastor had blinked, he would have missed the sudden electric ruffling of the man’s fur as well as the way his mouth set into a thin line. Trafalgar clasped the brim of his hat to further hid his face as he began a brisk walk to the exit. Seeing the other’s haste, Jinbei watched in contemplative silence before he moved to follow.
Alastor eyed the jolly roger on the back of the rival pirate’s coat as the man fled. The captain’s assertion had at least partially answered his own curiosity, specifically the one he’d gained when his shadow had seen the way Luffy had deigned to spend the night in Trafalgar’s quarters similar to the way he would with one of his crew. But he was left with the feeling that he still lacked understanding as to the extent of their relationship, and how it was he’d managed to become an exception to the delineation between crew and Nakama, terms which before now the Straw Hats would use fairly interchangeably.
Though, there was at least one thing he was sure of. Just an alliance, as the man claimed? Definitely not. Not only from Luffy’s end, but from Trafalgar’s as well.
It’s been less than a day since she’s been here, and she already deemed this Hell unfit for her person. All the worst of man, concentrated within a single city. What a horrid place! Disgust was too kind of a word for how she regarded it.
When thinking of how to address this issue, Hancock came to a swift conclusion. She was an Empress in life, and she will remain an Empress in death. Not in the sense of taking over this pathetic city, why ever would she want a place filled with putrid men? But the presence of other royalty did not exclude the possibility of her establishing a new Amazon Lily. If anything, the presence of a King only spurred her to spite any sense of authority the surely detestable man would attempt to force onto her.
Surely there would be women who’d prefer to live in her colony over being forced to tolerate co-existence with the evil that plagued the streets. She can establish a similar system as what the royal line of Amazon Lily had, offering protection to any woman who chose to live under her rule. The most difficult part of implementing this plan would be building everything from scratch. She had no desire to take over an area of the actual city and thus still be in close proximity to its men, so setting up a location in the wastes outside its borders would suit her fine once it’d been made habitable. Still, that was a project to be initiated only once she recruited the numbers to do so. The first order of business would be in deciding her recruitment methods.
With her everlasting beauty, she knows that she could bewitch any sinner with ease. Death has only expanded her power. But even amongst women, she has standards. Amazon Lily was a not just a refuge, but a place of warriors and obedience towards her royal authority. She must take care to locate women who could quickly become dedicated to her on a level surpassing simple admiration for her beauty. Accepting a bad egg now would do much harm at this stage that would be irritating to deal with. Therefore, a surveying of more detailed information about this cesspool would be required.
It was no issue demanding answers from someone at random, most instantly caved at the sight of her face to inform her of any current happenings –Oh~ Of course her beloved has already begun putting these wretched sinners and Overlords in their place! While she was oh so tempted to immediately regain a place at his side… She was also self-aware enough to realize she’d cease to get anything done, at that point. Not only that, but it’d be much more impressive if she came before him having already recruited her following. Perhaps he would even praise her? OHH~ <3
In the middle of her questioning, however, the wave of a slender hand caught her attention. It directed her gaze towards a nearby alley. The woman who greeted her was a familiar one, even with the changes to her form.
Seeing someone more worth her attention, Hancock dismissed the other woman she’d been talking. When her directive was ignored in favor of asking for her number, she swiftly moved to dismiss the annoyance with a kick, sending the sinner flying into a building on the opposite side of the street. Redirecting her attention back to the new arrival, she approached the other’s somewhat hidden position, a clear attempt to stay out of plain sight of the main street.
“Nico Robin… Could it be you’re here on Luffy’s behalf? If he’s looking for me, I will go to him right away!”
While she occasionally regarded this woman as a potential rival for her love, in this instance, she was more focused on the possibility of Luffy seeking her out. And either way, she was nowhere near as much of a threat as that wretched Trafalgar¸ the insolent whelp!
Nico Robin replied with a blasé smile, “It’s a surprise to see you so soon, Pirate Empress. But regardless, I’m sure my captain would appreciate your continued cooperation and alliance. Perhaps we’ll find our interests to be aligned in certain matters.”
Luffy? Appreciate? ME <3?!
Her hands raising to cup her flushed cheeks, Hancock couldn’t contain her squeal, “OOOH~ Whatever will be of help to my darling I will provide without fail! Just don’t get in my way!”
“Fufu~ I wouldn’t dream of it.”
Notes:
Adding this note now since I know there will be at least one person to mention it: I know Law's Shambles doesn't work well on people with strong Haki, but I'm assuming that if Luffy lets him Law would be able to use his ability on him lol
Chapter 14: Hurricane Impact
Chapter Text
An all-encompassing wall of screens dyed in red– that was all Vox had within his sight for the past few days.
It hadn’t started that way. Usually he used his multitude of monitors to keep up feeds of various cameras throughout the Ring. But somewhat recently, he’d look through to find that ugly face glitching up one of his feeds, and then would pause on a frame that he had a hard time believing even when it was in front of his eyes. He couldn’t pry his stare off of it. And one by one, he’d gone through his feeds to see similar frames, distorted to hell and back sometimes but still clearly him, until he’d ended up with a completely unusable workstation due to almost all of his screens being stuck on the particular images he couldn’t get out of his head.
If the Radio Demon knew just how many pictures Vox had collected of him to display, low quality though they might be with how much that fucker fucked with his tech, he’d put up the biggest hissy fit. But Vox didn’t even have enough in him to get worked up over that idea.
It wasn’t just that he was watching Alastor, he’d long since devoted a drone to staking out that Hazbin Hotel solely to keep watch on the old-timey bastard when he left the premises. That was a reasonable level of stalking in his opinion. This was something on entirely new level even for his own tastes. Because previously, every time Alastor had gone somewhere, he’d either be alone, only loosely part of Morningstar’s gang, or occasionally visiting his “favored ally Overlord” Rosie. But now, it seemed like he was always with someone.
Someone that, based on all the images covering Vox’s wall, he was undeniably close with.
Red wasn’t the only color featured. There was one screen in the corner with some green, showing a still frame with a three headed demon who leaned around Alastor with one of his many hands on the shoulder of that red pinstripe suit and another on his arm, the hand so large compared to the bastard’s twig frame that it somehow made the arm look even thinner than Vox remembered it to be. And there were a couple of screens scattered about that held a soft pink. Most of the pictures were of a too-cute tiny deer holding onto one of those long red legs and coat tails, two screens caught the quick still image of usually dangerous black-red claws reaching down to pet the kid’s ridiculous hat, and one even showed one of those same claws carefully holding a small, hoofed hand.
But the majority of his wall was RED. Red not just from the Radio Demon, though, but also from the red shirt Monkey D. Luffy always wore. He was on almost every. Fucking. Screen.
A chest with an X-shaped scar held together with the familiar glow of Alastor’s magic. Arms around Alastor’s slender chest and arms set above the pink deer hugging Alastor’s lower half. An arm wrapped around Alastor’s sharp shoulders, leaning into his space in a way Vox knew anyone else would be clawed at for. Hanging from Alastor’s thin neck and shoulders off the side in the image of a clingy monkey. Hanging from Alastor’s back, with even his legs holding onto the irate demon and his chest pressed against that slight back.
The old-timey bastard hasn’t changed that much it all these years, that was kinda his thing, so Vox knows how careful HE had to be whenever he tried to touch Alastor. The guy was fine to assert himself into other people’s space, but hated when the same happened to him like the damn hypocrite he was. It had always been a balancing game of trying to get close to Alastor without getting so close he’d be berated. And this Monkey– he hugs and holds and fucking climbs all over the Radio Demon like it was the most normal fucking thing. And even worse, the usually bitchy demon LET him.
But even worse than that were the couple of screens dedicated to Alastor himself. One he’d caught through a newly broken hole in the hotel wall of Alastor with his own arm around the Monkey’s shoulders, grinning at him with a thumbs up of approval. A still Vox had found tracing back through previous feed the night of Monkey’s attack on Val, where Alastor stared up with wide eyes at the boy falling from the sky. His hard-won interest undeniably caught without Monkey even trying for it.
And lastly, in center focus on the largest, main screen… was Alastor smiling. It was a close up from the feed he’d gotten after the demon’s battle with that magma sinner who ravaged Cannibal Town, from when he was speaking up on the roof with Rosie and the Monkey, though the drone hadn’t been close enough for the audio to go through. But it wasn’t his usual look of mischief, smug smirk, tightly held anger, or anything else– It was just a simple, content smile.
The glitching feed looped on the brief blink where his eyes had closed themselves in the raising of his cheeks, before hypnotic scarlet eyes and dark lashes opened once more in a joyful squint. Looking not at the lurking camera, but at where Vox knew Monkey D. Luffy stood off screen…
–He’s never seen that look on Alastor’s face before. Alastor never looked at HIM with that sort of smile, before. Not even when they’d been friends–
“Voxy? Are you still staring at all your voyeur pics? They won’t change just cause you look away from them, you know. Maybe it’s time you took your mind off things~ ” Val’s flirtatious tone at the end made it clear how he thought Vox should ‘take his mind off things’, his absentminded additional comment didn’t help, “Though I gotta say… that one in the middle actually makes that old hack Radio Demon look kinda cute~ I can understand a bit more how it is you’re so hung up on him.”
“Shut UP, Val– I’m NOT in the mood…” he didn’t even look back at the other as he growled out his rejection, static breaching into his voice at certain pitches in a way he couldn’t help, too much bitter vitriol clawing at his chest and lungs. Instead, his eyes drifted back and forth between the smiling Alastor on the center monitor and the various others where the other red took up part of the frame.
It can’t be the way the Monkey dresses– he already knows Alastor’s preference for style and fits that image way better than the guy. Is it the stupid grin? Alastor is pretty hung up on that “you’re never fully dressed without one” bullshit. Maybe he could improve his facial graphics for that kind of thing. Is it the chest? The Monkey’s always showing it off and for such a small guy he’s pretty built. Surely he could rebuild his torso into a similar make, but even better since he was already taller. Or maybe Alastor likes that the Monkey’s shorter??? Admittedly that would be harder to modify into a natural look, he’d probably have to take out proportionate parts of his torso, legs, and arms, but it wasn’t impossible. Is it the animal features? Is there something in that part-deer brain of Alastor’s that likes that kinda thing? He could make some additions like, a cat tail and ears or something. Sharks were more of his thing but maybe Alastor liked the mammalian look over fish. But if he guesses wrong on what it is Alastor prefers, he’s just gonna look like an idiot… Who’s he kidding? No matter how he changes himself, Alastor’s gonna think he’s an idiot for doing so. Fuck…
“…What is it this guy has that I don’t?”
“Other than the fact he’s a literal fucking God? Get a grip, Vox! I know you lost the Idgaf war ages ago, but this is gettin’ ridiculous!” Velvette was the one to say this time, coming up right beside where his chair was in the middle of his station in an attempt to gain more of his attention. “We hardly had even a day to put out your bots tryin’ to trash on the Radio Demon’s advertisement before the guy beat up Zestial like he’s part of the fuckin’ Looney-Tunes gang! Ya should be focused on that, NOT on the fifteen million times he hugged your NOT-boyfriend!”
“Not to mention how the God already landed me in medical and stole MY Angel Dust from me…!” Val pitched in with an irate, low growl. For all he’d been poking fun at Vox’s misery, the pimp still cycles back to fuming outrage whenever he was reminded of Monkey D. Luffy’s actions against himself.
At first Vox had been annoyed by how much Valentino bitched about Angel Dust being out of his Contract, but after the first feed he’d seen of Monkey hanging all over Alastor… He just stopped caring about it, too invested in his other hang up to have room for it.
“It’s not about the damn hugging– It’s that Alastor is WITH him! Mister I don’t wanna team up has decided that this Monkey is apparently worth his time when I wasn’t! It’s BULLSHIT!!!” both his fists slammed down on his desk in an electric burst at the growl, causing his monitors and face to flicker for a split second. The deep, hissing breath he sucked in through his grit teeth did nothing to calm the torrid, violent fury that stung like static in his lungs.
“…And he’s not my boyfriend! I mean, he’s not my NOT-boyfriend! …Wait, no– fucking– Nevermind! What is it?!” giving up on that attempt to salvage his dignity, Vox finally turned his glare onto Velvette’s matching judgmental stare, not even bothering with his usual façade of pleasantries.
Velvette just raised an eyebrow at him. “Well since ya stopped carin’ about your network schedule sometime around when you got that pic of the Radio Demon involuntarily givin’ the God a piggyback ride, I took the opportunity to usurp some airtime for a show. I’ve got it all set up, I just need ya to sign the papers for the okay. You got enough time to schedule that in between your broodin’ sessions?”
Vox was the one to raise an eyebrow at that. “I’m declining into insanity, not stupidity! I’m not signing anything without a proper read through first, so you better have sent me a digital copy.”
“You think I’m the idiot here?! Robin already sent that email! Didn’t ya?”
“Right as we walked in, Miss Velvette.”
Satisfied with the quick response, Velvette turned away from her aid to continue ranting at Vox, “Ya see? Check your inbox first before you go bitchin’ at me!”
Upon checking his email, he did find the PDF attachment Velvette was talking about. He scanned it through his usual virus checker, then had his processor do a swift but thorough scan of the document. Seeing nothing out of place, Vox sighed his agreement while holding out a waiting hand, “Fine. You got the real thing for me to sign now? Let’s just get this over with…”
“Right here, Mister Vox. The places to sign have been highlighted,” Robin handed him a pen as she spoke, also holding out the stapled document. After looking over it to confirm it was the same as the digital copy, Vox quickly flipped through, signed, and dated. When he handed the stack of papers back, two more of Robin’s hands held out his drink of choice as she accepted the document. “I also prepared a glass for you to wind down, should you desire it.”
Two hands raising with wiggling fingers, Valentino piped up at that, “Oh~ Ya got a drink for me too, sweetheart?”
“Of course Sir,” was the pleasantly blasé reply, another hand holding out Val’s cocktail to go along with it. The man accepted it with more cheer than how Vox accepted his, even as Vox went straight into drinking his glass, trying to take himself off the visceral edge he’s been hanging on for much too long.
Having apparently already been given her drink, Velvette took a sip before chiming, “You lot are lucky Robin’s as attentive as she is. If it was up to me, I would’a just left you both to fend for yourselves! But don’t ya even think of tryin’ to steal my secretary from me!”
“You flatter me, Miss Velvette,” Robin chimed back with an appropriate amount of polite gratitude, hand resting above her chest.
“Nonsense! Ya know I don’t hold back from tellin’ off my girls that need tellin’ off! Good help is too hard to find these days. You’re a dyin’ breed, love, and I ain’t about to lose ya to one ‘a these pissheads.”
“Yeah yeah, wouldn’t dream of it, Velvette…” Vox sighed, even as he mentally shooed away the thought of offering the woman double her current salary in exchange for becoming his secretary instead. Because she really was that good.
Robin was one of Velvette’s non-Contracted employees who started about two months ago as just another pretty face in her line up, but the Overlord quickly shifted her into administrative work after realizing the woman’s mind was worth much more than her looks. Upon confirming her competence, Velvette promoted Robin to act as her primary aide seeing that her previous one had been a spineless wimp, and since then her schedule has been flawless. Business, fun, and time to appraise the social media landscape properly put in place and all unneeded tasks, calls, and emails taken care of by many capable hands. Vox would envy it, if it wasn’t for the fact that the entirety of his jealousy was very focused somewhere else for the time being…
The only real downside with the woman was that she wasn’t under a Soul Contract, meaning there was always the chance of a liability occurring with her that wouldn’t happen if Velvette had more complete control over her. Though currently her lack of Contract was also a good thing in that they didn’t have to worry about her running off unlike any of the Contracted. However, while Velvette had considered attempting to lead her aide into a Contract, she ultimately decided that Robin would be too smart to be tricked into one and the failed attempt might lead to her quitting. From what Vox has seen of the woman, he agreed with Velvette’s logic, but made sure the security within and surrounding the building was keeping a look out for any points of suspicion or weakness that they could use. He had yet to find any sign of either, though.
Still, even though Robin was mainly Velvette’s aide, she kept appraise of Valentino’s and Vox’s affairs to a certain extent. Allowing her to casually inform him, “If you’re looking to take a break from your current business, Sir, the Engineering Department has an update for you. If you wish to delay visiting them however, I can send them a notice as such.”
To that, Velvette was quick to scold, “You’ll do no such thing! It’s about time this guy crawled out of his lair and did some actual work! This update’s about the security, right? That’s much more important than his pathetic everlastin’ pining– ”
“ALRIGHT, Velvette– You’ve made your opinion very clear, thanks!” Vox sighed one last time before downing the entire rest of his drink in one go, since if he was going to bitched at for this he might as well just get it over with. “Robin, did either you or my aide schedule that call with the new broker?”
“Yes. It’s been set for tomorrow an hour prior to lunch, Sir.”
“Good. It’ll be an important one if what we heard about the guy is true. Now all of you better be gone by the time I come back, or else…” and with that lingering glare, Vox zapped himself into one of the many wires around that lead down into the extended basement.
From the electric current, he remanifested himself at the entrance of the workshop. Predictably, the majority of his workers shied away at the sight of his presence. All of them were perfectly aware of his constant less-than-pleased attitude he’d gained from all the Monkey business.
Also predictably, a certain individual among the group couldn’t care less and strolled right up to him. Which was good, in that it meant they could still get work done, but also awful, because it was fucking Franky…
“Box Boss! You get rid of that stick up your ass yet?”
Leveling a deadpan look at the brute, Vox had to withhold a deep sigh, “Don’t call me that. And solely due to the fact that you’re too competent an engineer to get rid of, I’m choosing to graciously ignore the second part of what you said. I’m assuming you guys finished with the security update?”
Franky lowered his sunglasses to wink at him, because he was both the type of guy to wink like a douche at people AND wear sunglasses indoors. “You got it, Bossy Voxxy! When this building goes into lockdown for realsies, not even Heaven’s army’s gonna be able to bust down these walls!” pushing his sunglasses back into place, Franky gained a disgruntled expression as he moved on to complain, “Gotta say though, the extra lockdown shit you had us install on our floors is a SUUUPER safety hazard! You should at least give the head engineer the permissions to disengage them. What if ya get knocked out from an actual emergency and everyone’s stuck down here? They’d all just be waitin’ for the building to fall down on top of ‘em!”
“ …How did you manage to come up with an even worse– nevermind. You think I care about something like that?” The department head was also under Contract, so giving him the key out would defeat the purpose of locking them all in here. He scoffed at the guy before moving past him to use the main access panel, intent on double checking their work to make sure no convenient backdoors had been installed. He doesn’t think any of the others would have the guts to defy him so boldly, but Franky would, and a part of him would actually be happy to be given a real excuse to take his frustration out on the freak.
Really, the only reasons why Franky wasn’t the head engineer himself were because he’d only been around for a bit more than a month and a half, and Vox refused to give such a critical position to an employee not under Soul Contract. And despite the guy’s skill, he wouldn’t touch that weirdo’s soul with a ten-foot pole. Vox truly would’ve just cut his losses and gotten rid of the bastard by this point if not for how absurdly good the guy was at building shit. The only aspect he’d needed additional training in when he’d first been hired was his lack of experience in software engineering, and by now he’d improved tremendously on that front.
If Vox had to guess, he’d assume Franky had been a gangster mechanic of some kind in life given the bias of his experience and demeanor, though his ability with robotics was also considerable given his lack of previous computer work. When Vox had first been introduced to him, he’d been interested to see another sinner with a tech-based form similar to his own, so of course the guy had ended up being a complete fucking weirdo. Like yeah, he could do some cool shit with his tech and his car was objectively the best car Vox has ever seen, but if there’s one thing he’s learned from his life and afterlife it was that having a cool car did not make up for having an obnoxious as shit personality! Because would it kill him to put on some pants?! They’re in a damn engineering workshop, not Val’s whore house!
After finishing his scan through the programing and disconnecting himself, Vox sighed, “Well, nothing looks wrong…”
“Course! I’m FRRRRRANKY! My work is always SUUUUPER STAR level, Boxy Voxy!” he did his weird pose in the middle of his extended rolling R. When Vox heard a couple good-hearted chuckles at the act, his narrowed eyes swiftly shifted over the group. The offenders cut themselves off and ducked their heads at his judgement.
“Riiiiight… You’re lucky you’re good at your job, you know that?”
“Would ya like Foxy Boxy more?”
“NO!” decidedly done with this bullshit, Vox zapped himself back into the electrical system to turn his back on the conversation.
Though once he returned back to his workstation, walls still dyed in red and Alastor’s smile still looping on his screen, now void of any pesky visitors… He belatedly realized that at the very least, the guy’s weirdness made for a good distraction.
He did have something to look forward to the next day, however. The broker he set up a call with was a relatively new player in the Ring’s underground who’d managed to squeeze himself in as a middleman bridging the gap between various small-time crime and Overlord level organizations for just about any illicit desire ranging from weapons, drugs, and most significantly in this case, information. Word on the street was that this Joker as he called himself was someone from the pirate world who’d recently died, and therefore knew more than the average sinner about the so-called Sun God.
Any additional information would be a benefit considering they were in the dark about Monkey D. Luffy outside of knowing the absurd extent of his apparent divine power, so all the Vees were chomping at the bit talk to the broker. To the point that all three of them were present in Vox’s aquarium meeting room as he put the call through.
“The Vee Overlords I presume? Fufufu~ I was pleased to hear of you inquiring for my services! Though it was only a matter of time considering your prior conflict with Straw Hat.”
Ignoring Val’s reflexive scowl at the mention of the boy, Vox got the meeting rolling, “If you know why we’re calling, let’s just cut to the chase. Time’s money after all. What do you know that’s worth paying you for?”
“Compared to what you three probably know? What DON’T I know would be a better question! I fought with Straw Hat once before that God shtick of his started, and even then, he was a hard fight. If you still have any delusions of besting him on a battlefield, my first piece of advice would be to give up on them! Fufufufu!”
Immediately ticked off, Val slammed all four of his hands down on the table as he hissed, “If you’re such a smart-ass, how about you tell us something useful, bitch!”
While she was much calmer about it, Velvette was also clearly annoyed when she drawled her agreement, “Any info you got is only worth payin’ for if we can act on it, ya know.”
“Alright alright, still a sore spot huh? I get that. Ha! How’s this for ya then? If there’s one thing Straw Hat’s known for, it’s that his crew is everything to him. Now, while you lot might not put much weight in the title, being the crew of the Pirate King is nothing to deal with lightly. They had to beat out every other pirate captain and crew who were out for that title, and that included some proper heavy hitters. But even still, some will be easier for you to handle than others, and that proves even more so if you branch out to Straw Hat’s allies. Would that information be worth your time?”
“Hm… We’re listening,” Vox was the one to say, a smirk finally stretching across his face as his claws steepled together. Equally appeased, Val leaned in with uncharacteristic focus while Velvette took a sip of her cocktail through grinning lips.
“Excellent~ There might yet be hope for you Overlords, heh! Now, the best place to start would be to give an overview of who, exactly, is on Straw Hat’s crew. Gotta know your enemy and all that. From what I can tell you’ve got yourself hardwired to this city’s surveillance system, so I’m assuming you’ve seen at least most of them around at some point. The one with the swords is ‘Pirate Hunter’ Roronoa Zoro, he had the highest bounty under his captain. Then there’s the ‘First Son of the Sea’ Jinbei, previously a captain of the Fishmen Sun Pirates and one of Seven Warlords, I can get more into that later if you’re interested. ‘Blackleg’ Sanji, who’s considered Straw Hat’s second ‘wing’ along with Roronoa. Most would consider those three to be among the strongest of Straw Hat’s crew. Then there’s ‘Devil Child’ Nico Robin, ‘Cyborg’ Franky– ”
Velvette spit out her drink into Vox’s face at the same time his screen glitched into colored bars, electricity sparking through the antennae sticking out of his head.
Valentino just blinked stupidly at them, before asking, “Uhh– Can you repeat those last two?”
“You mean ‘Devil Child’ Nico Robin and ‘Cyborg’ Franky? What about ‘em?”
“ …I think we’re gonna have to call you back.”
“Oh? Fufufu! Something interesting happening over on your end, huh? Nico Robin’s known to be a tricky one~ HEHEHEHEH– ”
Vox cut off the call at the same time he initiated total building lockdown. Pulling his face back together, he forced his systems to reorient themselves to hook up with the internal security system and scour the tower –Though if they were smart, the two would’ve hightailed it already considering Robin knew EXACTLY what time this meeting would be dammit!– ignoring the way Velvette shrieked like a banshee into what was presumably her primary aide’s voicemail –did she expect the woman to ANSWER?!
What he found, however, was another entirely unknown person. Glaring up at the front desk’s security cam like she was offended it’d taken so long to notice her and fully ignoring the fretting woman currently manning the desk.
Suddenly hanging up her phone, Velvette turned to shout at him instead, “VOX! Where are they?!”
“I don’t know, but it looks like they let someone in. Who the Hell is this lady even?! Both of you meet me at the entrance ready for a fight!” And with that, Vox flashed away into the nearest piece of equipment connected to the system. Oh– he fucking KNEW that weirdo was a bastard! And of course Robin was too good of a deal to be true! The next time Val tries to call him paranoid he’s gonna zap the shit outta that moth, the good sex be damned!
Vox appeared in the entry room, the usual light from its floor-to-ceiling windows blocked off by the steel plates that had lowered with the initiation of the lockdown. Along with the employee at the front desk, there were also a couple of other employees who’d likely happened to be around when the emergency lights and barriers went into place, collecting in the front to try to figure out what was happening. When the media Overlord stepped forward, every employee in the area stepped back, while the intruding woman took a graceful step forward.
“To keep an Empress such as myself waiting… You lot must be as foolish as I’d been told. Is it not natural to come running at the appearance of your betters? That is the only worth any man has, whether in life or in death!” the melodic, feminine voice sounded in full confidence, words that should be absurd and horrendously offensive instead coming off as honeyed truths with their delivery. Even the frightened bystander employees leaned just a bit forward, attention unconsciously captured by the figure.
As Vox himself got a better look at the woman, his initial mental comparison to the mythic figure of Medusa seemed right on the money. Her fair face was framed with hair made up of long, thin, dark veridian snakes, all with hissing fangs and only one eye each. They matched her dangling large gold snake earrings. Rather than making for a hideous monster, though, they just seemed to add to her mesmerizing appearance. The light scales that ran along her body, a good amount of which was left in plain view due to the intense cleavage of her cropped shirt and the extended slit of her long skirt, also added a shimmering effect to her person. And with her high heels, she towered over him, likely coming up to Val’s height.
Objectively speaking, this “Medusa” was drop-dead gorgeous. When Vox glanced back at the front desk woman, he realized that she’d been agitated not due to the bombshell’s barging in, but because she’d apparently been working up the nerve to ask for her number, if the way the sinner had her phone clutched in hand was any indication. Why is he cursed to be surrounded by such useless people?!
Vox narrowed his right eye as his left went wide, rings spiraling from the pupil with his mind control. “Even if you were an ‘Empress’ in life, that doesn’t mean much down here. Are you with the Straw Hats? I got a bone to pick with quite a few of them now– ”
He cut off with a pained choke when, in seemingly the blink of an eye, he was kicked in the middle and launched into one of the steel plate walls, banging into it also painfully. Vox had to claw at the wall he’d left a good dent in to at least right himself onto his knees, his other hand holding whatever the Hell she just broke in his midsection. What the FUCK?!
“OUTRAGEOUS! A man, trying to control ME?! I’ve killed men for lesser reasons, so-called Overlord of sinners!” sticking out a finger towards him, the Medusa turned her face so far upward he could only see her chin and neck, declaring grandiosely.
“Listen here and remember well, wretched man; this honorable one is Boa Hancock! Pirate Empress! Snake Princess! Empress of the Amazons! The most beautiful woman in the world! All of these are titles this one goes by! But no matter which is used, there is a single truth to be acknowledged no matter what world I reside in– There is but one man worthy enough for me to follow the will of, and that man is Monkey D. Luffy! All others who attempt to order me are fated to be forever cast in stone! Do you understand these words, or are you too idiotic for even that?!”
His eye twitched in a glitch of static at the name of the Monkey. Baring his fangs in a sneer, he snapped, “What the HELL is SOOO GREAAAT about that damn Monkey that EVERYONE just can’t wait to fall all over themselves for him?! HUH? Is being a God really that big of a deal?!”
At his jeering, Boa at the nerve to huff, a smug sort of smile lifting her lips, “If that’s what you’re asking, you truly have no idea about his wonder, do you? I could spend all day telling you of how great he is, all without even touching upon his divinity. Yes, indeed, even in this moment now as I think of him… I really just wanna marry him right away!”
“ …Huh?”
He couldn’t help but blink in shock at that answer, internal bleeding almost entirely forgotten. In a total one 180, the graceful, powerful woman cupped her now blushing cheeks with both hands. Twisting back and forth in a movement matched by the snakes in her hair as she rambled in a squeal, “He’s told me no so many times, but I just can’t help dreaming of it! Isn’t it a true maiden dream to marry the love of one’s life after all?! Oh~ I want to go to him right away! By the way, you noticed immediately I was with him, didn’t you?! That’s what you said! ‘Are you with Straw Hat’! How lovely of you to notice! Is it that obvious?! OH~ How embarrassing, but it really can’t be helped, right?! We’re just so obviously suited for each other, even our enemies can tell! It’s meant to be– ”
This is a whole other level of delusional. Even still, though, as the apparently besotted woman went on and on… There was definitely something about what she was saying that sounded unsettlingly familiar…
All at once, however, Boa halted both her words and her shift in attitude as her hand reached out to deftly catch the scissors that had been thrown at her face. With that, the switch flipped right back the other way with stunning eyes glaring like daggers. “To even attempt to leave a mark on this face is a grievous sin! That it is by the hand of another woman matters not!”
Approaching from the hallway leading to the elevators, Valentino and Velvette entered the hall. Their relative delay was explained by the sight of Velvette wearing a fitted gasmask, evidently prepared for Val to do his thing and smoke out the intruder. Vox was about to make a snarking comment about them finally getting to business, before the two beat him to it to say something decidedly less smart…
After squinting his eyes a bit due to his poor eyesight before they blew out wide again, Val chimed, “Oh my~ What a beautiful face indeed! You’re right that it’d be a crime to leave a scar on it. Ever thought of goin’ into show business, dollface?”
Velvette outright pushed Val to the side from where he’d taken a step forward to insert herself, even pulling the mask off her face to get a better look, “You’ll keep your ratty hands off this one, Val– A body with curves and height like that is clearly meant for the runway! I’ve got a collection that’ll be perfect to match your standard of beauty, darling! Why don’t you have a go at becoming Sinstagram famous– ”
“Love-Love Mellow!”
With her hands held out in the shape of a heart, a pink-tinted beam shot out at the two other Vees. When the light dissipated, they were left as gray stone figures, stuck in the poses they’d been in just a second prior.
“ …What the FUCK?!” he cursed out loud that time, because What the FUCK?!?!
In an obviously judging sneer, Boa turned her cheek to the now stone Overlords, turning her still heart-shaped hands towards Vox with the same motion in a way that hand him tense in place. “I was told this place is an enemy to women, and it seems that was no deceit. Those who sinfully covet beauty as such are but victims in waiting to my power. You, too, are but my victim in waiting, for I have come to take any women shackled to this tower to become one of my people. And no matter how any of your curse this, I shall be forgiven all the same… Because I am beautiful! Love-Love Mellow!”
Shutting his eyes with a flinch, Vox braced himself.
…Only for nothing to happen.
Blinking back into his vision, he stared blankly up at the woman. She sent him a curious stare and head tilt back. There was an awkward, extended pause.
A smirk began to distort his face. “ …Oh– I see! Doesn’t work on everyone, huh? HA! Well, isn’t that a shame– ”
She interrupted his renewed smugness before he could really get going, just calmly mentioning, “I see… You do not seem the type of be pure of heart, so there are two assumptions to be had– Either you are much weaker than I had anticipated and my prior attack injured you too greatly, or there is another who’s visage already mesmerizes you. One who even when not present, draws all of your focus and emotions away from my person.”
The screen that made up his face instantly began glitching out. It took a good number of seconds of color bars and static to get his features back into place enough to scowl at the woman, fully flustered. “That’s– There NO WAY that’s true! That guy’s gotta be the ugliest prick I know! Really! There’s no one I HATE more than that bastard!”
“…And yet you immediately thought of this one person and no one else. Truly, only a man could be this stupid when it comes to the desire of the heart.”
Taking the opportunity for retreat, Vox dissolved himself into electricity to once again zap back into the power system, releasing a powerful offensive shockwave to cover his tracks.
Only for a hand clad with a black sheen to continue holding him in place. The totally unexpected counter shook him back into physicality with his eyes going wide. Boa continued to look down on him, this time all the eyes of her many snakes looked down on him with her.
“How curious, that you could look upon this face and still see them as more beautiful than I. It matters not, though. For my power has developed even further than it had in life. The truth of your heart will be laid bare within the hold of Love-Love Vision!”
His vision was blinded by rose-colored light. Blinking it out of his eyes, Vox prepared to snap back at the woman.
Only to look up and see the Radio Demon’s grin looking down on him.
“ALASTOR! I KNEW you’d have something to do with this, you old– you…”
Vox’s snarl involuntarily died out as his eyes blew out so wide, they pushed his mouth down to the very bottom of the screen. He couldn’t help the way his gaze trailed up and down the demon’s figure.
He heard the fan in his head whirl to life as his processor struggled to buffer. “You… Your clothes are… Oh… Holy Shit…”
Because oh holy shit indeed– The prim and proper Radio Demon –you’d think this prick died in the Victorian era– usually dressed from head to toe with the only parts of his body being visible being his hands and face, maybe occasionally his wrists, neck, and the flash of an ankle if Vox was lucky… was wearing so much less than his normal suit.
A delicate neck leading to a slight chest left on display. His waist, so cinched with nothing to cover it, right in the line of Vox’s vision just tempting him to place his hands around it. And that long, slender bare leg ending in high heels shown through the slit of his skirt, hanging just beneath his hips to the point that the cute, furry deer tail Vox has only imagined the man having but never seen for himself was peeking out– He’d never even dreamt of the man being in an outfit anywhere this showy, but somehow here he was.
And that handsome face with half-lidded eyes, the one he’d been staring at so long it felt like the light of his own monitors would burn his digital eyes… Alastor smiled down at him, as though he was genuinely happy to see Vox, and wasn’t that all he ever wanted–
“It seems you’re quite taken by this one’s beauty now, isn’t that right?” even with the light radio filter, Alastor’s voice seemed to ring through his mind the same way it always does. Vox couldn’t help the way he swallowed at the sound of it.
“I… That… Can’t really be helped when… you look like that… Like woah…” he couldn’t even think straight enough to figure out how his mouth worked, let alone think about how stupid he sounded.
Still, when a familiar sort of irritated condescension bled back into Alastor’s grin, he knew he must sound stupid. “Men are such disgusting, lecherous beings. All it takes is an outfit not meant for your pleasure that happens to show some skin, and you think nothing but to take what isn’t yours. And for a purpose as debased as carnal desire. It’s the epitome of shameful!”
Vox flinched back at the accusation, suddenly very aware of how he was injured and on his knees before the Radio Demon. It was a situation that he’d typically snap back in anger at the demon for, letting his own rage and bitterness defend the soft center that was too-easily pained. He’d even imagined things being the other way around, with the Radio Demon being the one defeated and helpless to whatever way Vox chose to hurt him. For him to DIE with the knowledge that the worst mistake he ever made was turning away from Vox’s side.
But like a mirage, Alastor’s condescending look shifted seamlessly back into that smile that Vox has only seen from the screen –so very close to the way he used to smile with him, but at the same time so far from it that it hurt– and suddenly the poisonous revilement was drawn out of him with the breath of air that was pulled from his lungs. With it, words that he’d been playing and remixing in his mind, unrealized possibilities of what he could have said but never did, were drawn out with it…
“No! It’s not… I mean– of course you look good, no shit! But… even more than that… the thing I can’t believe is how you’re smiling at me like that… That’s all I ever wanted, before… For you to be as happy with me as I was with you…”
His hand reached up towards Alastor. But like always, the man wouldn’t take it. He shied away even, as he took a step back with his eyes flashing wide in shock, a hand held against his chest in uncertainty.
When those scarlet eyes narrowed on Vox’s surely pathetic form once again, there was a long moment of heavy consideration.
“…There is a saying that I have come to know as a truth– Love is always a hurricane. I suppose even as a wretched man, this must be true for you as well… At the very least, you made for a convenient test subject. It is not often I come across another who has such little regard for my fairness. You can consider the image of this person being the last thing you see to be your reward for that.”
And with that, Alastor’s hands came together to form the shape of a heart.
“Love-Love Mellow!”
One of Alastor’s shades first came upon the sight of the Straw Hats’ shipwright strolling through the employee entrance of the Vee’s corporate headquarters not too long after having located the trembling trio but before his announcement of the captain’s divine nature. Deciding the situation needed more investigating, his shadow was around on a later occasion to see the archeologist enter the building as well. It was sometime later that night after stalking the woman through the streets, seemingly headed back to her apartment, that a disembodied mouth and ear manifested on the wall beside his shadow while the woman’s back was still turned to his shadow.
“The Radio Demon Alastor– You are with my captain, are you not? I know Luffy must be waiting for us, but I must request that he wait just a bit longer. This project I initiated had originally merely been for the purpose of collecting information concerning this Ring of Hell and its Overlords as well as an opportunity for Franky to acclimate himself with the technology here, but as these sinners have decided to make an enemy of our crew, it would do no good to depart without leaving behind a proper message.”
Not wanting to come out personally for such a brief message, Alastor channeled his voice through his shadow to respond, “ …Hm~ I do find that sort of scheming to be quite appropriate, along for lending into an entertaining time. As you’re clearly among the more competent members of your crew, I’ll leave you to your plotting. Aha!”
“Thank you. I do hope you have a pleasant evening. Until we next meet,” and with that, both the wayward body parts scattered apart in a small flurry of petals. A very useful ability this one has, it seemed.
From that time on, Alastor made sure to keep the eye of a shade or two on how that situation was unfolding, though from a careful distance as to make sure the surveillances of one Vee Overlord didn’t catch on as to any suspicions. Nico Robin had bid her time well, making no major moves to avoid causing a stir until it was time to bring the pot to a broil. The patience had paid off in a grand manner when, unknowing as to what fuss they left behind on the inside, both undercover Straw Hats slipped out of the Vee’s tower and allowed an unfamiliar woman to slip in just a few minutes before the place went into total shutdown, steel plates slamming down over all the windows and doors.
Seeing the happening, Alastor’s shadow manifested and crept its head out of the corner of a nearby alley. The scheming woman walked over to it casually, leaning towards the shadow with an indifferent smile that didn’t match the soft hand that appeared to briefly pet the shadow’s head, having manifested on the wall above it. “You’re a rather cute creature. Could you tell your master to bring our captain here? Though I suppose I can talk to you directly this way as well, Alastor? I hope this timing isn’t too inconvenient for you.”
In a total contrast, the man who’d followed Robin to glance curiously over her shoulder just pushed his sunglasses atop his head to give Alastor’s now annoyingly pleased shadow a queer sort of glance. “Woah. Freaky little thing, ain’t it?”
Eager to see how the show played out, Alastor made quick work of unceremoniously drawing Luffy down into the shadows in the middle of an absolutely horrendous game of poker he’d been attempting against Angel, Husk, and Usopp, leaving the latter two opponents to shriek at the sight in frustration and fright respectively. Alastor manifested himself from the darkness alongside the captain at the entrance of the alley. Luffy spent but a brief few seconds looking around at his sudden new location before his sight landed on the two before them. At which point his face lit up with a beaming grin and the strangeness ceased to matter.
“ROBIN!!! FRANKY!!! Al found ya!”
The large man returned the large hug with an equal amount of energy, tears streaming down his face as though in heartfelt reunion while crying out, “LUUUUFFY!!! I really missed ya! Sorry we couldn’t be back sooner, but you know Robin– She’s a crazy cat when she’s made up her mind on fuckin’ with people! Ow! Even thinkin’ ‘bout it makes my balls hurt! I just had to hang on for the ride!”
“That’s fine! Shishishi! I’m glad you guys were havin’ fun!”
There had been no exaggeration in Luffy’s description of the man being a “cyborg”, the title had only gotten more appropriate in death. Standing at around Angel Dust’s height but with much more bulk and tall light-blue pompadour styled hair to add to it, most of his body had a gray-blue metallic sheen about it. And Alastor did mean most of his body, in that the vast majority of it was plain to see seeing as the man’s only form of “modesty” consisted of a button up tropical-print shirt that’d been fully left open and a speedo undergarment. Would it kill this man to put some actual clothes on? He’s vaguely surprised Vox didn’t just fire the man the first day he showed up to work looking like this. While his limbs and large boxy shoulders were clearly made of metal, Franky’s torso and face seemed to be a strange mix of a fleshy tone and metal panel lines, with his nose being a bolted on rectangular piece of steel. His forearms were a strange, spiked shaped. And his oversized hands were also very boxy with its robot features, though seemed to be painted yellow and red for some color, and despite their seeming unwieldiness had no issue in delicately holding onto Luffy’s slight frame.
After the cyborg had the chance to cry it out, Luffy shifted himself in the embrace so that he could pull in his other newly reunited crewmate in for her own hug. She accepted the hold with a pleasant, chiming chuckle, growing out another hand from Franky’s chest to sooth through Luffy’s messed hair before righting his Straw Hat once more. “I’m glad you were having fun as well, Luffy. You’ll have to tell us about how things have been with the others and Alastor here. You recruited him to the crew, didn’t you?”
Out of all the Straw Hats, Nico Robin was the most demonic looking of the bunch, and certainly the most traditionally so. Just a tad taller than Alastor’s height, she had the classical devilish features of black horns sprouting from her long hair, finely kept claws, and a thin tail ending in a spade-shaped tip to match. With her long floral skirt and her short-sleeved partly zipped vest leaving a good amount of cleavage to be seen and showcasing the faint violet tint of her skin, one might even mistake the sinner to be a legitimate succubus if not for how off-form her wings and eyes were compared to theirs. Along with having black sclera and violet pupils, a third eye sat right in the center of her forehead. As for her wings, they were rather large and the same violet tint as her skin, and upon closer inspection, seemed to be made up of countless miniature hands grasping one another to form a web to make up the shape of the wing. Alastor wondered if it would be possible to use such a peculiar design for actual flight, or if the feature was merely cosmetic.
“Yeah! It’s been awesome!”
“SUUUUUPER!” The reasoning for the strange shape of Franky’s forearms was made clear when the man posed with his arms above his head, bringing them together to form a five-pointed star. “But damn! No wonder Bossy Voxxy’s been losin’ his shit this whole time! That guy’s level of obsession rivals even the Snake Princess, except in an evil, jilted techbro stalker kinda way! You know how many glitched up pics I found of the Radio Demon on his network– ”
“I’d rather not know,” Alastor put a quick end to that topic, smile going particularly sharp and thin in his displeasure, “Now, how should we move forward at this time? I assume the woman you sent into the Vee’s abode is meant to be an offensive force?”
Robin was the one to answer him in a plain explanation, “Yes, that was the Snake Princess Franky referred to, Boa Hancock. Along with her superb strength, her ability allows her to petrify people who are attracted to her. Miss Velvette and Valentino will be no match for it. I’d be more concerned with how well it’d work on Vox, but it seems she has a way to deal with that now. Once petrified, in life the only known way to reverse its affect had been through the Empress’s will. I do wonder if the Pirate Empress’s victims lose awareness or not once they’ve become stone– What a horrid fate that would be, to be forever cast in stone and stuck within the prison of one’s mind for all eternity. Or at least until the stone of one’s body becomes slowly eroded and weathered down over the course of time.”
Even as she spoke of the ‘horrid fate’, the woman didn’t sound disturbed by the legitimate possibility in the slightest. The eeriness of her casual speech caused Franky to slightly lean away from Robin with a brief shiver. “Ow! You and the Snake Princess are a pair of real scary ladies, Robin babe! Pity the fool who tries messin’ with ya!”
Oh– he likes this one. Alastor just let out a hearty laugh, overjoyed by the prospect, “AHAHAHA~ Why yes! That would be an awful existence, wouldn’t it?! For all their jabs concerning the other Overlords and myself being products of the past, those upstarts may very well be stuck in the stone age for quite some time! Haha!”
Franky sent him a suspicious glance of his own for that reaction. On the other end of the spectrum, Luffy ignored all of this to squint at Robin in a questioning head tilt, “Hancock’s here? Last we heard from Barto she was still alive though!”
“It seems she passed rather recently. Considering her personality, she wouldn’t have gone long without making herself known if I’d not coordinated with her so quickly upon her arrival in Hell. From what she told me, she held out for a good amount of time after your death while settling Amazon Lily’s affairs and establishing your church, but evidently succumbed to the pains of her heart,” the archaeologist somehow managed to give that explanation in a way that didn’t come off as absolutely ludicrous.
And of course, the implications went right over the boy’s head as he replied, “Something was wrong with her heart? She should’ve gone to the doctor! Too bad Traffy and Chopper were already dead…”
“Hey– this is the first I’m hearin’ of this! Is that for real?!” Franky leaned in close to Robin with a whisper and a hand covering his mouth, as though that would be enough for Luffy not to overhear the conversation. Which if the captain’s vacant stare in the direction of the Vee’s skyscraper was any indication was actually working despite basic logic. “She seriously died of a broken heart?! That’s SUUUUUPER crazy! And super sad, like really! Luffy didn’t even like her back! Ow!”
“Indeed, it’s a tragedy more than a romance. But she seemed happy to hear that Luffy is here and that she can see him once more, so I suppose all’s well that ends well.”
“I really don’t think it’s cool to just leave it at that… But we gotta get down to business now, huh,” leaning back with a huff, Franky caught Luffy’s attention again to point out the blocked entrance to him, “Luffy, can ya bust us in? Me ‘n’ some of the other guys made these babies strong enough to withstand a Heavenly siege, but I know nothin’ I make would ever be strong enough to hold out against my captain! Just make sure you put yer back into it!”
“Okay!” was the cheerful agreement.
Apparently the captain took considerable stock in his shipwright’s work, since he went straight into Gear 5th to bust through the defenses rather than work his way up to it. Rather than bulldozing his way through, however, his punches ended up stretching out the wall to the point where he was able to stretch it apart like a curtain in a rather cartoony fashion. It wasn’t too long upon them walking into the place that attention was drawn their way.
“You! Spread the word and tell all the women of this place that they are free to join my order and be trained as Amazon warriors! As for the men, I shall graciously ignore them leaving after us should they choose to use this opportunity to free themselves. You may refer to me as the Snake Princess or your Empress from now on, if you intend on swearing your allegiance to me.”
“Y-Yes, Empress! I-I’ll do so right away! But– uh– what should we do about Mister Vox’s workers? They’re stuck in an additional lockdown in the basement…”
“How many women are among these workers?”
“U-Um… I don’t know if they have any, actually. Most girls end up with either Miss Velvette or Mister Valentino because of their businesses…”
“Then it matters not. I have no need for them!”
“HEY! There’re some cool bros down there! Even if ya don’t want ‘em we gotta let ‘em out!” Franky finally butt into the conversation, calling out with insistence as they approached.
Rather than react with the attitude one would expect from such a demanding royal, Boa Hancock’s gaze immediately locked onto where Luffy stood next to Alastor. Within the blink of an eye, she dashed over, only to stay a good ten feet back and shyly clutch her hands to her sizable chest –what in the pirate’s world are they feeding these women for them to all be so top-heavy??? “L-Luffy! You’re here! Oh~ I wasn’t expecting you so soon, I haven’t even finished rallying my followers yet… Did you miss me <3?”
It made for a rather ridiculous sight, given how the woman looked like a beauty out of Greek mythos and towered over the God in his current form. Given the captain’s apparent lack of interest, Alastor found it to be a rather irritating sight as well. Luffy, still slightly bouncing around in his divine visage, seemed to completely ignore the ‘crushing innocent maiden’ overtones, “Hey Hancock! I guess I missed ya, yeah. You’re freeing these guys? That’s good of ya! I’ll help!”
“OHHHH~!!!” She felt onto her knees, legs going weak with the back of her hand raised to her forehead in a dramatically faint look. “Marry me, please~ <3!!!”
“No, I still don’t wanna,” the rejection was almost brutally direct given the boy’s apparent ignorance up to this point. The God walked right past the fallen woman to stand in front of where Valentino and Velvette’s statues stood next to one another, poses and expressions caught in the midst of excitement.
Previously, Luffy has only broken Soul Contracts when their manifestation was already brought out for him. Thus Alastor stared in vague surprise as the God began to root around the apparently accessible pockets of Valentino’s solid stone statue, sticking his hand so far into them it made for a bizarre sight. With a mischievous grin of victory, Luffy pulled it back out to reveal a book’s worth of glowing, magical Soul Contracts. “Found ‘em! Hehahaha!”
“Oh my. Our captain is so talented,” Robin commented like it was a pleasantry.
“He’s our SUUUUUPER crazy SUN STAR, for real! I’m gonna go get started on hackin’ into the lockdown system, then Luffy can bust his way down for anything I can’t get passed Vox Box’s firewall for,” Franky added on as Luffy’s hands grew just large enough to tear the stack of papers into tiny, smoldering pieces. The God then moved on to repeat this process with Velvette.
While the captain was busy, one of the bystander employees came forward to try and give a hand of assistance to the Snake Princess, seeing that the woman she’d been ordering had already left to do her allotted task. But tried was the key word, given that all he managed to do was stick out his hand while saying, “Princess, do you need help– ”
“FOOLISH MAN! Do not TOUCH me with your filthy hands!”
Within the next blink, the male sinner was sent flying into the front desk with what looked like a gut-crushing kick. The impact was so hard, the desk shattered into pieces around the now limp figure. The Pirate Empress stood tall in her scowling rage, her leg still held up in an angle from her strike and the snakes that made her hair hissing in an echo. “Listen well, sinner of Hell– No mere man is allowed to lay even a single finger upon this honorable form! Even standing too close to the likes of your filth threatens to taint my beauty! Do not make the mistake of assuming you have such a right!”
“Y-Yes, Empress…” not just the fallen sinner, but the other male employees lurking about simpered in their wariness.
Somehow the occurrence just made the scene that happened not too long before it retroactively even more absurd. Luffy, of course, was paying no mind to any of the farce. Instead finishing up with Velvette’s Contracts before he crossed back through Boa’s side to reach the last petrified Overlord. That was when the now recovered woman stopped him, holding out her hand. “W-Wait, Luffy! There’s one thing I wanted to show you right away as soon as I saw you again! If that’s okay…”
That caught the God’s attention, spiraling stare focused back on the Empress in a way that had her flustering. “Huh? What is it?”
Posture going tall and proud, Boa turned her back towards the boy, her snake hair moving themselves to the side and out of the way as she did so. While he didn’t have a good view from his current position, Alastor’s shadow crept along the opposite wall to see that the back cut of her shirt was similar to how it was in the front. It left the simple sun design that took up the center of her back in full view with her hair no longer obscuring it.
Glancing over her shoulder, the Snake Princess gave a bright smile as she excitedly exclaimed, “Look! I have the symbol of your divinity, now! This back is no longer an ugliness to hide in shame, but a point of pride! And I know it’s thanks to you. That my sisters’ shame shall also likely be cleansed of their forms in their next lives– to know this fills me with joy!”
Much like the Sun itself, Luffy’s face beamed in a bright, stretched out grin at the news. He hopped over towards her to call out, “Woah! You’re right, it’s different now! That’s great! I’m happy for ya, Hancock! Ya like this a ton better, right? I’m happy for your sisters too!”
“Y-Yes! Thank you, Luffy!”
Thinking back on his conversation with Jinbei concerning the mark of the Sun Pirates… Alastor was left with an impression as to what “shame” had marred the woman’s back in life. The Pirate Empress’s rather extreme misandry made much more sense, with that context…
Taking a step closer to his side, the more devilish looking woman present explained without his asking, “We weren’t around when Luffy first met the Pirate Empress, but we believe he managed to charm her by being the first man to properly show her kindness. Hancock was born on and became the leader of an island consisting of only women, so she likely had little to no interaction with men other than their interactions with the outside world.”
Alastor hummed back in consideration, “I see… I suppose I could see that sort of ridiculous circumstance occurring with the good captain, yes.”
With Boa returning to her bashfulness, Luffy continued on his way towards where Alastor stood by Nico Robin. Alastor took the moment to look back over at the petrified Vox that wasn’t too far behind him, his last moment having apparently been on his knees and reaching a hand out towards something. It was a rather curious discrepancy compared to how his fellow Vees had ended up. “How is it you were left in such a pathetic looking state, old pal? It’s almost a shame I can’t mock you for it directly, ha!”
Luffy had to bend down to rummage his way through Vox’s stone pockets. As though drawn by the tug of a rope, Boa inched a bit closer to where he now stood even while maintaining her modest distance. It seemed that Alastor’s comment had earned him what little attention the woman had to spare outside of her borderline disturbing voyeurism towards the captain, since for the first time she looked his way to glance over his form with a critical gaze. Alastor returned the stare with his usual unwavering composure.
“So you are the one he referred to as ‘Alastor’… I don’t understand the appeal, as the only man of any sort of true beauty is my Luffy. But you do seem to carry some strength, that Luffy has deigned you acceptable for his company lends the impression credence, and strength is beauty. I suppose your form was adequate enough to appear in his Love-Love Vision. I can see now how the change in attire would be such a shock, though.”
“ …I beg your pardon, but his WHAT– ”
“Found ‘em!” Alastor’s increasing derangement at attempting to puzzle out the context as to whatever the Hell the woman was talking about was cut off by Luffy’s exclamation. The boy held out Vox’s stack of Soul Contracts and thus drew the Empress’s attention back in. He wasn’t too upset as to being left without an answer, getting the sense he’d be better off not knowing…
As the God tore apart Overlord Vox’s hopes and aspirations for power into tiny smoldering pieces, Robin introduced another point of consideration, “Should we destroy their statues? In life, that would eliminate any chance of the Empress’s victims returning and kill them, but with how reincarnation works in death I think they’d likely just regenerate their forms instead. Leaving them petrified might be a truer form of death in that case. Though I suppose if Luffy were to destroy them with his divine might that should finish them off for good as well. If left be, there remains the possibility of their recovery considering the vast possibilities of magics and demonic powers in Hell. Other outside forces may intervene on their behalf. We can also bring the statues with us.”
“Don’t care! Let Al decide.” Once again, the dear ‘captain’ fails to care much for the finer details of decision making…
At the que, the archeologist looked his way with an expression not lending towards preference one way or another. After a brief moment of thought, Alastor met the look with a mean, curling grin while he gestured with his cane in a wide, grand movement. “Let us leave their fate in the hands of Lady Luck! I do so enjoy the sight of the pitiful attempting to crawl out of their misfortune with what miniscule hope they have remaining, only to fail once more and further fall into despair. If the Wheel of Fortune should show them favor in this moment, it will only make for a more entertaining show by the end of it all! Ahahaha!”
“My, what a devilish demon Luffy’s found for our crew. If our captain’s left the decision in your hands though, there’s no helping it. Fufu~ ” Nico Robin didn’t seemed bothered in the slightest as she ended on her own light chuckle of amusement, a hand partly covering her slight, petite smile. While Luffy predictably didn’t care, already moving on towards where Franky was by the elevator shaft, the cyborg glanced up from his work to send the both of them a wary side-eye.
After the two freed the shipwright’s fellow “bros” from the basement Vox had apparently kept them locked up in, they left the Empress to organizing the mass exodus, as she would be sticking around to gather women to her cause while Luffy predictably didn’t care for doing any of the follow up that came with the large-scale dismantling of a corporate empire. He returned to his mortal form shortly after. The obsessive woman gave a particularly dramatic farewell for someone who’d be seeing Luffy again in less than an hour or two.
The Vees wouldn’t be left with nothing should they manage to recover from their petrification, even given this great humiliation and the release of their Soul Contracts. They still had their businesses, property, capital, and non-Contracted workforce, but given the circumstances a good portion of even those not under Soul Contract were likely to take the opportunity to leave if only to not be around to deal with the inevitable fallout. Any sinners who tried to usurp the Vee’s seats of power were left with the chancy game of them coming back, given they knew even less as to the conditions of the Snake Princess’s abilities, so they still had somewhat of a buffer window before that was likely to occur. Overall, Alastor hadn’t been lying when he’d claimed interest over seeing how things would play out.
With rolling Rs that sounded like the revving of an engine, the cyborg brought his arms together in his star pose to announce, “ALRRRRRIGHT! What’s a good con without a SUUUUUPER flashy getaway?! It’s time for the FRRRRRRANKY RRRRRRROCKET RRRRRRRACECAR to shine!!!”
“WOoOoOoOhhhhh!” Luffy pumped his fists in the air with literal stars in his eyes as what was objectively the most ludicrous and most hideous souped-up red convertible Alastor has ever seen drove itself to the streetside directly in front of the building. The ‘Rocket’ part of the title was apparently literal, in that there was a giant rocket engine slapped haphazardly to the back of the car that let out a fiery exhaust as it sped in front of their group only for the brakes to screech it to a halt.
After Franky righted himself, he slapped the truck of the engine-stalled car, making it stutter and honk in a rather concerning fashion. Then sent a thumbs up and smirking wink at the lot of them. “This baby can go from 0 to 500 mph in ten seconds flat! Runs on pure burning Cola! Front’s fitted with a FRRRRRANKY Radical Beam that’s sure to burn through the steel of any other car if the horn’s not gettin’ the message across! And the 360-surround sound system is based on VoxTek’s top of the line not yet released stereo system! Robin babe, you want shotgun– ”
“No thank you.”
“I DO! HAHAHAHA!”
The man’s hair sagged a bit as his grin faltered at the rejection, the captain instead being the one to fling himself into the passenger seat without opening the door. As Nico Robin instead made her way to open the door to the back seat, Alastor’s face scrunched in a squinting look of distaste at the horrid contraption. He kept his tone purposefully light with just a touch of patronizing judgment, “Well, you lot enjoy your trip! I’ll just make my own way back– ”
He'd already begun to dissolve into the shadows when Luffy’s hands stretched out, somehow grasping his not fully physical form, to reel him into the empty side of the backseat in a most graceless manner. Alastor only just managed to get himself upright from the sudden upheaval, claws digging into the metal of the door beside him, when a feminine arm appeared on the same side to fasten his seatbelt into place. He looked over to see the devilish woman give him a blasé smile as she plainly stated, “Safety first.”
“Let’s ROCK N ROLL BABY, OWWW!!!!”
The maniac shipwright turned car-junky gunned the gas to make for the most awful, gut-wrenching lurch. He’d evidently not been exaggerating about his 0 to 500 statistic, much to Alastor’s displeasure. Luffy laughed with his hands in the air as though it was a roller-coaster ride, which it might as well be at the speed they were taking the narrow city streets. Alastor had to claw into both the door beside and the back of his own seat just to keep himself stabilized through the bastard’s sudden 90 degree turns running through red lights.
And, as though to personally victimize him to the highest degree, Franky then turned on his deafening, overly upgraded speaks and shouted back over the roar of the engine, “Hey Robin, you hear anything from that new band of Brook’s?! All his usual stuff’s great of course, but there’s this awesome song his bandmate’s the main of! Check it out!”
“Hell is forever whether you like it or not! Had their chance to behave better now they boil in the pot– ”
To think he’d be naïve enough to assume there’d be no other Straw Hat he’d dislike MORE than the cook and first mate– How wrong he’d been! Of course the very best and very WORST the pirates had to offer would make up the last of the set! If this maniac doesn’t kill them all on the course of this joyride, Alastor will have to hold back from killing the man himself! If there’d been any question as to why Vox had been stupid enough to hire an exhibitionist freak, it was gone with the wind now! That guy always did have SHIT taste! All the pirate would’ve had to do was show off this monstrosity and he’d be hired on the spot!
“Franky, slow down a tad please. This is a good spot,” even without raising her voice, Robin’s words somehow manage to retain full clarity in a contest with the loud as Hell rocket engine and Adam’s shrieking vocals and guitar. A hand grew into Alastor’s view to point back in the direction they’d come from. After a short internal debate on whether checking the situation out was worth breaking his neck, he decided he might as well just break it himself at this point and turned his head around 180 degrees with a crack.
Wind rushing through his hair and ears, Alastor was rewarded with the sight of some of Vox’s own drones, clearly having been hacked by the man currently attempting vehicular homicide, finishing up painting an enormous rendition of the Straw Hats’ jolly roger on the upper center of the Vee’s tower. The street they were speeding down provided the perfect distance and framing to have the entirety of the tower in the clear background with the jolly roger prominently featured.
“This should make for a good enough message for all of the sinners. I did learn at least one thing from Velvette, and that was the importance of a calculated perspective and setting when designing a good photo.” Alastor snapped his head back around to see the woman hand herself a briefcase that had been under the seat in front of her. At his curious glance, she opened it to reveal it was full of stacks of cash. “Starting from when they were distracted by their meeting today, I had Franky hardwire this out of one of the Vee’s bank accounts and withdrew it. It was only one of the auxiliary accounts, but the amount should still be enough to please Nami.”
Alastor stared at her for just a second longer. Then reared up in the most insane, delighted sort of cackling laughter.
“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA– YOU– AHAHAH– You really are the BEST this crew has to offer, aren’t you?! AAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA– ”
“Thank you, Alastor. You flatter me,” her reply was somewhat flat, but still charmed, a hand resting above her chest with a modest smile. When her arm closest to Alastor clasped lightly around his waist to pull him forward and to the middle of the seat to reorient for the picture, he permitted it even as he continued to laugh.
Robin’s phone was passed forward to a hand that had grown out of the top of the car windshield. Preparing for the picture, Franky ducked down and towards the center with a grin to take one of his hands off the wheel for a peace sign. Luffy laughed before reaching back to pull Alastor’s face even farther towards the front, bumping their cheeks together with that idiotic smile of his. Robin’s face hovered close above and to the side of him with a much more pleasant smile that contrasted in an inane fashion with the suitcase of cash two more of her hands held out at the bottom of the shot. Another violet hand was added to make a peace sign for good measure. Alastor just barely reigned himself in enough to flash a grin of serrated teeth, chiming cheerfully, “Ha! Any digital picture with me in it doesn’t come out quite right, you know!”
“That’s fine! All that matters ‘s that you’re in it!” Luffy called back with joyful ease. The response, both nostalgic and new, had Alastor’s grin stretching wider at the warmth it left behind, his cheeks raising his eyes into a smile to match.
The phone’s camera went off with a shutter sound. Retrieving it from the external hand, Robin pulled back to show off a perfectly crafted “selfie” with the four of them, the stolen cash below and the jolly roger and defaced property above and behind them in the background. As Alastor had warned, the graphics around his own figure were pixelated and marred with static, but as he wasn’t purposely distorting the image, enough of it came out to be able to discern it was clearly him.
“Oh good, we can still see your cute smile,” Robin commented amiably. That earned her a squint of an irritated side-eye from him. His amusement renewed itself, however, as he watched her fiddle with the new-fangled technology to insert the picture in a ‘sinstagram post’, if he remembered the term correctly. She typed out the caption of ‘Happy to be back with my captain. The Vees are not so happy :) Looking forward to seeing everyone else soon. XOXO –Devil Child Nico Robin of the Straw Hat Pirates’, before presumably releasing it to the internet hounds. Another round of cackling ensued.
The good time didn’t last for long, however. Franky swerved in a jolting reminder that they were still stuck on the death trap with him.
In almost no time at all, they were racing down the road towards the hotel. And rather than do anything sensible such as slowly coming to a stop in the street out front, the man instead drove through the front gate onto the lawn and swerved the car yet again such that the side Alastor and Luffy were on was in most danger. They just barely screeched to a halt right before they were about to crash into the hotel proper, but a few feet away from the doors.
Up on the overseeing balcony where a Charlie gobsmacked seemed to be having lunch with her father and girlfriend, Vaggie spit out her drink while Lucifer choked on his food. Sanji, who likely had been in the middle of leaving after serving the three, rushed back to lean over the railing and shout furiously, “FRANKY! Are you crazy?! What if you hurt Miss Robin with that stunt of yours?! If she has so much as a scratch on her beautiful skin, I’ll beat the shit out of you!!!”
“Chill Sanji bro! I had it handled!” Franky shouted back holding a thumbs up, “That’s why I positioned the car with us two on the outside, just in case I messed it up!”
“You call that having it handled?!?! Miss Nami’s inside the lobby right now, you piece of shit!”
Before the man could respond either way, tendrils of darkness sprouted all around and began to wrap around, their hold crushing against strong metal and moving into a chokehold. “HEY! WOAH WOAH WOAH– ! I’m a pervert but I’m not into tentacles– ”
“I’m going to kill you now.”
“ROBIN!!!” Nami burst through the hotel doors with absolute joy. She ran to Robin as the other woman exited the car, first giving her a great hug, before Robin held out the suitcase that she’d really come for. At which point she switched to embracing the object with the same tenderness one would a lost lover. The berri signs in her eyes so blinding, she likely didn’t even see the Radio Demon’s demonic visage and his attempted murder of another crewmate.
Peeking out of the doors from behind the gathering Straw Hats that’d come to greet them, Angel Dust provided the reasoning for how the navigator had known to expect Robin’s haul by holding up his phone to point at it excitedly, “Are you Nico Robin?! Yer post’s already gone viral! Can I get a selfie with ya later when yer done sayin’ hi?!”
“Of course. You’re Angel, correct? It’s nice to meet you.”
In contrast to the woman’s casual reply, Chopper began fretting about in a panic beside the sorry excuse for a vehicle, “W-W-W-W-WAIT! Alastor, don’t– ! If you bend Franky that way, he’s gonna break! You’ll kill him!”
“That was the intention, yes.”
Usopp cried out in a similar manner, hands holding the sides of his head, “His face is going blue! He can’t breathe! We haven’t even had a proper reunion yet and you’re about to kill him!”
“Again, all of this is entirely iNtEnTiOnAl.”
There was the deep sound of Jinbei’s tired exhale, “Luffy, while I know you like leaving us to be, it’s about time you stepped in…”
Alastor almost choked himself when, without a care in the world, the captain jumped up in front of him to wrap his arms around an extended neck and shoulders, sticking his frowning face into Alastor’s distorted one and latching on like a Monkey-leech hybrid. “Come on Al, it’s alright! Franky was just givin’ us a fun time!”
“I did not consider that a FUN time…” was the hissing reply.
“Okay! He knows that now, so it’s fine! You can’t kill any of our Nakama for realsies! Ya need ‘a let everyone say hi to him!”
Glowing red radio dials set into the void stared at him, but predictably, Luffy wasn’t intimidated in the slightest.
Releasing a miffed huff, Alastor shrunk his form back down and released his prey along with it. The partially broken cyborg landed on the ground in a heap. Alastor finally stepped out of the accursed car, still dragging Luffy’s weight with him. Seeing that Chopper leaped back in a fright along with Usopp away from his clearly still displeased expression, he ended up around the area Brook and Jinbei were standing before Luffy finally hopped off his person. From his place closer to the door, Zoro slid the swords that had been partly out of their sheaths back in with a disappointed tsk.
When Luffy beamed at him with a pleased grin, Alastor shifted his narrowed eyes away to watch Franky pick himself back up with shaky arms, planting the end of his cane into the ground in front of him with both hands placed atop the mic-head. “You can owe your life to the mercy of your captain, Franklin. Take care with the consideration that he will not always be around to protect you…”
“Ow! As in an actual OW! You’re one crazy bastard, Al! That was SUUUUUPER NOT cool! …And who the hell is Franklin?!?!”
“Oh deer– That was a close one! My heart almost stopped! …Only I don’t have one! Yohohoho!!!”
“That was a close one indeed. If Alastor had succeeded, Franky wouldn’t have been alive to fix the fence he broke. What a poor first impression that would have made,” with her flat delivery, it was impossible to tell whether the disregard was meant in jest or if she truly cared for the other’s life to that little extent. Once again, Nico Robin continues to prove herself to be the best Straw Hat …Discounting perhaps the captain, but only when he wasn’t being a nuisance to Alastor and telling him not to kill people.
“OW! Your shitty reactions hurt me even more!” Franky called out while fixing the placement of his shoulder. For all his complaining, though, he recovered quick enough to strike a dramatic pose, pointing back at the car.
“But the show’s not over! You guys haven’t even seen it yet– the Franky Rocket Racecar’s final form… Behold! The FRRRRRRANKY RRRRRROCKET RRRRRRACECAR RRRRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOBOT!!!!!!!!!!!”
In a confusing mess of twisting parts and mechanical whirls, the car somehow managed to reform itself into a bipedal robot, complete with the rocket engine being repurposed for its jetpack and what could only be assumed to be laser beam cannons. There was an immediate rousing reaction from the crowd.
“WOAAAAAAH! It really turns into a ROBOT!!!” Luffy exclaimed along with Chopper, Usopp, Brook, Angel Dust, and Bartolomeo –who’d been in the midst of taking rapid group shots from an upper window in a manner resembling the TV-headed Overlord they’d just left behind to an annoying degree– all of them going starry-eyed. While not showcasing such an extreme response, Jinbei, Sanji, Zoro, and even Husk peeking out from the door and Trafalgar where he was lurking in the same window Bartolomeo was sticking his head out of looked on with appreciative hums.
Having taken a good number of steps back so as to keep his distance from the wretched thing, Alastor deadpanned, fully unimpressed, “…And here I thought that hunk of junk couldn’t get worse. I should’ve finished the job when I had the chance.”
“Why not just make the car and robot separately…?” Nami questioned under her breath, the ridiculous sight bringing her out of her greed.
“The only potential positive I could see is if one were to trick an enemy into staying inside the car as it transformed, crushing them in the process. Otherwise it’s rather pointless,” Robin responded without inflection.
“WOAAAAAAH! It really turns into a ROBOT!!!” Lucifer and Charlie both echoed from their places leaning over the balcony rail, eyes sparkling. The apple truly does not fall far from the tree. Still at the table of the ruined lunch, Vaggie held her face with both hands in a loud groan.
“Yes… He’s here…! The Ultimate Pirate Bad Boy…!”
Alastor had to keep himself from startling, forcing himself to slowly turn to look at where Niffty had appeared, her single eye disturbingly wide and dilated. The stupid cyborg had chosen this moment of all times to turn the robot back into a car and lean against the side of it, crossing his arms while pushing his sunglasses into place. He looked the spitting image of a deadbeat 50’s gangster sans clothing.
He felt a carefully contained but surely growing sense of panic as he snatched a hand out to hold her back by the collar of her dress. “Oh nonono– You’ve got it all wrong, Niffty dear! That man is also a good-bad boy– ”
Only for the little gremlin to pry her way out of his reach. “No! I can tell! He’s not a good-bad boy, he’s a weird-bad boy,” narrowing her eye in a very predatory manner, Niffty growled devilishly, “I like weird~ Ehehehehe– ”
His resistance was futile. The not-so kept creature scurried forth to climb the much taller man like a metallic jungle gym. Franky pushed his sunglasses back to give Niffty a questioning look and raised eyebrow. She giggled at him, more the picture of a disturbed mind than a flirting gal, “I’m Niffty! Heh... I clean~ hihihi– Wanna go on a joyride~ ?”
“That’s a no-go, little lady.” Large fingers pinched a hold on the now pouting Niffty’s dress to remove the girl and set her back to the ground. And if it’d just been left at that, it would’ve been a perfectly acceptable rejection. So it was no surprise that the man then immediately made it weird by posing once more, running a hand through his hair dramatically. “This pervert’s a bachelor for life! The only women I’m faithful too are the sexy ships I build. Ow! Oh Sunny Go, my precious girl, I miss you so!!! My one-of-a-kind ship of dreams!”
And with that being said, he promptly fell to his knees and burst into tears, holding his hand out to the sky in longing. Wide eye blinking at the scene, Niffty regarded the now sobbing bad boy for merely three seconds before regaining her smirk. “Your angst and playing hard to get just makes the passion of the romance even hotter~ eHEHEHEH~!”
Briskly walking up to Robin’s side to lean towards her, Alastor quietly hissed through his teeth, “Is it too late to go back and unpetrify Vox so we can return the cyborg to him?”
She didn’t miss a beat before plainly responding, “Even if we did so it wouldn’t be successful. Not only would Luffy never allow for it, but I don’t believe Vox would take Franky back anyway. While he appreciated Franky’s work, he didn’t care for his personality.” FUCK!
And just like that, all members of the Straw Hat Pirates were gathered once more. All highs and lows that came with said gathering implicitly included…
Vox fell over onto his face at the sudden shift in balance. Cursing while getting his hands under him to push himself back up, he suddenly remembered what he’d been in the middle of and swerved his gaze around in a wild search. The woman he’d been fighting was nowhere to be seen, and neither was Alastor.
“Alastor– ! …It wasn’t him! Fuck fuck FUCK!!!”
He pounded the floor with a fist of rage. Then unclenched it just to dig his claws into the tile. His soul twisted in a storming, lightning-laced gale, caught between wanting to curse, scream, and cry. So intense, it felt like his chest could just explode and tear apart his useless insides. He almost wished it would, if only so that it’d finally stop hurting so much.
He didn’t bother looking over at the sound of the other Vees groaning as they woke up. However, a foot stepping into his line of sight interrupted his fit before Vox could work himself into an overload.
Glaring up in a sneer baring his sharp teeth, a large man with a black beard grinned down at him.
“Zehahaha! So even the Pirate Empress is too much for you lot to handle, huh? Well, that’s just fine. There are other ways to win against a pirate… Why don’t we help each other out, Mister Overlord?”
Chapter 15: The Greatest Treasure
Notes:
Big thanks to novahee for this wonderful fanart of Alastor meeting Luffy! I added a link in the first chapter when the scene takes place, but wanted to also include it in the most recent update to make sure continuing readers also get to see it :)
I also wanted to include the links for the two songs that appear later in the chapter here before it starts because at least one of them I expect to not be as widely known since it's neither a Hazbin/Hellaverse nor One Piece related song, and it will probably be easier to go into the scenes already knowing what the songs are supposed to sound like... The first song that shows up is Party Like It's 1929 by TAPE FIVE. And the second song is SHINDA! by Masayoshi Oishi, also the opening for the anime The Legendary Hero is Dead. Disclaimer that I actually haven't seen that anime, I just love the op lol
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
As Alastor had predicted, it only took a couple hours for Boa Hancock to finish up at the Vees’ tower and make her way to the hotel with whichever sheep decided to follow her. Her arrival was the complete opposite of subtle.
“Who would be so insolent… as to leave a cat and piglet in my path?”
“KeeKee!”
“Fat Nuggets! What the FUCK lady?!”
Honestly, Alastor was somewhat impressed by the sight of the Pirate Empress straight up kicking Charlie’s cat and Angel Dust’s pig out of her way as she strut into the hotel as though she was entitled to a red carpet affair. It took a certain level of gall, boldness, and self-conceitedness to so openly disregard the unstated social rule to cater to cute small animals and only care for removing whatever blocks her path. This sense of vanity was only enhanced when all she did to address the complaints levied at her was to look over both Charlie and Angel with graceful indifference, saying, “It matters not. Even if I tread over such innocent creatures, I will be forgiven. Indeed, this is because… I am beautiful.”
Alastor fully anticipated the kind of backlash that kind of inane reasoning deserved. However, instead of being spurred further, the clearly fuming Angel Dust holding his also irate pig hesitated, his eyes going wide as Boa’s face shifted to the side just a tad. The light scales on her face shimmered with the movement.
He ended up staring with his mouth agape for a good three seconds before rapidly shaking his head, then fully turning away to avert his eyes. His expression was the height of bewildered as multiple hands came up to hold his head. Angel furiously muttered to himself under his breath, “The fuck??? I’m gay as the goddamn rainbow, ‘n’ I was checkin’ her out? How the fuck did she do that?!”
Adding to the absurdity, Charlie had yet to succeed in forming any words after she’d picked up the now squirming KeeKee and glanced up at the much taller woman. She stood wide-eyed and speechless as blush colored her already rosy cheeks.
“I– You shouldn’t– You can’t just– You… I’m sorry my cat was in your way Ma’am!” and with that absolutely ludicrous and backwards apology, Charlie did her own about-face.
Retreating to where her girlfriend stood not too far from the scene, she instantly spiraled into a panic, “Vaggie I– I’m so sorry I was looking at her. I know it technically isn’t cheating but it really felt like it, but I just couldn’t look away from her face and her– NOT face! She’s so tall they’re just right there! But I shouldn’t have I’m so sorry– ”
The ex-angel gave a muted, dry sigh, “Charlie, calm down. It’s okay. I don’t think you were cheating… And I think we’re having the same problem anyway.” She notably glanced back towards the Empress, before forcibly averting her gaze back to Charlie in a both angry and not angry flush.
“Sanji! Pull yourself together! Hancock hasn’t even used her power on you, how did you turn to stone?!?!” Nami uselessly chastised the fully petrified cook, his face stuck in those idiotic heart-eyes of his. The rest of the Straw Hats, presumably having become accustomed to the woman in life, were fairing better. Though Brook while not turning to stone was also noticeably trying to keep his perverted voyeuristic request to himself as though his life depended on it. Which given the Gorgon in question, it likely did.
Those of the hotel not familiar with the Snake Princess, however, didn’t do much better than Charlie, Vaggie, and Angel. Husk stared for a good fifteen seconds before outright slapping himself across the face to snap himself out of the spell. The recently arrived Cherri Bomb didn’t even bother with that, her single eye trailing up and down Boa’s figure from the safety of her relatively out of the way position with an appreciative nod. Niffty dared to approach the Empress in a starry-eyed daze to hold up an offering of a single dead bug. “Roach for the pretty lady?”
Predictably, the gift was not appreciated. The Medusa hissed with a shooing gesture, “Disgusting! Remove it from my sight at once!”
“Yes Ma’am pretty lady Ma’am!” and with that Niffty scurried off to hide behind Alastor’s legs. Though she still peaked out from behind them to stare at the woman. He reached down to give her a consoling head pat.
Alastor, somewhat befuddled, tracked all the ridiculous reactions with increasing confusion. Standing at the edge of the Straw Hat grouping and thus conveniently close to the most reasonable two members, he leaned closer towards both Robin and Jinbei to inquire hesitantly and quietly, “…Is her beauty truly worthy of such an extreme reaction? She is objectively attractive, yes, but I really don’t see a need for all this.”
With a thoughtful hum, Jinbei responded first, “If you feel that way, you may be one of the few that would be unaffected by Hancock’s ability. She was made into one of the Seven Warlords contracted by the government for a reason. It was known that she could turn entire ships full of both male and female marines into stone, for none of them could withstand her allure. I don’t think there was a single Warlord meeting she attended since they could hardly force her to do anything, outside of calling upon her for the war at Marineford which she only agreed to for Luffy’s sake.”
“Yes, she is quite feared because of this. I’ve heard more seasoned marines would counter her Love-Love Fruit activation by causing themselves pain to force their focus off of her,” Robin affirmed matter-of-fact, “Actually, the complete lack of reaction you had to first meeting her led me to the same line of thinking as Jinbei’s. One of the only other people we know of with that sort of immunity is Luffy.”
While he chewed on what he still believed to be an absurd notion –how could it be THAT hard for people to restrain themselves from being attracted to this woman???– the aforementioned captain stepped forward, and Boa’s surliness instantly switched out for that annoying infatuation of hers, “Luffy~! Everything went perfectly after your departure, I made sure of it! I even allowed the men who wished to leave to follow behind us since many of them wish to take refuge in your graciousness …Are you pleased?”
“Oh, that’s good yeah. Thanks.”
Despite the lackluster reply, the Snake Princess swooned, the snakes of her hair swooning with her, “OH~<3”
Angel seemed to come back into awareness enough to question in bewilderment, “Luffers…? And THAT drop-dead baddie…? For real???”
Even though Luffy clearly had the woman handled, Alastor found himself debating on if he should subtly find a way to place himself between the two of them. Though accomplishing such a thing “subtly” with this level of obsession was unlikely. Every instance of Boa interacting with the captain just deepened his distaste for her behavior further.
This particular instance at least was thankfully interrupted without his personal intervention. Ever the useful pawn, Bartolomeo chose this moment to enter the room and make his presence known. The reasoning for this being clear right from the start. “Hancock? It’s you! If you’re gonna kill me for my #1 fan title, at least live a little longer with it!”
Irritated that her time with Luffy was being interrupted, Boa swerved into a glare with all the eyes of her snakes at the fanboy. “Oh, it’s you… Actually, this is a good opportunity. I have just the thing for you now– Your defense against my Love-Love Mellow is no more!”
At that, Bartolomeo jolted in shock, before he relaxed into a belligerent smirk. “Huh? What’re ya talkin’ about? I already proved in life that that oh-so powerful Devil Fruit of yours is no good against me! Ha! Nothin’ ‘bout the reasoning for that has changed. More importantly, have you heard yet that I’m the official leader of Luffy-senpai’s church? That makes me Number One again bitch– ”
“Love-Love Vision!”
Rose colored light beamed out of the eyes of Boa’s snakes in the shape of hearts, encircling the previously jeering man. When Bartolomeo blinked his sight back into use, he opened his mouth in an obvious scowl of complaint. Only for his eyes to go wide at the sight of the Snake Princess and his mouth to go slack jawed in a high-pitched squeak.
“Lu-Lu-Lu-LUFFY-SENPAI??!?! That’s… You wearing Hancock’s outfit’s so risqué! Incredible! But also, I can’t let myself look at you for too long now or my heart will give out– ”
“Love-Love Mellow!”
And with the final blossom-pink beam of light from heart-shaped hands, the fanboy was petrified. Drunk on victory, Boa tilted her head severely upward while pointing down at the statue, declaring with full grandiose, “And with that, I prove myself once more as the superior admirer! In both life and death, I am my beloved’s Number One!!!”
“There it is– Hancock’s Looking so far down on you she’s looking up pose! Knew it had to come up at some point…” Usopp quietly quipped similar to a sport’s commentator, “But seriously… how obsessed does Barto have to be to not only be immune to the Snake Princess’s beauty, but also turn to stone over Luffy in her outfit?! That’s such a weird thought I can’t even imagine it!”
Alastor watched this. Made the inference as to what Bartolomeo saw in that accused ‘Love-Love Vision’. Then retroactively faced the point he’d previously been halfway in denial about and made the inference as to the context for how the Pirate Empress had used her power on Vox based on her previous comments. Just to drive the fact home, from next to him Robin sounded a confirmatory, “I see…”
His grin pulled fully taunt against his unseen sutures with the twitching of a blackened eye. He hissed out from grinding serrated teeth, “I must either kill Vox or the Empress. But I can’t figure out which is most deserving…”
“Why not both?”
“ …Why not both indeed! Brilliant suggestion, Robin!”
“Even if you’re joking, I’m not sure you should be encouraging him like this…” Jinbei commented with a trailing tone.
Before Alastor could act on his new homicidal intention or Boa could bask in her glory for much longer, Luffy finally protested with a disgruntled pout, hands on his waist, “Hancock, ya can’t keep Barto like that! He picks up a lot ‘a food for me now!”
The quiet echoed responses of ‘That’s the reasoning…?’ were predictably ignored by both parties. Slightly startled, the woman quickly offered in a stutter, “I-I can perform any duties that man had perfectly fine, Luffy– ”
“But you’ll be busy with your people like before, right? So you won’t have time. Just let him do it!”
“ …I guess that’s true, yes. Fine. I shall release him. But my title shall remain!” Before Boa could act on her word, though, she was interrupted by another entrance into the lobby.
“Huh? What happened to Barry here? We got Medusa running around in Hell now or…” Lucifer trailed off as his sight finally crossed paths with Boa, his much shorter stature forcing him to trail his widening eyes up and up to reach her face –or not face, as Charlie had previously described it… “Uhhh… Oh… Hello?”
The woman’s expression returned to a stone-cold visage. She stepped forward with a hand resting on her hip. “Are the so-called King of this Hell?”
“Uhhhhh… yeahhh? That’s me alright, Lucifer. The most hated being in all of creation! Or so I’m told at least! Haha! Ha…”
The response was painfully awkward, but she seemed to pay no mind to it. Instead, the Pirate Empress just jumped right to a defiant declaration, sharply pointing at Lucifer in accusation, “Then let me tell you now– I bow to no King, wretched man of creation! This honorable one is Boa Hancock, Empress of the Amazons! I have come to parley my terms for the establishment of my new colony of Amazon Lily Eterna! I demand complete and unrestricted independence! And once I have chosen a plot of land to develop, the establishment and respect of our borders! Any man who dares trespass upon my domain shall be executed, and you are no exception to this! Should you disagree with any of these terms, speak now, and I shall cast you into stone! What is your response?!”
She cannot possibly be getting away with this– But just as Alastor had that thought, Lucifer, the all-powerful and ever-feared King of Hell, a once heavenly being born of the age of the creation of man itself, in all his angelic might… Instantly folded like the wet paper towel he was.
With furrowed brows and an awkward, tense smile full of polite placation, Lucifer cupped his hands together as he offered, “Mhm. Alright. I hear what you’re saying, so… How about this? Why don’t you give me a couple of minutes, and I can ask Queen Lilith to come over so you two can, uh– talk it out? I’m guessing you’d prefer working with her over me…?”
The Snake Princess gave this some actual consideration, shifting in her stance slightly before affirming, “Speaking to a Queen would certainly be an improvement over speaking to any King, yes. Very well, I shall await her arrival.”
“Great! Right! Just, uh– give me a sec…” and with that, the King of Hell rushed back into the hallway he’d just walked out of, presumably off to call upon his wife for reinforcements. Seeing him flee made it hard for Alastor not to agree with the Pirate Empress’s opinion of all men being completely useless. Frankly, he was already partway to that conclusion as he did indeed believe the majority of men to be useless.
By the time Boa finished unpetrifying Bartolomeo to leave him in a sobbing heap on his knees at having lost their so-called ‘battle’, Lucifer returned once more. Alastor had thankfully had enough time to internally steel himself so as to not react to the sight of the Queen of Hell entering the lobby, just a step in front of her husband. Her composure was as flawless as always as she came to stand before Boa, free of the inane reactions or antics any of the others had befallen outside of a brief but thorough examination of the woman.
“Seriously? Just as this guy got himself out of the stone, swirly brow went right back to bein’ a statue after seeing the Queen! Idiot cook!”
Ignoring the sideline silliness, Lilith gave a proper introduction, “Pleasure to meet you, Boa Hancock. I am Lilith, ruling Queen of Hell alongside the King. My husband here has told me you seem to be a woman of a similar nature to myself, so I hope to reach an amical relation with you. Shall we retire to a proper receiving room? Speaking of such delicate matters in an ill-fitting setting is likely undesirable for the both of us.”
“Hm. Yes, that would be acceptable.”
While not as extreme of a change compared to when she spoke to Luffy, Boa became noticeably more reasonable, apparently deeming Lilith worthy of a certain level of respect. After the two departed to have their meeting elsewhere, Lilith leading the way, the King immediately dropped his tense smile and deflated into a sigh of relief, wiping at his forehead with the back of his hand.
From his place a good number of feet away, Alastor sounded a wordless, unimpressed hum in his throat. Lucifer turned on him in a swerve, scowling up from his drooping posture. “What? You got something to say, bellhop?”
“Not exactly… It’s simply that your preferred type of woman is very apparent to me now, and I would have preferred to go the rest of my afterlife without that knowledge. Though someday it may be useful to know that the King of Hell is weak against tall, bewitching, strong-willed women…”
“Oh fuck you!” the King gave a middle-finger to accompany the insult, “You’re telling me you’d seriously just tell a woman that beautiful no?”
Alastor had to give an incredulous stare at that. His smile pulled taunt in exasperation. “…Yes??? What does it matter what she looks like?! This isn’t exactly rocket science! All of you people are acting insane! Every single one of you! …Except for the captain. How the tables have turned…” he had to amend with a sigh at the questioning look from Luffy his tirade had earned him.
By the time the two matriarchs left their talks, an agreement had been struck allowing Boa to form her official colony, but still under the jurisdiction of Hell’s royalty. However, Amazon Lily Eterna would apparently be left mostly self-governing, with any ruling being done in the form of the Queen calling upon Boa to reach a political agreement. The system sounded similar to the terms the Pirate Empress had managed to strike out for her island with the World Government in life as a pirate Warlord, leaving the question as to whether Queen Lilith had actually succeeded in talking her down or if it’d been her intention to start with absurdly high demands to be bargained down to her actual goal. Considering Alastor believed the threat to turn the King to stone had not been an empty one and that the woman truly was that conceited, however, he still leaned towards the former circumstance as being the truth.
Unfortunately, while in the process of staking a claim of land and developing what would essentially be a new town out in the barrens, the Snake Princess and her new mass of adoring women would be staying in the hotel, along with many of the male Contracted souls who fled along with them. He was very much not looking forward to seeing the woman’s infatuation on a regular basis. And it seemed that Trafalgar agreed with him, seeing as the man not only entirely avoided Boa’s arrival at the hotel, but continued to do essentially everything in his power to never cross paths with her. Alastor could hazard the guess that neither of the two liked the other, as well as why that was.
The first night of Boa’s arrival was spent not focused on the woman herself, thankfully, but on the last two reunited Straw Hats. With the recent vast increase in patronage and knowing the chef would remain stubborn about cooking for everyone, Alastor surveyed the newcomers to find that they’d managed to gain two of the three private chefs the Vees had employed, and thus put them to work under Sanji along with a number of more baseline kitchen staff. Alastor himself had deigned to assist for the meal that night to ensure that there were no mishaps regarding the new hires. His presence properly intimidated them into behaving and following the cook’s lead, so he didn’t foresee any issues occurring in the future on that end.
Burgers and sandwiches were a big hit for dinner, being the favorites of Franky and Robin respectively. At the dinner table, he ended up sandwiched between Robin on one side and Chopper on the other, and found he wasn’t dissatisfied by the placement. After the meal, Robin set about moving into Nami’s suite while Franky into the suite containing Sanji, Brook, and Usopp. However, as always, the captain was set on a gathered sleepover that night. One that, as Alastor had unfortunately predicted, he was unable to decline.
Directly in front of him, Luffy asserted, “You’re join’ the sleepover, right?!”
Before he could even speak, Brook appeared out of nowhere to lean down from above and cheerfully insert, “Right?!”
“Riiiiiight?” Chopper chimed from below, head popping up to be seen.
“ …It seems that my rejection is about to be rejected.”
“Cause it is!”
With that, the gathering took place in the middle suite consisting of Zoro’s, Jinbei’s, and Chopper’s rooms. While Charlie had granted them sizable four-bedroom suites, the living room was still crowded from so many people. Alastor ended up lounging in adjoining kitchenette, seated at the island bar next to Jinbei while Sanji prepared drinks. He couldn’t complain too much once a glass of rye had been slid in front of him. The main activity of the room bustled around the three couches the pirates had somehow managed to cram into the living room, with the archeologist and shipwright being the center of attention and the captain of course right in the thick of things.
The Straw Hats predisposed to drinking drank, while others snacked, and they talked and played useless games well into the night. Until they all ended up falling asleep on top each other in a mess that did not belay a comfortable sleep position. All of them except for himself, that is. As he figured.
But also apparently Brook, who lifted out of a recline that had made him look like an actual dead skeleton at the sound of Alastor standing up from his seat. He spoke in hush, mindful of the others, “Ah, you’re staying up tonight, Alastor? I’ll go with you.”
Alastor waved the offer off with a polite smile, “There’s no need. You undoubtedly wish to spend more time with your crew now that they’re all present, so you should rest with them. I have no desire for company currently.”
“But they won’t all be present, once you leave,” the simple response caught Alastor off guard, Brook continued with the same level tone as he tiptoed over a snoring Usopp and Luffy on the floor to reach where Alastor was closer to the door, “I know you’re a person that enjoys having time to himself, but I dislike the thought of one of us being alone on this joyous occasion. Please allow me to accompany you. If you wish to do something without disturbing the others, why don’t we finish up practicing some songs? We’ll be having that party fairly soon now, it seems.”
“ …Very well. That seems like a good enough way to work out the whiskey in my system.” He didn’t make to leave right away, however. Instead taking a brief moment to conjure a good number of blankets and have some tendrils set about laying them atop the pile of bodies as well as they could. One even managed to stuff a pillow underneath Luffy’s head so it wasn’t just on the ground. When he then left the room with Brook following behind, the skeleton was still cooing softly at the gesture, causing him to send a sharp look at the other once the door closed behind them.
As they made their way up to Alastor’s tower, Brook raised his voice back to his normal speaking volume, “Did you have a good time, Alastor? I know I myself along with the others insisted on you coming, so it’s my hope that you enjoyed being in all our presence as much as we all enjoy having you around.”
Reaching the entrance to his abode, he stepped aside to allow Brook to climb up first before answering, “I wouldn’t say all of you enjoy having me around, however… it did provide for a more amusing evening than I had assumed, so yes.”
“Yohoho– How splendid! Now let us play some music to our hearts’ desire! …Not that I have a heart, yohohoho~ ”
While they practiced through the rest of the night, Alastor took the opportunity to multitask and sent his shadow out to survey the Vees’ tower. He immediately noticed that, somehow, all three of the Overlords had already escaped their stony imprisonment and were working through the night to rearrange their disastrous affairs. Considering the rather miraculous recovery time, this led to the assumption that a third party had been lying in wait to assist them. Though despite scouring the premises as well as his shadow could within the limitation of remaining undiscovered, it was unable to locate the mystery guest, suggesting they’d already left.
He wasn’t too put off by their revival, however, since it meant that the three were around for the social media storm that was still ongoing to feel the full force of their utterly humiliating defeat. It may also make for an interesting turn of events to see how Vox would choose to move forward with this unknown player in the game.
The very next day, Luffy demanded a party. One where every soul in the hotel would be invited along with a few extra invites for the individuals various Straw Hats had spent their time with before reuniting, or at least that was how Alastor interpreted the boy’s shout that ‘everyone’s invited!’. This unofficially included the First Man, with Alastor choosing to ignore Brook’s poorly whispered plan to Jinbei about disguising the ex-angel so that he could partake without disturbing Vaggie and the others. And if such a big shindig was to occur partly in honor of himself, Alastor considered it a duty to ensure the event met a high standard of quality. Thus, in exchange for putting together the venue and décor, he made his own demand that this party have a dress code. This was to be no drunken slop or anything of the sort, but a genuine, bonafide –the skeleton is truly rubbing off on him– celebratory dance.
While the captain himself wasn’t too impressed by the suggestion, Nami, Robin, Sanji, and Brook took well to the idea, seeing that they typically didn’t have many occasions to dress up. And with the demanding navigator on his side, that was all the support needed to enforce that this was a dress to impress event. She took charge of procuring suitable outfits for the rest of the Straw Hats –seeing that she was also the only one with the money to buy said outfits.
The chef set about making a feast with his new kitchen workforce. Checking in on them, Alastor had been pleased to note that a good number of his recipes were being included on the menu, along with various other complementary Straw Hat favorites and appropriate finger foods. He would’ve liked to assist with the food prep, but he was busy enough with setting up the place. Deciding the lawn in front of the hotel should be spacious enough, Alastor summoned a fair number of shade minions to set up tables, various black and gold decorations including balloons, streamers, ribbons, one table with a sizable sparkling champagne tower close by where the bar was being set up, ghostly whisps of green fire and glowing crystal to float about as lights, and some Mardi Gras themed décor.
He had been planning to have them construct a stage as well, but the shipwright along with Usopp, Chopper, Jinbei, and Robin volunteered their assistance for set up, and so Franky was the one to build a sizable red curtain stage and dance floor at what was admittedly an impressive speed. Brook meanwhile took charge of the set up for the music and performance. Luffy had also volunteered his assistance, and so the first mate had been tasked with distracting the boy away from the area to ensure there was no accidental sabotage. This of course meant that the both of them became horribly lost in some unknown location, but that just meant they were both out of the way until Alastor was ready to summon them back. Overall, the many hands made light work, with his goodfellow helpers fine to follow his directives in this matter. The only one to question him to some degree had been Usopp, and quite hesitantly at that…
“Uhhh hey Al…? What’s with all the skulls and bones for decorations? They… aren’t real, are they?”
“Ahaha! Of course not, good sir! It’d be a waste to use such valuable material as mere party decorations. Ha! And they’re meant to compliment the theme of the party!”
With a curious look, the puppet further questioned, “Huh? What theme is there? Isn’t this just to celebrate all of us being together and you joining?”
“Why yes, but from my interpretation, this occasion implies another point to consider– the celebration of all your deaths! This is a proper welcome to Hell party!” as he declared this, Alastor pointed the head of his mic at the banner that was in the midst of being spread across the front gate, reading Welcome to Death! in splattered, blood red paint.
“ …I don’t think that was the kinda party Luffy had in mind.”
“And do you think he cares about what kind of party this is?”
“ …No.”
“Exactly! Good talk!”
In seemingly no time at all, evening was beginning to set in and the hour of the party was close in hand. The front lawn now looked akin to if one were to hold a Mardi Gras party in a graveyard. Almost everything was prepared, excluding one last feature. It was one that Alastor wished to see the captain’s reaction to, however. So a tad before guests were set to start coming out, he summoned Luffy and Zoro back so that he could finish up and to ensure the unruly duo had enough time to dress themselves.
“Was it really okay to leave this guy in charge of things…?”
“Woah! Cool!” As Alastor had predicted, Luffy simply looked over the ghastlier portion of the decorations, ignoring the deadpan Zoro had given at the sight of the Welcome to Death! sign.
Alastor took hold of the boy’s waist with one hand and arm to guide him forward to a prime spot, directly in front of hotel itself. Seeing this, the rest of the pirates gathered around in curiosity, including Sanji who had left the kitchen to begin setting out the food and Nami who had come out to drive the crew back inside to get ready. Alastor met Luffy’s grin with a smile of his own as he expounded, “Why thank you, dear captain! But there’s just one last thing to add… This would hardly be a proper celebration of your crew without your flag in prominence! Hoist the colors high!”
With the snap of his fingers, the shade minions on top of the roof released the pièce de resistance. An enormous black sheet fell over the front of the hotel, unraveling to reveal a large-scale Straw Hat jolly roger, so big that it covered almost the entirety of the building.
There was a round of appreciative oou’s and hums from the other crew members, the sound of the deerling’s hooves, boney hands, and metal palms clapping in excitement clearly heard. Having already braced himself, Alastor was prepared for the tight wrapping of rubbery arms around his person. Luffy brought him in close, face right up against his own with a beaming grin as he shouted, “WOAH!!! It’s SO BIG!!! It’s great! Thanks Al! You’re the best!”
“I do try~ ” he didn’t bother to keep his smile from curling smug along with the trill of his words, even as he began a mental countdown for how long he’d allow the embrace to last.
“ …What the Hell is THAT tacky thing doing on Morningstar property?! And it’s HUGE!!!”
“Dad, it’s alright. It’s their party! They should get to put their flag up. And I think it looks cute anyway,” Charlie could be heard talking down Lucifer not too far away. Looking over in a side-eye to see the King giving the jolly roger a dubious expression with his hands on his hips, Charlie looked back at Alastor with a smiling wink. He returned the gesture with a nod.
While the pirates went off to put themselves together, people began arriving, mostly coming out from the hotel. Husk came out to man the outdoor bar in a proper suit and slicked back hair, a style similar to his Overlord days. Angel Dust, who strut out in a dazzling floor-length backless gown with a slit running all the way up to the thigh, shimmering shawl, and pair of heels to match, looked quite taken by the bartender’s clean up. And conversely, the cat almost spilled an entire bottle of good whiskey in his distraction when his eyes caught the spider’s form. Alastor sent the man a clear eyeroll for the foolishness. Charlie, Vaggie, and Cherri Bomb all exited the hotel together with their personalized gowns and their hair pinned up, Niffty twirling about behind them, the puffed-out skirt of her dress making an entertaining sight for her amusement. The roach tiara she had clearly fastened for herself made for a unique but appropriate accessory for her look.
However, select persons arrived in front of the gate. Alastor returned Rosie’s hug with a smile and compliment to her dress, which he also received in kind for his suit. Zestial along with Carmilla Carmine and her daughters received a more cordial welcome. Then Prince Stolas’s limousine rolled up on the street. When the tall Prince was led out by his presumed date, both of them contained a more nervous sort of excitement as the imp offered his arm like a proper gentleman –emphasis on excited for the Prince and emphasis on nervous for the imp. It caught the eye of every sinner currently present at the venue. Nami had clearly been successful with her not so delicate hand in navigating their relationship. Alastor gave a proper slight inclination of a bow and formal greeting, which Prince Stolas politely returned even while Blitzø gave a squinted eye look of suspicion. His two imp employees followed behind arm in arm, along with the hellhound and the Prince’s daughter who were already chatting amongst themselves. It was a rather impressive turnout for a literal less than 24-hour notice. Clearly, a party with the pirates was one no one wanted to miss.
It wasn’t long before the Straw Hats reemerged to greet their acquaintances. The navigator had also succeeded in that endeavor, with the men being dressed in suits of a variety of colors. The two ladies were in classy gowns with their hair done up. They had even managed to force the exhibitionist cyborg into his suit pants, much to Alastor’s satisfaction. And with the people of the hour now in company, he lured Brook backstage to begin the opening act…
“Welcome~ to the Roaring 20~ 20s~!”
Alastor’s voice sounded through his microphone, sounding over the rolling drums being manned by the skeleton while a pair of 20’s flashed in lit signs on either side of the stage. The curtains pulled open as he stepped forward to reveal the Radio Demon, dolled up in a more show-worthy dark red suit coat with stitched shoulder pads, a shorter jacket front, and long coat tails. The crisp white shirt tucked into a red waist sash, black bowtie, fine black slacks, and matching stitched up top hat in between his ears completed the look. Brook looked quite dashing as well with his full black suit and usual top hat, this time wearing a deep red shirt underneath to match Alastor’s coloring. The two of them made for a snazzy pair if he did say so.
“Roll up all you bigshots and babes! You palookas and pinkos!” leaning forward against his mic, one eye flashed wide with black sclera and a glowing red pupil as Alastor emphasized, “Welcome to the party~ ”
“Hey! What’cha doin’? Feelin’ lonely~ ? Feel that beat! You~ speakin’ easy, don’t be sleazy! On my street!”
“Hey~ what’cha doin’? Come on over~, come in style! You~ in the corner! We’ll keep swingin’~ for awhile!”
The big band consisted of a mix of the musician’s ghostly self-playing instruments along with a couple of Alastor’s shades, the brass playing loud and clear in time with the swinging beat of the bass that he tapped his foot along to. After Brook’s confession about how playing on his own with his magic was too heavy a reminder of the times he would hallucinate his old crew’s music, Alastor had planned the songs so that either himself or his shades would be playing with Brook, such that he wouldn’t feel as though he was playing alone.
“Tonight we’re gonna party! Tonight we’re gonna party! To-night – we’re – gon-na – party!”
“Tonight we’re gonna party! Tonight we’re gonna party! Tonight we’re gonna party like it’s 1929!”
He slammed the end of his cane down to change the 20’s still on either side of the stage to ‘19’ and ‘29’ in a shower of green sparks. Swinging his hips with the beat, Alastor showed off a twirl of his microphone before righting it once more. While Brook got to his rolling drums again, this time Alastor spoke into the mic in an announcement.
“Salutations to the sinners of Hazbin Hotel and friends! As I’m sure you can tell by this point, we have a swingin’ party planned for the night in honor of the Straw Hat Pirates! I, the Radio Demon Alastor, will be your host! As is only appropriate considering I am now their radio broadcaster and host, if you couldn’t already tell from how biased the content of my broadcasts have been recently. Ha!”
“What the Hell does a pirate crew need a radio host for?” Adam, poorly concealed with a masquerade mask at an otherwise empty table near the side, snarked not quietly enough as he stuffed his face with the delectable food provided. A small tendril of darkness sprouted from underneath his chair to tip it over, causing the heavy man to fall back with a curse.
The man’s rudeness and subsequent embarrassment, however, were covered up by the sound of Luffy and various other Straw Hats cheering at a table close to the front by the stage. Though he could tell from their faces a couple of them were asking themselves the same question Adam had posed. Honestly, these simpletons have no sense for the usefulness of propaganda…
Alastor continued as though he hadn’t noticed the incident, “I have the pleasure of performing alongside the musician of the Straw Hats, Soul King Brook, for a number of the songs tonight. He’s quite the talent, so I have no doubt that the dancefloor will be bustling as the night goes on! Should you sinners find yourselves entranced by his artistry and in desperate need to listen to more, there’s no need to despair! For henceforth, my broadcasts will regularly feature segments playing recordings of his songs as well as the songs we produce together! One need only tune on in to listen the best hits.”
“REALLY???” Brook exclaimed from behind him in time with another round of cheering from the crew. Alastor had informed the other beforehand of his formal announcement concerning his position on the crew, which was met with uproaring approval and excitement, but had left out this detail as a fun surprise. He conveniently left out the stipulation that, of the music Brook has produced with Adam, he would only be playing the songs Brook sang for. Of the concessions he was willing to give, listening to the First Man’s screeching was not one of them.
“But enough with the formalities– It’s time for the party! Because tonight, we’re partying like it’s 1929~ AHAHAHAHA!”
And with that roundabout and another spin of his cane, Alastor pointed the head of his mic into the air, releasing a single shot of fireworks that burst apart in a sparkling boom of red and gold. To the cheers of the crowd, the show went on.
When the opening song concluded, Brook transitioned to his next song while Alastor excused himself from the stage to mingle. Approaching the two squished together tables that had been reserved for the crew, he was met with the sight of not only the Straw Hats, but also Trafalgar and Boa Hancock, one flanking each side of the captain. Luffy stuffed his face with meat, completely oblivious to the glaring scowls the two other pirates were shooting at each other over his head. Meanwhile, Bartolomeo circled about the table snapping candid group photos of the crew. He quietly cursed to himself when Alastor passed in front to cause a sparking, static-filled distortion in his phone. This was a party table from Hell, indeed.
Glancing up at him, Luffy instantly brightened as he exclaimed, “You’re wearin’ it! Oh– I’m wearin’ it too! Haha!”
The captain looked down at ring of his own jolly roger that he’d only just noticed Alastor had manifested for him. The symbol of his and the captain’s Contract noticeably stood out as he used the hand with his own ring on it to take hold of his mic, pointing it at the other. “It seemed like an appropriate accessory, considering the occasion.”
“Matching RINGS?! The insolence…! …Luffy~ do you think we could– ”
The deerling fortunately chose that moment to shoot out of his seat to rush over and greet Alastor, unintentionally interrupting Boa when he chimed in full delight, “That was great Alastor! You’re such a good singer, you sound so good with Brook!”
“Indeed, a most impressive performance you planned out for us! There was truly no need to go so far, but your efforts come with them a great amount of appreciation,” Jinbei held out a cup of whiskey ready in waiting for him in a show of said appreciation. Alastor gladly accepted it with a smile of thanks, clinking his cup against the fishman’s sake cup in a cheers.
“Right? I’m kinda surprised! Uh– no offense of course!” Usopp was quick to add on to his exclamation.
Rather than make a fuss, Alastor folded the hand not holding his drink behind his back and kept his response pleasant, “Thank you all, you’re too kind.”
As though to challenge his patience, the swordsman threw out in between gulps of his beer, “Who knew you actually know how to throw a party, red ears? Guess I can’t complain too much.”
“Of course I know how to put together a proper party. The city I come from happens to be known as quite the party town, I’ll have you know,” he couldn’t withhold his scoff at the suggestion, before his words twisted into a more sinister tone to match the mean curl of his smile, “As it is, I am actually a rather fun-loving person, it’s simply that my version of fun often involves the misery of others! Haha!”
“Ya think about bein’ the crew’s party coordinator?” at the unimpressed look that earned him, Franky was quick to defend, “What? I meant that in a good way! This is SUUUUPER party ya got goin’ on, and you’ve got a groovin’ beat! Voxy Boxy’s probably dyin’ of blue-screen envy in his office right now!”
The last statement was in reference to the VoxTek drone currently watching over the party from a distance in the air, a clear enough indicator to anyone with eyes that the media Overlord was back on his bullshit. Glancing over at the thing now that it’d been pointed out, the sniper offered, “Should I shoot that down…? Also, please don’t be mad! But– even though I knew you ran a radio station, I didn’t think you’d join as a radio broadcaster…”
Before Alastor could give what was certain to be a huffy reply, Luffy spoke up from in between bites of his food, “Huh? What else would Al do? He’s happy doin’ his radio stuff, so course he’s gonna keep doin’ it!”
The boy truly did have a knack for simplifying things down to their most important aspect. The only part of the response that left Alastor with any sort of discontent was the way the Snake Princess quietly squealed at the apparent ‘coolness’ of it, but thankfully Trafalgar was already giving the woman enough evil eye for the both of them. Even with the captain’s easy acceptance, however, Nami leaned forward onto the table with her elbows while hesitantly admitting, “I get that part, but I think what Usopp’s saying that I’m curious about too is how that role fits in the context of the crew. What does it mean, exactly?”
“Think about it like this– ” Alastor glanced over at Robin when she began to answer before he could, tone more akin to a proper teacher than the scathing undertone Alastor would have used, “As we moved through the New World, the coverage Big News Morgans of the World Economy Newspaper wrote about our captain pushed Luffy’s fame as a pirate further, even helping to transition him into being seen as one of the Emperors and then later helping to cement his claim as the Pirate King. However, he also would spin his coverage in a way that was sometimes unfavorable to us depending on his needs. In contrast, Alastor is only working based on our needs. He has already been acting as Luffy’s personal broadcaster, in that he’s been disseminating news in a selective way to the wider population of sinners with the goal of quickly pushing our captain’s notoriety closer to how it was in life at a faster rate than how it would’ve naturally occurred. He’s been doing this in the context of Luffy’s divinity, which has led to more obvious results such as the formation of the new fleet, but also in the context of him being a pirate. Before this, piracy was not considered a legitimate practice among most sinners as it’s associated with an out-of-date form of criminal activity, and we all know Luffy would wish for everyone to respect the title he rightfully earned– ”
“ ‘M King ‘a the Pirates!” the boy shouted through a mouthful of food as if to prove her point.
“ –But with Alastor’s spread of news about the captain, he’s been using Luffy’s accomplishments and divinity to establish that being a ‘pirate’ is a credible title that comes with it an implication of strength, along with directly establishing Luffy’s position as ‘Pirate King’. Therefore, even while he’s been operating independently, he’s continually acting in Luffy’s interest for the most part.”
Alastor stared at the devilish woman along with the rest of the Straw Hats, though Jinbei was nodding in firm agreement as he did so. He was caught between being impressed and being thoroughly unnerved, considering she’d managed to accomplish a full analysis of his actions and behavior despite only meeting him and joining back up with her crew literally yesterday.
Thinking on it, though, most of her deduction only required having listened to Alastor’s broadcasts paired together with the knowledge that he was working with the captain. The only chancy part about it was that it also required the assumption of his genuine, complete loyalty towards Luffy rather than having a more personal scheme at play, but she likely accepted that assumption as truth upon confirming his status as one of the crew. In the end, he decided not to split hairs over the matter, cajoling, “Thank you. Finally, someone with a proper level of understanding!”
“Woah… That’s kinda intense…!” Usopp muttered in shock about the revelation.
Speaking up for the first time while massaging his temple, Trafalgar sighed in a muted sort of exasperation, “You guys have no idea that most other pirate captains would kill to have the kind of PR the Radio Demon’s giving Straw Hat-ya, do you? You usually have to bribe the news people to get them to work for you like this! It’s not a usual position for a pirate crew because in our world it was impossible to be part of the official news network while also being a pirate. With the Radio Demon on your crew, Straw Hat-ya basically owns a news network, and it’s completely wasted on him because he’s an idiot!”
Truer words have never been spoken. Perhaps he judged the Surgeon of Death too harshly? In what was likely a fully unintentional but still wonderous recovery, however, Luffy countered the rightful accusation with, “I don’t need ‘a tell Alastor what to do. I trust him to do what he wants! Shishishi!”
A burst of invigorating pride surged through Alastor at the declaration. Looking at Luffy’s charming, boyish grin, he decided on a move that he realized may start a localized pirating war, but he really couldn’t give a shit about anything other than indulging in his whims at the moment. “Thank you very much, my dear. May I sit next to you? Seeing that we are celebrating my joining you.”
“Oh yeah! I wanna sit by ya too!”
“Room. Shambles.” Trafalgar was quick to the draw, as Alastor had been hoping.
Boa shrieked from her new table a far distance away. At least the doctor had been kind enough to place her amongst a grouping of her new followers. In the place she used to reside beside Luffy was an empty chair, which Alastor swiftly took for himself. The infatuated nuisance removed from Luffy’s vicinity in the same move to secure Alastor’s position. He did so appreciate efficiency.
Giving credit where credit was due, especially since his actions would be sure to draw any heat from the Empress away from Alastor and onto himself, Alastor held out his glass towards Trafalgar in a show of communion. The doctor stared at it with a stony expression for a good three seconds before he clanked his glass against it. Luffy immediately followed with his own cheers using his cup of juice, much to Alastor’s amusement.
Sighing to herself, the navigator despaired, “Hancock’s going to be unbearable later because of that!”
“She will indeed…” Jinbei, likely having more experience with the fellow Warlord, gave a deep sigh of agreement that was just barely not a groan.
When Alastor shifted his gaze back to the catty woman to reply, he only then realized a particular detail– Nami was wearing the blood diamond necklace he’d compensated her with prior. “Oh? You still have that? I thought for sure you’d sell it.”
Nami blinked at him in surprise, before her eyes darted down to the gold necklace lying against her chest and then back up to give him a grinning wink. “A girl has to keep the best jewels for herself. It’d be a loss to trade it in!”
“I suppose that makes sense, yes… My apologies, if I’d known you planned on wearing it for the occasion, I would’ve given you these prior to the start of the evening– ”
He conjured up the matching set of blood diamond hanging gold earrings. Cat eyes went wide even as Nami accepted the pair, allowing them to land in her open palms. “I was planning for this to be your next payment whenever it’d be required, so let’s just consider it a payment in advance. Please do remember it the next time I ask something of you. I’ll be most displeased if you try to double dip and ask for more compensation…”
As the woman stared at her newly gained goods, Alastor expected her to investigate their quality the same way she had the necklace. But instead, Nami just shifted the earrings to one hand as she looked back up at him with a beaming smile reminiscent of the captain himself. She used her now free hand to reach around the side of the table and repeatedly slap him in the back in a friendly manner –that actually still hurt a bit. She was definitely stronger than she looked, with how much she was able to slap around the monsters of her crew. Nami chimed with a teasing joy, “Alastor, ya shouldn’t have! Really! Chopper’s actually been right this whole time ‘bout you bein’ a nice guy, huh?”
“Yeah! See?! We’re both deer, so I know! …Wait, that’s not right! I’m a reindeer dammit!”
She continued without acknowledging the deerling’s interjection, “None of these blockheads know how to treat a lady right like you do! I’ll dance with you later as a thanks, free of charge!”
Alastor was still left internally reorienting himself while Nami went straight to adorning herself with the new earrings. To the point that he was slightly blindsided when the cook was suddenly beside him, slamming his hands down on the table as he screeched, “You SHITTY BASTARD– ! Since when did you give Miss Nami JEWERLY?!?! Don’t think you can seduce her so easily on my watch!!!”
“Are you being for real, swirly brow?!” Zoro quipped within an instant.
Narrowing his eyes at the pervert in sneering smile of displeasure, Alastor firmly stated, “I did so as a legitimate form of compensation. I have neither the intention nor desire to attempt any sort of seducing. Do I sense a bit of projection? The real question here is why have you not deigned to gift the fair lady any jewelry from yourself if you’re so insistent on the issue. Or are you suggesting she deprive herself of the luxury simply to soothe your fragile masculine ego?”
“ …Is it just me, or did it feel like Hancock was back for a second?”
“It wasn’t just you! Ow!” Franky responded to Usopp’s stage whisper with a volume that had the coward rush to shush at him in a panicked fright.
“I– No– ! That’s– ” Sanji’s fiery fury fell apart into a stutter that had Zoro smirking in a jeer at the man from across the table while Nami gave a most unimpressed side-eye of a deadpan stare. Alastor knew very well that the truthful response would likely be that Sanji was genuinely incapable of buying Nami jewelry for the simple reason that the woman herself hoarded all the crew’s money, leaving the man nowhere near enough to purchase anything of sufficient quality as he had to use all his budget on copious amounts of ingredients. However, the chef would never admit to such a thing even on the pain of death, and thus he was utterly unable to defend his position. Alastor just smiled in false pleasantry at the man, enjoying the sight of him squirming in the proverbial grave he’d dug.
There was an awkward silence, before Sanji gained a contemplatively expression, and managed to shift his line of logic, “Well… I guess I can believe you don’t have those kind of intentions… So I guess it’s okay if Nami wears them, since it’s you.”
It was Alastor’s turn to be left internally reeling from incredulity. He ended up staring as the cook set about taking plates off the tray he’d brought over with him, placing a number of plates directly in front of Alastor including one with a large helping of jambalaya along with a second helping for Luffy to trade out for the captain’s now empty plate. “I saw you didn’t get yourself any food yet. You need to get to eating before you have to go back on! With how much you need, I won’t have you skimping just because you’re putting on a show! By the way, you better have scheduled a break for Brook so he can eat too! Just because he can go without it doesn’t mean I’ll allow it!”
Almost absentmindedly, Alastor took a spoonful of the jambalaya just to have an excuse to look away from the other and give himself a pause, then swallowed the deliciousness to answer, “Of course he has breaks. It’d hardly be a party for him as well if he was working the whole time. We need simply play some instrumentals remotely with our magic to keep the life of the party going.”
He surveyed the premises during his time off stage. Charlie was at a nearby fancied up table consisting of her girlfriend, Niffty, and now both her parents. The King and Queen of Hell had somehow managed to sneak in unnoticed so as to not cause a stir, but were unable to continue without drawing eyes towards them. Prince Stolas was in the middle of a conversation with Lucifer that had likely started as a social obligation, but it seemed to be going pleasantly based on how the King was proudly showing off a back-flipping fire-breathing rubber duck to Goetia’s hooting applause of approval. Angel and Cherri were helping Husk keep up with the demands of the bar, switching out in shifts of two so that they could all have turns enjoying the night for themselves. Though the amount of tipping noticeably increased whenever Angel was present to lean severely forward over the bar as he passed out drinks with a flirtatious wink. They’d likely be making some good money tonight.
When some of the Straw Hats disseminated to speak with the partygoers they were familiar with, Alastor took the opportunity to do the same. He caught sight of Mimzy, dressed to the nines in her full dance attire, stand up from where she’d been seated by Rosie to approach him with open arms. Not at all reflective of the way they’d last left off in a riff of contention. “Alastor~ Thank ya for invitin’ me ta yer shindig! I knew as soon as I heard you were throwin’ this dance that it’d be the place ta be!”
“Mimzy! Of course. I would never dare to call this a real party if there wasn’t at least one flapper girl livening up the dance floor! Haha! You’re providing us a much-needed service,” he chimed back while returning the hug, though when he leaned back from the embrace, he sent the woman a considering glance, “So long as you didn’t draw any unexpected guests along with you…”
Twisting her hair in an attempt to make her sheepishness look charming, Mimzy gave him a nervous, placating smile. Evidently she’d been impressed by the accommodations enough to try her best not to be thrown out. “Who? ME? Never, Alastor darlin’– honest! …At least for t’night! For realsies!”
Alastor gave an affirming hum as he tapped his whiskey against Mimzy’s glass of champagne for a cheers. After regaining her ground with a sip of her refreshment, she shifted into a look of incredulous doubt as she started on what he’d predicted would be their next point of contention, “But seriously– what’s with all that talk ‘bout joinin’ up with these pirates? This ‘s gotta be another sneaky scheme ‘a yours, right? I mean, you? Content ta be under some God ‘n’ takin’ orders? That’s gotta be the joke ‘a the night! Ha! That’s not you, Alastor.”
“ …No, I suppose it’s not like me. But it is now. Whether people believe it or not, I know where I stand, Mimzy. And I’ll ask you to not make a joke of it.”
At the sight of the simmering heat that lied in the tension of his sharpened grin and stare, Mimzy swiftly moved to recover, holding a hand out towards him in a panicked stop gesture, “Woah there– No need ta make things ugly, handsome, I get what yer sayin’! It’s my bad! Hey, that glass ‘a yers is way too empty! Let’s go have Husky fill that bad boy back up for ya, huh?”
Alastor allowed the diffusion. After some more mingling and Brook having come off stage for his own meal, it was time to do the big number of the night. While some guests had been dancing off and on, this song was timed with the intention of officially starting up the dance floor. It’d taken some back and forth for them to create this piece. Alastor had initially been put off at the idea of using such a modern beat, but a sample from Brook changed his mind with type of tone it granted the song. Alastor had written the lyrics in collaboration with Brook, with much of the skeleton’s humor coming through. Though he did instill what he himself believed to be an appropriate amount of pessimism into its content that was balanced by a contrasting hint of a more optimistic message. And to top it off, it made for quite the dance number. Truly, if this song wasn’t a hit by the end of its run, the sinners of Hell would have to be the most tasteless hacks in all of existence.
So it was with that in mind that, as the curtains parted once more with the opening chord, the stage and dancefloor in their entirety darkened. Before lighting up in a colorful neon glow of greens, purples, and pinks. The dramatic change up instantly caught everyone’s attention, drawing gazes up to the upright, glowing coffin in center stage. A giant neon sign showing the word DEAD popped up above.
“Dead, dead, another day dead. Head, arms, and legs gonna fall off any minute now. Whole body hollowed out, dry to the bone– Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha– HAAAAA~ ”
The Radio Demon burst out of the coffin on his last lingering groan of a laugh. Arms spread out wide in a grand manner. Summoning his microphone back into hand as Brook played an echoing electronic piano, Alastor spun around it for a beat or two as he sang.
“Spending every day like you’re in a casket, trapped. Ready for another night like the dead, collapsed. Yeah, living like a carcass with just your ‘life’ intact– Who wouldn’t want a way to con themselves out of that? Breaking away from ideas of ‘should do’– to live for yourself, that’s lots of fun too! Otherwise you’re just being a mark, and who wants that?”
“You and I, we’re just corpses– pawns of some faceless necromancer. From onе marionette to another, I say– How about we cut our strings together~ ”
Rising over the extended drop, Brook shouted over his own mic, “DA-DA-DANCE~ !”
“Dead, dead, another day dead! Head, arms, and legs gonna fall off any minute now! Whole body hollowed out, dry to the bone– Ha-ha-ha-haaa!”
Alastor moved back and forth with the rhythm, claws spread with his hands raised from the bend of his elbows while leaving his wrists limp in a dance move resembling the living dead. A group of shades on either side of stage mimicked the dance.
“Dead, dead, we’re already dead! Gonna shake off this mortal coil any minute now! You just gotta laugh a life like this off! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha– HAAAAA~ ”
“I tell you, this world makes life so hard! What can you do but dance the whole night through! Even if I collapse and my body decays– That doesn’t mean I’m rotten all the way down to my soul– Oh-oh-oh– Ooo…”
The sinners already on the dancefloor were having a blast with the tune, and more were in the midst of getting out of their seats to join. When the beat trailed off, Alastor sunk down into a disappearing darkness as the music and his voice became quieter. His shadow replaced his presence on stage, miming the movements he would have done to go along with the lyrics.
“Spending each day inside a casket, trapped. You scrape up little bits of joy to add to your stash. You whisper ‘Just being alive, that’s enough happiness’– Smothering your voice as you smother yourself. Quietly lured into going through life, as unseen and unheard as you can be. And next thing you know, you’ve faded away– Like the invisible man.”
When the volume rose back up, he popped up in a shadow directly behind the captain’s seat. Luffy’s grin stretched from ear to ear when he pulled the boy along with him by a rubbery arm.
“You know you aren't just a pawn– It's up to you to be yourself instead! Don’t worry, I’m here with you– Wanna ride that revolutionary rhythm together~ ”
Brook shouted in time, “MAKE-SOME-NOISE~ !”
“Screwed, screwed, another day screwed! No chance at dreams, no chance at hope! Pounding out a body-rending beat– Zun-ta-ta-taaa!”
On the dancefloor in a spot that’d been vacated for his use, Alastor guided Luffy in a swinging, back and forth sway to the rhythm, intent on showing him a proper but easy dance. The boy laughed as he joyfully played along.
“Screwed, screwed, we’re already screwed! Whole way of life gonna crumble any minute now! But let’s set that all aside for now– Zun-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta– TAAAAA~ ”
“Ya hearin’ these lyrics? They really didn’t check this song before they let ‘em do this thing, huh…”
“This comin’ from the guy who seduced me with a song callin’ me a loser? And who cares?! Ya hearin’ that thriller beat?! Dance with me, kitty-cat! Ya said you’d be my date tonight, but you’ve been tendin’ that bar way more than ya have me!” Angel pulled a blindsided Husk out through the tables to make their way to the floor during the instrumental interlude. From back at the bar, Cherri sent them a smirk, wiggling her fingers in a farewell wave.
The strobing lights pulsed with the intermitted beats. When Alastor spun Luffy around in a haphazard motion, the lights then cut to black. Even the ambient light of Hell was smothered under the cover of his darkness. The music trailed off with a deep, sinister chuckle. Until a faint, ghostly green fog rolled in.
“Spending tonight aimless… Every night wandering, directionless… We’re all ready to depart this world… To come together at the witching hour… Stuffed into caskets– bound up forever– being something else’s pawn– ”
Neon flashing back once more in a blinding second, Alastor shrugged one shoulder and arm while grinning wide with serrated teeth to emphasize, “If life’s like that, WHO NEEDS IT?!?! AHAHAHA!!!”
“Dead, dead, another day dead! Head, arms, and legs gonna fall off any minute now! Whole body hollowed out, dry to the bone– Ha-ha-ha-haaa!”
In an impulsive move, Luffy threw out his hand, stretching it all the way up to where Brook was on the stage to drag the skeleton over by the shoulder in a sudden jerk. The musician thankfully had the presence of mind to have the keyboard keep playing on its own so that the music didn’t cut out.
Brook laughed as he regained his footing, pulling Luffy forward then apart before he spun the boy free and used the move to reach for Alastor’s hand instead. He had to repress a laugh as he allowed the tall skeleton to lead him into what would at least visually look like a dance with death, keeping his lyrics steady.
“Dead, dead, we’re already dead! Gonna shake off this mortal coil any minute now! You just gotta laugh a life like this off! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha– HAAAAA~ ”
“I tell you, this world makes life so hard! What can you do but dance the whole night through! Even if I collapse and my body decays– That doesn’t mean I’m rotten all the way down! Let’s party ‘til we dance ourselves down to the bone– Oh-oh-oh– Ooo…”
“YOHOHO– SKULL JOKE!!!”
The exclamation sounded at the same instance that roaring applause greeted the end of the song. Brook let out his laugh just before Luffy’s arms wound around the both of them. Bringing them both in close to the shorter boy so he could beam his grin at them, Luffy laughed as though he was in his divine form, “HeHAHAHA! Play it again!”
Still speaking through his microphone’s amplification, Alastor chimed, “So the captain wishes it, so it shall be! Let’s play that back one more time!”
He rose his mic into the air once more to set off another round of fireworks. The spectacle and declaration were met with resounding cheers of approval.
It seemed that the vast majority of the crowd had come out for the second play. Throughout the song, Alastor finished off his dance with the musician. Then when Brook returned to the stage to play his next set, Nami tapped him on the shoulder to offer her hand for that dance she had promised early. Alastor led her like a proper gentlemen, and then allowed the cat to lead him with a wink into taking Robin’s hand for the next song. He danced with her as well, before then being passed off in a row of waving hands to Jinbei, to his slight surprise. He allowed the much larger man to lead without complaint though. And then allowed a final pass off to Chopper, who was in his taller form to better reach a suitable dance positioning, but was clearly inexperienced enough that Alastor still had to lead, which was of no concern to him.
Still, it was on this dance that Alastor finally posed, “I must say, I’m impressed! I didn’t believe so many of the crew would be dancers. I suppose it’s common to dance to Brook’s music as such, though.”
Smiling back at him with a bit of sheepishness, Chopper admitted, “Actually, even though we’ll dance, we won’t dance like this. Like in a real dance I mean. It’s just that when we saw how much you like it, we wanted to dance with you too!”
Apparently what he had assumed would be the final pass off was not actually so, as Chopper took hold to guide him into a spin back to a grinning Luffy. Alastor cackled in a laugh as this time, the boy swung him around in an unpracticed, hazardous motion.
Glancing around, Alastor saw some more of the crew in a different part of the dancefloor. Franky was pointing his hand up and down across his chest with his other hand on his hip in a cheesy disco point dance. Usopp and Niffty of all people were copying the move on either side of him, all somehow having procured sparkly star-shaped sunglasses. Back at the table, Sanji and Zoro were bickering once again this time with their imp acquaintance Blitzø thrown into the angry mix. Jinbei and Robin had gone to have what seemed to be a pleasant conversation with Rosie and Zestial. And as for other pirates of note, Boa and Trafalgar had finally devolved into a verbal snapping session as the woman insisted on dancing with Luffy while the man insisted that ‘I’m not dancing with the idiot but I’m not letting you dance with him either!’ Which while considerably stupid, also carried the type of spiteful pettiness Alastor himself could appreciate. The conflict dissolved into Boa attempting to use her atrocious “Love-Love Vision” to no success, as Trafalgar had cleverly figured out the technique required eye-contact and thus made himself scarce once it seemed to be coming. All the while Luffy had returned to the buffet with Chopper in tow for the chocolate fountain, none the wiser to being the center of conflict.
Alastor had to excuse himself back to the stage. Binks’ Brew was a must for Brook as well as the others after all. And thus they gave their charming duet version with Alastor instead being the one on the piano while Brook played his violin, the two of them switching from alternating solo verses and harmonized combo lines.
When he made his way off the stage afterwards, this time, he noted that the Straw Hat table was empty. Nami had already come by to break up the bickering trio and drag them off somewhere else to sort them out. While it’d been a fun time, Alastor was glad for the moment of stillness, needing the break as he sat down to finish off some more whiskey even when he was already feeling warm from the alcohol. Or maybe it was more than just the alcohol? Either way, he let out a quiet sigh under his breath as he looked out over the floor to see a number of the Straw Hats had moved onto more ridiculous dances that he’d rather die than participate in, nursing the drink in his hand.
“Hm…? What’s mister popular doin’ all by himself over here? Not up for sticking chopsticks in your nose like your pals over there?”
Alastor withheld a groan as his half-lidded eyes shifted over to watch the King of Hell invite himself to the table. Lucifer took the seat next to his, before swirling his glass of red wine in his direction in a smirk. “What’s with that look? I was kind enough to let you plaster that wacky flag of your crew’s all over my hotel, at least let me sit where I want!”
“It was my hotel before yours, and still in part is,” with that said, Alastor leaned back in his chair as he took a sip.
“ …Yeah, well, that’s kinda what I came over to ask you about,” Lucifer transitioned to a more somber tone, his gaze tracking away before returning to Alastor in a contemplative examination, “So, I know technically it should be impossible for you sinners to move between the Rings, but frankly speaking I’m not labeling anything as ‘impossible’ when it comes to that God of yours. Not sure how or when, but him and his crew will start traveling around the place at some point. Are you going with them?”
Returning the curious look, Alastor didn’t hesitate to clarify, “I would hardly be on the crew if I didn’t go where they went, now would I? My announcement tonight should have been enough of an implication as to that.”
“Did you tell Charlie yet?”
“ …Not explicitly, but I’m fairly certain she’s figured it out on her own,” Alastor thought back to what she said to him after Luffy’s fight with Zestial specifically as he said this, when she told him with a smile that being with Luffy suits him. While she’d been genuine in her happiness for him, he did notice that smile had been just a tad saddened.
“Welp… Can’t say I won’t be happy to see you go! Aha!” Lucifer laughed while throwing back a large gulp of wine. Before Alastor could return the insult with his own quip, the King lowered his glass, lowering his gaze along with it to watch it swirl in his palm in a much more slight, melancholy smile. “Man– I… really was wrong about you, wasn’t I…”
Raising an eyebrow, Alastor took his own sip while pressing, “You are wrong about quite a lot of things concerning my person from my perspective, so you’ll have to be more specific.”
“From when we fought after Luffy’s fight with Eve,” that was all that needed to be said for Alastor to remember that particular argument. But still, Lucifer reiterated, voice soft and barely heard over the music…
“That you’re miserable. That there’s nothing for you to find joy in. That there’s no one you love… Not a single one of those things is true.”
The music played out between them, covering up the silence of the conversation. Lucifer glanced up from where he’d been staring down at his wine, before looking back behind Alastor in obvious rumination. Alastor followed his gaze to see he was looking at where Luffy was messing around with Usopp, Chopper, Franky, and Niffty –truly, there’s no better group to have a doctor on hand for. A literal disaster in the making, it is.
“That God of yours has got me thinking a lot, you know. For so long, I’ve just been thinking that I’m– some fuck up, I guess. I’m literally known as the fallen angel that brought evil upon all of creation and everything. The number one example of the phrase ‘the road to Hell is paved with good intentions’. All the rest of the angels in Heaven, when they cast me down, all they talked about was how ‘naïve’ I was. How ‘foolish’, how ‘short-sighted’, how ‘defiant’. ‘The nail that sticks out gets hammered down’. ‘How could you ever even dream to think giving humans freewill would be a good thing, Lucifer? They’re simple, easily tempted creatures. All you’ve done is opened the door for them to damn themselves.’ And really, after I ended up here, I believed them! I mean, look at all these sinners and how awful they are! And not just down here, but up there in life, too. The world is filled with awful, awful people, all because I gave them the ability to make that choice…”
Somehow, someway, the extremely hazardous group ended up catching Usopp’s hand on fire. The puppet frantically waved the thing in the air before his screams caught Nami’s attention, and the weather witch dosed Usopp in a similar way to how she had when they first arrived at the hotel. While Chopper was appropriately concerned, Luffy, Franky, and Niffty all laughed at the sopping wet man’s expense. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say the lot of them were actively trying to prove Lucifer’s point, right now…
“So how is it that this God, this boy… He lives by freedom, brings it everywhere he goes in both life and death, without an ounce of consideration or thought, and– it’s undoubtedly good! Why is it that his version of freewill is a good thing, and mine wasn’t? –That’s what I thought. But then I realized… no, that’s stupid, it’s the same thing right? But if that’s the case, then doesn’t that mean… that I wasn’t being stupid? That I wasn’t crazy? Having the freedom to choose the path of one’s life does give people happiness! It isn’t all smooth sailing, but just as some people will choose to do evil, others will choose to do good! And that good will be greater than what would have been if they hadn’t had the choice! And that boy… is proof of that! He's…”
Alastor’s gaze drifted back to the King to see a couple solitary, shining tears roll down those rosy cheeks. But even as he was crying, Lucifer was smiling brightly, too. The definition of bittersweet.
“ …He’s everything I dreamed freewill would be like. What I had given up on thinking would ever be reality. And it’s just… unbelievable. That after all these years, after Heaven’s contempt and condemnation, after all this time cursing myself for my own seemingly idiotic dreams– I can still look at him and think… maybe I did do good. Maybe my dreams… were worth something, after all… God… You must think I’m even more pathetic, huh? Babbling about shit you don’t care about and showing this kinda weakness in front of you like this…”
As Lucifer started scrubbing at his tears with his sleeve, Alastor looked away from the sight. Instead, he looked back to the boy in question. As his half-lidded gaze remained firmly on Luffy, there was a feeling of deep-seated satisfaction at seeing the elated curve of that boyish grin, and knowing he’d helped to put it there.
“ …Before my captain, everyone is weak. That’s true even for myself… Perhaps it had been true, what you had said about me. Before I met him. As it stands currently… I can’t remember having ever been happier than I am right now.”
He felt Lucifer glance back at him, but Alastor kept his own gaze firmly averted.
Until a wine glass stuck itself into the corner of his vision. It drew his attention back towards the King to see his hand outstretched with his glass in a familiar gesture. Lucifer was smiling softly, brows furrowed together. “I know this party isn’t for me, but– I actually had a really nice time tonight, Alastor. I hadn’t been sure about showing up at first, it’s been so long since I’ve been to one of these things. Or talked to so many people. But Charlie convinced me and Lilith wanted to come, and I thought I’d just grin and bear it, and… I didn’t have to, cause I’m having fun for real! Who would ‘a thought? Great food, great drinks, great music, a little dancing, some good company– that’s all you need, right? Ha! So… thanks for putting this whole thing together.”
Alastor eyed the glass. However, he didn’t keep the man waiting too long before he returned the gesture, clinking his cup against the King’s. He was not about to accept the gratitude humbly, though, “You’re most welcome, Your Majesty. You are correct that this party is most certainly not for you, but I suppose some amount of collateral damage is to be expected when holding a party this large.”
“You really gotta ruin the moment like that– ”
Before Lucifer could go too far into his complaints, however, there was a pitch of feedback from the microphone on stage. The previous song had ended, and the musician apparently was taking the opportunity to speak, “Testing, 1, 2– Is this thing on? Oh wait– I’ve been singing with it, haven’t I? It’s certainly on! Yohoho!”
Both of their attention was drawn up to the skeleton, along with all the other partygoers. “My– so many eyes on me. It’s a bit intimidating! It also makes me wish I had eyes of my own, yohohoho! But I mustn’t distract myself. I didn’t stop the music to tell Skull Jokes, although I do love them so, but to ensure I accomplished this self-appointed duty of mine before the night comes to an end– ”
From the edge of the stage, a wave of Robin’s hands passed a small cup of sake up. Brook leaned down to take it with a quiet thanks before standing tall again to raise the cup in the air.
“Based on all the smiling faces, it seems that this party has been a complete success. And I share in that feeling! We must give thanks where it is due. But not only that, we must celebrate this momentous occasion properly… It is not just the Straw Hat Pirates that we honor tonight, but also specifically our newest member! Alastor! So please join me in a cheers for a most treasured Nakama of ours! For the event that he has orchestrated for our enjoyment! And for the many future celebrations we are sure to have with him by our side! Alastor, you are truly a wonderful, dear friend to me! …Because he’s a deer, get it? YOHOHOHO– ”
“TO ALASTOR!!!” he swerved his head about to see that all the Straw Hats had cried out in an answering call, hold up their own drinks from wherever they were scattered about. After their exclamations, drunken guests cried back in their own cheers, Charlie’s excited high-pitched squeal and Bartolomeo’s fanatic cry rising above the lot of them. And still next to him, Lucifer raised his own glass once more with an amused half-smirk, even when he didn’t say anything.
And right on que, a body slammed into Alastor’s back along with the back of his chair. Luffy’s noodle-like arms wrapped around his shoulders from behind. He cricked his head to the side to see a large, toothy grin take up most of his vision.
“Shishishi! I’m really glad I found ya, Alastor! Thanks for everything!”
Even knowing the King was still in hand and that pestering VoxTek junk was still hovering about somewhere, he couldn’t find it in himself to put on any airs. The place that he usually associated with the void inside was filled to the brim, bursting with light and warmth. And perhaps he was too blinded by the Sun in front of him to see anything else.
With his ears relaxing to partly fall to the sides of his head, eyes closing softly, Alastor brought his head in to lean it against the side of Luffy’s. At the move, the arms around him tightened their embrace, and one of his hands rose to where they rested against his chest to hold them in turn.
“ …I’m really glad you did, too. Thank you for finding me, Luffy…”
Notes:
Some notes about the lyrics that I used for Shinda for the chapter. I mostly used the translation provided in the official music video, but made a couple specific changes:
1) For the line "Karakkara ni natta karada", the video uses "Whole body hollowed out, dry as a desert", but there's another translation online that overall uses more literal translations than what was chosen for the official that just has the line as "My body is bone dry". Technically in this case the "whole body hollowed out, dry as a desert" translation is more encompassing to the actual lyrics, since there's some word play going on with "kara kara" where it's the onomatopoeia/word for something "dry" or "empty", but I obviously wanted to keep the Skull Joke and the desert simile isn't actually being said, so I felt like it'd be fine to just combine the two translations together.
2) On another note about onomatopoeia, I kept the original "Zunta tta tta" for the second chorus rather than the way they translated it in the music video since it's supposed to be actual sound anyway. From what I understand, it's a sound based on the onomatopoeia of "zuta zuta" which is used previously in the line ("Zuttazuta ni kizanda biito de", which the video translates as "Pounding out a body-rending beat") The sound makes more sense in terms of translation with the alternative translation which has the line as "Dancing to a beat that's chopped to shreds", since zutazuta is the word for "into pieces"/"into shreds"/etc, so it's like the sound of tearing/chopping something into pieces (the beat in this case lol but there's also a kinda violent implication I think the song is going for, which is why they went with "body-rending" for the video and why I kept that line as it was even after changing the rest back to zunta ta ta)
3) Switched out the "Let's get dancing!" the video translation uses for "Odore!" with "Da-da-dance!" so that it better matches the beat of the syllables. I probably didn't need to explain that, but thought I might as well mention it.
I think that's it, but I may have forgotten something... In case you were wondering, the complication that comes from me being particular with how the Japanese songs are translated into the story is part of the reason why I just used the dub for Binks' Sake. It simplifies things when the lyrics are already being spoken in English lol That and I liked the "Gather up all of the crew" line since it matched with the plot point of Alastor gathering up the crew.
Chapter 16: No One is Born into this World to be Alone
Chapter Text
It was a few days after the party that the King of Hell graced the hotel with his presence once again, this time with three official invitations in hand. One for Luffy, Alastor himself, and the Pirate Empress, though that one was presumably passed off to Lilith to increase the chances of a successful handoff.
While Alastor examined his own invitation, Trafalgar just snatched away Luffy’s to look at it himself, which the boy allowed in his total indifference to the thing. The Radio Demon glanced away from the card to look down at Lucifer’s careless stare and comment, “It’s not typical for the King himself to host a meeting of the Overlords. Such an occurrence has yet to happen since before I’ve been an Overlord myself, even. I suppose this is an attempt to establish a wider-spread organized effort against Heaven’s retaliation?”
“Yep,” was the equally careless reply, Lucifer shrugging his slight shoulders as he explained, “It’s more that I’m helping Charlie put this together. She wants to take the lead for this issue. Pretty sure that after how the last Extermination went for them with the First Man dying and everything that they’re fucking pissed. Hope for the best and plan for the worst, right? Makes sense to loop in sinners of a notable powerbase with people under them. I’d say only people that need to go should to keep things from getting crazy, but that being said… Considering your boss is the way he is, Luffy’s allowed to bring a plus one or two that would actually be useful for the conversation. Other than you since you have your own invite, that is.”
“I’m going,” Trafalgar immediately seized the chance, even stuffing Luffy’s invite into his own pocket. Which wasn’t exactly an inconvenience since they still had Alastor’s copy, but it was the principle of the thing that mattered. Looking to Luffy, he then also advised, “You should bring either Jinbei-ya or Nico-ya. Either would do well, but the First Son of the Sea would probably be the best choice due to his experience as a Warlord.”
Instead of Luffy responding, the King instead chimed up once more, his indifference shifting into curiosity, “Hmm… I’ve been meaning to ask one of you guys, actually. What does it mean when you refer to one of you pirates as a Warlord? Or Emperor for that matter? Along with hearing it around down here, Charlie overheard people in your living world refer to that kind of thing a lot, but she was more focused on figuring out what was up with Luffy so she didn’t really follow up on it.”
As if summoned by the mention of his name, Jinbei approached from where he’d walked into the room to explain, “Both are different titles of renown a pirate can gain. The Seven Warlords of the Sea refers to seven pirates of whom the World Government struck a deal with where in exchange for their occasional cooperation, their bounties are frozen and they are free to do as they please for the most part. This is officially not meant to include the allowance of illegal behavior, but unofficially it is essential a free pass for such activity. I was once one of these Warlords as an attempt to establish better relations between the human government and Fishmen. Law had also been one, though after I had already left my position, as well as Hancock.”
“And being an Emperor refers to being one of the Four Pirate Emperors of the New World, the lawless second half of the Grand Line. They’re the top of the pirating world who had been in contest to become King of the Pirates, usually having immense individual power along with wide-spanning empires of pirate subordinations and island territory, to the point that their might equaled that of the Marines and Seven Warlords combined,” the snow leopard demon took over from there, evidently informed not just of the circumstances of his own world but also Hell’s underlying workings, “So between the two factions, Emperors are the ones that wouldn’t bother restraining themselves from making trouble. You had to put down two of them, Big Mom and Kaido, after they died and fell into Hell. Straw Hat-ya is also an example of this, since he’d been labeled an Emperor before he claimed the title of Pirate King.”
“It’s the same title that Shanks has!” Luffy cheerfully added, as usual without any sense of background context to go along with the statement.
“Huh… The more you know!” with the same good-natured casualness of having learned an interesting but unimportant factoid, Lucifer gave one last parting wave before he turned his back and disappeared in a swirl of liquid fire magic, “Well, that’s it for now. See ya in a week!”
Later that same day after receiving the invitation, a point of contention came up amid the two newer Straw Hats catching up with the rest of the crew. To no surprise to Alastor, the issue in question originated from Franky. However, even he had been somewhat shortsighted as to not have previously realized this would be a likely topic to occur…
“So that owl prince guy’s got a way back to the living world? That’s SUUUPER! Can he make a portal big enough to bring the Sunny down ya think? I’d give anything to get my girl back!”
“Well he might be able to, but actually, uh– when we went back to Laugh Tale, the Sunny wasn’t there anymore…” Usopp hesitantly trailed off at the mention.
Franky was surprised enough by the answer that he pushed his sunglasses up to get a better look at the puppet’s face –why he was wearing them still while indoors was a whole separate issue. “HUH? Where’d she go?! I remember that she got pretty banged up, but if it was bad enough that she’d been totaled, ya still should’ve seen the wreck around.”
Nami was drawn into the conversation by the question, answering with careful logic, “We think someone probably moved her. There were gravestones placed for us and the Blackbeard Pirates on the island, so someone had definitely been by.”
“That so… Damn, I wonder if there’s a way to figure out where she went. Even just checkin’ the Fleet members might take awhile to get through.”
“We can’t just go around like that. We’re DEAD! We’ll freak everyone out if we all start sailing around without being careful not to run into anyone!” The navigator vetoed with insistence.
“But Zoro ‘n’ Sanji already busted that didn’t they?! So we might as well if it means we can get our ship back!”
Meanwhile, over in a separate corner of the lobby, Brook had started choking on the sip of milk he’d been in the middle of at Franky’s first mention bringing the ship back. As he bent over the bar top to hack it out, Chopper examined the skeleton in concern. “Are you okay, Brook?! What happened?”
“Y– Yes– ugh– I, uh… It simply went down the wrong p-pipe is all…”
“But you don’t have lungs!”
“…Oh, wait, that’s right… Yohoho?”
Having seen enough from sleuthing with his shadow, Alastor moved it into the hallway to emerge from. He walked out in a facsimile of a natural entrance, heading straight to where Brook was still leaned over to say, “Just the fellow I was looking for! Do you think you could help me out with something, dear pal? I just have a musical quandary I wish to inquire about.”
“O-Oh! Yes! Certainly!” smart enough to take the opportunity for salvation, Brook jostled as he suddenly stood up from his seat, the very picture of suspicious behavior that had Husk giving him a queer look.
Luckily for him, Chopper was a much more gullible creature, and thus easily accepted with a smile, “Have fun Brook, Alastor!”
“Y-Yes! Fun! Certainly!”
“Good day to you as well, darling deerling,” and with that, Alastor took Brook by the arm to subtly guide him out of room to prevent the musician’s further self-sabotage.
He only drew them into the hallway from whence he’d emerged before sinking the both of them down into the shadows, popping them back up in his radio tower. The skeleton immediately began pacing from his nerves, one hand raising up to clutch the hair at the side of his head.
“Oh– Oh no– Alastor, Franky was saying– ”
“I know, I heard.”
“I– Oh no no… I wouldn’t have done that to the Sunny if I’d known there might be a way to get her back in death! Truly– ”
“Certainly not, I know.”
“I have to tell them…” Brook came to a sudden halt at the words, even though he was still only staring down at the floorboards, “Luffy would never leave the Sunny behind if he thinks there’s a way to get her. They’ll scour all of the Grand Line and all Four Blues just to not find her, and I’ll have to tell them I sent her to Davy Jones’s Locker because I went crazy– ”
“Now now– Let’s take a moment to calm down, shall we?” Alastor took the skeleton hand available to gain Brook’s attention in full. In a gentle pull, he brought the man over to the couch he’d begun leaving out for convenience, seeing that he now had a number of regular visitors.
After seating Brook down and then taking a seat next to him, Alastor took the other boney hand as it slowly lowered from its previous position at the other’s skull, holding both hands in his own for a grounding effect. “There we go. Let’s not make any rash decisions. If you still do not wish to tell any other, there’s no need to.”
Brook objected with underlining panic still pitching his tone, “But– I cannot in good conscience let them go on thinking they may be able to retrieve the Sunny when it’s impossible! What else am I to do?”
With a more level response, Alastor offered, “This is the vessel your shipwright built, correct? If the matter of having the same ship is so important, can he not simply build it once more using materials perhaps more compatible with Hell?”
“I was not around when he’d built the Sunny Go, but I know she’d been made from the special wood of the Adam Tree. Frankly speaking, I’m unsure if the quality of wood here in the afterlife would be up to the same standard. Adam’s wood is famed for being incredibly resilient. The previous Pirate King, Gol D. Roger, also had a ship made of it,” before he could attempt to contest the point, Brook brought up a more complicated issue at hand, “But even more importantly… we were fortunate enough for our ship to have formed a Klabautermann, a living spirit of its own that I’d only thought of as being stuff of legends before hearing that their previous ship the Going Merry had gained one. Even if Franky were to build the same ship design, it cannot be the Sunny because it will not have her spirit, and therefore he would never rebuild her in such a way! None of the others would accept such a thing either.”
“ …A ship with a soul? That does make things interesting…” Alastor had to take a moment to think over the situation more thoroughly. While keeping one hand holding Brook’s, he allowed his other to come up and tap at his cheek, mentally raising possibilities only to strike them dead one by one.
Until he was left with one potential strategy, that is. Uncertain though it may be.
“ …There are known to be magicks that can summon souls of Hell to the living. Perhaps there may be a method to summon a soul to Hell? The fact that said spirit is of an object and presumably not meant for humanity’s afterlife may make such a trial unfeasible, but the object itself should be capable of being conjured, and thus we may be able to summon its soul along with it. How about we leave the problem on hold while I do some research? I’ll have a better understanding of its likelihood of success then.”
Brook stared at him for a couple of seconds. If the skeleton had a face, it’d likely be looking at him in full shock. “You… believe you may be able to accomplish such a feat?”
Not wanting to give the impression of false promises, Alastor explicitly clarified, “Like I said– I’d have to look into it, but until I can rule out the possibility, there is a non-zero chance. If it can be done, it’d be likely I should be capable of such magic at least. I have an extraordinary proficiency in the mystical arts if you’ll forgive the boasting! The main concern would be if it can be done to begin with, and if so, how difficult the set up and execution.”
Thinking it over himself, it wasn’t too long before Brook responded, “If you could do such a thing… I’d be incredibly grateful, Alastor. Everyone would be, in fact! Please, do not feel too bad if you find that this is indeed an impossible task. Just the fact that you would put such an effort into helping me with my blunder means very much to me.”
With that, the skeleton brought Alastor into a boney hug he had to internally brace for, though he returned it for a good number of seconds before taking hold of Brook’s arms to lean out of the hold with a smile. “You’ve done no blunder, my dear. There was no way you could’ve divined the possibility of dragging a ship of all things back with you to the afterlife! It’s a simple comedy of errors, a classic bit of humor indeed! Haha! Just leave the matter in my capable claws for now, and I’ll follow up with you when appropriate.”
While he’d put on a confident front, truthfully, Alastor himself wasn’t sure how well his studies would turn out. Even just finding tomes of suitable subject matter and old magicks would come with its own difficulty. However, after sending Brook back down to have some time to ponder the matter, his shadow caught a glimpse of Charlie passing through the lobby talking with a group of new guests. A very apparent answer showed itself.
Lying in wait until the girl had finished up her business, Alastor promptly appeared from the darkness of an otherwise abandoned corridor to corner her. The shriek of shock she sounded at his sudden arrival was quite amusing, “AL!!! Gosh– don’t scare me like that!”
Grinning at the way Charlie wound down from her jolt, hand resting on her chest as though to hold down her fast-beating heart, Alastor posed with a carefully crafted casualness, “My, I do apologize for the fright, my dear! There was simply something I wished to ask of you…”
“O-Okay… What do you need then?”
“It’d be a great help to me if I could peruse the royal family’s library. I assume such a thing exists?” he gestured a hand towards the Princess of Hell at the inquiry, waiting on the confirmation of his assumption.
Charlie’s eyes went wide, before squinting in an apologetic wince. “Oh! Well, yeah, we do have one of those, but… Mom and Dad have both always said no one other than us is allowed in there, so even though I’d love to help you Alastor, really! I don’t think– ”
“You misunderstand me,” he corrected while bringing his cane forward to rest both hands on it. His grin curling sharply at the ends in a bit of devilishness, his eyes flashed black and green in a small surge of power. “I know perfectly well that no mere sinner would be permitted access to such a wealth of knowledge, a good portion of it likely forbidden to the likes of humanity and demons. I’m calling in my favor, Miss Charlie Morningstar. One favor at a time of my choosing that harms no one, those were our terms! This easily falls under them.”
Perhaps just the task of reviving a ship from the proverbial dead of all the inane things wouldn’t be worthy of using up a favor from the Princess of Hell, but the knowledge that would be gained from the endeavor certainly would. To not only potentially learn such a powerful sort of magic, but to browse through the rest of the surely ancient and advanced tomes would lead to additional benefits, either in learning of the workings of Hell itself or in learning deeper mystical arts. Therefore, he had no issue with killing two demons with one bite, as the saying only somewhat went, and committing to the decision.
Charlie’s eyes blew out wide once more, her mouth even parting in shock. But before Alastor could relish his victory, a now familiar swirl of fiery red power manifested beside the girl.
The Radio Demon was suddenly confronted by the face of a very irate King of Hell leaning forward into his space. Alastor had to force himself to not step back and give up ground, merely allowing his grin to shift into something closer to a sneer. “You tacky piece of– See Charlie! I was right to charm you so that I’d be notified if this guy tried to use his deal! He might be under new management and with a better attitude nowadays, but he’s still a shady red bastard he is! Can never be too careful with a sinner like him!”
“D-Dad, wait! I mean– what he was asking for wasn’t that bad– ”
“I know it seems harmless, but you don’t know what kinda books are in that library, Charlie. There’s some real evil shit we’re keepin’ in there just to make sure it doesn’t end up in the claws of someone who’d use them. Like this guy right here!” After glancing back at his daughter to give an insisting look, Lucifer shifted his glare back towards Alastor to tap at his chest with that stupid apple-top cane of his, which he batted away with the mic-head of his own. “Even with your deal, you aren’t getting in because I have the authority to veto Charlie’s decision. So why don’t you do us all a favor and let this go, huh– ”
“Oh, that’s such a shame. I was very much looking forward to learning more about this realm, Your Majesty. As well as to picking up some more of its languages.”
All three of them were blindsided as they jolted in synch. They pivoted to look at the new addition of Nico Robin, who had very much not been standing beside the group but three seconds prior. Now with his own wide-eyed look, Lucifer opened his mouth, only to stupidly close it without a word. Then open it once more to finally say, “Uh… Sorry, but what?”
“Alastor was requesting access to the library on my behalf,” the woman lied as easily as she breathed, stepping closer to Alastor to place a supporting hand on his shoulder in a graceful movement, “I’m unsure if you’re aware, but I am our crew’s archeologist. I make it a point to study the history of ancient peoples and civilizations. In life, I even discovered the secrets that had been hidden by the World Government regarding the history of its formation. However, while I wished to continue my research, I assumed that there were likely some details concerning the creation of Hell that would be left out of public awareness, and thus thought looking through the knowledge accrued by the royal family would be an excellent opportunity.”
With three sets of stares still firmly on her person, Robin continued unfettered, “Alastor was kind enough to offer his favor seeing that he also saw value in the chance to learn more about this world. I apologize if our favor came off as pestering to you. I suppose it’s only natural that if human governance had such unsettling skeletons hidden underneath, so too would the governance of Heaven. I do hope we haven’t endangered you and your family by posing the question– ”
“W-Wait a second– There’s no need for you to apologize. And I never said anything about it being dangerous to me and Charlie,” Lucifer had fully transitioned from stubborn righteousness to awkwardly tense placation, “You mean to say you think I’m hiding some ugly secret, for Heaven? I wouldn’t do a single thing for those pompous bastards even if they paid me!”
In what Alastor recognized to be a calculated slight tilt of the head, Robin belayed with seeming curiosity, “Is that so…? I simply assumed that to be the case, given how harshly humans will hunt down and eliminate what they deem to be dangerous information, including those searching for it. Why else would you need to bar someone as trustworthy as Alastor if such knowledge didn’t exist?”
“As trustworthy as– are you being serious?!”
“Most certainly. All of my Nakama are the most trustworthy people I know. Alastor is no exception to this.” Even Alastor himself was surprised by her unwavering stance. Lucifer began to fidget slightly under the heaviness of her unmoving three-eyed stare.
“I am no stranger to forbidden knowledge, angel of the Morningstar. I was the only survivor of my island at the age of eight years old when the marines came for our scholars and decided to execute everyone else along with them, just to ensure their learnings wouldn’t be passed on. If I should expect a similar situation in the afterlife as well, we’d be better off if you said as such.”
An unavoidable heaviness fell over the conversation. Charlie looked to her father in obvious fear, herself unknowing of the answer and horrified by the possibility. As the King glanced back and forth between the girl and Robin, his face fell into conflicting pensiveness. Alastor, while waiting for the other man’s response, mentally filed away the apparent tidbit of information about the mysterious woman for future consideration.
“ …Maybe Heaven itself has that kind of secret hidden in it, but you wouldn’t find that kinda thing down here. It’s just– we just need to be careful, you know. I wouldn’t come after any of you guys like that…” with a sigh, Lucifer visibly deflated in his concession, “I guess… Considering the kind of good Luffy’s brought down here, it should be fine to make an exception. But you need to tell me whatever it is that you learn, alright? And definitely don’t take any books with you! …And Al still needs to use up his favor for this! I won’t have that kinda deal hanging over my daughter’s head any longer.”
“ …I was planning to use it regardless. Thank you for your cooperation, sire,” reinserting himself back into the conversation now that the King had been talked down, Alastor kept his response polite so as to not ruin the Devil Child’s beautiful handiwork.
“Yeah, yeah– don’t spread it around too much, will ya? I’m still serious about this restricted access thing. I don’t want any other sinners hearing of it… When you two are ready to come over, just knock. You’ll be allowed to approach the estate,” and with one final parting glanced, tired as it was, Lucifer unsummoned himself.
“ …Well, all’s well that ends well? Hehe…?” Charlie concluded the matter with a fully sheepish smile, “Um– I can take you guys over if you want?”
“While I appreciate the offer, I believe it’d be better to decline. It’d be dreadfully boring for you to just stand around waiting for us to finish reading through the place. We can handle ourselves just fine, dear.” And with a tap to her head using his mic that left Charlie wincing, Alastor made himself scarce as well.
Robin followed him as he made his departure. Once they’d gone an appropriate distance, she finally asked, “May I ask what information you’re searching for, Alastor? Perhaps I may be of assistance.”
He allowed himself a side-eye of a glance at the woman in step beside him, before he purposefully set his gaze back on the path ahead. “As you were of great assistance to me just now, usually I would tell you, but as it is I’m dealing with some confidential matters.”
“Does it have to do with Brook?” the question drew his eyes right back to Robin, who just looked back at him with that even stare of hers as she posed, “Jinbei informed me that Brook was likely the last of us to die, and that based on what he remembered of the state of his body, it didn’t seem that he was on the verge of dying naturally. With what Usopp, Nami, and Chopper have said about Laugh Tale, the two of us assumed that he was the one to send us off, but rather than confront him about it, we wished to respect his decision not to tell us. Luffy along with all the others would be quite upset to hear how we’d failed him.”
“ …Well if you’ve already figured it out for yourselves, that’s enough due diligence on my part. He’s lucky the crew is filled with as many simpleminded people as it is or it would’ve been obvious to anyone who’d thought on it,” Alastor shrugged it off with a purposely dramatized sigh before answering plainly, “Our dear friend feels rather guilty now that he had sent your ship off to the briny depths with his send off, so I’m searching for magic that may revive your ship’s soul. Along with taking the opportunity to look for greater magical arts in general.”
That managed to stall the previously unmovable woman in her steps, something which he interpreted as a considerable win. Robin blinked at him for a second, eyes just a tad wider than usual. “Does such magic really exist?”
“I have no idea! We’ll find out for ourselves soon enough, however.”
“ …Indeed, we shall,” it was Alastor’s turn to blink at the other as Robin smiled at him. Her expression was incredibly softer than her typical visage, matching the gentle cadence of her voice.
He’d not focused on it so much before, but even though Robin smiled regularly, it was a plain, slight curve of the lips that didn’t belay much in terms of actual emoting. It made for quite a contrast to see the way her face could brighten up. “Hm. You should smile like that more often, dearie. It suits the fairness of your face, and you’re never fully dressed without one you know. Ha! I hope you don’t take offense to me saying as such. You did such a splendid job maneuvering the King, not to mention the state you left the Vees in. I’d hate to make an enemy out of a fearsome lady like yourself.”
“There’s no need for you to worry about such a thing. We’re crew after all,” she dismissed the matter, though her smile dimmed to a more common expression as the apparent moment passed, “And when it comes to King Lucifer, I only thought to intervene in such a way based on your own advising. While I don’t match the Pirate Empress’s beauty, I don’t think it’s too far off to say that many would consider me to be a tall, bewitching, strong-willed individual.”
After a split second to regard the statement, Alastor couldn’t help but hold a hand to his gut and let out a bark of a laugh, “AHAHAHA! Indeed you are! Good show! I did say knowing such a weakness would be useful, now didn’t I!”
They ended up heading to the royal estate the morn of the day afterwards, not wanting to go right away as to give Lucifer the opportunity to collect himself and reduce the risk of being kicked out. The manor was as luxurious and sprawling as one would expect, but not to the point of being gaudy much to his surprise. However, after knocking on the large wooden double door entrance as indicated, they were met with the Queen granting them entrance rather than the King.
Alastor instantly tensed at the sight of that fair face staring down at him, grin freezing in place and his hold on his cane tightening from where his hands were folded behind his back. Lilith thankfully deigned to speak first, which allowed him a brief moment to internally collect himself, “Lucifer already told me to be expecting you both. Good to see you again after meeting you at the party, Miss Robin. And good to see you as well, Alastor. You were a wonderful host that night.”
“And you as well, Your Majesty.”
“You flatter me, Your Majesty,” Alastor followed Robin’s reply in an appropriate manner as they followed the Queen inside.
After leading them down a number of winding halls, they soon came upon a large, wide room containing high shelves stocked full of numerous mystical grimoires, as well as a couple desks for working. Before he and the archeologist could head in, though, the Queen paused just after opening the doors to address Alastor once again, “I was hoping we might take the opportunity to catchup shortly after so long, Alastor. Your friend may get started as she pleases.”
While she’d been given permission, Robin looked to him first, face still unreadable even when it was clear she was anticipating a cue from him. But knowing that he needed to bite the bullet, Alastor waved her away with a smile he forcibly untensed, “There’s no trouble, Robin dear. I’ll just be a moment…”
After their third party entered the library, Lilith shut the door once more for privacy. When she looked back at Alastor with what he knew to be a consoling expression, graceful though it was, he didn’t hesitate to avert his gaze away and bare his serrated teeth a tad.
“Alastor… I know it must be displeasing to see me, but I truly must express my regrets to you.”
“Oh yes, certainly. But no worries, I’m smart enough to figure it out on my own. ‘Dear Alastor, I’m quite sorry that my deal with Eve royally fucked you over. But all’s well that ends well for the both of us, so it’s fine right?’ ‘Why yes, Mistress of Hell, the issue’s been concluded so that’s that! Good day to you!’ Now that I’ve expedited the conversation, perhaps you’ll grant me leave?” Even as Lilith’s face fell further, he remained belligerent, keeping his arms and cane held tight to his back.
Technically his summarization of the circumstance wasn’t inaccurate. He’d known upon first falling into Hell and accepting Lilith’s deal that there was a risk of a gamble at play. When she covertly came to him for more subtle assistance in curbing the might of rampant Overlords, in exchange for access to a depth of power usually inaccessible to a newly fallen sinner, essentially accelerating his accumulation of demonic strength, he had agreed to pledge his soul in service to the Queen.
In his wariness at being potentially preyed upon by any number of powerful Overlords, he’d thought to roll the dice and accept her hand for his own grab at power. But the key to the deal which had sealed his agreement was the stipulation that there was an end date to his service. A century to the day. After which, the power he had attained would still remain despite no longer being under Contract. There had also been the additional, favorable clause that should the deal come to an end early for whatever reason, he would still receive his due. It had been a matter of biding his time, trading a hundred years or potentially less under the Queen’s rule in exchange for the strength to keep his freedom for the rest of his afterlife from that point on.
And for a long while, it had not been an unbearable deal. He would not have described himself as being content with the arrangement, but he’d been capable of tolerating it until its natural conclusion. Queen Lilith retained a cordial, professional relation with him as clandestine as it was, treating him with fair regard. To the point that he’d even unconsciously deluded himself into thinking that she genuinely regarded him. That she might have held actual value for him as a person and saw him as more than just a filthy, rabid pet of a sinner that she may beckon to attack and yield as she pleased. The fact that part of her aim in having him cull rampant Overlords was that, in their deaths, the sinners who had been bound by Soul Contract to the deceased Overlord would be freed contributed to this. Despite her having offered a deal to Alastor, she had appeared to be a Queen who valued the freedom of her people, and her fair treatment of him corroborated that.
But then however, seven years ago, Lilith had made her deal with the Mother of Humanity, and that delusion was rightfully dispelled into harsh clarity.
He hadn’t realized what was going on until it’d happened. He’d been a hair’s breadth away from ending the battle that’d been spurred from his falling out with Vox, Valentino having only just arrived to provide the other backup, when he was summoned away. He doesn’t know why Lilith had made that deal or what their terms had been outside of Eve’s use of her body. He doesn’t know what the Queen had gained from that trade. He doesn’t even know what the true purpose of Eve’s order for him to assist Charlie with her hotel for the time being to keep an eye on her was or how it tied into it all. But at that time seven years ago, what soon became apparent was that the Mother of Humanity had inherited the right to his soul with her possession of Lilith. Thus, he’d been transferred from one owner to another. All without a word of warning or chance to save himself. Next thing he knew, he was kneeling before a new yet familiar master, his mouth bound together upon his objections.
It had been Eve who looked down at him with the Queen’s eyes, but such a circumstance would never have befallen him if not for Lilith’s allowance of it. He will not be made a FOOL of.
–And perhaps his view of her hadn’t been a wrong. Perhaps Lilith did indeed truly dislike the practice of binding people’s souls and had indeed directed him with the goal of alleviating some of her people’s suffering. But if that was the case, that just meant she’d deemed that it was only Alastor’s freedom and soul that made for an acceptable sacrifice, and that thought brought with it even more biting venom–
“Please listen to me for just a moment, Alastor... You are right to be upset with me, but I must tell you– it was not my intention for you to be hurt by my deal. It was– a tricky situation, you could say. Giving up my own body was no easy decision you must realize. But even still, I failed to protect you as I should have, and for that I am sorry.”
“Does it ease your weary soul to apologize for what I am sure was but a minor consideration to you? For surely you must realize I gain no benefit from mere words. Actions speak much louder,” was all he had to say to that, his gaze still averted from the woman, “There is no need for you to pretend that I was anything more than collateral damage to your circumstances. And you owed me no consideration, for that was what my place beneath you was meant to be. I’ve already accepted this truth, so there’s no point in trying to appease me otherwise.”
“I am not pretending. Truly, Alastor, had we not developed a friendship, before it all went so wrong? Do you truly believe it had not pained me to witness your suffering?”
“And yet your decision was the reason for my suffering! Funny thing, is it not? And despite our ‘friendship’, you still deign it appropriate to keep our shameful little dealings a secret from your husband. Lucifer should consider himself lucky you’re not the type of woman be tempted by infidelity with how easily you can meet up with another man behind his back.”
Somewhat unexpectedly, Lilith corrected, “I had kept him in the dark during the time, true, but not anymore Alastor. After I woke from the injuries I retained from the God’s battle with Eve, I came clean to Lucifer, such that there would no longer be anything hidden between us. I wanted him to understand what had happened with me, as well as how your situation was created from my own consequences.”
He would have preferred her maintaining her deceit. Knowing that the occasionally pestering King of Hell was aware of the extent of his weakness was undesirable to say the least. Alastor’s tense smile pulled further into a sneer as he drawled, “How nice for you to put in the work to repair your marriage. But that doesn’t have anything at all to do with me, now does it. I don’t care what reasoning you had. I’m going back to what it is I came here to do, Queen Lilith. In the end, our deal still resulted in a conclusion that was favorable for me. I have the power I sought, no more strings attached. That is good enough. However, as it is over and done, I have no need to associate with you outside of matters involving your daughter and her hotel, and I intend to keep it that way. Now good day to you.”
When he turned his back to her to face the library door, however, Lilith persisted, “And what of your deal with your God, Alastor? Even when you may wish to wash your hands of me, I am still curious as to the path you’ve taken… Your soul is still in his possession, but you have had the ability to take it back whenever you wished to, have you not? Why is that?”
Teeth gritting tight, he didn’t turn around in his answer, “Are you perhaps dense? He is obviously more worthy of entrusting than you.”
“That’s not what I’m referring to. There’s no need for him to take hold of your soul. You can work for him regardless of such a status. Even in our own deal, you only agreed to it for the sake of the coming day where you would regain your soul with your power in hand. So why is it you wish for him to have it?”
Why does he allow his soul to remain in that God’s possession? Why does he wish for him to have it? At the beginning of his association to the captain, Alastor’s truthful, never to be spoken answer to those questions would be that it was a convenient excuse for him to accept Luffy’s offer to join him. But the longer he allowed things to go as they have, the more complex his feelings on the matter had become.
At some point, perhaps he had felt somewhat reassured knowing that Luffy could not leave him behind, so long as they held such an intrinsic bond? But even if the sentiment lingers, that reasoning has already been turned over on itself. He knows very well that even without the boy holding onto his soul, Luffy would not allow him out of his hold. So now, in the present day, what is it that Alastor gained from the seemingly illogical decision?
Glancing back at Lilith’s inquiring face, he realized that the reason was currently standing right before his eyes. He spoke his answer not for the Queen’s benefit, but so that it may be understood that Alastor was fully out of her, Eve’s, or anyone else’s reach alike.
“ …It’s safer with him.” Alastor turned his back once more, his hand reaching out to grasp the doorhandle. He left the rest unsaid– My soul is safer with him than it was with you… And it’s also safer than when it had been with me, too. He values it too much to ever trade it away, as I had.
And with that, he allowed himself entrance into the library, and firmly shut the door behind him. He was certain that by the time he was done, the Queen would no longer be on the other side of it.
Walking into the grand library among its tall shelves, Alastor came stand next to where the archaeologist was leafing through a book. While a pair of arms had formed themselves before her to hold the tome and turn the pages, her main arms were crossed across her chest in a peculiar stance.
Thinking of the stray ear that he’d caught sight of at the tail end of his and Lilith’s talk, he grinned a baring of teeth as his gaze narrowed on her, picking out a tome for himself as he chastised, “It’s not polite to listen in to other people’s private conversations. I hope you realize that should you attempt to speak of this to any other, including your fellow crewmates, that I will not hesitate to demonstrate my displeasure to you…”
“That’s a hypocritical point coming from you, seeing that you often listen in on the others. I was simply keeping an ear on the situation in case there was an issue. There’s no need to speak of it to anyone else,” she replied simply. Rather than dismissing her pose, however, freeing her attention from snooping allowed her to focus the use of her abilities on their search. A scattering of dark eyes blossomed about, along with hands to pull books from shelves and hold them in place in front of them. It was an impressive show of multi-tasking.
After giving a sigh of a dismissal, Alastor deigned the matter unworthy of follow up and got to his own research.
The library proved to be as fruitful as he’d hoped. Many unfamiliar, sometimes disturbing mystical arts were written under the tips of his claws. There had even been a tome detailing what was surely a very useful sigil that could suppress demonic abilities. But unfortunately, he couldn’t delve too deep into any specific subject, mindful of the limited amount of time they had. In the worst-case scenario, they would have to go through every book available if only to be assured that the magic he was in search for wasn’t present.
Time passed quickly that way, the two of them working in a comfortable silence. All there was to break the hours of droning monotony being the turning of old, crisp pages and the faint sound of his radio’s background music. Until, just about halfway through the considerable amount of books housed in the library, Robin called out to him, “Is something like this what you would be looking for, Alastor?”
He immediately abandoned his own tome to walk over to where the archeologist was seated. Alastor took the grimoire that was handed to him to see a detailed summoning circle inked in the first page Robin had left open for him. Eyes trailing over the scrawling description and list of requirements for the ritual, he confirmed, “This is likely the closest spell we’d find suited to what we need, yes… Very intriguing. It’s less like a concrete summoning and more like a call into the void. Hopefully we don’t draw in something more frightening than what we’re looking for. Aha! I best copy everything down carefully so as to not make any unfortunate mistakes.”
“It would be quite unfortunate indeed to accidently summon a soul-eating monster of the void, yes,” Robin agreed with that casual morbidness of hers, before inquiring, “If you are able to use this ritual to summon the Sunny Go, you could also use it to summon a second ship, correct?”
The question drew his stare away from the grimoire and back onto the woman. Robin’s expression didn’t look too different from its usual blankness despite the peculiar request. “Assuming I am able to collect the same needed summoning materials for that ship as well, theoretically, yes. Am I to assume you are referring to the previous ship of your crew’s that Brook had mentioned?”
“The Going Merry, yes,” the name did ring a bell of recollection in his mind, “She was smaller than the Sunny. She made it much farther into the Grand Line than most would assume a ship of her make to be capable of, given how dangerous its waters are and how we lacked a proper shipwright until Franky came along. We even took her up to the Sky Islands and back. It got to the point where she was deemed unfit for sailing. However, despite this, she spent her last voyage sailing herself out to save us, when Luffy and everyone fought to retrieve me from agents of the World Government. If she had not been there, we would not have survived, and they would have perished attempting to free me… While of course everyone would be overjoyed, it would mean very much to me if you could bring the Merry back to us as well.”
“A ship that can sail itself out to collect its wayward crew… These spirits really are such a curious phenomenon.” The story that came along with the explanation was also a curious one. A fight against the nebulous World Government for the sake of a single crewmate, just the sort of thing he’d come to expect from the captain. With both this detail as well as what she’d mentioned prior about surviving a genocide orchestrated by the military in her childhood, it was clear the woman had lived a colored life. With a careless half shrug, Alastor turned back to examining the book in his hands as he agreed, “If it can be done, I will attempt to summon that ship as well, yes. Might as well go all in if I’m doing this. The captain will likely just ask me to do the same regardless.”
Tone lifting into something lighter at his acceptance, Robin’s brighter smile returned as she teased, “He most definitely would, yes. Fufu~ But you enjoy it when Luffy asks you to do things for him, don’t you?”
“Enjoy is a unique way to put it.”
“It is. It is also an accurate way to put it, however. It’s just that it’s hard for you to be honest about it. You’re similar to Law in that way.”
He didn’t relish the comparison, but as the topic of the snow leopard had been brought up… He might as well ask about a lingering thought he’d had, seeing that Robin was likely one of the handful of the crew who could give a comprehensive explanation about it, “Speaking of Trafalgar, I have a curiosity you may be able to indulge– What sort of relationship does the captain have with that man, exactly?”
“Oh? Are you worried for Luffy? That’s rather cute of you.”
The edge of his grin pulled taunt, unimpressed by the comment. “If you could grant me an answer without patronizing me that would be very much appreciated, thank you… And like I already said, I’m simply curious. It pays off to be well informed of these sorts of matters. I know very well Luffy is able to handle himself and Trafalgar just fine.”
Hand raising to cup her chin, Robin chimed back, “Of course. Why don’t I start my response by asking you this: If you’re asking that sort of question, you must be thinking there’s a possibility that their relationship is a non-platonic one, isn’t that right? What makes you think that?”
“Trafalgar is almost certainly foolishly infatuated with the captain. Though not as horrendously so as the Pirate Empress is,” was the easy reply. The aspect of the situation that was confusing him the most was next to follow, and not so straight-forward to put into words, “The thing I’m uncertain about is the captain’s end of things. He very much regards Trafalgar with fondness. But at the same time, however…”
“ …It doesn’t seem that different from how he treats the rest of us, is what you’re getting,” she finished the thought for him, “That’s because he doesn’t see Law differently than us, whether that be in a romantic or sexual sense.”
“ …Truly? But he makes rounds in Trafalgar’s quarters. And while he does the same with us, the implication is significantly different in the context of Trafalgar’s feelings.”
“That doesn’t matter to Luffy. Nothing different occurs when he’s sleeping with Law than how he is sleeping with any other of the crew.” Wow. Trafalgar is even more of a pitiful bastard than he’d thought! It’s almost sad. Almost.
Alastor still had to ask, halfway intrigued and halfway doubtful, “And Trafalgar is content to just hang around and cater to the captain’s whims despite his feelings being unrequited? He did not seem to me to be that charitable of a person.”
“Well it did take him awhile to come back around, did it not? He most likely had to make some decisions about how he wanted to move forward concerning Luffy.” What kind of masochistic lunatic makes the decision to come back under this circumstance? “And additionally, it’s somewhat up to interpretation if their relationship could be considered unrequited or not.”
Shifting his weight to one leg and placing down the tome he’d officially put on hold, Alastor huffed with the incredulous raise of an eyebrow, “What ‘interpretation’ is required in this case? Either the captain fancies the man or he doesn’t, and if there’s nothing non-platonic on his end, he doesn’t!”
“In terms of matching the exact emotions Law has for him, perhaps. But there’s more to their interpersonal connection than that. After all, Luffy still respects how Law feels and still loves him, it’s just that he loves him in his own way. Luffy still sees Law as a ‘favorite’ person. Whether that’s enough for Law to feel that his feelings are being reciprocated is his own call to make.”
The suggestion blindsided him. It hadn’t even occurred to Alastor that something like that was an option.
Romantic intentions, while metaphorically colorful in feeling, were supposed to be rather black and white in that sense. Or at least that was how he’d thought it to be…
While he hadn’t reacted more than a vacant stare and blink, it seemed that the woman was able to read something from his face. Her eyes softened a tad as they fell half-lidded, looking over him in consideration. “…Are you not the same type of person as our captain, in that regard? Someone who is less inclined to experiencing romantic or sexual feelings towards another. That is the impression I got from you, but if I’m wrong, please feel free to inform me.”
He himself has often thought along those lines, that he was simply ‘less inclined’ to those sorts of frivolous intentions. But when stated as a stark delineation rather than a vague notion, he found himself giving the excuse he always has in both life and death, “Surely it’s just a matter of finding the right person. Why, it’s no wonder someone with my sort of unusual nature would be unable to find the ideal lady for myself…”
Even as he said this, though, the words trailed off as he stared at Robin’s face. The woman just regarded him cooly, waiting for his thoughts to process on their own. And thankfully so considering their current ponderings.
Since, when he really thought about it… shouldn’t the woman who’s currently before him be his exact type of “ideal lady”?
From his perspective, there was essentially nothing wrong with Nico Robin and everything right. She held grace and beauty. An independent will and witty, intelligent mind that paired well with her level-headedness. Even her sense of humor was perfectly aligned with his own, and her still somewhat unknown sense of morality had yet to contest with his own so far. Additionally, there was none of the awkwardness that there would have been if he’d evaluated Rosie the same way, in the way that his long ally and pal had already firmly settled into the ‘just friends’ category. Every theoretical box he could think of was checked off one by one, and yet, somehow… Even that was still not enough to feel even an inkling of attraction?
And if it was a question of gender, well… A candidate who’d at least been previously endearing enough to potentially consider also failed to move his heart in such a way. So if it was not a matter of gender, or physical appeal, or the individual’s personality, then… The last remaining factor was indeed himself, was it not?
“ …Though, I suppose I’m giving myself too much credit. Ha,” Alastor finally had to glance away, looking over the otherwise empty library with a short, humorless laugh as his arms folded over his chest in a rigid posture, “It’d also be no surprise if a soul as wretched as mine was simply incapable of feeling love to such a degree. It’s more convenient, even. None of that messy business or weakness to deal with! I’d say I’m much better off without it– ”
“Alastor. Do not misunderstand things, and do not speak of yourself in such a cruel way.”
A hand grown onto his shoulder firmly grasped the side of his face to redirect his gaze back to Robin’s still level stare, before it dissipated into petals along with the weight of it. “This topic of conversation emerged from talking about Luffy, remember. Of how the two of you are similar in this regard. Do you think his love is such a shallow thing?”
Alastor had to restrain himself from balking, even as his smile involuntarily pulled into a defensive, stretched out mimic of itself, pulling at his unseen sutures. “Certainly not. But that is Luffy, I am a completely different matter. There’s a reason I don’t get along well with others. It’s difficult for me to empathize with people, surely this fact it somewhat connected to the matter at hand.”
“That’s just an assumption. And even when it may be difficult, that doesn’t mean you’re incapable of empathizing with others. You seem to be an empathetic person when it comes to someone you do care for. You do love people, and deeply so. After all, do you not love Luffy as well?”
His breath caught in his throat. Even knowing it was sign of retreat, he couldn’t keep himself from taking a step back. His still etched grin was more painful than the way the fingers of his free hand clawed into the opposite upper arm, the other hand clutching hold of his mic tightening into a sharp sensation.
“Love is a very strong word even in this context– ”
“A strong word to match a strong emotion. Yes,” Robin’s agreement was a plain statement, even as her words were anything but, “For all of us, our love for Luffy is very strong. Enough so that we all followed him into Hell. And it’s the same for you, is it not? And even more than that, there are others you love besides just Luffy.”
A violet hand gestured towards the very large pile of books they’d steadily gone through in their efforts. With how many books had been on the shelves to start with, they’d become countless in number. Or at least supposedly so. “Have you been keeping track of how many books we’ve gone through, looking for that ritual? I have. The royal family’s library is a treasure trove indeed for any researcher. We’ve hardly reached the halfway point, and already their number had surpassed one thousand. With the work split between us, we went at about the same pace even with my additional eyes, likely due to you being more familiar with the subject matter. That’s more than five hundred books you searched through, Alastor, just on the uncertain chance that you’d find something that would let you help a friend in need. What is that, if not a demonstration of the strength of your feelings?”
“That’s… I was also looking for knowledge for my own self-interest– ”
“And every time you found something worth knowing, you put that book aside all the same. Because you knew you wouldn’t have the time to read more about it without giving up looking for what you needed to learn for Brook. He was right to say that you are a friend to be treasured. Perhaps it may be difficult for a person to become close to you, but when they are… you are a very loving friend, Alastor.”
“You don’t know me!” he finally snapped back in a crackle of radio static, lips curling his smile to further bare his teeth as he stumbled back another defensive step.
His hand had moved to claw into his sternum now, if only to have something to focus on. His antlers branched out, his ears twitched, and his own eyes darkened at the uncomfortable sensation of being seen. “You don’t know me. You can’t when we’ve hardly been acquainted for such a minor amount of time, so don’t act like you do! I let it go when you were explaining my position to the crew, but you step too far now. I’m no altruist. I refuse to allow myself to be sacrificed for the convenience of others! I will not be made a fool of! I will not be USED!”
“Then you’ve found yourself the perfect captain and crew. Neither Luffy nor any of the others would ever permit you to sacrifice yourself for the benefit of the whole. If you insist on staying behind, our captain will firmly order you to return alive. If there is a battle to be faced where death is an inevitability, then we all fight and die together. If you face the enemy on your own, believing that you can avert danger set on your person away from the others and only onto yourself, they will follow you and declare war on the world itself to bring you back.”
She remained unmoved by his rage. The weight of three dark eyes settled heavy atop Alastor’s lungs. When the devilish woman took a step towards him, he force himself to keep his ground. The gentle, slight curve of her smile did nothing to curb the anxious pounding in the void of his chest. “It’s true, I do not fully know you. But I do know myself, and you remind me very much of myself, Alastor. Before Luffy and the others, I too was afraid. Afraid to accept the hand of another. Burned by hope and promises. I had given up on anything more than just getting by in life. Until they took hold of me and refused to let go…”
“Do you know why it is I was so insistent on leaving behind a message for the Vees? On tearing apart their power and standing? It wasn’t just that they initiated conflict with our captain, though that was certainly part of it. It was also because it was clear to me that one of them was taking the fight with Luffy personally, and that he would, in the future, try to take you from us. I was inflicting a proactive punishment for a grievous sin that had yet to be committed. The sin of trying to take one of our crew. The fact that I had yet to meet you mattered not. Just the fact that I could tell Luffy had chosen you was sufficient enough reason. That’s the sort of crew you agreed to be a part of.”
Wings made of many hands spread wide, partially blocking out the light from the window behind her. Seeing the way they twitched with the movement made their unnatural make up all the more apparent. With so many hands at her beck and call, it was as though nothing was beyond her reach. Even the forbidden knowledge of the world could be grasped within her palms. Within the shifting mass of limbs, however, were not only hands… but also countless, dark eyes. Splitting open from previously unmarred expanses of skin. All of them were looking at him.
It was only upon seeing the many eyes scattered across the fleshy set of wings that he realized this woman’s form was not only crafted in the image of that of devils, but also in that of angels. They were quite known for not only their wings, but for their all-seeing eyes as well.
Her tone remained quiet, but steady, “A dear friend once told me– No one is born into this world to be alone… Those same words count for you as well, Alastor. You were not born to be alone, and you shall not be. Luffy won’t allow it. So just as you no longer fear the love he holds for you, do not fear the love you hold for him. For he shall protect those feelings of yours…”
However, despite her words, despite the way they echoed in his mind, Alastor was already sinking down into the darkness. Caught between the instinctual responses to fight, freeze, or flee, he followed the path he would never admit that he found the easiest to take.
In the next moment, he found himself raising up within the confines of his bedroom, claws tearing into the wall as he staggered to keep himself upright. He forced his breathing to start once more. It took a couple of gasping breaths for his thoughts to start once more as well.
“Ideal lady”? Well, THAT had been a rather hasty assumption! That woman was much too intense for even himself to handle… Shit. He left the grimoire behind. Not that he’d been allowed to take it with him. But now he’ll have to go back, and just the thought of it was painfully awkward–
So on edge was he that Alastor outright jolted in place when the door of his room slammed open. His ears twitching straight, it was only then that he realized they’d pinned themselves back at some point prior –the infuriating things. Swerving around in a violent, neck cracking motion, the tension melted into a sigh of exasperation at the familiar sight of Luffy strutting in as though he owned the place.
“You’d think at some point you would learn how to knock. Even an actual monkey could learn such a gesture given the right training, you know.”
“What happened?”
“ …Excuse me? Why would you assume– ”
The still blank-faced captain just stepped forward to grasp one of Alastor’s wrists in his hand, causing it to freeze up in his hold. “I felt there was something wrong with you when you came in. What happened?”
Alastor had to look away from the boy’s prying gaze. But even still, he tried to wave things away as simply as possible, not wanting the situation to blow out of proportion, “I merely had an undesired conversation with your archeologist, is all. It was nothing serious…”
“Huh? With Robin?” the usually follow up to that would be to question what the conversation had been about. But Luffy, like always, was the furthest thing from usual. Instead, the tension immediately bled out of the boy while a smile stretched across his face, unneeding of any additional words or clarification to feel reassured about the situation. “Oh, that’s fine then. Robin can scare people sometimes yeah.”
“I was not scared,” the snarl that drew out of Alastor pulled at the edge of his mouth, before even that tension deflated out of him with a huff. Luffy had yet to let go of his wrist, and now that he’d extracted himself from the previous conversation, he was quickly calming down. “But regardless, I need to get back to what I was doing with her. I shouldn’t have left so abruptly when our business is unfinished– ”
“You don’t gotta go back. Robin‘ll know ya need a break. She’ll take care of it!”
“ …She has no instructions of what I need of her. To be certain things are recorded properly, I should do it myself– ”
Still, Luffy cut him off to insist, “She’ll know what ya need her to do without asking! She’s like you, like that.”
The comparison unconsciously brought to mind Robin’s own comparison of their persons. The thought distracted Alastor enough that he found himself being led by Luffy over to the bedside. It wasn’t until he was pushed down by the shoulders to sit him down on the floor while the boy sat upright on the edge of the bed, his back pressing against Luffy’s legs as his head was guided back, that Alastor had to question, “What are you doing, exactly– ?”
He startled at the feeling of hands in his hair and on his ears. Despite their usual careless nature, Luffy was deliberate and gentle in his movements as his thumbs rubbed against the base of Alastor’s ears.
He immediately tried to pull away with a somewhat befuddled objection, “I am not some pet or child that needs consoling!”
Only to be pulled right back into place, objection predictably ignored. If anything, Luffy was the petulant child between the two of them as he replied with a whining pout, going right back to petting Alastor’s ears, “I know that! But it feels nice when they’re scratched, right? And I wanna pet ‘em cause they’re so soft ‘n’ fluffy, so let me! Stop thinking too much! It’s captain’s orders!”
Alastor just barely kept his jaw from dropping open at the words, eyes flashing wide before narrowing once more. “Captain’s orders? I don’t think you’ve once explicitly ordered me to do anything, and now that you do, it’s for THIS? You, my dear captain, are the very height of absurdity!”
“Shishishi~ Thanks!”
“That wasn’t intended as a compliment!”
Still, despite his protests… the careful massaging of his ears did feel quite soothing. Seeing as his “orders” provided a sufficient enough excuse not to struggle further, Alastor just accepted the inevitable, and fell back further into Luffy’s hold.
The more he relaxed, the more his ears fell to the sides to provide further access for the fingers messing his hair. He withheld a contented hum as his eyes drifted shut. The only thing holding him back from fully relaxing, however, lingered as quiet thoughts in the back of his mind. Whispering in hardly present echoes despite his intentions to ignore them…
“That you’re miserable. That there’s nothing for you to find joy in. That you there’s no one you love… Not a single one of those things is true”
“…Perhaps it had been true, what you had said about me. Before I met him. As it stands currently… I can’t remember having ever been happier than I am right now”
–It had been such a simple thing, to let the truth slip by. Unstated but implied. Why does it feel so much more daunting to have the words spoken straight to his face? To have it asked of him to speak them in turn? As though he would leave himself wide open to be stabbed through the heart. A man of words he was known to be, and yet, for the most important things, he cannot summon the courage to speak… What a coward he is–
“ …Luffy… Do I… Do you know… Is it okay, that I… Nevermind,” he ended with a sigh of self-induced frustration.
His frame was shifted to the side such that the side of his cheek lied against the other’s knees. The angle made it so that he was able to look up at Luffy without the boy stopping his motions. A soft, sunny smile shined down upon him.
“If ya wanna say something, just say it. But if ya don’t want to, then don’t. Hearing stuff I don’t need to is boring.”
The statement drew out a snort of a chuckle from the back of Alastor’s throat. With a flicker of an eyeroll, he was drawn out of his melancholy at the same time. “Of course that’s how you’d feel. It’s no wonder you never listen to anything people have to say. What if what I have to say is important?”
To that, Luffy just shined a cheeky grin down at him. “If it’s important, then I’ll know whether you tell me or not! Or at least the feeling of it. Stop worrying so much! I already told ya to stop thinking too hard didn’t I?”
Alastor stared up at the captain for an extended moment. Then, he allowed his eyes to fall closed once more under the sensations of a calloused palm running over the length of an ear. The strain of his stitches holding his smile in place alleviated as his tightly coiled internal state finally unwound itself. Once again, so very easily, he was drawn into the gravity and warmth of the Sun.
“Is that so… That suits me perfectly fine, then…”
‘No one is born into this world to be alone’ … He would have scoffed at the notion, before he’d met this boy… But that is a nice thought, isn’t it?
Chapter 17: Mother Sea
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
It wasn’t until late into the evening that Nico Robin returned from the Morningstar manor, to the point that the chef was beginning to fret about the woman potentially missing dinner. But thankfully she made her casual entrance before things could turn ugly.
It was after dinner that she covertly followed Alastor as he began to make his way back to his tower. Before they could get that far, he waited at the end of a hallway to face her directly, having already recollected himself well in advance. “My apologies for leaving you without assistance, dearie. I just need a moment to think things over, I guess you could say.”
“There’s no need to apologize. I clearly made you uncomfortable. I’m sorry to have caused you such distress,” her tone was still without much inflection, but seemed genuine nonetheless.
“Now now– Calling that distress is an exaggeration!” he deflected even while knowing it wasn’t actually far off the mark. He instead was quick to dismiss the issue to accept the papers Robin handed to him.
Drafted onto the parchment was a seemingly identical copy of the section of the grimoire that contained the summoning ritual, the summoning circle being carefully inked with perfect circles and symbols to match. It was clearly done by the skilled hands of a professional, certainly. Luffy had been right to say that he could leave the task to the archeologist. “Excellent work! This should be all the reference material I need…”
As he said this, however, Robin pulled out a rather large stack of additional papers. Specific thick sections of them were bound together by threads of string for organization. With brimming curiosity, he accepted them as well. Leafing through the booklets, he recognized them to be various exerts from more of the tomes he’d been searching through in the library.
“You separated out the books with contents you were interested in into that smaller section of yours, correct? I wasn’t quite sure what interested you the most about them, so I simply copied everything from them down. I have more of those that I can drop off at your studio.”
He’s certain this wasn’t what Lucifer had in mind with his stipulation to ‘not take any books’, but it was the Devil’s own fault for leaving such an open loophole, really. Alastor had to keep himself from gawking at the stack in his hands as he blinked his gaze back up at the woman. Though he wasn’t quite able to keep the entirety of his incredulous reaction out of his words as he questioned, “That must have been at least twenty books, my dear! Redrafting an entire magical tome is no meager task, let alone at that amount. How on Earth did you manage to get all this done by supper?”
“Many hands make light work,” she crossed her hands over her chest to sprout a couple more to wave at him in demonstration. And indeed, her ability was quite the handy one.
“Even still, there was no need for the extra work. I do thank you for your efforts though.”
“Of course there was a need for it. You weren’t able to look through them as much as you wished to because you had to leave early, and you used your favor to get access to them. It was only right that I provided them for you. Regardless, I enjoyed looking through the books as well. It’s interesting to have another on the crew who’s also invested in research to such a degree, though our particular fields may be different,” she left off her comment with a slight curve of a smile, and that was that.
He waited until the next morning before making any moves for preparation. The biggest hurdle for this ritual would be succeeding in the magic itself, as in channeling enough power to send out a call to the void and hoping they actually get the response they were looking for. But before that could even be attempted, there was at least one starting material he could not precure for himself that was an absolute necessity. If there was no way to source this material, he might as well call the whole thing off, so the first order of business was to question a crewmate that may have a solution to the issue.
And unfortunately for him, that crewmate was indeed the shipwright who’d built the thing he was attempting to summon, Franklin…
“Huh? Ya wanna know where to find the wood I got to build the Sunny? I don’t have a problem with talkin’ ‘bout it, Al Pal, but why the interest all of a sudden?”
“If you value your life, Franklin, you shall never refer to me by such a title ever again,” Alastor couldn’t help the threatening quip or the sneer that came with it before retracking back to the topic at hand, “To make a long story short, I happened to overhear the issue you all were discussing the other day as to how to retrieve your wayward ship, and I also happen to have a potential solution via summoning it directly to Hell. However to make such an attempt, along with the summoning circle which I’ve already acquired, I must have a miniature model of the object –which should not be an issue seeing that as its creator you should presumably be capable of making such a thing– as well as a piece of material from the object itself. As the location of the ship itself is unknown, it is my hope that a sampling of the wood from which the ship was sourced will be sufficient.”
To his vast displeasure, Franky pushed his sunglasses up to his hairline to look at Alastor with watery, shining eyes full of hope. The plan was apparently enough to distract the other from Alastor’s improper use of his name. Alastor leaned back just a tad when the cyborg crouched forward with an equally simpering tone, “For real? Ya might be able to get my girl back?! That’d be so SUUUUPER of ya, Al bro– !”
“Using Bro is even worse…”
“ –I’ll help ya with anythin’ ya need!” Franky ignored the complaint to give Alastor an annoying thumbs up and wink, before shifting his stance to slap one of his oversized palms onto his bicep with a clang of clashing metal.
“If it’s somethin’ from the Sunny, I can do you better than the Adam’s wood. I used my homemade steel to make up the parts of the Sunny Go that needed sheet metal, and all the metal from my body is made ‘a the same stuff! That’s the kinda thing yer lookin’ for, right?”
Alastor glanced over the man’s metallic body in vague surprise at the news, before immediately regretting it once his eyes reached the speedo. He averted his glare with a hard twitch at that point, the edge of his grin curling in muted disgust even as he agreed, “That would be precisely the type of item I require, yes. You don’t happen to have a similarly convenient solution for the predecessor ship that came before your own, do you? If so I’m all ears.”
While he spoke, Franky had already gotten to work acquiring a piece for Alastor’s use. By straight up tearing off one side of his half-star shaped forearm that is. The process was apparently painless, seeing that the cyborg didn’t even flinch. He was clearly familiar with the task of dissembling and reassembling himself. Alastor somewhat hesitantly accepted the offering when Franky handed it to him.
“You’re goin’ for the Merry too? That’s SUUUUUUPER SUPER!!! And we got the perfect guy for ya for that too! Ow!” It was only after Franky slammed his forearms together for his typical star pose that he glanced up at his self-disfigurement to question, “ …That’ll grow back, right?”
“I suppose we’ll find out!” Alastor replied a bit too cheerfully.
At that point, Franky led Alastor out of the hallway he’d pulled the man aside to and up to the Straw Hat suites.
They entered the one the cyborg and the other resident perverts inhabited to see that the living room was currently being used by Usopp, who tinkered with something on the couch while Luffy sat on the floor by his feet, poking at what was almost certainly a very poisonous Hellborn plant that resembled Snapdragon flowers in a pot set on the coffee table. When it snapped at the boy’s prodding finger, Luffy just slapped the thing across its proverbial face. The plant shied away into its pot in a quivering fright. “This thing’s boring, Usopp! Why’d Stolas give ya somethin’ like this?”
“It’s a good plant to use to make paralytic smoke bullets, Luffy. If you were anyone but yourself, you’d be seizing up on the floor after touching it that much… And don’t bully the poor guy! He’s a present you know– AHHH!!!”
Not one to pass up a prime opportunity, Alastor materialized directly behind the coward to lightly grasp Usopp’s shoulder with his curling claws. The man spun around to fall onto the floor in a heap. It was only after a good couple seconds of flailing that he blinked up at Alastor’s mean amusement and Franky, who came up to his side with an unimpressed glance at the Radio Demon, stuttering out, “A– Al! Don’t do that! Franky…? What’s up?”
Seeing that they sought out the other at Franky’s directive, he was the one to start, pointing a large finger into Usopp’s chest as he asked, “Usopp bro! Ya never said anythin’ about it, but that wood of yours is the same wood from the Going Merry, isn’t it?”
Two for two? That IS extremely convenient. The shipwright’s form incorporating the material of his own creation is one thing, but for the puppet to also similarly feature their other ship’s make, Usopp must’ve been particularly attached to the thing indeed. He leaned up from his spot on the ground to look up at Franky in surprise while confirming, “That’s right! You’re able to tell just like that even when you didn’t spend that much time with her?”
“Course! I’m FRRRRRANKY! The shipwright who built the ship of the Pirate King that sailed to the ends of the world! Recognizing the make of wood from a ship I’ve laid eyes on is nothing for me,” the man loudly boasted before dismissing the point, “But nevermind that. Al’s got some SUUUUPER news! He’s gonna summon the Sunny and Merry to Hell for us! All he needs ‘s a piece of the ships and their models. I already gave him some metal for the Sunny and agreed to make the miniature, but I never got a good enough look at the inside of the Going Merry to make a complete one for her. Ya think you can take care of that along with givin’ him some of your wood?”
Both the puppet as well as Luffy startled up at that. Usopp abruptly stood up to stare at Alastor in the face with an intensely hopefully expression, leaning in closer than he’d ever dared to be with the Radio Demon before. “Really?! You– you can bring them here? Even the Merry?! She’s been destroyed for years now!”
Alastor kept his smile carefully in place even as he attempted to backtrack, “Theoretically there is a possibility, yes. The ritual I will be attempting is not an absolute method, but it is likely the best chance there’d be for such a thing.”
His deliberate wording, of course, was completely ignored by a certain captain of his. The strength of Luffy’s body slamming into his own was such that even when he’d braced for it, he’d been unable to keep them from falling prone onto the floor. Alastor was entrapped in the octopus limbs of a rubbery Monkey as the boy rubbed his cheek into the demon’s now snarling face.
“AL’S gonna get Sunny and Merry?!?! You’re the best! Thanks a ton! Now the crew’ll all be together for real! Shishishi!”
“If you would deign to use those enlarged ears of yours, you would’ve heard me say that I have a chance of getting them,” he managed to hiss out through his constrained lungs.
“Naw– If ya say you’re gonna do it, you’re gonna do it! Cause Alastor’s strong enough to do anything he wants right?” Appealing to his own pompous sense of pride? How devious! He’d think it a deliberate provocation if he didn’t know any better…
Still, he’d indulged the captain’s excitement for long enough. And by long enough he meant it’s been ten seconds too long. Alastor quickly righted himself by dissolving into shadows to slip out of the hold and then rematerializing, standing up next to the couch and smoothing down the front of his suit with a huff. He only had a brief moment to recollect himself before Usopp stepped towards him once more, expression still hesitantly hopeful.
“If… If you could really do that, Alastor… then of course I’ll do anything to help! Anything at all! Even– cutting off a piece of myself. Oh god– ”
There was a stalling instance where the coward’s determination failed him, falling at the horrifying realization. Before he visually worked himself back up to bravery. Slapping his palms against his cheeks in a bracing manner, Usopp rambled to himself, “No– It’s for Merry! Do it for Merry! But please tell me you don’t need that much…? And it should grow back, right? That’s how this regeneration stuff works?”
“It will, yes. We certainly won’t be using Heavenly arms for this after all,” Alastor provided a more reassuring response than he had for Franky, not wanting the coward to lose his nerve before he could collect his dues. But at the same time, he was not quite kind enough to remind the other that their crew happened to have a certain deerling doctor with a rather miraculous healing ability.
Nodding mostly to reaffirm his own decision, Usopp continued, “Alright, then… Does it, uh– matter what I give you, exactly? Like can it just be a pinky? It shouldn’t be too bad if it’s something small…”
Looking straight at the Pinocchio-esque face, Alastor chimed pleasantly, “Something relatively small…? I think I know just the thing~ ”
To his immense hilarity, Usopp became immediately unrecognizable to Luffy upon Alastor cutting off the man’s nose. The captain, despite being present for the denosing, promptly questioned who Usopp was amidst all the puppet’s shrieking. Franky cried off to the side in a shout of outrage, as though some great atrocity had been committed. And after calming down and failing to convince Luffy of his identity, Usopp was forced to retreat back to his room to hide in shame until his nose grew back in. Alastor, of course, was uproariously cackling through all the chaos.
However, perhaps it was because of the distraction created by his own machinations that Alastor had been caught off guard for the captain’s next move. While he was in the middle of winding down from his fit, Franky had moved on to thinking next steps, “If we’re really doing this, I better get to building a deck to hold the ships though. It’s too bad there isn’t a lake or anything we can dock them in, but to move ‘em around in Hell I’ll probably have to install treads on them anyway so they’re land-worthy.”
“Oh! Franky should make ‘em like the Snake Captain’s ships too so that they fly! That’d be fun!”
“ …Huh? For real? I know you wouldn’t know this, Luffy, but that guy’s airships were probably made with a frame meant for flying. With the way our ships are weighted, makin’ one that flies too would be hard for even me! The Coup de Burst only works because the ship doesn’t have to stay in the air long term.”
“So Franky caaaan’t make it?” Luffy stretched out the word with a squinty-eyed look of confusion, like he couldn’t even fathom the possibility that his shipwright would be held back by the limitation of basic physics.
Franky immediately riled up in offense, snapping back, “I didn’t say that! I’m a shipwright that can build the impossible, ya know! I can rival even Vegapunk’s creations now!”
“Awesome! So Franky’ll do it then! Shishishi!”
“ …Did I just play myself?”
Unfortunately for the thoroughly played shipwright, the captain had already moved on with his victory in hand, humming in a rare instance of thought, “Hmmm– but even though flyin’ Sunny ‘n’ Merry around ‘ll be really fun, it still won’t be the same as sailing them. I wanna sail ‘em… OH! That’s right!”
Brightening in realization, Luffy then turned to Alastor to declare, “I’m gonna ask Lucy to make a sea!” and then promptly turned his back to rush out of the room.
It took Alastor precisely three seconds for his mind to catch up with the facts that one) Luffy had been referring to using his favor with Lucifer, two) he’d told Alastor for the purpose of fulfilling the promise he’d forced the boy to make about warning him before using the favor in an attempt to prevent him from using it for stupidly unnecessary purposes, and three) creating an entire ocean in Hell just to have a place to sail around a couple ships fully counted as a stupidly unnecessary purpose–
“Now wait just a moment– ! Fuck…” Alastor cursed under his breath after slamming the suite door open to see that the boy had already vacated the hallway.
The clock was ticking. The Radio Demon swiftly sunk into the darkness, speedily traversing the hotel and its many hallways to finally locate where Luffy had found Charlie in the lobby area.
“ –oh, you don’t need to go to the manor if you just want my dad. Here, I’ll call him for you!”
“No you shall not!” Alastor declared while using his mic to outright slap the Princess’s phone out of her hand.
But unfortunately, he was just a split second too late. She’d already pressed the dial. For someone who’d apparently been out of his daughter’s life for quite some time, the King had certainly circled back around to being one step away from being a helicopter parent, as he’d somehow answered the phone in time to hear it clattering to the floor, and then promptly manifested himself in the room with the swirl of his magic.
“Charlie?! Are you okay, what– happened…” Lucifer’s fretting trailed off at the sight Luffy struggling against the small tendrils Alastor had summoned hold his mouth shut, squinting at the happening while Charlie was the one to switch to fretting next to him.
But it was a fruitless effort. The captain was too strong for him when Luffy really tried. Therefore, while Luffy was quick to pry off the makeshift muzzle, Alastor grasped both of the boy’s shoulders to lean in close with narrowed eyes, hissing his objection, “Don’t use your favor for such a thing. If sailing is really a must for you, you’ll be able to do so in the Envy Ring where there’s already a sea present. There’s no need to make a new one. I already used my favor with the royal family on this endeavor, it’s too much of a waste to use yours too!”
“I don’t wanna wait ‘til then though! Sunny ‘n’ Merry need a place to sail around here too! It’s where all our friends are!” Luffy stubbornly pouted at him, before shifting to a questioning tilt as he backtracked, “And you had a favor? How’d ya use it?”
Alastor had to withhold a sigh, “I used it to find the blasted summoning ritual I’ll be using for your ships. This isn’t exactly common magicks we’re dealing with here. Robin and I had to search through the Morningstar library for something suitable for our purposes.”
“Oh… Thanks!” involuntarily, Alastor softened a tad as the boy sent him an appreciative smile, before the exasperation just rose back up once more when Luffy persisted, “But I still want a sea here for the Sunny and Merry! That’s where ships are meant to adventure! So make one, Lucy!”
“ …Huh? What?” the King startled at suddenly being jerked into the conversation, having been distracted by keeping track of their back and forth. He gave Luffy an incredulous once over as he clarified, “Wait, so if I’m getting this right… You want me to make, like, an actual ocean? Here, in the Pride Ring of Hell?”
“Yep!”
“ …How big does it need to be? We talkin’ big lake-sized ocean, or an ocean ocean?”
“As big as you can make it! I wanna sail it! Oh– and with islands to adventure on!” But of course. Might as well throw in the islands if he’s going to ask for an entire ocean…
“ …What you’re asking for will change all the geography of the Ring outside the city areas, you realize? This is permanent creation-level manipulation of the environment. Hell, even when I’ve messed around with stuff here before, I’ve never tried to do anything that big. And you’re asking for this– just to have a place to ride your ships around??? WHY?!”
“Because the sea is the freest place to be! So since I’m the most free, I want a sea!”
Luffy proudly stated this as though it was the obvious response, hands on his waist and his posture standing tall. Then, with a mischievous smirk and steady stare suggesting it was indeed intentional this time, he provoked, “Can’t do it?”
After staring at the boy just a bit longer, Lucifer’s incredulous bafflement died down into a considering look. Before he then ended on a humored uptick of a smile and furrowed brows.
He snorted, twirling his cane in his hand while sticking his own chin out in a show of pride, “ …HA! I never said that! I’ll just model out the topographical changes I’ll be doing first, and then make a flood that hasn’t been seen since Noah! You might have Alastor complaining, but you sure know how to use a favor on something big at least, along with being shameless enough to ask for it. I’ll say that much.”
“Haha! Thanks Lucy!”
“Is– Is it really okay to do something like this, though? This is a huge change for all of Hell!” Charlie pipped up with a worried look.
Lucifer just laughed while patting the girl on the back, reassuring, “I’m the big man in charge down here, Char-Char. If I say it’s fine, then it’s fine!”
When the King then turned to give Alastor an expecting look, raising a brow as though to ask if he had anything else to say, the Radio Demon just turned his face away in a drawling sigh, “I’ve learned well enough by now that if the captain has yet to listen to reason by this stage, then he won’t be changing his mind anytime soon. Complaining further would just be a waste of energy.”
“Huh. Looks like you are learning, red ears. Good for you,” he sent a narrow-eyed glare and sharp grin towards where Zoro was drinking at the bar for the comment. The smirking drunkard lifted his beer glass towards him before turning back towards Husk, who looked caught between humor and exasperation, to say, “Pour out one for him too. He gets less pissy when he’s drinking.”
“Say that again and the cook will be finding your remains in the fridge. And if you’re going to influence me into day drinking, at least order me a whiskey,” Alastor outright hissed at the other. But when Husk actually did pour him a glass of rye with a knowing side-eye, he accepted the drink without further objection from his shadow, who’d moved to get it for him.
As he took a sip, Lucifer snorted once more, flashing a glance his way. Alastor lowered his glass to question with a simmering tone, “Have something to say, Your Majesty?”
“Not really, no! Just… ” Lucifer averted his gaze in something of an eyeroll, his previous smirk pulling into a stupid grin to himself. “If you’d told me you were lookin’ through the library for a way to conjure a pirate ship, I wouldn’t ‘ve put up so much of a fuss about it, ya know. You really needed the royal library just to learn how to portal something over from the living world?”
Grin tensing at the slight, he corrected with insistence, “I am not merely conjuring a ship. Both their ships gained souls in life and were either destroyed or their location and status is currently unknown.” Actually both were destroyed, but as the Straw Hats around at the moment were unaware of that, he had to keep the farce up. “I am going to attempt to summon these souls from the aether, wherever they may be, thus remanifesting their form here in Hell. And to address your previous point– it’s not as though that was the only knowledge I gained. And even if I explained it, I doubt you would’ve believed I had such benign intentions regardless.”
“Oh, well that… is definitely more complicated, yeah. We had a spell like that in there?” Lucifer’s curious gaze drew back over to Alastor for a couple of seconds, before he turned away with a smirking shrug. “ …And I think I would have believed you, honestly. For as much as you like to act like a shady bastard, it seems you’re quite a people pleaser when you wanna be. Ha!”
“I beg your pardon– ”
“I’ll be back later today to fulfill your favor, Luffy. See ya then!” ignoring Alastor’s distorting image and complaint, the King whisked himself away to safety with a wink and swirl of liquid fiery red.
And indeed, Lucifer kept to his word, returning to the hotel just a bit before dinner with a timing that suggested he planned to take advantage of the opportunity to stay for Sanji’s meal after the deed was completed. He drew out his wings to fly to the top of the hotel and perch at the edge, stretching his arms over his head as his horns grew out and his form shifted in preparation. The sinners and pirates of the hotel alike stepped outside to watch in curiosity.
This included a certain Surgeon of Death, who apparently had not been appraised by any of the others as to what was happening as he asked, “What’s King Lucifer doing? I’ve got a bad feeling about it…”
Luffy, standing next to the man, turned to plainly explain, “I just asked Lucy to make a sea for Sunny and Merry since he owed me.”
“ …You asked for what– ”
Alastor’s schadenfreude amusement at someone else being rightfully offended at Luffy’s use of his favor was cut short when Lucifer’s voice sounded, echoing across not just the hotel, but likely all over the Ring, “Hellborn and sinners of the Pride Ring, this is your King Lucifer speaking! Just wanted to let everyone know that we’ll be going through some remodeling, so no one panic too badly, alright? But also no one step outside the city limits right now or you’ll probably die, and I won’t take responsibility for that!”
“Is that really enough of a notice– ” Vaggie’s deadpan cut off when the ground beneath glowed with unearthly power. It shook in a rumble that wasn’t quite violent enough to be a full earthquake but was certainly enough to be a concern.
The land of the Ring began to shift. The hillslope on the opposite side of the hotel stretched out deeper and deeper off in the distance. It seemed the land underneath all of Pentagram City was rising while the land outside its borders fell lower. The other more Hellborn inhabited cities of the Ring similarly rose higher, with the thin roads leading to and from the locations being the only strips of land left to connect their otherwise isolated points. There was also at least one other jut of land rising out in the wastes that could be seen from the hotel, the location that Alastor had noted the Pirate Empress had begun building out her new colony.
It wasn’t too long before the shaking stopped. But as the land shifted, dark clouds had already begun to roll in, settling not over the city, but the newly formed gorge surrounding. The storm grew out far and wide. Right in time with the ground stabilizing, thunder boomed, and rain came down in a deafening pour.
When he’d said that the God’s winds of change would blow through the city like a hurricane, this wasn’t quite the storm he had in mind for the metaphor… but he supposed it was still appropriate.
With the rain still going, Lucifer flew down from his perch, landing in front of Luffy with a poorly contained huff of exhaustion. He looked drained, which he should be considering the vast amount of energy that had to have cost him. It was almost a shame Alastor didn’t have a reason to plan the King’s assassination at the moment– it would’ve been the perfect opportunity! What a waste!
“And now we’re even. The rain will go through the night until it’s all filled up… Hope your cook can make an extra plate for tonight, kid, cause I am STARVED now!”
Sanji answered for himself at that, putting out his finished cigarette to start heading back to the kitchen, “Of course. The least we can do is feed you after having to deal with our captain’s ridiculous whims. And you can take some back with you to give to the beautiful Queen Lilith as well <3”
Lucifer leveled an extremely unimpressed squint of a glare at the pervert and his heart-eyes. “ …I am being so serious right now when I say if you EVER go lovey-dovey about my wife in front of me again, I will fucking drown you in the ocean I just made! And the same goes for my daughter too! Like holy shit, are you an idiot?!”
“He is,” Zoro agreed in full stoic seriousness, never one to pass on the opportunity. When a multi-leg kick flew his way, he was quick to parry with the unsheathing of a blade.
Meanwhile, Trafalgar was trying to complain to the rest of the Straw Hats in the midst of all of them filing back inside, “How are you all just okay with this? Your captain had a favor from the King of Hell and he used it to make a random ocean for no good reason! Even if you’re used to him, surely at least one of you has to see the issue here?!”
“Yes, one of us did. It was Alastor, and he accepted things as they were after failing to convince Luffy otherwise.” At the glare her commentary earned from Trafalgar, Nico Robin just deadpanned, “Is there a problem? I was simply answering your question.”
Lifting a hoofed hand into the air, Chopper offered hesitantly, “I mean– We didn’t expect it since we didn’t know the King could do something like this, but hearing about it makes sense…”
“Luffy wants to sail, but there’s no sea to sail. Therefore, he’ll have one be made, even if it inconveniences everyone else and changes the entire environment of Hell itself. That’s our captain’s logic alright…” Nami sighed in exasperation with arms crossed over her chest. Even with her usual fiery temper, even she saw this as a ‘predictable’ occurrence in the context of Monkey D. Luffy.
“Indeed! The captain is very skilled at making things the opposite of complicated! No need to think too hard for straightforward solutions. And he can hardly be blamed for having a heart that draws him out to the romance of the sea. Many pirates have such a heart, including myself…” there was but a three second pause before Brook predictably joked, “Except I don’t have a heart! Yohohoho!”
“ …So we’re all just gonna pretend that this is fuckin’ normal then?!”
“Well Husky, not sure what else we can do at this point. Luffers ‘s a damn force ‘a nature even without gettin’ the King of Hell ta bring on the actual force ‘a nature for ‘em,” Angel was the one to respond to Husk’s frustrated bewilderment with a multi-armed shrug.
That didn’t appease the irate cat in the slightest. And as though to provoke him further, Cherri also shrugged with a smirk and excited raise of the eyebrow and fist pump, “All I know ‘s that ya guys better get your beach bods ready, cause when this rain’s done we are partyin’ on that new beach for sure! Ha! I haven’t had a beach party since before I kicked it! I knew Monkey would keep things fun ‘round here, but this ‘s even better than I thought!”
“The water will make it easy to drown the roaches! Hehehe~ ” was little Niffty’s charmingly deranged addition.
It was only then that, after glancing around at everyone, Chopper noticed, “Huh… Wait a second, why isn’t Usopp out here with us?”
“Usopp bro’s nose still hasn’t recovered from Al cuttin’ it off…”
“HUH?! HE WHAT?!”
Alastor kept his tone unaffected and casual as he waved the concern off with a smile, “Aha! No worries! It was needed for the ritual to summon one of your ships. I had consent!” Though technically not so for the specific body part he’d taken.
After Franky finished dabbing at his eyes, still a bit weepy over the event, he shifted to point at Alastor with a shout, “That was SUUUPER NOT cool of ya, Al! That nose is the core of his identity! Seein’ him without it is just WEIRD! It’s unnatural, I tell ya! A violation of the way the world works!”
He gave the cyborg unimpressed side-eye at that. “You are the absolute last person I want to hear complaining about what’s weird or unnatural…”
“Even more than that, someone needs to get him a doctor! Why didn’t you get him one right away?!”
“That’s you, darling deerling.”
“Oh… right.” Chopper calmed down upon Alastor’s now officially reoccurring reminder. “I’ll go up to his room before I eat, then.”
“Oh wait! If you’re gonna fix up Usopp, can ya do me too?” Franky asked while sticking his arm, which was still missing the chunk he took out earlier. Chopper shrieked at the sight of it, eyes blowing out wide.
“WHY DID YOU WAIT THIS LONG TO ASK ME?!?! SAY SOMETHING SOONER!!!”
In the face of all the side commentary and antics, Luffy just laughed to himself, smiling brightly, “Haha– It’s great havin’ everyone back! I really missed you all! Now if only Usopp ‘ll come back from where he disappeared to… It’s a mystery!”
“You really don’t listen to a thing anyone says around you, Straw Hat-ya…” Trafalgar finally ended the trial of a conversation with a long, enduring sigh.
They all made their way inside for dinner, after that. As one of the last of the group to step through the hotel doors, Alastor looked over to Jinbei who followed after him. The fishman seemed to be in good spirits, leading him to comment, “I noticed you didn’t give your two cents on our captain’s ridiculous whim, good man. You don’t seem phased about it in the slightest even.”
To that, Jinbei gave him a wide, shark-toothed grin, “Waha! Yes, perhaps to most others, Luffy’s request is a selfish extravagance. But I’m actually quite happy to hear of it! The sea has been my home my whole life after all. Even when it hasn’t been too long down here, I’ve already come to miss it. It was somewhat daunting to think I’d have to go my afterlife without it, with the exception of us reaching the Ring of Envy that is. And the fishmen and merfolk sinners who have never traversed the Rings and never will must feel similarly. So while it wasn’t our captain’s intention, I do believe this whim of his will bring a significant portion of people much joy, and I am included in this number!”
Alastor allowed himself a couple seconds to consider that perspective. It was admittedly not something he’d thought of, previously. But indeed, it would make sense that even more than the sea-fairing pirates, a species born of and meant to live in the sea itself would find the lack of one disconcerting.
It was with a hum of agreement that Alastor finally shrugged off the last of his annoyance at the outcome, giving a friendly pat to the helmsman’s large arm, “Well there’s no use in dwelling on what the favor could have been used for now that it’s already gone, is there? I suppose it’s a consolation to know that more than just the captain himself will benefit from this ridiculousness!” Not that he cared about whether the others of Jinbei’s kind saw any benefit or not. But the man himself did, and Alastor was not so petty as to discount Jinbei’s own delight on the matter when he was one of the few persons on the crew Alastor fully enjoyed the company of…
Lucifer joined them for dinner that night, sitting next to Charlie with a cheerful air about him that didn’t bring notice to the grand show of power he’d displayed earlier in the evening. Alastor meanwhile was settled between Luffy, who insisted on sitting next to him likely in his joy at Alastor’s future endeavor to revive his ships, and Brook, who while he didn’t mention it aloud was very happy to hear that Alastor had found a viable method for his assistance and was grateful for it, even when Alastor had yet to produce results. All of the crew seemed excited about the matter where the ships were concerned, actually. The cook even made gumbo as the main course of the night as if to reward him.
Alastor had to withhold a snide comment or two about how they could all be so attached to a couple ships of all things. Not wanting to rebuild them out of respect to the spirits they once held is one thing, but from the way some of them talked with overflowing anticipation about it, you’d think he’d made a deal to bring back someone’s first born child from the grave.
It was only after dessert had concluded –beignets as well? The chef truly was spoiling him, but he wasn’t about to complain!– that Robin subtly made her own exit alongside him. She must have either sensed or predicted his lack of understanding, since she explained, “Our ships are more than just the vessels in which we traveled on, Alastor. They are part of the crew as well. And even more than that, they are our home. By bringing them back to us, you are bringing back our home, so of course everyone would be grateful to you.”
“Is that how it is…” he quietly mulled over the idea. Folding his arms behind his back along with his cane, he glanced away from the devilish woman as he admitted, “I have not had a ‘home’ of strong attachment since before I died, and that was quite a long while ago. So I suppose I don’t quite empathize still, though I am glad that you all are looking forward to it. I will confess, however, that it does add a bit of pressure as to accomplishing the task.”
Luffy will be most disappointed should it turn out the ritual, or even worse, Alastor’s power isn’t enough to bring them here…
She gave him a slight smile, saying, “I also had not had a home for a long time before I joined the crew. Though compared to how long you’ve been in the afterlife, it wasn’t very long at all. I’m sure you’ll come to understand. And you shouldn’t worry too much. Everyone has full confidence in your ability.” He’s saying that’s the problem here… “And even in the case you do fail, no one will laugh at you.”
“ …That wasn’t exactly the thing I was worried about in that regard,” he deadpanned back, eyes narrowing on the woman’s still unaffected smile.
Expression diming slightly, Robin just replied in a considering hum, “Is that so? Well, I can’t say that no one would cry in disappointment, because most certainly a couple of them would. I myself would be saddened.”
“You are NOT helping.”
“I realize this, and I apologize. I’ve been told I’m not the best at providing comfort.”
“I wasn’t looking for any pathetic comfort!”
“ …I’m quite sure you were, actually.” Alastor finally had to proverbially throw his hands in the air and give up on the conversation, at that. Robin just watched in silence as he turned away from her with a huff to walk off.
The heavy pitter patter of the rain lasted through the night. Luffy deigned to spend the night with him, and thus it was one of the ones in which he actually slept. When his bleary eyes fluttered open the next morn, the sound of the rain had stopped. He made the trip up to his radio tower after redressing himself.
Looking out the window of the high vantage point provided a perfect view of the vast, blue sea that surrounded the city and one side of the hotel. It was now certified beachfront property, with the hill rolling down from the backside of the hotel leveling off into a stretch of rusty-looking sand. Not quite the pristine white beaches of Earth, but likely the closest they could get. The sight of the water went on as far as the eye could see. Just like the ocean he remembered of the living world. There was even an ocean breeze that swept in when he stepped out onto the balcony, the salty scent tickling his nose as the wind ruffled his hair.
It had been almost a century since he’d last seen the ocean. Seeing the contrast the deep blue cut across the otherwise red landscape and sky… he realized he’d forgotten how beautiful it could be.
“IT’S THE SEA!!! He really made it! Hahaha!” Luffy laughed joyously as he rushed next to where Alastor stood before the balcony railing spikes, looking over the scene with shining eyes and a smile brighter than the sun itself.
When the boy grasped two of the fang-like structures, pulling his body back to stretch out his arms, Alastor already knew the move he was about to make. Does he attempt to stop the captain? Certainly not!
“Gum Gum Rocket!”
“Have a nice fall, dear captain! Ahahaha!” Alastor laughed with gusto at his own self-referencing joke –who doesn’t like a good callback?– sparing a hand to wave at Luffy as he went flying over the side of the balcony. His grin remained wide and amused watching Luffy shoot himself far over the water, eventually arching downward to land in a great splash amongst the waves.
After an extended pause where the only sign of Luffy were the bubbles coming up from where he landed underneath the water, the boy’s torso suddenly breeched the surface in a mess of flailing arms. There was a great amount of splashing to be had in his apparent attempts to keep himself afloat. He choked out a garbled shout, “I– Still can’t swim– !”
“AHAHAHAHA– ”
“YOU IDIOT!!! We just got this ocean and that’s the first thing you do?!?!”
Alastor just cackled harder at the swordsman’s berating and the sight of him discarding his robes to run onto the beach and dive into the waves. He was very practiced in retrieving his drowning captain, as he swam through the sea with swift, strong strokes until he reached the struggling mess of a Monkey. After he pulled Luffy to his side, the random splashing stopped and the boy relaxed in a breath of relief.
Seeing that the rest of the crew were assembling on the beachfront due to the commotion, after calming down from the last of his lingering giggles, Alastor straightened himself back up before sinking into the shadows. He rematerialized not too far from where Nami and Robin stood amidst the red sands. Nami was next to speak, shouting out to the boys in the water with confusion, “Hey wait a second– Luffy! You’re still able to move even though you’re in the water, aren’t you?!”
“Huh?” Both Luffy and Zoro looked up at the woman with a blank look. Kicking his feet in the water behind him, Luffy’s grin flashed back to blindly bright as he yelled back in excitement, “Oh YEAH! I CAN! How am I doing that?! Haha!”
Ever the knowledgeable one, Nico Robin offered with a slight uplift to her tone, “How curious. I thought this might be the case. We’re technically no longer Devil Fruit users, after all. Our abilities are purely from our demonic forms and power. As our Devil Fruits reincarnated upon our deaths and are no longer part of our bodies, we should no longer react abnormally to being in the sea.”
“So we can swim now? That’s great!” Chopper cried out in similar excitement to Luffy, running through the sand to jump in the water.
Only to rise back up to the surface in a similar flailing mess of hooves, choking out, “I– I’m still drowning!”
“NOT YOU TOO!!! Why are you both like this?!” Nami snapped back in evident frustration at being surrounded by such idiots. Alastor, meanwhile, started up a renewed fit of laughter at the deerling’s struggles.
“You do need to have learned how to swim prior to having had a Devil Fruit. Otherwise, you still won’t know how to swim. I never learned either since I’ve had my Fruit for as long as I’ve been able to remember.”
“I realize that’s common sense, but perhaps say that part sooner next time, Robin…” Jinbei suggested while quickly stepping out into the waves. He was tall enough that he could still stand properly in the portion of the water Chopper was drowning in. Taking the creature in with one arm, the reindeer gasped out in exhaustion.
“Th-Thanks, Jinbei…”
“Of course,” was the polite reply, before the fishman kindly offered to the group at large, “Seeing as there seems to be a need for it, how about I hold a swim lesson for the previous Devil Fruit users of the crew? It’d be good for them to learn now that they’re physically capable of it.”
“We can learn to swim?! Thanks Jinbei!” Both Luffy and Chopper cheered from their respective person-shaped floatation devices. Robin just sounded a hum of agreement along with a nod.
“Yohoho– We’ll all be able to swim now? How wonderful! It’s been so long since I’ve been able to!” Brook chimed in delight from his place on the beach with his hands cupping his cheekbones, walking up along with Usopp.
To that, Jinbei looked over the skeleton with an apologetic examination, before explaining, “Actually… In your case, Brook, I’m not sure you’ll have enough body mass to have proper water resistance, and you won’t be able to float that well. It would be dangerous for you to be fully submerged since your strokes likely won’t be able to overcome the currents or move around that well. We can test how much you’re able to do, however.”
“Oh… I see… That would make sense, yes…” Brook sighed, bending over with a depressed air about him. Usopp awkwardly patted him on the back in consolation. “Bones are not made to swim, after all, and I am all bones… Because I’m a skeleton… Skull Joke! YOHOHOHO~ ” Usopp fell over into the sand in a shriek of alarm when Brook suddenly recovered, popping back upright with his arms going out wide at the delivery of those last words.
Suddenly, the sound of some new-fangled modern piss excuse for music started. They looked back towards the hotel to see the usual gang rolling in, all dressed up in swimsuits and beach gear with Cherri Bomb being the one to hold the offending stereo underneath her arm. Dressed in the skimpiest bikini Alastor has ever laid eyes on, Angel jeered at the pirates as Charlie excitedly began setting up an umbrella with Vaggie, “If you chumps ‘re done drownin’ yerselves, how’s about ya get changed yeah?! We’re havin’ a beach day today! Princess’s orders! Best fuckin’ group exercise she’s had us do for sure!”
Much to Alastor’s and the girls’ displeasure, the pervert cook sounded off at that, wiggling in place with his heart-eyes and nose bleeding profusely, “OoOoOoOh~ Miss Nami and Miss Robin in swimsuits?! And look at the Princess! Miss Vaggie! Miss Bomb! Such beautiful ladies, my heart can’t stand it– ”
The mood took a turn for the better, however, when the King made good on his threat. Suddenly flying forward, Lucifer outright punted Sanji over the water a good ways off the shore. While Luffy’s face and gaze tracked the man’s path as he went overhead to land in a splash, Zoro didn’t even bother a glance, keeping his focus on swimming back to the beach with the captain against his side.
“I fucking told you BITCH! I’ll pluck your damn eyes out before I let them leer at my little girl like that!”
“Daaaad… But also, thanks?” Charlie couldn’t up too much of a resistance to the parenting when it led to the ultimate preferred outcome of her and her girlfriend no longer being ogled.
Usopp cried out in concern, hand hovering over his eyes as he looked out towards the now stilling area of the water Sanji went under, “Z– Zoro! I think you might actually need to get Sanji! He’s not comin’ back up!”
“Guess he’ll drown, then. Lucifer did tell him that’s what would happen. It’s the idiot cook’s own fault.”
“You can’t serious leave him to die like that?!”
“For real, Zoro bro! Who’s gonna man the beach BBQ if Sanji drowns?!”
Having deposited the soaking wet reindeer onto the sand, Jinbei turned right back around into the water to collect the next Straw Hat on the list. Despite not saying a word, his tired silence spoke volumes enough.
It didn’t take too long for the Straw Hats to reorganize themselves and come back out onto the beach in their swimwear, along with bringing various items to enhance their beach experience. The only exceptions to this were Franky, who essentially already constantly dressed in improper beach attire, and Alastor who, after watching their antics with amusement, moved to turn back inside after it seemed the fun was over. “Well, you all have a blast! But as it is, it’s rather well-known suits and sand don’t mix quite right, so I’ll be spending the day elsewhere.”
That earned him several judging looks, including a pout from the captain himself that looked rather adorable when paired with the brightly colored floaties on his arms. “Huh? No! Al needs to stay! Just get changed too.”
Alastor deflected the issue with a causal wave, “I’m afraid that sort of style doesn’t suit me.”
“Who cares?!”
Franky stuck his head in between to back up Luffy, “Yeah Al bro, just chill out ‘n’ hang for a while! Speedo is SUUUPER freeing to wear!”
Alastor didn’t even bother withholding the reflexive eye twitch that came from the suggestion, his smile sharpening unpleasantly. It distracted him from the sight he caught from the side of his vision of one of Robin’s mouths manifesting on the neck of a thoroughly spooked Usopp to whisper something into the puppet’s ear. “Even if I did put on swimwear, it would most certainly NOT be a SPEEDO, of all the ungodly things! You are significantly detracting from the captain’s argument rather than supporting it!”
“Hey, don’t knock it ‘til ya try it– ”
“I will literally perish from second death before I even consider trying it– ”
“Green Star: Exploding Pinecones!”
His growl was cut off by the announcement of the sniper’s attack. Both himself and Franky turned their glares away from each other to look up and see Usopp had shot the aforementioned pinecone into the air, which then hit the nearby hovering VoxTek drone straight on. It exploded in a fiery bomb to blast apart the machine into metallic smithereens.
Alastor then redirected his stare of vague surprise over towards Robin, who just answered the look with a tad of a smile, then back to the sniper in question, who was looking at him with a curious, waiting expression. There was an extended pause before Alastor looked away from them both to shrug with both hands.
The shadows enveloped him briefly before falling away to reveal he’d changed into a buttoned up patterned short sleeved shirt and swim trunks, his monocle switched out for tinted sunglasses perched at the top of his head. His limbs with their ombre fade into dark coloring and the red hooves of his now sandal clad feet clearly seen for once. He then ignored Charlie, Angel, and Lucifer all falling over themselves in the midst of their splashing in the water in shock at the sudden change, acknowledging, “I suppose there’s no harm in joining the festivities for a day.”
“YAAAAH!!!”
Luffy’s exclamation of excitement was contrasted by Usopp shouting in alarmed exasperation, “So that Vox guy was the problem! Next time just say something! Actually, why do you even let him spy on you like that?! It’s so creepy! And you can take care of his drones yourself, can’t you?”
Alastor put on an intentionally dismissive air as he set about setting up an umbrella and lawn chair for himself, as well as a small folding table to conjure his radio on to play his tunes, explaining in an offhand manner, “It’s true that I lack a preference for such casual attire, I’m simply making an exception for the occasion. And as for that picture-box’s flying contraptions, their presence typically does not bother me that much. In fact, I gain much amusement from the knowledge that he is torturing himself by forever watching me from afar, reaching for any semblance of satisfaction or happiness only for his suffering to persist. It’s just in this sort of circumstance that it becomes most distasteful.”
“ …I seriously can’t tell which of you is worse in this case.”
“It’s me, good man! Always has been, always will be! Aha!”
Truthfully, at least half of the reason why Alastor had bothered to stay was to witness the absolute disaster that was sure to be the Straw Hat’s “swim lesson”, and he hadn’t been disappointed in the slightest. The fishman of the group, known for his everlasting patience, was starkly put to the test in the way he had his hands full with Luffy excitedly kicking himself into the deeper end of the shore only to be overturned by a large wave, forcing Jinbei to have to retrieve him. Only for Jinbei to then have to turn around and repeat the rescue with Chopper as his small form and innertube were washed away by the tide, and then back to the captain who had recovered enough to go at it again. Rinse and repeat. The only one semi-competent at the task was Robin, though she was noticeably reserved in her swimming, still very unpracticed compared to someone who’d been swimming since childhood. Brook, on the other hand, just floated about in his own innertube. He seemed to have enough fun with just that before he was also put under by a rough wave, accidently taking out a nearby boogieboarding Usopp with him in the process and forcing Jinbei into action once more. Eventually, the first mate joined in as a second lifeguard if only to give the helmsman a break.
“The poor fellow. Will he ever know rest?” while the words themselves were sympathetic, there was an obvious pitch of amusement to Alastor’s voice.
“Not until at least Luffy and Chopper get out of the water. Jinbei’s really too good to the lot of them,” the cat burglar sighed from the lounge chair next to his, before her tone lifted in appreciation, “Oh– thanks Sanji.”
“Of course Miss Nami~ It’s my eternal duty to serve you!” the cook gladly replied as he handed the woman her cocktail. He did so with remarkable coordination considering he was blindfolded. Lucifer had forced him to wear the thing just to ensure there would be no more additional leering at his daughter while in her swimsuit. Alastor was only somewhat surprised when the sightless man then turned towards him with the second drink on the platter he’d brought over, which seemed to be an iced coffee. “I’m only bothering to bring this over cause you’re next to Nami, so you better be grateful she’s gracing you with her lovely presence!”
Alastor accepted the chilly cup to drink from the twisty straw, confirming that it was to his satisfaction before cheerfully snarking, “Certainly! I’d much rather thank this charming young lady than a horrid pervert such as yourself. Now don’t you have a grill to attend to?”
“Shitty red ears!” Sanji stormed off after the insult even when he did, indeed, go back to grilling burgers. All the while still blindfolded. He still considers the fact that Luffy had managed to land a chef this skilled to be a feat just short of a miracle. Sanji would surely be working as the executive chef of some top-of-the-line fine dining establishment if it wasn’t for the fact he was a walking sexual harassment lawsuit in the making…
“Franky! Watch me drown the mama bugs in front of their children! Hehehehe– ”
“Ow! You are one freaky little lady! And NOT in the good way! …But you’re tiny enough to test out this toy boat I built just cause, wanna go at it?”
“YEAH!!! Oh, I just knew you were the best-est ultimate bad boy~ ”
The swim lesson officially went from awful to a single step below catastrophic, at that point. It was to such a degree that Robin promptly abandoned the others to join him and Nami’s lounging, slowly swimming back to the beach so as to not be caught in the crossfire that was Niffty attempting to run over each and every swimmer in the water with her newly gifted deathtrap. “Toy boat” indeed– what kind of toy boat requires a literal functioning cannon and rocket booster engine? He might’ve been tempted to put up a fuss about it if dear Niffty wasn’t having such a blast, both literally and figuratively.
And of course, it wasn’t just Charlie’s entourage or the Straw Hats who were enjoying the new beach. A multitude of the newer hotel guests came out to have fun in the water themselves, though they made sure to give their betters a good berth so as to not be caught in any of the precarious situations that tended to occur around powerful demons. In fact, it was probable that many of the city’s sinners had gone to check the stretch of beach at some region surrounding their new island. It was too much of a novelty to not be the sole focus of attention for the day. When Bartolomeo came out only to start snapping away with his camera at the Straw Hats beach outfits, as he so excitedly fanned over, Alastor felt absolutely no remorse in immediately summoning a tentacle to destroy the thing. Much to the fanboy’s dismay. In a somewhat amusing display, Trafalgar sulked underneath his own umbrella seated on a beach towel, still managing to convey the expression of not wanting to be there despite choosing to come out entirely of his own accord.
And when Boa Hancock approached to look out over the scene, she was thankfully not in a bathing suit. Meaning Alastor didn’t have to endure anyone ogling her as she disgustingly fawned over Luffy playing in the water– though admittedly her admirations seemed to be less of an expression of lust and more so just general “crushing innocent maiden” flustering. When the boy went under for a brief moment, however, the Empress regained enough lucidity to comment on the circumstances, “Along with my Luffy so happily enjoying this new sea, I must admit… I am satisfied with the King’s efforts. With Amazon Lily Eterna being an island once more, we will be in a better position to guard our land and restrict access from unwanted men. I suppose I will thank you on behalf of this for the consideration given to us despite it not being asked of you, Queen Lilith.”
His mood immediately soured upon realizing who the Empress had arrived with. Alastor did his best to ignore the new presence even when he clearly picked up Lilith’s end of the conversation, “Certainly. It would have been illogical to allow you use of the land only to flood you out of the area. I do apologize for the additional burden this will place on your building efforts, however. Your people as well as others of the Ring will surely require shipping vessels, but as there was no need for them in Pride prior to this, there may be a delay in the Hellborn transporting them over from Envy to sell on the market.”
“It’s but a minor consideration. I am used to working around the restrictions that come with outside materials being only available through ships. Though, while they shall be sufficient in the short-term, I am also doubtful that the quality of the Hellborn made boats will be up to my standards…” at the trailing thought, the Snake Princess suddenly stepped forward to point a finger at Franky, who glanced back at her with raised sunglasses as she ordered, “You, strangely shaped man of my beloved’s crew! You are the shipwright who built the ship of the Pirate King, correct? I demand your services for the commission of the Eterna Kuja Pirates’ new ship!”
There was a slight delay as the man had to wrap his head around the proposition. Scratching at his chin, the cyborg almost –almost, because there wasn’t a shamed bone in that strangely shaped man’s body despite the fact that he very much should be ashamed– hesitantly responded, “For a smokin’ babe like you I usually wouldn’t turn ya away, but I’m my captain’s shipwright above all else. It’d take away a good amount of my time to do your commission, and after Al gets our ships I’ll probably be busy with them, so ya need to get Luffy’s go ahead first…”
Predictably, Boa snapped back in full offense, the snakes in her hair hissing along with her, “Of course I wouldn’t be so crass as to demand one of Luffy’s men away from him without proper compensation! I will pay for both the materials of the ship and your time.”
“You heard her, Frrrrranky. You better enjoy your day off today, because starting tomorrow… You’ll be working on that ship for the Pirate Empress,” the navigator’s words and smirk were filled with greedy intentions that had Alastor’s own grin stretching wide at the cyborg’s impending misfortune. Lowering her sunglasses from her seat to reveal the berri signs in her eyes, Nami sing-songed, “Not to mention how much demand there’ll be for a skilled shipwright like you with the current void in the market! I’m sure we’ll be able to find some other sinners looking for a good ship or two! You’re about to make me a good amount of profit~ ”
“YOU AIN’T THE CAPTAIN! But also OW! I feel like I’m about to be SUUUUPER used! And I won’t see a berri of it! Ain’t this is indentured servitude?!” Franky ended the dramatics with sobbing tears, his half-star forearm coming up to rub at his eyes.
It was approaching the evening by the time Cherri and Angel Dust challenged Zoro to a drinking contest, Husk most certainly sitting out from the attempt due to his remembered previous defeat. And while it had been a closer call with Cherri putting up a better fight than either the spider or cat, the swordsman ultimately proved himself to be the reigning alcoholic. After which Sanji promptly started a fight with the man for daring to win against a “beautiful lady”. There was no setting sun to fall beyond the waves, merely the darkening of the scarlet sky. But on the horizon now, there was a strange mix of the colors, casting the dusk in a slight purple haze that Alastor saw as a fair improvement to the previous scenery.
Still, even with the coming night, the day had not been declared over quite yet. Instead, a roaring bonfire was started while people retreated from the water and other various activities to gather for dinner. As King Lucifer stood back to look over his handywork with an appreciative eye, Luffy approached the bonfire with bursting elation, shouting in excitement. Since Alastor himself had just finished up disassembling his lounging area, he also walked over to watch the twisting flames of the fire.
Lucifer started the small talk with a laugh at the captain’s reaction, “Ha! Figures a wild child like you would like a good bonfire! I think I did a top-notch job with this one. It’s kinda been a while, but I still got it!”
The King pointed into his chest with a thumb in a prideful look. While Alastor was about to take the delightful opportunity to burst the man’s bubble, Luffy’s cheerful agreement defused the opportunity, “Yeah! Campfires are the BEST! But ya also did really good with the sea! Jinbei likes it a lot, and the Sunny Go and Merry will feel right at home here! So thanks a ton, Lucifer! You’re really good at makin’ stuff, ya know that? I can’t make anything like you can– all I’m good at is breaking stuff! Shishishi!”
Lucifer startled at the words, whether it was due to the captain’s sudden use of his actual name or the praise wasn’t quite clear. That is, until, his eyes began to glisten, his smile wavering as tears threatened to fill them. Thoroughly touched.
Alastor didn’t really have it in him to blame the man when he himself was perfectly aware of how acutely Luffy’s words tended to strike, such that they would land themselves within the cavity of one’s chest to make themselves at home.
It took Lucifer a moment to force his expression to remain steady, swallowing down the potential tears to keep them from falling as he responded in earnest, “Th-Thank you, Luffy… That means a lot coming from you…” The man then visibly reoriented himself in an attempt to further regain control, turning to instead address Alastor with a feigned smirk, “So– still don’t like that favor your captain chose, Al? Or have you come around to it too? I think you have, right?”
After a few seconds of reflection, Alastor replied with an indifferent hum, “Hm. It wasn’t the worst thing he could’ve used it on, at least.”
“Oh come on– You like it! You had fun today too, I know you did! Just admit it!” An apple-topped cane poked him in the side at the provocation. Alastor batted it away with a strike from his mic as his grin tightened unpleasantly.
“Saying such a thing could potentially be misconstrued as appreciation for your work in this context, so I’ll refrain from doing such. So as to prevent your already sizable ego from growing any larger, you understand.”
“Are you being serious right now– ”
However, even as he and Lucifer devolved into pointless bickering, Luffy just laughing at the both of them without a care in the world… Alastor would admit to himself, at least, that he held more appreciation for the new addition than he thought he would. It had been a happy day in Hell, indeed.
Notes:
For those of you not as far down the One Piece rabbit hole, the title of this chapter "Mother Sea" is a reference to an OST by the same name. But the unofficial/unserious title for the chapter is "The Obligatory Beach Episode" lmao It was named that for a while in my drafts.
Chapter 18: Seven
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
It was only a couple of days after the creation of Hell’s new ocean –which Lucifer had officially deemed the Red Sea, ironically enough– that the meeting of the Overlords was set to take place, with the meeting spot being a reception room on an upper floor of the Hazbin Hotel itself. However, not just anyone from the hotel would be allowed, as attendance was limited. Among their number, Alastor would be present along with Luffy, Jinbei, Trafalgar, and the Snake Princess, with of course King Lucifer and Queen Lilith as well as Charlie and her paramour being in charge of discussions. Alastor had deigned to postpone attempting the ritual to summon the Straw Hats’ ships until after the meeting. Assuming that he was indeed successful, the ritual would consume likely all of his demonic power, and it would take some time to regenerate the energy. He would prefer not to attend such a gathering in a relatively weakened state.
The circumstances did introduce the question as to who, exactly, counted as an Overlord these days now that Soul Contracts had fallen out of favor. The well-established fellows of Zestial, Carmilla, along with Rosie and Alastor himself had been invited, as well as the Overlords typically invited to such meetings. The Vees however were now rather on the fence as to how they were regarded. They still had some amount of their powerbase left, but along with the significant chunk that had been taken out of it, the public humiliation of their defeat considerably damaged their reputations to the point where some sinners were referring to them as has-been Overlords, much to his own amusement. When Alastor questioned the King on the matter just moments before the meeting was to take place, though, Lucifer confirmed that he had indeed invited them still…
“They still have a good amount of sinners working under them as normal workers, so I sent them a notice yeah… And also I was kinda curious to see if they’d even show up, considering Luffy and Hancock are here.”
“Well let us hope your curiosity does not lead to a more unproductive meeting due to someone being defenestrated from the premises…”
Lucifer just rolled his eyes at the forewarning, crossing his arms over his chest. “Hey now, if anyone is throwing anyone out a window, your captain is definitely gonna be the one doing the throwing! Don’t act like that wouldn’t be something you’d find ‘entertaining’.”
“I never said it wouldn’t be. I’m merely being conscientious as to dear Charlie’s expectations for how a meeting of this nature should go,” Alastor agreed easily with that point before moving onto another, “I suppose it goes without saying that the Empress is being considered an Overlord now? I will admit, I do not think there has ever been a case of a sinner so swiftly conquering a portion of the Ring and its inhabitants for themselves upon their death. That her colony is already in the midst of being built and the female sinners she cannibalized from the Vee’s workforce are fully dedicated in their loyalty to her is a remarkable accomplishment.” Now if only she would cease her annoying behavior whenever Luffy was within eyesight of her person, she might actually be bearable to be around…
“It made enough sense to me to make that call, yeah,” Lucifer agreed, and that would have been sufficient enough. However, he then moved on to explain offhand, “Also since I was inviting all those other former pirates that have less of a powerbase than her, it wouldn’t make sense not to invite her, you know?”
Alastor stared at the King for a few seconds. Before he could comment, however, Trafalgar approached their conversation, evidently having been listening in. He didn’t look pleased, a fact compounded by the fact that he’d had to abandon his post of glaring over Luffy’s head at the same Pirate Empress they’d been discussing. Jinbei stayed where he was beside Luffy, but glanced over at them, clearly listening as well.
“You what? Who did you invite? And why?!”
Lucifer glanced at the snow leopard with a blank sort of confusion. “Huh? Well there were a couple of up ‘n’ comers who aren’t at Overlord status but were making a stir, so I thought since we had the Pirate King coming and all we might as well include them. It’d just be like inviting more of his followers right?”
“NO?!” the doctor shouted in frustration, clearly confused as to how the King had even come to that conclusion.
Seeing the need for it, Alastor took to the task of being the proverbial bridge between worlds, folding his hands behind his back while explaining as plainly as he could to Lucifer, “You have surely heard by now that the title of Pirate King was granted to Luffy due to his finding the previous Pirate King’s treasure, yes?”
“Yeaaah?”
“Perhaps the connection that you failed to make, then, is that said Pirate King is not an actual position of kingship like you yourself hold. He is not King of the Pirates in the sense of being the ruler of pirates. He is King of the Pirates in that he defeated all other pirates who were in contest for the title and treasure against him.”
“Exactly!” Trafalgar was quick to back up the statement, expanding in a much more annoyed manner, “Unless they’re a pirate captain who was allied with Straw Hat-ya like Hancock and me, they’re likely someone who was either an outright enemy to our faction or who he beat in a fight! They won’t fall in line with him just cause he’s Pirate King! It’s bad enough you invited the Vees when it’s almost guaranteed they’re working with our most dangerous enemy. They’ll just tell Blackbeard whatever our plans are and that bastard will probably swoop in after all the danger’s gone to cause trouble like he always does. But adding other pirates on top of that is just throwing more wildcards in!”
“ …Oooooh. I get it now. Okay…” the King said in a very slow realization, before gaining a sheepish smile. “Uh… my bad? There’s only like four of them if that makes it any better.”
Trafalgar just tsked, raising a hand to cover part of his face in a low sigh. Alastor empathized with the feeling even while he refrained from reacting, remaining silent while the doctor continued, “Four of them…? Fuck. I just know one of them has gotta be– ”
“Mingo?! What’re you doing here?!” the three of them looked over at Luffy’s angry yell, with Trafalgar tensing in place.
The doors to the reception room were thrown open in a grand manner to reveal a flamboyant looking flamingo sinner, strutting in with the same level of confidence on his long spindly bird legs and wings spread out wide.
He was absurdly eye-catching, with a bright pink feathered coat atop of a body already covered in pink feathers and being as tall as Jinbei and Boa, the comparison easy to make as he stepped up towards the fishman, Empress, and Luffy. He could even be mistaken for a Goetia demon, seeing as he had both the avian form and the size to match them. Husk, who had evidently guided the man up to the room, immediately back-walked himself out of the mess upon seeing the pirates’ reactions, closing the doors with him as he went.
While the flamingo’s eyes were covered by a pair of sunglasses, the grin on his large beak was clearly set into an antagonistic sneer of a grin as he curved his thin long neck downward to properly glare at the much shorter monkey. He jeered, “So we meet again, Monkey D. Luffy… And Jinbei! Long time no see! It hasn’t been since Marineford, right? For a fishman so caught up on the rights of your species, you sure don’t mind putting yourself under the heel of a human! Fufufu!”
The newly arrived sinner straightened his neck to match Jinbei’s height once more, allowing the helmsman to level a proper, hardened stare at him. It was evident he was also displeased with the other’s appearance. “Doflamingo… You would do well not to disparage the loyalty I have for my captain. He is a far greater man than many, yourself included.”
Despite the call out, the now named Doflamingo had already moved on to meet the glare of the other former Warlord among the group. He jeered in feigned curiosity, “Yeah yeah– But Hancock! What a surprise! You never even bothered showin’ up whenever the marines called a meeting, and yet you’re here for this one?”
“A man as wretched as yourself as no place addressing my person,” Boa shut the small talk down with her usual attitude, resting one hand on her hip as she tilted her chin up slightly to better look down on the bird, “I am here to support Luffy’s position amongst these so-called lords and for no other reason.”
“Figures. Only Straw Hat could find a way to win over the infamous stone-hearted Snake Princess of the Amazons.” Moving on from the woman, the flamingo’s neck curved to the side such that his head peaked around Jinbei’s frame, which was blocking his view from where Trafalgar was still standing beside Alastor and Lucifer. The grin on his beak sharpened into something visibly on edge. “Law… What’s with the long face? You’re the one who came back from the dead to cut my HEAD off along with Straw Hat’s men! At least look a bit happier at seeing the fruits of your effort. FUFUFUFU– ”
“Don’t talk to Law! He doesn’t wanna talk to you!” Luffy’s demand was compounded by the way he shot a hand up to grasp the flamingo’s neck, pulling Doflamingo’s head back down level to his serious scowl. The bird’s grin instantly downturned into a full sneer.
Doflamingo pulled his head back in time with Luffy releasing his neck. The more he moved around, the more unnatural the movement of his neck came off. The way it was able to twist and curve about was more reminiscent of string keeping his head attached to his body than a vital stretch of flesh and vertebrae. “Tch! Touchy~ Don’t ya have any confidence in Law fightin’ his own battles? Now that I think about it, you really shouldn’t, seeing that he had to get you to fight me for him! Fufufu! And then Blackbeard went and proved that he really couldn’t take the heat of the New World when you aren’t around to save him– ”
The flamingo’s neck twisted on itself in a full half circle, leaning his head down upside down while Luffy’s crack of a punch went flying over head to crash into the wall behind him. Doflamingo had apparently predicted that statement would lead to a swift retribution, which he thus avoided. He didn’t bother righting his head before rambling on, “Now there’s no need to start a fight, Straw Hat! I came with the intention to attend this meeting properly. I know the song and dance. So play along too, yeah? Or do ya really want Princess Morningstar’s hotel caught in the crossfire like that?”
“Luffy… Just leave it.” Trafalgar approached the boy from behind to grab hold of the retracted arm, keeping him from throwing another punch. Luffy was still scowling as he glanced back at the snow leopard. He was well and truly pissed from the flamingo’s comment.
However, the simmering glare Trafalgar sent the man himself betrayed his intention to merely hold off on retribution, rather than give it up entirely. Doflamingo just renewed his manic grin at the sight of it.
The commotion drew Alastor and Lucifer forward as well. It seemed the former Warlord was at least somewhat committed to his bit of playing along, since he merely greeted the King’s unimpressed stare with a bow of his extended neck, saying with exaggerated joy, “King Lucifer! The Devil himself! Fufu– I’d say thanks for the invite, but I don’t really think ya want me to. I gotta say though, this Hell of yours is really the place to be! Two of my crew –who these guys ALSO killed by the way– died a good while before me, so they were able to set things up nicely for when I kicked the bucket. Crime is so much easier down here than it was in life! No marines, Celestials, or government dogs that need appeasing! I guy like me is really meant for this place!”
For once, Lucifer’s careless shrug and unimpressed stare provided quite a bit of comedy rather than acting as a personal annoyance towards Alastor. Evidently the fact that Luffy disliked this man so much was enough for Lucifer to also find him distasteful. “Yeaaah don’t really care. Who’re you again?”
One edge of the grinning beak twitched in an evidently unpleased look, though Doflamingo just passed over the slight to respond, “Donquixote Doflamingo, the ‘Heavenly Demon’– at your service, assuming you’re willing to pay the right price for it.” It was then that the flamingo finally turned Alastor’s way. He examined the Radio Demon with a thorough glance over before continuing, “And you… are the Radio Demon, yeah? The newest addition to Straw Hat’s little crew from what I’ve heard. The folks around here really talk ya up, say you’re a big bad evil cannibal and the like.”
Alastor just returned the obvious judging evaluation with a grin of his own, resting his hands atop the mic-head of his cane in front of him as he casually replied, “So you’ve heard of me? Yes, I have developed quite the reputation around these parts I’d say.”
“Yeah well, not sure if realize this, but Straw Hat has a reputation of his own. Not just for becoming the Pirate King, but also being a friendly guy. To the point that it’s crazy, even! He’d tear down an entire monarchy just cause some rando who gave him food cried to him about it, ya know that?” the beaked grin stretched just a tad sharper as he conveyed, “Which means that, no matter what the sinners down here might think, you have to be a bleeding-heart just like the rest of his crew if he wanted you. So hope you’ve already said goodbye to that rep of yours as some scary guy, since no one else who met Straw Hat in life is gonna think otherwise! Fufufu~ ”
Alastor had to restrain his eye from twitching in agitation. Instead, he allowed his radio feedback to peak harshly in a brief instance as he narrowed his gaze and sharpened his own grin. His response was a falsely pleasant drawl, “Well– I’d much rather be known for my position amongst the captain’s crew than be known as the has-been Warlord who he soundly defeated. Who doesn’t want to be on the winning team? In comparison, shouldn’t you be more worried about overstepping yourself? He put you in your place for a reason, I’m assuming. Perhaps you should have been a peacock instead of a flamingo with how much you enjoy prancing around in false confidence. The absurd name of Doflamingo notwithstanding, that is. Ahahaha!”
Doflamingo’s jeering grin twitched back into a sneer at the insult. Before he could snap back, however, the doors behind him creaked open in a much more reserved manner this time around. There was a deep sigh, “I’d been thinking this would be similar to a Seven Warlords meeting, but not this literally… Guess it was too much to hope for that I’d never have to deal with you people again.”
Alastor glanced back towards the door to see not one, but three newcomers walking in, filing in one after the other.
The first one through was the man who’d spoken, with the rather intriguing form of a crocodile made entirely of sand. Standing taller than Alastor but shorter than the flamingo, likely around Angel Dust’s height, his large, sandy tail dragged behind him on the floor, looking as though it should be getting the stuff everywhere but staying loosely contained, following and floating about his person in a trail. Alastor couldn’t help but blink at the sight of the actual hook hand at the end of one of the crocodile’s arms, shining gold and very much the picture of a stereotypical pirate that somehow managed to pair well with the otherwise mafioso vibe of his attire. The man raised his flesh –sand?– hand to his fanged snout, holding his cigar between two fingers to let out a smoky sigh. A straight line of a scar stretched across the entirety of his face over and around his mouth and nose.
Doflamingo immediately turned towards him with a wide grin, promptly ignoring Alastor to raise both wings high and declare, “Crocodile~ I knew I’d run into ya eventually! What’s with that attitude? And Mihawk! You know, I was surprised when I first saw you guys kept the Cross Guild going. You must like each other more than you’re lettin’ on! FUFUFUFU!”
It’d been a while since Alastor had been taken aback by the commonality of animal-based names in the pirate’s world, but really, this many of them this on the nose was too much. Was Crocodile a first name or a last name? They literally only added a single extra syllable for both Doflamingo and Mihawk. And now that he was thinking about it, Boa was pretty on target for a snake-themed woman as well.
The aforementioned Mihawk was, of course, a hawk of around Alastor’s height. Though more of a hybrid, harpy like form compared to either Crocodile or Doflamingo who both more closely resembled their namesakes, with black feathered wings for arms and digitigrade legs that ended in taloned claws. The next to walk in after Crocodile, his most notable features were his hawk-like, spiraling gold eyes that seemed to pierce through whatever he focused his gaze on, set underneath the wide brim of a feathered hat. His long coat flared dramatically behind him, wings kept to his side as he moved to step not beside where Crocodile stood in front of Doflamingo, but in front of Luffy and Jinbei.
“Hardly. I merely take up requests from their lot to stave off boredom,” after addressing the flamingo’s attempted jeer, Mihawk quickly moved on to look down at Luffy instead. The captain regarded the man with a neutral, blank sort of expression. “The First Son of the Sea. Straw Hat… Roronoa has already accepted my request for a rematch, just to keep you awares.”
“That’s fine. Zoro can do what he wants. Hi Zoro!” Luffy sped past the issue to instead look past the hawk and wave at where the three-headed man stood at the door to the room, having been the one to bring them up. The brute just sounded a grunt back before leaving without a word.
Jinbei meanwhile also responded more cordially than he had with Doflamingo or the careful stare he’d watched Crocodile with, “Hello to you as well, Hawk Eyes. It’s good to see that your previous bout with Zoro hasn’t left you with ill-intentions towards us.”
Mihawk turned his face slightly to the side before stating without inflection, “Naturally. It was a satisfying match, and he earned my title properly. There was nothing about the circumstances to leave me discontented.”
“Hey hey HEY! Aren’t you guys ignoring me a bit too much?! I was the one who was called an Emperor in life, remember?! And a flashy one at that! Buggy the Clown is not a man to be looked over! Even if I’m shorter now!”
The third member of the group jumped up into the air in their tantrum, insect wings flashing out to flutter in a short hover before he landed directly to the side of Mihawk also in front of Luffy. This person was, in the most straightforward terms possible, a clown cockroach. With a mostly human face but a round, big red nose and marks like face paint, he was of miniature stature likely close to Niffty’s size. He somehow managed to beat out the clown snake First Man as being the most hilariously awful demon form Alastor has yet to witness.
The hawk promptly took a large sidestep away from the bug, not even sparing him a glance even when two out of four of the man’s arms outright detatched from his torso to stick their pointing fingers in Mihawk’s face. “And what do you mean there was nothing to be ‘discontented’ about?! YOU DIED!!! And even worse, you left the rest of us to deal with the marines and World Government on our own when shit hit the fan! Why do you think we all died?! You were our strongest fighter and you got yourself taken out in a stupid duel right before we needed you the most, you sword for brains! Who trains their own successor to murder them like that?! Don’t drag us into your death wish– GAH!”
Mihawk’s wing slapped both of pest’s arms hard enough to send them flying across the room to smack into a window. They limped back into a float towards their owner, reattaching while his eye blew out wide at the sight of a blade pointed straight at his face. He was quick to devolve into pleading for his life, “P-Please don’t kill me! I’m sorry! I-I didn’t mean it! You know it’s not my fault they made me the Emperor between the three of us! I’m just a lying hack and we all know it– ”
“Silence.”
Alastor had to take a moment to examine the scene. The hawk’s wing had not only lengthened and sharpened into something resembling a large sword, but the blade of it now shined white with the divine glow of angelic steel.
It should be impossible for a sinner –a regular, non-divine being sinner unlike Luffy that is– to be reincarnated with such a feature. And yet somehow, that seemed like the most likely explanation as to this man’s ability. Mihawk’s spiraling pupils might as well be blades themselves with how the bug squirmed underneath the intensity of their gaze.
“In a duel for the right to be called the world’s greatest swordsman, it is only natural that the defeated would suffer death. Roronoa Zoro lived up to his potential and surpassed me, and thus, I was defeated. It is nothing more, and nothing less. The fact that this duel precluded the war to come after is no concern of mine. To go to war suggests the possibility of either of us becoming wounded, and such a match deserved to be fought in full health. To have won due to lasting wounds suffered outside our battle would have only marred the pride of the victor. Roronoa understood this, and thus sought me out at the time that he had.”
“ …That just makes your priorities even more awful! The both of you had it completely backwards– GAH! S-S-S-Sorry! Really! Please don’t kill me!”
“Fufufufu~ ”
Mihawk pulled back his bladed wing with a sigh, ignoring Doflamingo’s chuckling and leaving the bug to press a hand against the pinprick of blood that had been drawn from his nose. Crocodile also sighed in a puff smoke from his cigar. Based on his side-eye he glare at Mihawk, he agreed with Buggy’s complaint that the swordsman having left them high and dry, but evidently was aware that mentioning it to the hawk in question was a pointless endeavor. If this is any representation of how this group functioned in life, it was no wonder they met such an ill-fated end…
“Mihawk…” Jinbei stared at the man’s bladed wing, eyes slightly widened in his surprise, “Your sword, Yoru… It’s part of your body now? I didn’t realize such a thing could occur! And it’s a divine weapon, just like Zoro’s Wado Ichimonji.”
With a hum of affirmation, Mihawk’s wing flashed back into black feathers as he explained, “Indeed. Yoru has become one with me. Or perhaps it’d be more fitting to say that I have become the sword. And to your other point, it seems that a blade which a swordsman has turned into a Black Blade due to the intense concentration of their Armament will reincarnate into heavenly steel along with its swordsman. As Roronoa turned the Wado Ichimonji into a Black Blade, it resulted in the same outcome… In a way, it makes one ponder if the will of humanity, if strong enough, can approach even the power of the divine. It is a curious thing to contemplate.”
As he spoke, the hawk stepped forward to stand in front of Lucifer and Alastor by proxy. The crocodile took that as his cue to face the King as well, and even the downtrodden bug made his way over. Mihawk was the first to address the former angel, “I don’t usually care for formalities, but I suppose it would be prudent this time, seeing that we are here upon your invitation. ‘Hawk Eyes’ Dracule Mihawk, once known as the strongest swordsman in the world prior to Roronoa Zoro. Should you come across a strong opponent you don’t wish to deal with yourself, I may be amendable to taking on the task. I have yet to face a proper challenge since my arrival here.”
“Uh… I’ll keep it in mind…?”
“ ‘Desert King’ Sir Crocodile,” the other man continued without a hitch despite the King’s previous somewhat awkward reply. If the way he lowered his cigar away from his snout to speak properly was any indication, Crocodile seemed to be taking the matter of interacting with Lucifer seriously. A proper level of caution to show in the face of a being renown for his power. “I’m the one in charge of the operations and business side of the Cross Guild, though I doubt you have much interest in that from what I’ve heard of you. Just as a point of curiosity, was it your intention to regather the Seven Warlords? Or did you truly ask for the presence of seven former members purely by coincidence,” he gestured his hook towards not only the three of the Cross Guild, but also the flamingo, the Pirate Empress, Trafalgar, and finally Jinbei as he posed the question.
“Uhhhh…” That hesitant non-answer was all that needed to be said to know that the King truly had no idea what he’d been doing in the organization of this meeting. His expression continued to fall further into a squint of awkward tension. Before he muttered to himself, “Why is it always seven?”
As though to drive the point home, Luffy sounded a short bout of laughter, “Haha! Lucifer doesn’t care about that kinda stuff!”
“Maybe he should? Isn’t he supposed to be the King around here?” after the brief side commentary, Buggy jumped up into prominence, limbs detaching from his torso to spin around in a flashy manner. The man had evidently regained his nerve and boldness, detaching even his head to float up level to Lucifer’s now slightly bewildered wide-eyed stare.
“Before you stands the ‘Genius Jester’, Buggy! Once one of the Seven Warlords before rising into power as one of the Four Emperors of the Sea! I’m the man with the plan! The circus act of the century! The adored leader of the Cross Guild members, many of whom I –almost– single-handedly broke out of the most secure level of the previously inescapable prison that is Impel Down! Along with being on the crew of the previous Pirate King. HA! My fame knows no bounds! You were right to call upon such a– ”
“ –Annoying pest,” that was the only warning Buggy had before Crocodile’s sandy tail grew out to curve around and smack the back of his disembodied head. It went flying to the side like a rogue soccer ball, albeit with much more high-pitched shrieking involved. Crocodile then said, quite seriously, “Don’t ask that guy for anything. He’ll lie and say he can do it, and then beg on his hands and knees for us to clean up his mess for him. The only things he’s good at are playing pretend and being a clown.”
“That’s so mean! The truth can really hurt, ya know?!”
The bug was ignored, predictably. Squinting a look over the three Cross Guild pirates and flashing a glance back towards the flamingo as well, Lucifer finally caught up with the situation enough to hesitantly question, “Wait a second… Are you all saying you’d be okay working for me?”
“Not for you,” was Crocodile’s the instant clarification, “But we were all Warlords for a reason. We know how to work with those in charge when it suits our purposes.”
“ …Really? That was not the impression I got from pirates in general before this.”
Jinbei spoke up at that, considerate enough to help further explain, “It’s like Law mentioned previously– When you’ve had to intervene with the pirates who ended up in Hell, it would be because they’re a powerful soul causing problems, correct? But many pirates, even ones strong enough to gain the notice of the World Government and be offered a Warlord position, either don’t have the raw power necessary to afford just purely doing things their own way without regard for those who would contest them or don’t want the trouble that comes with it. In comparison… Luffy is exactly the sort of pirate who does exactly that.”
“Yeah!” the captain cheerfully agreed while sticking his chest out, before adding fuel to the fire, “Ya don’t gotta worry about any ‘a these guys, Lucy! They’re all weaker than me!”
“Tch.” There were resounding tsks of discontent from the four newly introduced Warlords, Doflamingo especially as he turned his beak away with scowl. But it spoke volumes that none of them could voice their obvious disagreement.
Instead, Crocodile continued his explanation, “Additionally, it’s not as though we are guaranteed to agree to everything you may ask of us. If you’ve spoken to the Pirate Empress for more than five minutes, I’m sure you’ve realized that Hancock will likely agree to nothing you ask of her– ”
“I work for no man! …Other than Luffy, of course <3”
“ –So on a case by case basis, there may be times when our intentions are aligned or there are no consequences against our own interests, but for the times when your interests are in conflict with our own, don’t expect our cooperation.”
After a moment of consideration, Lucifer commented with a carefully plain tone, “ …If this is just how you pirate Warlords tend to function, then why is it so different compared to the other three here? No offense, but you Cross Guild and that flamingo there give a real shady vibe compared to them.”
“Is it not obvious?” Mihawk cut in to give his own response. His gaze slid over towards Luffy before redirecting back on the King to say, matter of fact, “The First Son of the Sea, Surgeon of Death, and Pirate Empress are no longer independent Warlords as they once were. They are all firmly in Straw Hat’s faction. They will not offer any agreements outside of what Straw Hat himself would offer you. The Pirate Empress only to the extent of what she requires to establish her new kingdom.”
“I still work for my own interests also!” at Trafalgar’s insistence, those trademark Hawk Eyes just sent an unimpressed glance. No words were needed for Mihawk to make clear how much doubt he held for the man’s denial. Considering how it was only just prior to the other Warlords’ arrival that Trafalgar had explicitly described himself and Boa as being part of Luffy’s faction, the King himself also looked at the guy with an incredulous raise of the eyebrows.
“Also, just to make it clear, you really shouldn’t be trusting these guys. Especially that guy!” Law pointed at Doflamingo’s sneering face as he said this. “If he thinks he can get away with stabbing you in the back, he’ll do it the first chance he gets! As it is, he’s just biding his time until he can get back at me and Straw Hat-ya.”
To that, Doflamingo scoffed back, “Oh come on, Laaaw, aren’t ya bein’ a bit biased with your advice right now? Just cause Straw Hat’s makin’ nice with local royalty once again that doesn’t make you such a trustworthy guy.”
“That’s a joke coming from the guy who literally– ”
As interesting of a conversation as they’d been having, it was inevitable that the rest of the invited sinners would at some point arrive as the actual time of the meeting drew closer. Trafalgar cut himself off when the doors opened again. This time Carmilla and Zestial entered the room together, eyeing the new meat before approaching to become acquainted. Rosie as well as other various Overlords entered in one after the other.
Until, just a minute prior to the official start time, the Vees actually deigned to show their faces. Queen Lilith and Charlie flanked the three of them, Lilith as gracefully unaffected as usual while Charlie couldn’t withhold her cautious glances, having escorted the possible troublemakers and left their position greeting guests in the lobby now that all the arrivals were present. The three has-beens entered with their heads held high, evidently out to prove they still had a place at the table despite the fact that the last Overlord meeting that’d been held, they’d only bothered to send one representative amongst themselves.
It’s the first time since Alastor’s extended absence that him and Vox were meeting face to face, excluding the brief flash of a moment when Alastor had whisked Luffy, Husk, and Angel away from the Vees after Valentino’s defeat. His large, pixelated eyes immediately focused in on Alastor, as they often tended to. His expression was simmering and disgruntled. Then, those eyes slid over to Luffy standing directly next to Alastor, and immediately the intensity of the glare skyrocketed.
It was to the point that Vox’s scowl was more of a baring of serrated teeth, electricity sparking off his body and head as his shaking fists clenched tight. He forcefully averted his glare to make his way to the long table that’d been set up, apparently determined to ignore the captain’s presence for the time being even as he was enraged by just the sight of him.
Alastor was a tad taken aback by the reaction, turning it over in his mind as he took the seat to the right of Luffy while Jinbei took the left. Truthfully… he’d never seen that poor excuse of a colored-picture box head show a stronger emotional reaction towards anyone other than himself. Since their falling out, Vox always showed the most anger towards the Radio Demon above all others, and before that, Vox would get quite emotive concerning Alastor in other ways.
While this development wasn’t completely without logic, the boy did directly tear the Overlord’s media empire in half essentially by destroying all his Contracts, Alastor still hadn’t expected it. And as an additional detail to consider, while Vox did slide in a pensive stare towards the Pirate Empress –who was currently seated at Alastor’s other side, glaring down at him for being unable to complain about him sitting next to his captain rather than herself– it was nowhere near how he regarded Luffy despite the woman being just as instrumental if not even more so to the Vees’ current plight. Overall, the sense he got from the situation at hand was… precarious, to say the least.
While he was typically amused by Vox’s overcompensation, lack of self-control, and downright huffy anger in regards to himself, when seeing it aimed at his captain to such a concentrated degree… he rather found it lacking it’s usual humor.
Standing at the head of the table was the Morningstar family. However, rather than the King or even the Queen being the center point, Charlie was the one to take position as head of the discussion, her expression only somewhat pinched with nerves rather than the nervous mess Alastor would’ve expected of her not too long ago. With both Lucifer and Lilith giving their daughter an encouraging smile from either side of her and Vaggie standing at the side of the room to give her own reassuring smile, the Princess took a deep breath, before starting, “Alrighty! So– Thank you all for coming today. I know a lot of you guys are probably busy with your– Overlord stuff, I guess? But this is a really important meeting! Because today, we are going to discuss how we should prepare for Heaven’s next Extermination.”
“Actually, before we fully start off the meeting– we had a question that would be good to answer while we’re all gathered,” Carmilla seamlessly interjected, gesturing to both herself and Zestial in reference to their inquiry, “King Lucifer, what was the purpose behind your creation of the Red Sea? You’ve gone thousands of years without changing Hell’s environment in such a way. Alastor has said on his broadcasts about the matter that Straw Hat made an agreement with you about it, but surely there must have been an important reason for such a tremendous change that he left out.”
After a brief hesitation born from not having expected the question –which he really SHOULD have expected, considering it was a logical one for the Overlords to pose– Lucifer also hesitantly answered, “ …I owed Luffy a favor, and that was what he asked for. That’s all.”
“ …That’s it? For such an extraordinary alternation in Hell?!” there were mutters of echoing agreement with Carmilla’s shock. And in contrast, there was also a muttering of ‘Figures…’ from a certain, huffy looking clown further down the table.
“The favor I owed him was a big one, so… yeah,” Lucifer thankfully had the wherewithal to put a prompt stop to the questioning at that point, “No more asking about that, though! It’s not important– ”
“I’m not quite sure it’s NOT important– ”
“ –We’re here to talk about the Extermination!”
One of the other Overlords, Zeezi, rose a hand and spoke up not in any sort of objection but more out of a need for explicit clarification, “Has it been confirmed that there’ll be an Extermination? I mean, I know they weren’t happy with how the last one turned out, but they haven’t made an announcement of renewing the date and now know the sinners can fight back if they try another one.”
Lilith took over the response, likely for the sake of brevity, “They haven’t stated there will be, but given what we know of how poorly the higher angels are likely to take the death of the First Man, the chance of an invasion is high. This Extermination would not be like the others, with a set time or time limit, but rather a military operation to directly suppress the population. Their aim would be to dissuade the sinners of any belief that they can successfully go against Heaven’s ordainment.”
Having apparently moved on from their previous line of questioning, Carmilla and Zestial nodded in sage agreement with the Queen’s assessment. Charlie nodded as well, a determined expression coming over her as she pushed onward, “That’s right. This Extermination won’t be the same as how they were before. They might even completely destroy the city before they decide we’ve been ‘put in our place’! That’s why we wanted to work with all of you, who not only have territory throughout the city but also have many sinners that work for you under your protection, so that we can prepare a strategy to defend all of Pentagram City if need be! That’s why I also need to ask this specifically…”
Setting her firm stare on the end of the table with the three Vees, all of whom were exuding an air of ill-content with narrowed gazes, Charlie questioned seriously, “Vees… I realize that there’s been a bit… a lot of conflict, actually, between you guys and the hotel– ”
“That is the fucking understatement of the century, darling Princesa~ ” Valentino was the one to hiss out from between his teeth.
“ –but you live in this city just like everyone else. All of your businesses are tied to the sinners here, too. You should be just as invested in trying to withstand this Extermination as the rest of us. Therefore, as the Princess of Hell, I ask that you commit to a ceasefire until the time of the Extermination has been concluded.”
Someone, likely Lilith, had clearly coached the girl on how to address the sticky situation that was the Vees as well as what to say. And they’d done a good job of it. There was no hesitation in Charlie’s use of her authority unlike prior instances of her attempts to do so.
“A ceasefire?” Velvette reiterated with a sassy raise of her eyebrow that matched her tone, crossing her arms as she leaned into the side of her seat. “In both cases where we’ve been ‘in conflict’ with those damn pirates, like your political ass put it, they were the ones who attacked our turf! You’re sayin’ we can’t even defend ourselves?! Why don’t you ask THEM to not fuck around, huh?!”
It was admittedly a valid point. The Vees truly had not been the aggressors in two out of three the times. Though the third instance of conflict where they called a hit did not feature their direct involvement, they were still clearly responsible.
While she wavered for a brief second, Charlie regained her ground to give an interesting reply, to say the least, “I know Luffy won’t pick a fight with you guys if I ask him to. I don’t trust the same from you, since you have every reason to try and take this as an opportunity to retaliate. So that’s why I’m warning you now– Don’t. The Morningstar family doesn’t have time to deal with Overlords picking fights with each other right now when we need everyone’s cooperation, and we won’t hesitate to get involved personally if need be.”
VERY coached, indeed. If he’d still been on speaking terms with Lilith, he’d have her congratulated her for her successful teachings. Still, while Velvette herself was visually taken aback by the response, there was a hum of doubt from a different segment of the table. Gesturing his hook towards Luffy’s direction, Crocodile questioned, “Will Straw Hat really do as you ask of him? Speaking as an outsider that has more experience with that guy, I’d think it’d be him you should worry about for that kind of thing…”
“You can say that again! HA!” Doflamingo agreed with a barking jeer of a laugh, much to Crocodile’s displeasure if the scowl that set in was any indication.
Charlie tensed in her stance, thrown off from her script for the first time in the conversation. But thankfully, Luffy stuck his head into things to carelessly say, “Charlie’s my friend, so if she really needs me to do somethin’ for her, course I will!”
“ …Tch. What is it with you and Princesses?” Crocodile complained under his breath, but leaned back in his seat to look away, otherwise convinced by the answer. Doflamingo also looked put off by the response, the grin of his beak shifting into a sneer. Apparently, Luffy befriending the regional princess was very familiar behavior to the both of them.
With Luffy’s unwavering support, Charlie built herself back up, posture righting once more and her stare landing back on the Vees. There was no discussion amongst them or even passing glances, but after an extended moment, the still scowling Vox was the one to lean forward and slowly reply, “ …Fine. Until the next Extermination has officially ended, the Vees will comply with your ceasefire. But since we have the floor, I might as well say now…” Vox’s mouth twitched into a mock of his showboat grin as he jeered, “The only part of the city we’ll have any part in defending is our tower, and I guess the street it’s standing on by default. And frankly speaking, I think our defenses are in pretty good shape even considering the circumstances. So unless Heaven brings out some damn big guns, don’t expect us to come out and do any actual fighting, yeah? You lot are on your fucking own as far as we’re concerned!”
Even as she frowned, Charlie agreed, “I won’t expect that of you, yes. Even for the rest of the Overlords, most of what I’m asking is for you guys to protect the parts of the city under your lead, along with adjacent areas that aren’t specific territory to anyone. My family will be protecting our territory as well.”
“Woah woah woah– Hold up a sec! Doesn’t anyone else see somethin’ wrong with this picture?!”
As two dismembered hands slammed onto the table, Buggy’s upper body detached from the lower to float above the center of the table. While glaring at the thoroughly startled Charlie, he jabbed a point finger at Luffy with one of his remaining hands to start his accusation, “This guy considers your territory, or your hotel at least, his territory, doesn’t he? That means you guys are consolidating the folks that could put up the strongest fight against an angelic army, King Lucifer, Queen Lilith, and Straw Hat who is a damn GOD now because the universe is that unfair I guess! Where the fuck does that leave the little guys, huh?! Isn’t this meeting just the same as tellin’ us you fucks are on your own and washing your hands of the rest?! Don’t think you can fool me with that sweet fair princess act of yours!”
The words gained the attention of every Overlord at the table as well as that of the royal family. Wide-eyed with shock, Charlie stumbled through her attempt at recovery, “That’s not– No! That’s not what we’re trying to do here– ”
“Then what are ya doin’? Cause if that’s the big plan you’ve been hyping up this whole time, you better expect a lot of us extras to be dead at the end of the fight!” rather than continue to make his point with Charlie, the Genius Jester floated over to plant himself before none other than Luffy, glaring down with a twitching eye at the blank faced boy, “It’s just like what happened before! Straw Hat here picked a fight with the entire fucking World Government, and every pirate that wasn’t part of his damn fleet still caught heat for it! And who were the ones who survived the damn war they started? Of course it was him and his men! But what about MY guys, huh?! Ya ever even spared us a second of a thought of how your actions would affect everyone else, Straw Hat?! We weren’t even part of that fight and most of my crew fucking DIED! And ya have the nerve to side with the Princess who’s doin’ the same bullshit?! I ain’t takin’ it lyin’ down this time! Even a clown has his pride, dammit!”
Upon first seeing the literal clown cockroach, Alastor had had his doubts about this pirate being the one to actually hold authority over the men of the Cross Guild, especially considering the poor contrast he made to the two other Warlords part of their faction. He seemed like a joke at best. But as the clown spoke, Alastor could begin to see how it was Buggy could manage such a position. As weak and cowardly as he seemed, there was an undeniable sense of charisma to his words when he put the effort into it. It was even enough that his current accusation had a real chance of bringing the meeting to ruins. The room was as silent as the dead with the various Overlords at the table thinking over the clown’s assertions. Charlie’s face fell even further when she realized the impending crisis. From Luffy’s other side close to the verbal conflict at hand, even Jinbei watched the proceedings with an uncertain, uneasy frown.
But as for Luffy himself… in the face of what could be considered genuine, biting criticism, the captain merely blinked at Buggy in surprise. Before a smile lit up his face. “Woah– You’re a really good captain now, Buggy! That’s good of ya! It’s no wonder your crew stuck by you. They all fought hard with you, didn’t they?”
And just like that, the proverbial wind was swept out of the pirate’s sails. Buggy’s face fell slack in shock as his rage fell away with it. Because for all the clown’s apparent charisma, Alastor’s captain held a charisma that was at the level of the divine itself, likely even more so. The Radio Demon’s grin stretched out wider at the sight of the turnabout play.
Deciding this to be a prime opportunity to insert himself, Alastor leaned forward with his elbows on the table, resting his face upon his laced fingers as he addressed the clown in a feigned innocent manner, “Pardon me, Mister Jester, but as I’m new to this whole pirating thing, I am a tad confused as to your plight– It had been my assumption that pirates not in alliance held no due diligence towards one another. And that, by what I’ve seen, your faction was not aligned with my captain’s. Considering this, what was it that he did wrong, exactly?”
“H-Huh? You– ” Buggy stuttered as his free-floating torso turned to glance his way. He granted Alastor a hesitant, cautious expression.
“The answer is that Luffy didn’t do anything wrong. At least when it comes to a pirate’s perspective,” Hancock was the one to reply instead, tone cold and unsympathetic of the clown’s pleas, a stone-faced Empress indeed, “The Straw Hats and their Fleet had no business with the Cross Guild. In fact, they were enemies also in contest for Roger’s treasure. Luffy held no responsibility towards them. The natural conclusion of a pirate crew not strong enough to defend themselves is defeat, that is the way of things… To cast blame onto those who stood victorious for your own weakness is unsightly behavior!”
Buggy jolted back at the returning critique, though he’d recovered from his shock even to narrow his eyes on the woman and mutter, “You’re one to talk… Of course the Pirate Empress who can turn battleships of men to stone would see it that way!”
“Hancock’s own strength doesn’t change that what she said was right, Jester,” somewhat surprisingly, Trafalgar was the one to speak up then, back against his seat with his long sword leaning against one side, “There is no fair play when it comes to pirates. We’re all enemies until we strike the deal to be allied. You’ve been one long enough that you should know that by now. Not only that, but you can’t claim to have been innocent bystanders to the war when you were also after the treasure. You chose to involve yourselves in the fight when you decided on that path. Trying to argue about now is just a power play. The sinners of the other world may not be able to tell, but everyone in this room of our world was also a pirate and knows damn well what you’re pulling.”
The world of pirates was apparently a cutthroat reality. Just the way Alastor preferred it. There was not a single ounce of remorse to be seen between Boa and Trafalgar, and the fact that Trafalgar himself had also been killed in battle in a similar manner just made the rejection more cutting. Doflamingo was outright snickering in his corner of the table. While more amendable to Buggy’s presence, Luffy himself also showed no regard in that matter for all his usual kindness. It confirmed Alastor’s previously perceived notion that the boy only truly fought for those he kept in good company, rather than any innocent masses at large. In comparison, Jinbei did grant the clown a more sympathetic look, but also remained silent. The fishman likely held a stronger sense of morality than every other pirate in the room, and even he could not deny the apparent truth of their world.
And then, in comparison to that… still at the head of the table, Charlie stood tall once more. Her expression again filled with determination, but of the kinder sort that was more familiar to her face.
“Buggy…” when he turned her way, Charlie granted the bug a smile as she placed a hand on her chest and declared, “Maybe it’s true that Luffy didn’t owe you anything, but… what I was trying to say is that this isn’t the same. All of the sinners of Hell are my family’s people. My people. That’s true even for you and your crew. We’re asking you all to take part in this battle, yes, but it’s not so that we don’t have to take responsibility for you– it’s so that we can all help each other protect our home! I can’t promise that no one will be hurt, but we’ll do the best we can! If we all stay in contact with each other, we’ll be able to know what parts of the city need more help and where to send it. We’ll be so much stronger just by working together! Maybe you don’t believe in it, but… I really think we can do this! My friends and Rosie’s people proved last Extermination that we can fight back, and this time, we’ll all prove that it wasn’t a fluke! Together! If we win this fight, we have a chance to permanently end the Exterminations, and no one will have to die anymore. Isn’t that worth fighting for, for your own people at least?”
It was a charisma born not of proper teachings or a prepared plan, but of the girl’s own intrinsic belief. Disgustingly heartfelt, in Alastor’s opinion, but effective nonetheless.
Especially to those prone to sappiness. And it seemed as though this clown was one of those people since, after taking a big, bug-eyed moment to process the words, Buggy’s tone immediately turned simpering as his upper body dashed forward to take Charlie’s hands, “For real? You’ll protect me– I mean, US? Oh Princess, I really got you all wrong! What a nice girl you are! The royalty back in our world were only out for themselves, they never gave a shit about any of the normal folk! But you don’t see it that way at all! This is the way it ought’a be I’m tellin’ ya– ”
“This guy keeps finding new ways to make me embarrassed to even be associated with him. The fact that the marines actually thought we worked for him is a shame I’ll never recover from, even in death…” as Crocodile leaned down to press his fingers against his pinched forehead with a sigh, Mihawk nodded in silent, scowling agreement.
As Buggy continued to ramble like a sycophant, Alastor noted that while the majority of those present were watching the scene play out to mixed reactions, he felt the distinct sensation of a pair of eyes on himself. He gave a shifty side-eye over towards Vox, who predictably moved to turn his flat face away in an obvious attempt to pretend as though he hadn’t been staring. Alastor had to withhold a sigh as he redirected his focus back on the clown act only to feel Vox’s stare on his person again. Even with the supposed “ceasefire”, he very much doubted the evening would conclude without Vox making some sort of move.
The meeting continued from that point in a mostly predictable manner. Everyone was to make their own preparations. Carmilla would assist with procuring weapons of Heavenly steel, though not without compensation provided by the royal family considering the loss she would be taking to give out that many arms to this many sinners pro-bono. And there was also an issue as to the limitations of her stocks seeing that there were considerably more sinners that required arms. It was likely not everyone would be provided with a Heavenly weapon this time around. There also was not much of a concrete plan to be had outside of organizational efforts. It mainly seemed to boil down to try not to die, which based on Luffy’s approving grin, he was interpreting as just beat the shit out of them. Admittedly, this was literally the only type of plan that would survive contact with the captain’s involvement, if Jinbei’s sigh of relief and Trafalgar’s grumbling under his breath about the various plans he’s attempted with the man in the past was anything to go by. So Alastor himself could hardly complain about it.
Once the meeting was adjourned, however, the thing that Alastor had been waiting for with very little anticipation finally occurred. Vox couldn’t even wait until less than half the people at the table stood up before he shot up out of his seat to say, “Alastor! Now that business is over, I’d like to have a word. In private.”
Alastor’s smile was as pristine as always as he much more gracefully stood from his own seat and looked back at the other. Vox wasn’t even trying to pretend to smile, outright glaring in his demand. “You are not making for a very appealing conversation partner at the moment, so I don’t see why I should bother…”
At that, Vox’s screen gained a mean smirk. He spread his arms out to the now bystander fellow meeting attendees to say, “Well you see, I’ve got some theories as to what you’ve been up to those seven years you were gone. So if you don’t mind everyone in Hell hearing about it, then by all means, I can shout at you from across the table about it just fine!”
Something twisted inside his gut at the mention. But before Alastor could fret much over what exactly Vox thought he knew, Velvette dropped her face into her hand with a groan, “Fuckin’ Hell– You’re seriously about to admit to that crazy-ass conspiracy theory of yours? As though it wasn’t embarassin’ enough to be involuntarily subjected to it in private?!”
In comparison, Valentino stood with buzzing anticipation, chiming, “Oh, he’s serious alright. And I’m not missing this conversation for the fuckin’ world! This will be the funniest shit ever– I didn’t even bring popcorn cause I’d probably just choke on it and literally die laughing!”
“Fuck you too!” Vox finally looked away from Alastor to glare back at his fellow Vees, “And by the way, why the FUCK were you both checking out Hancock?! Don’t think I didn’t notice! Did you fucking forget how she turned us to STONE?!?! Like two weeks ago?!”
“Well nooo, but when I started glaring at her, I just got distracted is all! Really Voxy, what’s really weird here is that you weren’t checking her out. Some people are just too beautiful to hold a real grudge against.”
“Pretty privilege is fuckin’ alive ‘n’ well, and I will not apologize for that,” Velvette agreed with a sage nod and deadpan look that did not at all match the content of her statement.
“Disgusting wretches. If not for the ceasefire, you would already be stone once more…” the Medusa in question spoke mainly to herself, standing up and glancing over the two Vees, especially Valentino, with the clear air of someone looking down on another. Though when her gaze trailed over to Vox, it gained a more contemplative look. Which– no. It is absolutely NOT a good thing if Boa Hancock the eternal man-hater is somehow finding common ground with the picture box. So he is going to do the sane thing and pretend he never noticed that…
Alastor began walking around the table towards the door to the discrete side room the reception area featured as he drawled, “Considering the likelihood of your so-called theory being hilariously wrong, I think I’ll spare the masses from their secondhand embarrassment and speak to you without the peanut gallery, yes.”
“You’re coming too, Monkey?”
The name was spoken with such utter distain, Alastor had to take a second to realize that Vox wasn’t speaking to him. He glanced back at where Luffy was following behind him, having only vaguely noticed the boy’s presence prior, before looking at Vox as he stepped forward with a piercing glare set fully on the captain.
Rather than his usual careless attitude, Luffy actually gave Vox a somewhat serious stare as he insisted, “Alastor’s my crew. If you wanna talk to him, you gotta talk to me, too.”
Alastor had to keep himself from glancing at the boy in shock at the assertion. Luffy was certainly protective, and clingy, but at least thus far, he did not hover. He did not insist on inserting himself into each and every interaction his crewmembers had with outside persons even in the case where there was a chance of them being malevolent. The fact that he felt the need to do so with Vox was not at all a promising sign.
“Holy shit. I think this is gonna be good… What?” Alastor valiantly ignored Lucifer’s commentary, as well as the follow up question he sounded in return to his wife’s judging glance.
Electricity zapped between Vox’s antennae as his expression screwed up into a tighter, glitching anger. Before he sneered out, “Fine. Ya know what? It might actually be good to have you around for this talk, so fine.” And with that said, Vox strut past the both of them to walk into the side room first.
But before Alastor himself followed, after waving away both Jinbei’s as well as Rosie’s inquiring looks as to whether they should join in our not, he allowed Luffy to walk past himself so that he could pluck the stray ear out of the boy’s hat. Squinting his eyes at the disembodied thing, he licked at his lips before flashing his serrated grin. “What’s this? A little snack to get me by until supper perhaps– ”
“I’m so sorry I won’t do it again please don’t eat me!!!” with pleas uttered so fast they bled into one another, the ear went flying out of his fingers to return to its owner. Alastor sent the tearful Buggy a grin of warning, before he finally turned his back and entered the room as well. Seeing that Valentino had already made his way in, he closed the door behind him none-too gently.
The side room was just about the right size for four people, featuring a small square table with a couple chairs on either side in the center of the room within view of the single window on the wall. None of them bothered taking a seat, though. Valentino, after flashing a glare at Luffy, moved to lean against the wall close to the door while crossing his arms, clearly just planning to act as a fly or moth on the wall so to speak. Vox meanwhile was standing by one side of the table, glaring daggers at Luffy, and while he wasn’t quite glaring back, the captain returned the look with a heavy stare.
Luffy glanced back at Alastor when he walked forward, however, to step to the side and make room for Alastor to stand directly before the media Overlord. Alastor kept his arms folded behind his back along with his cane in hand, and when Vox finally averted his attention from Luffy, he was met with a somewhat conflicted expression, rather than pure rage. Something pained, but deeply, deeply bitter.
In contrast, Alastor kept his tone casually nonchalant, uncaring as he teased, “Where’s that flimsy showman smile of yours, old pal? You know very well you’re never fully dressed without it! Aha! You were so eager to have this little chat, I’d think you’d be happier about getting your way– ”
“Alastor…” the man cut him off –how rude– with a scowl that only grew heavier, as though if he didn’t force himself to start, he never would, “Seven years you were gone. Leaving our fight unfinished without a word of explanation since. And, really, you should’ve stayed fucking gone! I would’ve been better off if you never showed that ugly mug of yours around Hell ever again– ”
“Well I’d say that’s accurate, yes. After all, look at the state of you Vees now! Ahahaha~ ” Alastor reinserted himself again just to make a point, “But you’re giving me too much credit, I hardly had any hand in your humiliation. It was the captain and– ”
“You’re serious,” Vox interrupted once more, a ting of television static in the back of his voice as his scowl fell into a full glare, “You seriously– joined this damn pirate crew of all things?! You seriously respect that MONKEY’S authority?!?!”
He shot a hand out to point in accusation at the Monkey in question, Luffy just watching the gesture without response. Before Vox’s hand shifted to point forward at Alastor instead, almost close enough to press the sharpened tip of his claw into the center of Alastor’s chest. “That doesn’t suit you AT ALL!!! It would’ve made way more sense if you’d agreed to join me way back all those years ago! Hell, I wasn’t even asking you to work under me! I just wanted an equal partnership! Why the HELL would you suddenly change your damn mind about being an unchanging retro-ass loner for THIS fucking guy and NOT ME?!?!”
His grin pulling sharper in displeasure, Alastor brought forward the hand not holding his cane to take hold of Vox’s finger between his index finger and thumb. He then twitched his fingers with a snap.
Vox cursed out from the pain while rushing to withdraw his hand and its now broken finger.
“While I usually refrain from speaking this frankly, I am going to do so now just to ensure that tangled mess of wires inside the box that you call a head understands exactly what it is I’m saying– You know perfectly well why I refused your previous offer. None of that reasoning has changed over these years. As for my current allegiance, I owe you no explanation for any action or decision of mine, but I will tell you that Monkey D. Luffy is a much worthier man than you by far. The fact that he essentially enacted divine judgement upon you and your own should be enough testament to this. Honestly old pal, the mere fact that you would question why it is I respect the authority of a literal God suggests you are quite deep in denial as to your own importance, or rather lack thereof.”
After straightening out his misshapen finger with a wince, Vox glanced back up at Alastor with that conflicted expression once again painted across his pixelated face. He spoke again after almost a full minute of silence, rage bleeding out of his tone and into more distilled bitterness, “The Alastor I knew before… would never have respected any God’s authority. He would’ve rather died than pray to be saved by one.”
“ …I suppose that’s true, but no God as ever given me a reason to heed their authority, before. And my captain is not the type of God one need pray to. If you’re on his crew, that is. He is much more than just my God. But it’d be pointless trying to explain any of that to you, since you clearly aren’t in the mood to listen.”
Vox’s eye spiraled with venom at Alastor’s addresses of “my captain” and “my God”. Alastor forced himself to look straight on into it, knowing that it was more of an emotional reaction than an attempt at mind control. And that particular ability of Vox’s couldn’t usually affect him regardless.
After a split moment, Vox seemed to catch himself, flinching back as he averted his conflicted gaze and his left eye returned to normal. Sticking his hand almost violently into his pocket to rummage around in it, Vox growled through his response, “That so? Well, ya know what, you suddenly not minding being a damn pet for this guy has got me thinking that I may actually be onto something– about why you were gone for those seven years!”
Finding what he was in search for, Vox pulled out small square photograph. Though Alastor couldn’t quite tell what was printed on it yet.
“You needed to leave, because you were vulnerable, weren’t you? Couldn’t let anyone clue into the obvious weakness that you had no way of hiding!”
While Alastor kept the tension off his face, he felt himself internally brace at Vox’s lead up. For a moment, he wondered if perhaps Vox truly had figured out something concerning the situation, whether it be his deal with Lilith or his ownership under Eve or just the fact that he’d had a Soul Contract at all. The reference of him being Luffy’s “pet” would correlate with that. Whatever would come out of that over-sized mouth next, he braced himself to react accordingly.
“That’s right– because the strong, oh-so powerful, fearsome Radio Demon could never let it be known there was now a perfect target his enemies could strike at and take advantage of! You couldn’t let it be known– ” Vox slammed the picture down on the table in front of Alastor.
“ –that you had a kid!”
The picture was a slightly distorted image of Alastor holding Chopper’s hand.
Alastor stared down at the thing. He blinked once. Then twice.
Before he could even finish comprehending what the fuck was going on, Vox dramatically pointed once again at Luffy, who’d approached to slightly lean in and also look at the photo, and Vox somehow managed to find a way to make an already horrendous scene exponentially worse–
“And that guy’s the FATHER, isn’t he?!?!”
“The what.”
“Oh my God, he said it– He actually said it– ! Straight to the Radio Demon’s face– ! I– I can’t– pffFFFF– ” over in the corner, Valentino began curling up against the wall dying of cackling laughter. Popcorn unneeded.
He wasn’t alone. Luffy immediately burst out in uproarious laughter, outright falling over onto the floor curled around his gut from how hard he was laughing. And from beyond the door, the damning sound of Lucifer’s muffled laughter could be heard. Evidently the King was listening in, as though he could never pass up the opportunity to bear witness to someone so horribly embarrassing Alastor to this degree.
Vox, somehow, remained unaffected by the majority of the room outright laughing at him, still glaring at Alastor as though he was seriously waiting for a response–
“Vox... You need to listen to me...” He grasped both of Vox’s shoulders with his hands, much to the other’s surprise, tightening their grip as he leaned forward to emphasize, “No– Don’t speak. If you have ever even once respected and valued the friendship that we used to share, you will listen to me. Because I promise you, I have never been more serious with you than I am being in this moment right now when I say… This is literally the stupidest thing you have ever said.”
The stupid picture-box’s surprise fell away into frustration as he attempted, “Fuck you! I’m being serious– ”
“And I’m being serious, Vox, when I say that I honestly don’t understand HOW you can be serious about this. I– I really don’t– ” Glancing back at the damn picture of a moment that he distinctly remembered had lasted a grand total of ten fucking seconds, when Alastor redirected his stare back at Vox, he couldn’t help but lift one of his hands to drag down the side of his face in exasperated bewilderment. “You’ve got me stuttering! How many times in all the time we’ve known each other have you seen that? What you said is so stupid, I don’t even know where to fucking start! Actually, here’s a good one– Sinners are physically incapable of having children! Explain to me your logic for ignoring this very well-known fact!”
“There’s a God involved,” was the very quick response, delivered in a fully serious tone with a serious expression to match, “The usual rules don’t apply, anything goes.”
“And the fact that we’re both MEN?!”
“Well it’s not like I know what you’ve got down there– ” upon the Radio Demon flashing out his more demonic features, Vox was at least smart enough to pivot, “Same reasoning. There’s a God involved. Anything goes.”
“You cannot just use his godhood as an excuse to ignore ALL SENSIBLE THINKING!”
Alastor finally had to throw both his hands in the air at the utterly ludicrous man. Snatching the picture from the table, he held the wretched thing in Vox’s face to point at. “The creature in this photograph is a reindeer who attained human sentience. As in a literal, fucking, ANIMAL! Not a human! He was alive in their mortal world, for eighteen years mind you! And then he died! He was not born of some mythical womb within the confines of Hell! This is not a seven-year-old child! Let alone MY CHILD!!! Just because we both have deer-related forms does not imply biological relation!”
Vox’s stubborn face flickered, averting his gaze away in a show of doubt –fucking finally– only for him to redirect back onto Alastor with a much more hesitant defense, “ …I mean, yeah. But it’s not JUST him being a deer. He’s PINK!”
“And that’s relevant HOW?”
“ …You’re red.” Vox gestured an open hand his way, before gesturing it towards the still laughing Luffy, who had only just recovered enough to pick himself up off the ground, “And that guy in his God form is white. Red and white mixed together… makes pink.”
“I can’t… I CAN’T– My insides– can’t take anymore of this– O-Oh! Oh my GOD– !!!” Valentino continued to die of freshly renewed laughter in his corner.
Alastor’s mouth was open for a good five seconds before he was able to respond, “ …When you switched out your head to that modernized slim version, were you forced to lobotomize your brain to the extent that it’s been reduced to the state of a five-year-old’s? Because THAT’S THE LEVEL YOUR BRAIN IS ON RIGHT NOW!!!”
Snatching the picture out of Alastor’s hand to stuff back in his pocket, Vox’s bulldozed forward with his pigheadedness, “Okay, well– Origin of the little young deer who suspiciously just ‘HAPPENS’ quote-unquote to suddenly be hanging around you after your extended absence that you treat like your kid aside– ”
“Holding his hand one singular time does not count as treating him like my child! There is nothing suspicious about this circumstance in the slightest! This is all a product of your delusional paranoia!”
“ –Hey, it wasn’t just the hand holding. You let him cling to you a lot too. I would know, I have the footage. But speaking of clinging, you and Monkey are definitely at least FUCKING!” Vox had the absolute audacity to accuse with a severe glower, hands on his hips and fully convinced of his own delusions, “Not only that! But you’re fucking MARRIED, aren’t you?!”
Once again, Alastor could do nothing but stare in absolute disbelief at this catastrophic buffoonery, somehow managing to shout back, “ …NOOOOO???? Why in the name of fucking Lucifer all-mighty would you even come to that conclusion?!?!”
“You have matching RINGS!!!” Vox whined with the EXACT SAME cadence that Boa Hancock had, except at least the Pirate Empress had enough clarity of mind to understand it wasn’t a symbol of matrimony! It takes every ounce of internal willpower that Alastor has not to immediately grab the conveniently placed table beside them both and smash it over the top of that malfunctioning piece of shit Vox has officially lost the right to call a brain–
“Rings with the captain’s jolly roger, very much not WEDDING RINGS! By God, Vox! The skull and cross bones of a pirate’s flag are a distinctly well-known method for demonstrating pirating allegiance! Compare that to assuming I consented to the most god-awful gaudy design possible for my fucking wedding ring– ”
“So you WOULD marry him if you had better rings!”
“NO!!!!! We are not getting married! And we are not fucking! Absolutely nothing of that sort is going on between us! Our relationship is– ”
“So you ARE in a RELATIONSHIP– ”
“THE WORD REFERS TO PLATONIC RELATIONSHIPS TOO!!! You MISERABLE CRETIN! There is a literal clown out in the main room right now, and you are somehow out-clowning him by a significant margin!”
“HAVE YOU SLEPT WITH ALASTOR?!” Vox skipped over Alastor’s denial to question Luffy directly.
This time, Alastor didn’t even bother restraining himself from summoning a tendril to outright slap the man across his TV-screen face for the atrocious insolence. Hard. His head spun around like it was on a hinge. But other than how he was forced to grab the sides to hold it in place, Vox failed to react otherwise, so caught up in his envy that he failed to give a shit about literally anything else at all.
After having recovered from his laughing fit, Luffy had simply been watching the scene play out before him, his face swishing back and forth between the two players reminiscent of a sports match. Momentarily caught off-guard at suddenly being addressed, Luffy examined Vox with a squinty-eyed look, which he then shifted towards Alastor, then back onto Vox.
Alastor knew Luffy well enough to realize that, rather than making the obvious connection that Vox’s question was in the context of his previous sexual accusations, the boy instantly jumped to the literal connotation. He evidently remembered that Alastor had threatened to never allow him into his quarters again if he told anyone about the time he’d been allowed into Alastor’s bed, and thus, bless this literal sunshine boy, he proceeded to lie in the most obvious way possible–
Eyes fully averted to the side and mouth stretched into the corner of his face, Luffy’s words trailed out in an overly extended manner, “UHHHH… Naaaaah~ Al’s never ever EEEEEEVER let me do thaaa– ”
“He’s talking about us having SEX you IMBECILE!!!”
“Oh. Then nah. Course not!” Luffy immediately corrected himself upon Alastor’s chastising, speaking naturally now that he could tell the truth. Alastor was so very close to slapping himself in the face in his ever-building exasperation.
Vox stared at Luffy for a good few seconds. Then, narrowing his eyes, he leaned forward towards the boy to slowly lay out, “So you haven’t had sex… But you’ve physically slept with him? …Like in his bed?”
“Naaaaah~ Al’s never ever EEEEEEVER let me do thaaaaat…” Alastor didn’t react this time around, as he already realized attempting to get a more convincing lie out of Luffy was a hopeless case. Instead, he just suffered in silence.
“ …That’s even WORSE!!!” crying out as though he’d been personally victimized, Vox pivoted back towards Alastor with a glare that was more pathetic than it was angry, his hand slapping into his own chest as he whined, “You trust this guy enough to let yourself be unconscious around him?! You never slept over at my place when we were friends! Or in the same bed!!!”
This absolute disaster masquerading himself as a man– While he was somewhat surprised Vox apparently prioritized the act of sleeping together over the act of sex, even still, all Alastor could do was let out a long sigh, “Once again, you are speaking at the same level of logic as a five-year-old. Considering how our ‘friendship’ ended up, I’d say it makes perfect sense I would find the captain more trustworthy than you. How does that not compute for you when you supposedly have a computational contraption inside that box of yours?!”
Vox flinched back as though Alastor had struck him. Except when Alastor had actually struck him, he’d given less of a reaction than now. For the briefest, fleeting glimpse of a hopeful moment, he thought that perhaps he might be getting through to the man.
Only for Vox to fall back into a contemplative pondering before, of course, coming out the other side of it with a horrid take, “Wait… If you’ve slept in the same bed… That must mean… you’ve cuddled, right?! Have you– holy shit– have you pet his ears?!?!”
Behind Vox’s back within Luffy’s view, Alastor’s shadow crawled up onto the wall to mime out an X with its arms, trying to signal the boy to give a negative response. Alastor didn’t even direct it to do this. It must truly be in a horrendous amount of pain from the secondhand embarrassment of this travesty. Luffy noticed the creature, and then gave it a seemingly understanding grin of agreement.
The boy then crossed his arms to form an X in the exact same manner, confident grin still fully in place. Vox squinted questioningly at the action while Alastor withheld his longest sigh yet, still suffering in silence. Confused, the stupid box asked, “What… What is that supposed to mean?”
“Don’t know,” the Monkey who may or may not be even stupider replied without a hitch, “But that’s my answer!”
Vox swerved to glance behind him, just catching sight of Alastor’s now face-palming shadow retreating from its place on the wall. He turned back around with wide-eyed, slack-jawed shock plain on his face, hand half raised to his mouth.
“He… really let you… pet his ears…? The… The devastatingly adorable pieces of fluff that for so many years I’ve despaired over having to restrain myself from the temptation of even touching with a single finger lest Alastor murders me and throws away my dismembered corpse in a dumpster on the streets– ?”
“You truly do NOT need to go into that level of detail– ”
“ –But WHY?!?!”
“Huh? You don’t know?” as though it was obvious, Luffy pointed a thumb into his own chest with a beaming grin to declare in full confidence, “I’m Alastor’s favorite person!”
The TV screen instantly flicked to a blue-screen tone dial, Vox’s body going slightly slack in his malfunctioning. His screen flickered to colored bars and static. Before he finally pulled himself together enough to form a face. One that stared with big eyes straight at Alastor, waiting for any sort of denial.
After a short instance of eye-contact, Alastor’s gaze slid away from Vox. There was tense silence for a long moment. Even Valentino had stopped laughing.
–While he’d hesitate to explicitly state Luffy’s assertion… his silence on the matter rang out loud and clear–
“ …That’s it. That– That is IT.”
Electric blue energy flashed out of Vox at random, thin and branching like condensed lightning. It zapped out of his head and his fang baring scowl and the shaking, clenched fist he held out in front of his chest.
With his head tilted too far to one side, Vox took a step towards Luffy as he hissed out choppy, piercing words from a voice filled with static interference, “Y-Y-You know what, St-Straw Hat? All that other shit you-u did– THAT was enough for me to h-h-hate you, but it’s also whatever, still. Breaking into the tower. Br-Breaking Angel’s Contract. Beating up Val-al. Your crew infiltrating our empire to backstab-ab us! Being turned to actual stone! Destroying A-ALL our S-S-Soul Contracts! All of that– means fucking NOTHING to me– ”
“Ex-fucking-cuse me bitch?” Valentino’s offended objection was completely ignored by Vox as well as everyone else in the room.
“ –NOTHING! Nothing at all… compared to you taking Al-Alastor like this! Taking the place in Alastor’s life that I-I have wanted– that I have dreamed of– for SEVENTY DAMN YEARS!!!”
Electricity burst across the entire room in a flash of blinding light. A pure emotional release rather than an intentional attack, but still hazardous nonetheless. With his mic out front, Alastor was just quick enough to form a shadowy shield around himself while the captain took the blast head on. Vox’s fellow Vee was similarly caught in the out-of-control attack, and promptly cried out an awful high-pitch shriek at being zapped like an actual insect.
The energy didn’t dissipate entirely, still overflowing out of Vox in jagged currents, but it did die down enough for the light to no longer be blinding. Allowing Alastor to see the way Vox spread out his arms and curled claws while his screen flickered into one large hypnotic spiral, red and black ever circling in and in on each other. Streamline black wires with pulsing blue energy coursing through them shot out from the back of Vox’s head like whips.
“ I don’t care who you-u-u are! I don’t give a shit that you’re some pirate– some King– some GOD– I won’t accept that Al-Alastor is H-H-HAPPY with YOU!!! I WON’T ACCEPT THAT YOU CAN BE HAPPY W-WITHOUT ME-E-E, ALASTOR-R-R– ALASTOR– ALASTOR– I WON’T– I WON’T – I WON’T– ”
“I already told you that won’t work on me, Square-Face.”
With very little fanfare, Luffy’s enlarged hand took hold of all the cords at once to jerk Vox towards him. As Vox tipped forward head first, Luffy’s head drew back only to charge rush forward like a rushing bull. “Gum-Gum Bell!”
Vox’s screen shattered from the hit. His form fell back, red and black flickering on the pieces in an eye-searing glitch until they were rendered to static. Before he could fall to the ground, however, rubbery hands grasped the sides of that boxy head.
They swerved to the side to shoot Vox’s head along with the rest of the body attached right out the window, the glass shattering apart in a loud crash.
“It’ll be bad falling from this high up, so you should get him, Moth Man.”
“Oh that bitch does not fucking deserve me saving his flat ass like this– ! Don’t think I’ve forgotten what I owe you, Monkey boy, this isn’t over!” even with his rightful complaining however, to his credit the now crispy looking Valentino still flew forward. Flying out of the window right behind Vox.
Dismissing his shield to peer out of the wreckage, Alastor saw he caught the other about half-way down the length of the hotel.
Not even bothering to wait and see if Vox had been rescued from his freefall, Luffy just turned back towards the door to head back into the main room, his posture and walk fully casual. After a moment of hesitation, Alastor followed him a couple steps behind.
They entered to see that everyone was beside the much larger ceiling to floor window, having apparently noticed Vox rocketing out as well as Valentino’s subsequent rescue. Everyone except for Velvette, that is, who remained seated with her head leaning into the palm of her hand and exasperation clear as the sight of Vox being thrown out the window on her face.
“…So what was that ya said ‘bout Straw Hat listening to you, Princess Morningstar? FUFUFUFU!!! What a joke that was!” with his head tilted precariously back and a wing slightly covering his beak, Doflamingo guffawed through his jeering cackle. Charlie could only wince in response to the call out.
Shockingly, the still thoroughly irate Velvette spoke up, “That doesn’t fucking count. If that talk went anythin’ like the way I thought it would, then that bastard deserved to be thrown out the damn window! I would’a thrown him out myself if I’d been in the room! Fucking goddammit Vox! What was the point of us even agreein’ to come to this damn meeting if you’re just gonna pull this bullshit?!”
And with that, Velvette abruptly stood up from her chair, hands slamming down on the table, and promptly sulked out of the room without another word.
At the mention of the woman likely knowing how that downright awful conversation went, Alastor narrowed his eyes on another person who definitely knew how it’d gone. Seeing that he had to have been listening to have been driven to laughter loud enough to be heard through the walls. Upon the glare, Lucifer held both his hands up with a mouth quivering in its attempt to not form what would surely be a shit-eating grin. “In exchange for eavesdropping, I kept everyone else from eavesdropping too! And I didn’t say anything, because I knew you would try to kill me for real if I did! Really! And holy shit, that was– pff– I laughed more than I have in fucking centuries, Al, I’m tellin’ ya– ”
“I do not want to hear you complain about me laughing in the face of your misery EVER AGAIN,” with that said, Alastor made his own way right out the door.
Thankfully the last of the Vees had already made herself scarce, though clearly Velvette was the only tolerable one among the bunch. Ignoring the little form of Niffty scurrying past him, welding a kitchen knife and laughing about killing the “clown roach” while the bug being persecuted shrieked in terror, Alastor stalked down the hall. He could have simply traversed his way back to his tower through the darkness, but instead he kept to walking, needing to release some of his pent-up, prickling tension. Following behind him were two sets of footsteps. The heavy strides of Jinbei paired with the light stroll of Luffy.
“Alastor, Luffy, what happened back there?”
“Square-Face was just sayin’ a bunch ‘a stuff that didn’t make sense,” Luffy responded before Alastor could. And thankfully so, considering he would have likely hissed something vile at the fishman, and the poor fellow hardly deserved to become a victim of Alastor’s astray ill-intent.
Feeling the claws of his clenched fists dig in sharply into his palms from where they were folded behind his back, his unseen sutures tugged harshly against his smile as Alastor scoffed sharply, “Quite. The only saving grace of that entire farce was Luffy throwing him out the building! With any luck, Vox will take that as a cue to realize he is hopelessly outmatched and will never show his face around our parts again!”
“He’ll come back,” Luffy stated this with so much certainty, Alastor unconscious halted in his steps. He glanced back at the boy to meet his unwavering stare. Also looking down at their captain, Jinbei heeded his words with full diligence.
“It doesn’t matter if he knows he’s weaker than me, he’ll be back. He was serious about you. You’re his dream.”
“ …What a horrendous nightmare of a ‘dream’. And it’s not really me, it’s what he covets from me.” Alastor about-faced to continue down the hallway, the two still following behind. Only for his footing to stumble once more when next Luffy spoke–
“ …Sorry. I can beat ‘em up as many times as we need to, but I won’t be able to change his mind about how to be friends with you. He has to do that by himself.”
After blinking down at the carpet for a split second, Alastor cracked his head around to raise an eyebrow at the boy and drawl, “I understand you are quite the innocent soul, dear captain, but what that malfunctioning picture-box wants is not to be ‘friends’ with me. What he actually wants is something he should know perfectly well I will never give him.”
Luffy just stared back at the look, plainly stating, “But he does. He just doesn’t know the right way to do it.”
Giving up the semantics of it, Alastor permitted himself a flash of an eyeroll while he posed, “Is his supposed quest to become my friend garnering sympathy from you…?”
“No way!” Alastor’s eyes widened just a tad at the stubborn pout that suddenly drew across Luffy’s face, taken aback by the change up. Pointing at himself with his thumb reminiscent of the way he’d done just a moment prior, Luffy declared, “I’m your captain, which means that I’m your favorite person! I won’t give up that title, and I won’t share it unless it’s with someone really important! I’m not a hero, I’m a pirate!”
While Alastor was still staring at the boy trying to decipher whatever the last part of that meant, Jinbei snorted to himself. His fangs pulled up into a slight but fond smile as he apparently jumped right aboard the line of thinking, “Following that analogy– A hero would share being Alastor’s favorite with others, but as a pirate, you want Alastor all to yourself? That’s especially selfish of you considering everyone on the crew has to share being your favorite!”
“That’s right! But it’s fine, cause we’re all Nakama, and I’m the captain!”
“ …I’m not quite sure that makes the insistence any less childish. Ha!” Closing his eyes with the shake of his head, Alastor turned his head around to begin walking again.
But just like that, the uncertain discord emanating from the void in his chest started to unravel. His grin eased up from its prior stiffness as Luffy’s words settled into that same place, steadying it with their reassuring weight. And once more, his ‘old pal’ fell back into being just a small thought in the back of his head. Fully ignored and left without regard… But not completely out of mind.
Notes:
You guys have no idea how long I've waited to finally get to the Vox conspiracy theory, literally a significant portion of the reason why Chopper is pink other than it being his associated color and matching his association with sakura was that I knew it would enhance this joke lmao I can finally rest in peaceI limited the roster to seven shichibukai for obvious reasons, but I had been considering including Gecko Moria because his devil fruit ability would probably work really well in Hell, and I just want to state for the record that his demon form would be a cute Niffty size shadow bat cause I think being small would suit him lololol
Chapter 19: The Never-Ending Tale
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Promptly after the various Overlords and Warlords dispersed from the meeting, Mihawk stopped in the lobby upon finding the Straw Hats’ swordsman to collect him for their duel –after the cook had just finished locating and retrieving the man from where he’d gotten lost in the hotel after escorting the Cross Guild pirates up, that is– with the two other Cross Guild pirates following behind him with the air of those pretending to act disinterested when they were not. Crocodile was a great deal more convincing at it than Buggy.
Standing up from his usual barstool, Zoro looked at the hawk with three sets of grins as he began grew out his third pair of arms and began withdrawing swords from their sheaths. “Was wondering when you’d come around. Had to train with the new body, right? I hope you’ve past the point you were in life, because– ”
“What are you doing?! You two can’t fight in here! You’ll bring the whole place down!” Nami suddenly burst onto the scene to burst Zoro’s bubble. Based on the way a disgruntled Vaggie was beside her, it seemed that the ex-angel had had the foresight to gather backup after hearing that one of the Straw Hats had agreed to a fight.
“Tch. Fine. We’ll go outside– ”
“That’s no good either! A single stray attack from either of you will cut the hotel in half! You can’t be here or anywhere inside the city! Go find an island off the coast or something!”
“Huh?! You’re gonna make us find some random island– ”
“Actually, I also had that sort of location in mind for our duel, Roronoa,” Mihawk thankfully interrupted before the man could get too into it, “I doubt either of us would wish to hold back, so that would be the prime location to fight without restrictions. And as my new form allows me flight, I have already staked out a piece of land out past the island Hancock has claimed.”
With an annoyed huff, Zoro closed his eye and rubbed at the back of his head as he conceded, “Fine! Franky hasn’t made anything more than some rowboats though since he’s been too busy building the Pirate Empress a ship, so that’s all we got to work with setting out.”
“ …That’s all you have to work with. I am perfectly capable of flying to the location, as I mentioned.”
“FOR REAL?!?! You’ve gotta be fucking with me right now!”
“Would you prefer that I carried you there?”
“HELL NO!!!”
“Then the matter is settled,” the picture of unbothered, Mihawk then turned to the navigator to hand her a simple map, saying, “Please make sure he gets there. It would be inconvenient if our match never occurred because he got lost at sea for all of eternity– ”
“Don’t make it so I have to sail out to have our fight then!”
In the end, Zoro was accompanied by not only Nami, but also Chopper, who immediately volunteered to go to provide medical support, and Luffy, who wanted to go just because. Alastor was also bullied into tagging along by the captain so that, quote– “he would feel better”. Despite his great attempts at explaining that spectating a pissing match between two grown men would not, in fact, improve his mood, and that there was no need to improve it in the first place, he was ignored as always.
He was also prevented from using his shadows to traverse there. Luffy took him by hand to drag him all the way down to the dock Franky had recently built out –Vox is going to hate that when he sees that feed. It was expected to be a short trip, so they didn’t take much beside some emergency provisions that Sanji insisted on them taking, much to Chopper’s relief –“Please don’t make me the emergency food supply!”– and after boarding onto a small boat that was just big enough for the five of them, they were off.
For all that Zoro had been complaining about having to take the rowboat, Franky had fitted the thing with a modern, Cola-running engine, so it was just a matter of Nami steering the rutter. However, the swordsman was agitated that they were in the position of needing to catch up to his opponent and had thus argued his way into gunning the engine at almost top speed. This turned what was previously an almost pleasant ride into a jarring, choppy, stomach-turning experience. The boat cut through waves, forcing it up and down and sometimes outright hopping into the air to thud back into the water in a weighted landing.
While Luffy was laughing his head off at the front of the boat, wind forcing his straw hat off his head to shake in the wind by the string tying it to his neck, Alastor’s hands were clawing into the sides of the seat beneath him. He was also crouched in as much as possible in an attempt to avoid the overabundant sea-spray of the water flying off the sides of the boat.
And of course, looking casually unaffected by the turbulence, the annoying swordsman caught sight of him. “Red ears, have you even been on a boat before? Kinda weird for you to join a pirate crew when you’re no good out at sea, ya know.”
“I was doing perfectly fine before you sped up this horrid contraption! I’ll have you know I have been on boats, thank you very much. It’s simply that none the vehicles and vessels of my day would go as fast as modern-day engines are capable of, and thus they would provide a much smoother ride. Which we could be having as well if we slowed down!”
“The speed we’re going at is fine! We aren’t slowing down just because you’re particular– ”
As if right on que, they experienced the largest boat jump and jostle yet. There was a loud splash, and Nami suddenly gutted the engine, crying out, “We lost Chopper!”
“SHIT.” Alastor’s mood greatly improved upon the sight of the first mate being forced to jump overboard himself and swim back to where the deerling was struggling to tread water. They did indeed go slower after that occurrence, thankfully.
Shortly after, they moored onto a sandy red beach. Lucifer had apparently deemed to give the islands actual plant life instead of leaving the land born of wastes plain and dusty. There were a fair number of palm trees to provide shade on this one, but as it was a small island, more of a sandbar than anything, there still wasn’t much. Mihawk as well as his two not-so friendly companions were already present. Alastor supposed being able to dissolve into floating sand and well as break one’s body into floating pieces would imply some capability in flight.
The two swordsmen readied themselves and met in the center of the sands. Zoro with all nine swords withdrawn from their scabbards, placed the sword made of Heavenly steel that Alastor remembered had been referred to as the Wado Ichimonji prior that day, while both of Mihawk’s wings transformed into shining white blades. The peanut gallery, meanwhile, collected off to the side of the island as far away as possible, with the Straw Hats bunched together and the two other pirates standing just a ways away.
Right before they started after examining Zoro’s form, Mihawk commented, “I see you did not deign to acquire any additional angelic weapons when collecting more swords to fill out your roster.”
“Of course,” Zoro smirked through his teeth’s clenched hold on his blade, “The Wado Ichimonji is the blade I willed into transcending the Heavens, such that the person who would have welded it surely knows I fulfilled our dream. Compared to it, I didn’t earn any other sword of Heavenly Steel, and I don’t need any other, and so there was no point in trying to get any. It’s the treasure I earned– my pride as the Strongest Swordsman in the World.”
After a brief moment, the usually unemotive hawk smirked back. “Well said. You were the strongest in the mortal world, but we need to confirm you remain the strongest in the underworld, isn’t that right?”
“That’s why I agreed to this duel… Even after being here awhile, I haven’t run into any good swordsmen. Did you already take them all out?”
“They weren’t worth your time,” was the easy confirmation, “Unfortunately, it would seem that the strict adherence to honor Wano’s swordsmen live by increases their likelihood of being permitted into Heaven. None of their strongest were in this world. I’m quite thankful Straw Hat drew all of you into following him down here, it would have been a bore of an afterlife if you didn’t end up here.”
“Ha! How awful for you, yeah! Hope you made sure to get stronger while waiting for me though, cause the least you can do to pay me back is put up a good fight– !” And with that, the casual banter came to a halt with the clashing of steel.
As it turns out, the navigator had not been exaggerating in the slightest when she’d said a stray hit from either of the swordsmen would leave the hotel cut in half. Before the end of the fight, the very island they were standing on was completely bisected by Mihawk along with the ocean surrounding it, leaving the water to come roaring back in to fill the gorged with the loud crashing of waves. The fight then promptly ended when Zoro bisected his opponent in a diagonal slash with his angelic weapon, leaving the harpy in two pieces.
Chopper rushed out into the field at that point to immediately give treatment, officially concluding the battle. Mihawk looked down at himself in curiosity while watching the doctor bloom flowers in between the two disconnected portions of his body, while Zoro, still injured and huffing from exhaustion, stepped over to glance down at the proceedings and do the same. “Oh– That healing of yours really is somethin’, Chopper! I didn’t know you could fix that kind of wound.”
Chopper snapped back, “I didn’t know either until you cut someone in half! Just because I’m around doesn’t mean ya can do whatever, ya bastard! Didn’t Charlie just make an agreement to work with this guy and the Cross Guild to fight against Heaven?! What’re you doing actually tryin’ to kill each other like that?!”
“That’s right! That’s right! Isn’t this literally exactly what happened before in life?! Stupid swords for brains Junior!” Buggy hovered over to point in accusation at Zoro’s sneer.
“Hey! Neither of us can hold back for this kind of fight! If we don’t use our full strength it can’t count as a deciding match!”
“Then postpone the match until after the fight that matters for everyone else?!?! How hard is that to understand, you selfish pieces of shit?!”
From his place still on the ground, Mihawk sighed in annoyance, “It’s fine. I’m not dying.”
“I don’t wanna hear anything from you either! Die for all I care! But do it AFTER I don’t need your pro– I mean, do it after the Guild’s fight!”
“I don’t need to be around for this…” with that sigh of complaint, Crocodile began to dissolve into amorphous, swirling sand, until only his torso remained. Glancing Luffy and Alastor’s way, he intoned, “Straw Hat… Haven’t even been dead that long, and you’re already leaving a mark; Breaking down the old system, getting Morningstar to make this sea, recruiting one of those Overlords… It seems you’ve brought down here with you a new pirating era, just like that Gold Roger in life. I plan to take advantage of the waves you’re leave in your wake, so don’t get in my way, and we won’t have a problem.”
“Then don’t do anything I don’t like! I’m fine with Croco, but only when you leave my friends alone!” Luffy replied with predictable insistence, hands crossed over his chest.
Crocodile tsked but didn’t say anything else before he rendered the rest of himself into a stream of sand, traveling through the sea breeze. As for their own party, they returned to the hotel after both Mihawk and Zoro were tended to. The two swordsmen had also discussed a rough schedule of holding a match every decade or so to keep progressing further with their skills before they parted ways. They had a very casual relationship despite essentially establishing themselves as eternal rivals, but it’s not as though there was a set standard for that in the first place…
The very next day was when Alastor planned to attempt, for lack of a better term, the ship summoning ritual.
By this point Franky had long since completed his miniature model of the Thousand Sunny Go, and that morning Alastor collected from him a colorful brigantine model ship with a figurehead that seemed to be a mixture between a lion and a sun. An eclectic style, but one that suited Luffy and the Straw Hats certainly. Franky was, of course, bursting with excitement for the coming ritual, and Alastor had been eager to throw out an excuse to leave him and his loudness behind for the time being.
Usopp hadn’t been in their suite during the time, so it wasn’t until Alastor had gone outside hotel onto the beach to look over the area and decide where to set up that the second model was given to him. Usopp had been sitting in the sand with his creation, holding it out at arm’s length in front of the water in a way that suggested he was trying to visualize the real ship out in the water. It made for a rather pathetic sight, truly. After noticing Alastor’s arrival, Usopp jumped up from his spot to approach.
The sniper handed to him a smaller miniature than the Sunny’s, the two of them likely having been made to scale. A caravel with a cute lamb for the figurehead with a much simpler design compared to the Sunny.
“Well what do we have here…” Alastor absentmindedly commented as he turned the ship model over in his hands, looking at it from various sides. A discerning eye could tell that it wasn’t made with the same level of perfect quality that Franky’s had been, but it was a much better effort than a basic amateur would have given as well. “Hm. The sheep is a bit cutesy for my taste, but between the two of them, I believe I prefer this one.”
Usopp sounded taken aback by that, “R-Really? I mean– don’t tell Franky, the Merry will always be my favorite, but I’m also biased about that since she was a gift from my friend Kaya. The Sunny’s much bigger and has a lot of stuff that Merry didn’t. The Sunny was also made with Adam’s wood, so she was a really strong ship.”
“Regardless of what men across the ages will pretend– bigger is not always better. Ahaha!” that wasn’t the type of joke Alastor would typically use, but it was too appropriate for the circumstance to pass up.
Looking back up at the wide-eyed puppet, Alastor continued with a casual tone, “While the Thousand Sunny Go is most definitely a ship befitting for your crew, this Going Merry has got a charming, homey look to it! I’m not sure what kind of surely absurd modifications that cyborg built into his creation, but I often find unneeded modifications to be a tiresome complication. I suppose I’m just an old soul who’s content with the simplicity of the old-fashioned. I can see how the Going Merry was too modest of a ship to make it to the end of such a fantastical journey, but it sounded like it did fairly well for itself regardless.”
“Oh… You could say that, yeah…” Usopp glanced away as he spoke, looking out towards where the waves were crashing against the beach, before looking farther out onto the horizon. That liminal space where the red of the sky met the blue of the sea. It seemed that he was in the middle of a thought, so Alastor held off from responding until he next spoke.
“ …I used to think I wouldn’t make it to the end, too. You probably haven’t heard about it yet, but I even left the crew once.”
Alastor had to blink away his incredulous reaction to that suggestion. “Is that supposed to be an attempt at humor? As far as I can tell, the captain would never allow anyone to leave!”
“It’s true!” Usopp glanced back Alastor’s way to convey his earnestness, before averting his gaze down onto the ship still nestled in Alastor’s claws, “Luffy didn’t want me to leave, of course, but– I picked a huge fight with him when we got the news that Merry couldn’t sail anymore. He made the decision to get a new ship, and I refused to accept it. I challenged him to a battle for the right to her, and even though I lost, he gave her to me anyway, and… when it was time for us to go save Robin, I had to wear this mask the whole time because I wasn’t brave enough to face him again. And of course he couldn’t tell it was me at all until I took it off! I really don’t understand the way his head works sometimes.”
Usopp raised a hand to cup the mask attached to the back of his head in reference to it, a smile pulling at his lips in the remembrance of his exasperation at Luffy’s lack of guile. Before it faded once more back into his contemplation.
Alastor hummed back, only somewhat interested in the conversation, “Well, as you’ve said that the ship was a gift from a friend, I can understand why you’d be upset over the matter. But to insist on ignoring the practicality of the situation was also uncalled for. It’s not as though the captain is so irresponsible as to sail you all into a watery grave… Though I suppose he technically did that in your last fight, but that was likely a much more climatic ending than just drowning at sea due to your ship sinking! Ha!”
“I know that. Luffy made the right decision for the crew. It was one of the biggest decisions he’d made acting like a real captain. But the thing with Merry was more than just her being from Kaya, it was…” As his hand fell away from the mask on his head, Usopp looked back towards the sea once more. “ …It was like they decided she was too weak to continue the journey, so they had to leave her behind. And that’s a huge deal! You probably don’t get it cause you haven’t been on a ship with us yet, but the ship is part of the crew! Leaving Merry behind was like leaving behind a crewmate! And if they could leave Merry behind… I just thought it was only a matter of time before I would get left behind, too. Cause of me being too weak to keep up with everyone else.”
There was a moment of silence covered up by the sound of the rolling waves. Usopp shrugged to himself, finally looking back at Alastor to return to a more causal tone, “But that didn’t end up happening. Even now in death to the very end, I’m still the weakest person on the crew, but I’m still on the crew. They never left me behind. I made it to the end of the world with Luffy! I became the brave warrior of the sea that I always dreamed of being! I was even brave enough to join a war against the entire world and fight off that sniper on Blackbeard’s crew! And the only thing I regret is that I wasn’t able to go back to Kaya and tell her all the new stories I had of my adventures. I used to only tell her stories that were lies, so I really wanted to be able to tell her ones that were true. Hopefully the News Coo was able to get those letters to her…”
After looking away again at the mention of his friend, Usopp recollected himself to conclude, “I guess it’s just that even now, I still feel kinda shocked I made it this far. Me, the guy who used to do nothing but lie about being brave! And now here I am, in Hell, talking to a literal serial killer cannibal demon! Who would’a thought! Though I guess it did take me awhile to be able to talk with you for this long, even with you being on the crew and all… No offense.”
“None taken. Truthfully, I rather enjoy the times you become overrun with terror at the sight of me. It makes for some fairly entertaining reactions!” Alastor took the opportunity to interject.
“I’m not sure that’s a good thing…” Usopp gave Alastor’s mean curl of a grin the kind of wary glance his statement deserved, before dismissing the issue, “But even with how far I made it, I still can’t help but wonder… if I could’ve done better? I guess. Gotten even stronger, maybe. What if– What if I really was deadweight, in the end? Like I pulled my weight some ways but it’s not like I was perfect. I’m still the weakest for a reason. If there had been someone else on the crew instead of me who was stronger, the same way Sunny made for a stronger replacement for the Merry… Would Luffy and everybody have been better off?”
Usopp thought to himself for a brief moment, before he gestured towards Alastor, inadvertently cutting Alastor off when he’d been about to respond, “Like you, even! You’re super strong! And you can do all these things with your magic or demon powers or whatever they are– Like what you’re doing for the Merry and Sunny! And I– I wasn’t even able to keep the Merry running... If it’d been switched up– if Luffy had somehow been able to recruit you in life, you would’ve done a much better job than me. You would’ve been able to help Luffy win the fight and made it so everyone came out alright. I guess it’s pointless to think about since you didn’t even come from our world, but– ”
“It really is pointless, yes,” Alastor finally had to cut the other off, having decidedly heard enough of this drivel.
Leaning forward into Usopp’s now uncertain face, Alastor grinned wide as he tapped a sharp claw against the end of the puppet’s nose. The move caused the coward to flinch back, clutching his nose and now paling face as he likely remembered the ease with which the Radio Demon had been able to cut it off the previous time.
“It’s pointless, because even discounting the impossibility of the circumstances, you’ve got it all wrong to begin with! If it had been me in your place, there’s a very good likelihood that I wouldn’t have been nearly as useful as you were.”
“ …Huh? Really?” Usopp looked completely caught off guard by the response.
“Most certainly! After all, the premise you were discussing was that of Luffy theoretically recruiting me in life, was it not?” At the other’s hesitant nod of confirmation, Alastor leaned back to gesture towards himself with the hand not holding onto the model ship, explaining, “I don’t think you realize how stark of a difference there is between your fantastical world and that where the rest of us sinners fall from, good man. It’s like the difference between a mundane reality and that of fairytale whimsies! When I was alive as a human, I was much weaker than my current demonic self, and all other sinners down here were also similarly the equivalent of weak, human flesh bags. There is no such thing as a man who can cut an island in half with the strike of a sword where I come from! And even concerning yourself, for example– that enemy sniper that you mentioned, I’m assuming he also had some absurd abilities or power?”
Still staring at him in surprise, Usopp stuttered, “U-Uh– Well– He was really strong, yeah! Van Augur ‘the Supersonic’, he had a Devil Fruit which let him teleport and he was really fast, so I had to improve my Observation to the point of future sight so that I could hit him– ”
“You literally sniped a teleporting man moving a supersonic speed by seeing into the future– Why are we even having this conversation? Ridiculous! This is the very definition of Imposter Syndrome!” Alastor held himself back from running a hand down his face, but it was a very near thing. Making a full show of his unimpressed eyeroll, he raised his eyebrows in his exasperation as he emphasized, “That’s another thing– no one of my world has this Observation that you lot occasionally reference. Despite describing yourself as the weakest link, you fully surpassed the limitations of my version of humanity! As I was in life, I would not have been able to do anything against an enemy who moved that fast! Perhaps if the captain had required some covert assassinations I could have been of use, I was rather good at stalking and ambushing victims by the end of my run as a serial killer– ”
“You were a serial killer in life too?!”
“ –but I was not combat worthy. Especially in regards to such superhuman opponents.” Tapping the end of his claw against Usopp’s long Pinocchio-esque nose once more, this time, the puppet didn’t flinch at the action. “In comparison, if you as you were in life had somehow ended up in my world, you could very well have called yourself the best sniper in all the world, and no one would have been able to prove you wrong. For as ordinary as you perceive yourself to be based on the rest of your fantastical crew, you are positively extraordinary by regular standards.”
Alastor leaned away again, this time folding his hand behind his back with the motion. His other was still holding the model of the Going Merry low against his torso. Usopp’s already circular eyes went wide at the declaration, his mouth wavering as he tried to find the words to respond, “You… really mean that?”
“Certainly. And another thing– Even here in Hell, you are not considered part of the norm. All the strength you carried with you down here you gained in life. But as for the rest of us sinners and Overlords, power is gained through trampling over the weak. Striking deals, stealing souls, murdering enemies, eating the weak; That’s how people of my world become strong in death. For us, remaining human would be considered a weakness. But as for yourself, you gained your strength throughout the course of your humanity, and thus you remain a human amongst a world of demons, and it is not a weakness. Is that not a noteworthy accomplishment?”
At the very least, as someone who’d sold his soul to the Devil’s wife for power due to fear of his own weakness… he himself considered it as such.
Alastor had to restrain himself from sighing at the sight of the puppet’s eyes dewing up, tears collecting at their corners to roll down wooden cheeks. He did allow a brief flash of an eyeroll as he glanced away, however, turning his back to the other to start heading down to the docks. “There are certainly still some aspects of humanity which carry with them inherent weakness, however. Do be a dear and finish up your emotional crisis before it’s time to commence the ritual, will you? I’m disinclined to being around such sappiness.”
From behind him, Usopp called out, “Y-You’re the one who made me start crying, bastard! But for real, you’re actually really nice Al– ”
“When will you people stop spouting such lies about my person…”
“When it stops being true! Coming from a liar through ‘n’ through, I’m telling you Al, it’s the whole truth and nothing but the truth!” Alastor made a mental note to scare the shit out of the coward at the next opportunity that comes up, to remind Usopp just how nice he truly is…
It wasn’t too long after that the hour of reckoning was upon them. All the Straw Hats had come to gather around him at the end of the long dock, along with Charlie, Lucifer, and a couple of others who were curious to see what Alastor’s summoning would entail.
Bartolomeo of course was part of this number, eagerly waiting a good ways back along with the other bystanders as to give the Straw Hats their space and wholly decked out in what appeared to be handmade Going Merry and Sunny Go apparel with cheerleader pompoms. He was evidently just as excited by the prospect of their revival as the crew themselves were.
“GO GO ALASTOR-SENPAI, GO! We all believe in you senpai! I can’t believe this– To not only get the Sunny back, but after all these years, I might be blessed with the sight of the Going Merry! It’s a miracle! I’m already crying just thinking about it– ” Please stop…
Rather than admit to his internal annoyance, however, Alastor just turned to the Straw Hats –AKA the only people who actually needed to be there– to get the proverbial party started. “Alrighty then! As I know there are a number of you who are rather intellectually challenged, I’ll be explaining the steps I’m about to proceed through just to ensure that none of you somehow manage to find a way to inadvertently sabotage my efforts– ”
“The Hell you lookin’ at me for red ears?!”
“Shitty mosshead is one thing but don’t you go accusing me of being stupid too!”
“SUUUUPER NOT COOL, Al bro! I want this to work more than anyone!”
“I thought ya said you wanted my help?” Luffy capped off the round of objections with a genuine look of confusion.
As he was the only one worth responding to, Alastor addressed Luffy’s statement while guiding the captain by the shoulders to stand directly next to him at the very end of the dock, “That I did, dear captain! Which is why it is even more important that you actually listen to what I tell you to do, understand?”
“Got it!” Based on Luffy’s bright grin, he certainly believed his declaration to be a truthful one. Whether or not it actually was remained to be seen.
“Excellent. Now, we’ll be going one ship at a time, so let’s start off with the more recent of the pair, shall we? It will likely be easier to locate,” as he spoke, Alastor held out the model ship of the Sunny as well as the piece of Franky’s metal he’d collected from the shipwright to go along with it.
In the water off to one side of the dock end, shadows lurked about on the surface, forming the shape of the specific pentagram that’d been detailed in the book for the summoning ritual. Five candles lit with viridian flame marked each point of the star. His own shadow emerged to collect the ritual items from his hands, sliding down to the water to carefully place Franky’s metal down first and then the model ship atop the flat piece, both of them held aloft by the darkness of the pentagram. As his shadow retreated, the pentagram along with both its sacrificial offerings lit up in the ominous green glow of Alastor’s magic. All the spectators looked down at the sight with curious anticipation.
Bringing out his mic with a flashy twirl, Alastor leaned the top of it towards Luffy with a smile. “We’re in luck, for the ritual that we’re attempting is perfectly suited to my specialty! It requires the summoner to make a call out to the void. For that, we can use my radio waves! There will be no place left out of reach of my broadcast! Haha! Where you come in, dear captain, is concerning the message itself. As the captain of your darling ship, the likelihood of its spirit answering and following our call should drastically increase if you are the one to call for it.”
Luffy brightened even more as he took hold of Alastor’s mic with both hands. “So I get Al’s magic wand? COOL!”
“My– It is NOT something as ridiculous as a magic wand! This is a microphone, which connects to my radio. If you break it, I will throw you into the waves and force everyone to watch as you drown.”
“I know that already! And I won’t! Promise!”
Even with his threat, Alastor wasn’t that worried about giving the boy his microphone. His promise just reinforced this. After waiting a good thirty seconds to make sure that the hovering VokTek drone got a good shot of Luffy with his mic –that will surely leave Vox absolutely seething– Alastor grew out a long tendril to swat the thing out of the sky. He didn’t glance at it even as it crash landed in the ocean. Whether the ritual turned out a success or not, Alastor didn’t want Vox to have a front row seat to the affair.
Brook commented curiously, “Oh? That Vox Overlord is still sending over his devices? How persistent! Why is it that he’s so interested in Alastor?”
“Holy shit you don’t know the half of it– ”
“ –As I was saying!” Alastor spoke louder as to drone out Lucifer’s annoying tittering. He’d done his best to cloister a gap in understanding as to the intensity and nature of Vox’s interest in him between those who remained uninvolved and those who’d been around to bear witness to it –as in Robin and Franky who’d worked for the man, Luffy who’d been involved with the clownery, and Jinbei who’d likely figured something out based on the context of his previous discussion with Luffy– and he’d like to keep it that way for as long as possible.
“The summoning circle must be left intact until the summoning is complete. It may take a while to establish a proper connection with the spirits, so don’t expect the riveting events to occur anytime soon. However, you will need to speak for the entirety of time I am sending out my signal such that there is something for them to react to, Luffy, so simply babble to your heart’s desire until I say otherwise. Though it may be helpful if you chose a topic that would be relevant to your ship.” As to what topic would be ‘relevant’ to a SHIP, he had no idea. But surely if the pirates were convinced as to the legitimacy of the ship having a soul, there must be something.
“Okay!” was the pleased reply, before Luffy brought the mic closer to his face as he hummed in consideration, “Huh. What should I talk about? Oh! I know! FOOD!”
“ …Is the vessel capable of consuming food?”
“No. Guess that’s not a good one, then…” Alastor was almost tempted to tell Luffy to just forget about the relevancy suggestion if only to hasten the arrangement, before the boy brightened once more, deciding on, “I’m gonna talk about traveling with Merry! Since the Sunny wasn’t around for that part of our adventure. Shishishi! ‘K, so! When we first got Merry, we met Usopp! Or I guess we met Usopp and then got Merry after that. Anyway, there was this cat guy, but not like the cat guys down here. He was just mean and had weird claw gloves, and he was actually a pirate, but none ‘a the town believed Usopp cause he was a liar who lied about pirates comin’ too much– ”
“Do we really have to start with this one…?”
Alastor ignored Usopp’s complaint to begin channeling his energy through his microphone. Even when it was out of his hands, at this short of a distance he was still able to use it. And with his conduit being held by Luffy, he was able to draw out a small amount of the divine power sitting just underneath the surface of the God’s mortal form. His power mixed with that of the Sun God’s, then rather than connect to his usual system, he directed it into the summoning circle, from which it then radiated out into the skies above and the unknown which lied beyond. Energy beamed in unseen waves, a spectrum undetectable by eye.
And from then, it was a waiting game. Luffy had fortunately chosen material that could run on for quite a long time, especially with his inefficient retelling of the stories. All the while, Alastor felt out where his radio waves were, feeling them reach further and further until they reached that strange place nestled in between the gaps of reality, death, and life.
An empty hole that would never be filled and without anything tangible surrounding it. His energy was a disturbance in the system. A miniscule drip into otherwise still water from which a wake would radiate out. Closing his eyes, he only half listened to Luffy’s radio-distorted voice, making sure he would feel the moment his signal was received by something.
“ –And then Zoro challenged Hawk guy to a fight. He lost, but he was really cool when he promised that he’d never lose again– ”
“At least explain my battle a bit more if you’re gonna bring it up!”
“ –POW! I slammed right through the place! Arlong made me so mad talkin’ ‘bout Nami like that, so I beat him up a ton– ”
“I feel that I must once again apologize for letting my former crewmate go unchecked for so long…”
“I already told you I forgive you, Jinbei! But thank you.”
“ –Then Buggy was gonna execute me at the same place Roger had been! And I was like ‘Woah! Guess I’m gonna die!’ But then there was this freaky lightning that hit us, and it ended up totally fine! Isn’t that funny?! Hahaha– ”
“Exactly what part of that is supposed to be the funny part, shitty captain. You gave us all a heart attack with that stunt!”
“Oh! Oh! That’s when I first saw Luffy-senpai! The moment of destiny that started my life and death long journey as his devoted fan~ ”
“Come to think of it, that lightning storm was made by Dragon, wasn’t it? Fufu~ It’s cute to see that your father was looking out for you even before you met him, Luffy.”
“ –And then Merry ‘n’ everyone got eaten by a huge whale named Laboon! He’s Brook’s friend! There was a weird old man living inside him– ”
“Oh Labooon! He had gotten so big compared to when I’d last seen him! He was almost as big as the mountain! He used to be such a cute little thing~ The most adorable creature one could lay their eyes on! Even though I don’t have eyes anymore. Yohoho!”
“ –And then it turned out that Vivi was a Princess! And we had to take her to her country, but Vivi’s friend got blown up by Robin! Like KABOOM! But it was okay, since he ended up being fine I think. And also she wasn’t on the crew yet cause she was still working with Croco– ”
“Ow! A scary babe right from the beginning! How’d ya end up goin’ from Baroque Works to hangin’ with the Straw Hats anyway, Robin babe?”
“Well I wasn’t completely on his side to begin with. I joined him both to help safeguard myself from the government and to prevent him from succeeding in his goal of finding an ancient weapon. But it seems that Luffy will get to all that eventually.”
“I really don’t think he’s gonna explain it that well, though…”
“ –And then we met Dorry ‘n’ Broggy! You met ‘em too in the New World, Sunny! They were bigger than the dinosaurs that were on the island with ‘em! When their clubs smashed together it was like WABAAM– ”
“I remember how cool it was when we first met those two! Seeing them made me want to go to Elbalf so badly– when we finally got to go it was out of this world! Like a tall tale come to life! Even if it was kinda scary how big all the giants were…”
“ –And then the guy ate his friends! Like for real! And they combined together so he’d have all their powers! It was like a robot docking but way weirder– ”
“I forgot how disturbing Wapol was. I’d rather not remember him… Luffy! Can you skip to the part after this where I join the crew? That’s the best part anyway!”
“Okay! So Chopper tried tellin’ us goodbye, but he was bein’ stupid, cause obviously he was supposed to come with us! And he cried like a baby when I told him to shut up ‘n’ go– ”
“You really have to say it like that?!”
Off to the side, Angel muttered with a squinty-eyed look, “Ya know, the more he gets into it, the less I understand what’s actually goin’ on in this story…”
“Wouldn’t expect anythin’ less from this kid…” was Husk’s huff of a reply.
It was around this time that Alastor felt a shift in his signal. The radio waves reached a point of interference. Something had taken an interest, and had thus tuned on in. With any luck, it was the ship they were looking for and not the soul-eating monster Robin had proposed they might find instead. Though the specificity of their offerings should be enough to ensure they’d lured in the correct match.
At the shift, Alastor began to strengthen his signal. Some more of his demonic features were drawn out as he called upon more of his power. A green illumination encased him, his antlers growing larger and the red X marking the center of his forehead. Peeking open a black eye with a radio dial pupil, Alastor notified the captain, “We’ve reached an entity, Luffy! Please speak now as though you are speaking directly to your ship. We’ll see if it takes further interest.”
“Really?! Okay! Leave it to me!” Luffy proudly proclaimed, before babbling into the mic once again, “Sunny! It’s me! Al’s talkin’ like he doesn’t know it’s you, but it’s gotta be you right?!”
The interference increased further. Waves taken up as the entity began following the direction of the signal’s origin. Focusing on it, Alastor did indeed feel an unknown soul, a point of warmth and light within the emptiness of the void.
His grin stretched out sharp and wide in brimming anticipation, seeing success within the sight of the horizon. He pushed more of his and Luffy’s power into the signal.
“You gotta meet Alastor! He’s the one who’s lettin’ me call you right now. Can you feel him? He said he can feel you! I don’t really know how this radio stuff works, but I don’t have to, cause he can do anything I need him to! He’s really smart, so he figures everything out for me. And he’s really nice too!”
“It’s a bit of a faux pas to speak of someone to another while they are around to hear it, dear captain…” so intertwined with his power was he now, that the Radio Demon unintentionally spoke through his radio alongside Luffy’s voice, “Stick out your hand for me, will you? We need a BlOoD sAcRiFiCe from the one making the call!”
Luffy complied without a word to what should have been a concerning request, sticking out the hand not holding the microphone towards Alastor. He cut a careful line into the boy’s wrist with a single sharp claw. Golden blood of the divine beaded up to the surface, along with lightly coating his red-tipped claw. A thin tendril curled out to swipe across the small wound, then unfurled and stretched down towards the summoning circle in the water to wipe the blood onto the model ship.
In a move of indulgence, Alastor brought his finger to his mouth, helping himself to a small tasting of the Sun.
Waves of both green energy and water radiated out from the pentagram, stirring the sea and sky as an unnatural storm brewed. Energy radiated off his person as well. When Alastor reached a hand out to grasp his mic underneath where Luffy’s held it, power surged out of him like the epicenter of a disaster.
It just made the feedback of Alastor’s radio grow even stronger, “mAkE yOuR vOiCe HeArD, LUFFY! FINISH THE DEAL!”
“You gotta come down where we are, Sunny! I don’t want any new ship– I want you and Merry! We’re gonna have a whole new adventure! It’ll be great! Franky’ll make it so you can go all over the place even when there isn’t a sea! Isn’t that cool?! We all really miss you, so you gotta make it here… It’s Captain’s Orders!”
The call had been received and answered. The soul on the other end merged with Alastor’s radio waves. With Luffy still holding on, Alastor slammed the end of the microphone down onto the dock in the largest surge of power yet. Just like a fishing reel, all the remaining energy retracted all at once to blast back down into the summoning circle it’d come from.
Various people on both the dock end and further down fell back from the force, displaced air gusting in a gale that swept through the crowd and water. In a blinding viridian, the pentagram, model ship, and metal piece lit up the sea.
The light grew larger and larger and larger as the ship took form. Wood stitching itself back into existence. Metal and iron bolted back into the places its creator had carefully hammered them into. Sails rematerializing to flow out in a billowing burst. Piece after piece coming together, the ship of the Straw Hat Pirates rebuilt itself once more, feeding off the energy provided by both Alastor’s magic and divine lifeblood of its captain.
Until finally, in a burst of both light and the heavy crash of water, the Thousand Sunny Go stood tall and proud at the dock side in the land of the dead. Hoist at the top of the mast, the Straw Hat jolly roger flew in the wind and rain of the full storm that had formed around them.
All at once, the pirates began shouting over each other in a clamoring cheer–
“SHE’S REALLY HERE! ALASTOR DID IT!!!”
“SUNNY MY GIRL– SHE LOOKS GOOD AS NEW!”
“WELCOME BACK, SUNNYYYYY!!!” Luffy bellowed into the mic with a roar while throwing his other arm up into the air. Tears budded at the corners of his eyes even as his grin stretched from ear to ear.
Meanwhile, a complete antithesis to the roaring reactions of the Straw Hats, Niffty peaked out from behind Cherri’s legs to squint at the ship. She hissed, “She’s here… the other woman.”
“Uhhh– That’s a pirate ship, girlie,” Cherri commented with a raised eyebrow.
“A pirate ship that’s stealing all of my bad boy’s attention! We’re rivals in love!”
“What level ‘a down bad do ya gotta be ta be beefin’ with a pirate ship over a guy…?” Angel muttered under his breath.
Ignoring the inane commentary, Alastor didn’t waste another second before reigniting his powers, brewing up his energy in preparation for the next attempt. On the other side of the dock, darkness formed itself into the shape of the summoning circle once more. It was harder to keep the shape this time around however due to the choppiness of the waves, the water turned by both the newly emerged ship and the storm. And while the rain was far from a downpour, it was enough to cause the candles set onto the pentagram to flicker.
“There’s no time to celebrate yet! We still have one more to go, dear captain! Prepare yourself once more!”
Startling in place, Lucifer began to fret, “Hey– that guy’s really gonna keep going?! That’s crazy!”
“What? Why’s that, dad?”
“Look closely Charlie, that ship of theirs has a real soul in it! Just like they said! This spell Alastor’s using not only has to recreate the entire ship, it has to find the departed soul down, call it down into Hell, and remanifest it! This whole ritual’s a huge energy sink! Even using some of Luffy’s energy won’t offset the cost that much since Al’s using his radio as the main conduit, it has to do the brunt of the heavy lifting! He’d be better off if they stopped here and took a break to recoup his energy. It’d be one thing if I was doing something like this, but even as an Overlord, Alastor’s just a human sinner. He’s gonna hit a wall– ”
“Shut your ANNOYING TRAP, lUciFeR!!!” Alastor finally snapped back in a distorted hiss through his radio, not even bothering to glance back at the pest.
Feeling his arm begin to tremble from the stress of channeling even a portion of a God’s power, Alastor forced it to remain steady by tightening his grip on his mic until his claws bore into the flesh of his hand, until scarlet blood slowly dripped down the staff of his cane. His body partially morphed its form of its own accord, contorting itself, rooting into his demonic traits to strengthen itself against the strain. However, when Luffy glanced over at him, it was with general interest rather than fear at the changes to his person. As to be expected.
Alastor growled out from within the static, “The hardest part is finding the damn soul and their other ship has been destroyed for years! If I let go of the progress I made in locating the Thousand Sunny, I might never find it! We cannot start over! I will make it work! I will not FAIL them!”
With that declaration made, Alastor retrieved the model of the Merry and wooden puppet nose from the shadows where he’d been storing them, curling the claws of his free hand as the darkness bubbled and spewed from its palm. Before he could call on his shadow to deliver the pieces to the water, however, the puppet himself suddenly ran up in front of him.
“Those need to go down on the circle, right?! Let me take them for you!” Usopp insisted, even skipping straight to reaching out and taking the items from Alastor’s large, sharp claws.
He stared down at Usopp with dark holes and radio dials for eyes, shocked by the boldness. The puppet should be cowering before him in his current form. “That need not be necessary– ”
“It’s fine! King Lucifer had a point about what he was saying, right? Don’t waste your energy on stuff you don’t need to! Even a little could go a long way!” balking for just a couple fleeting seconds as he gazed up at the Radio Demon frightening visage, Usopp steeled his gaze with determination as stood his ground and proclaimed, “This is the only thing I can do for you, so I’ll do it! I don’t wanna just put it all on you and Luffy! Let me pull my weight!”
“ …If you insist.”
And with Alastor’s concession, Usopp need not hear anything more. He got right to jumping off the dock with the ritual items in his arms, landing with a splash in the still rough waves before swimming the short distance to the summoning circle. His burst into action caused a chain reaction amongst the others.
“Alastor mentioned the circle needs to stay intact, right? This rain and these waves are no good then!”
Whipping out her staff, Nami began swirling the top of it around and up in the air, drawing the dark clouds infused with the energy that had gone astray from the spell into the device. “This might take a bit! Jinbei, can you stop the rain in the meantime?”
“Certainly! We must assist in any way we can.” Broadening his stance, the fishman struck his hands out in a palm thrust on either side of him.
All at once, the rain halted midair, held aloft with a tremoring force. Jinbei brought his hands together in a smooth, steady motion, before moving them both towards the other side of the dock. The rain droplets collected together in time with the action, forming a stream to carefully deposit itself into a separate location in the water.
“And when it comes to the waves, leave it to me! The most efficient way to still the water is to freeze it in place– ”
Having already delivered his goods, Usopp was in the midst of being pulled up by a ladder of Robin’s hands while Brook jumped right over him. There was a blur of motion, before the skeleton slowly sheathed a sword back into his cane, having struck so fast that the movement went unseen. By the time his high jump was complete and he was to land in the water, a layer of ice burst across the surface, forming a smooth, mostly flat circle with the glowing pentagram directly in the center. Brook landed gracefully on the ice just off to the side of the circle, finishing his sentence, “ –with the chill of the Underworld! Yohohoho~ ”
Always in the cutting edge of gossip, Cherri Bomb was the one to whisper to Angel, “Holy shit– Could these guys always do this kinda stuff?! The fuck?!”
“ …Come to think of it, Brook, it’s not actually cold in Hell. If anything it’s on the warm side. So where does your ‘chill of the Underworld’ come from?” Sanji was the one to question in curiosity.
“ …That’s a secret,” was all Brook said while leaping back up onto the dock.
“WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?! Seriously! It’s not cold enough down here to make ice at all!!! Have you just been making it up this whole time?!”
“Aaaah, well, you see– there’s this saying. That dead men tell no tales– ”
“WE’RE ALL DEAD ALREADY SHITTY SKELETON!!!”
“If you would kindly cease your yapping and let me concentrate!” while he complained though, internally Alastor felt slight bit of relief. The combined efforts of the three had succeeded in stabilizing the ritual pentagram, so he no longer needed to feed energy into holding the shape of it together or keeping its candles lit. He’d already begun directing his and Luffy’s power back into the circle, and learning from the previous attempt, manipulated radio waves being emitted to permeate back into the far-off, distance place where the Sunny’s soul had been found.
It'd been his hope that their previous transmission would have also drawn closer the soul of the Merry as well, and they were in luck. Now that Alastor could recognize what he was sensing out, he felt the disturbance against his signal not too long after. His now distorted grin stretched wider once more.
“Captain, your ship is at the other end of the line! Give a message for it to hear!”
“Merry…” in a contrast to the excitement that Luffy had spoken with in his message to the Sunny, this time around, his tone was much more contained. Alastor looked down at the boy to see he was looking at the microphone he spoke into with a heavy stare.
“Even though it’s been a while, we still think of you all the time. I was only able to make my dream come true because you were there to take me so far. You had just as much fun on our journey as we did, didn’t you? Going to the Grand Line. Going up to the islands in the sky. It was hard for you, but I you were happy to be on such a great adventure with us. I hope you were able to watch the rest of our adventure from wherever you are.”
Alastor strengthened his signal further. The feeling of the soul began to solidify. Similar to that of the Sunny though smaller, more a flicker of stardust shining in the night than the flame of a sun, but somehow warmer in turn. He could feel it needed more time to come together, wavering with the lethargy of being woken from a long sleep. He drew out more of his energy, directly intertwining his signal with the spirit. “It’s time to add the blood!”
“I’ll handle that.” Suddenly beside the captain, Zoro unsheathed the Wado Ichimonji. As the small cut Alastor made had healed almost immediately, Luffy held out his free hand to his first mate, allowing Zoro to draw a precise line of golden blood across his arm that also left a trail along the blade. Holding out his sword, Zoro flicked it such that the blood coating it was thrown off to smear onto the brightly glowing model ship.
Viridian radiated out from the pentagram, again stirring the sea. But the circle remained unmoved from its place atop the ice. Alastor’s power surged out in a burst, growing in intensity once more. However, this time around, there was a noticeable strain.
The reservoir was running thin, to the point that his magic began cutting off excess expenditure of its own will. Alastor froze up at the feeling of his form weakening, antlers and limbs shrinking back to normal length. He forcibly drew more energy out of Luffy and into his microphone to compensate, and this time, he could not keep his arm from shaking under the pressure of channeling the divine.
“The crew’s bigger now, some of our Nakama never got the chance to sail on you. Franky only got to on your last trip. He’ll keep you in better shape than we were able to before. Brook ‘n’ Jinbei never got to meet you. You’ll like Brook’s music, it’s really nice. And Jinbei will keep you safe in the water, just like how he does for the Sunny. And now we have Alastor, too. He’s doing his best to let me talk to you right now. Can you feel him? He has fun hurting other people, but for our friends, he’s always careful. So I know his power must feel gentle to you.”
Even without a call to action, the transmission was received. The soul on the other end answered it, blanketed in the radio waves. Alastor leveled himself with a bracing, deep breath. Then, he slammed the end of his mic onto the dock in what he knew would be the largest surge of power yet, recalling everything back into the summoning circle.
As the gale of force swept through once again, dread welled up as Alastor felt the visceral sensation of the reservoir finally running dry, reaching the bottom of his magic in a way he never had before. Everything went into the circle.
There was an unfamiliar twinge on his face. The magic of the stitches at the corners of his mouth drained away, forcing him to be conscientious as to keeping his taunt grin in place. The magic sewn into the wound Luffy received from Eve drained away along with it. Though the wound itself was fine as it’d long since healed with the God’s divinity. The same could not be said for himself.
Alastor felt the moment that the sutures on his chest bled into the circle, and in the same moment, the pain of the slash tearing open from the exertion his body was undergoing. Placing his free hand over his shirt, he had to keep his face from twitching into a full scowl as he pulled the hand away to see wet blood staining it.
No No NO! He’s so close, he cannot stop! His power has to be enough! He won’t accept any other outcome! What was even the point of having traded his soul away if he is still too weak to give Luffy what he needs of him–
“Alastor! It’s okay, I’m here!”
The young voice tore him from his spiraling thoughts. Alastor tensed at the sudden sight of antlers in front of him, speeding through unbuttoning his jacket and shirt. He didn’t get a chance to react before the deerling bared his chest.
Hooves immediately placed themselves across the wound to bloom flowers in their wake, relieving the pain in the instant they blossomed. After covering all of his gash, Chopper let the flowers do their work as he moved onto Alastor’s hand that was holding onto the mic. While there was no open wound, after pushing down his sleeve to reach his forearm, the pink blossoms the deer grew across the arm unwound the strain in its muscle, helping to relieve the inside of it and its trembling.
Chopper didn’t look away from his ministrations as he explained, “I knew you must’ve had an injury you treated yourself back when Luffy said you guys match. So when I saw the stitches you gave Luffy go away, I knew yours must have gone away too. But it’s okay, cause I’m your doctor now! It’s my job to take care of you when you’re hurt! Leave healing your body to me, and you can focus on the job you need to do! That’s the way our crew works. Even when all of have things only one of us can do, none of us have to do anything alone!”
Breath catching in his throat, Alastor stared down at Chopper as the doctor gazed up at him with a firm, reassuring stare. It was only a few seconds before he forced his jaw to unclench, relaxing the tension in his smile.
When he next spoke, not even the usual filtered sound of his voice remained, even that feeding back into his power along with everything else, “…Thank you, Chopper dear, that’s a great help. I’ll entrust myself to you, then… Luffy, place your other hand on my microphone as well! We’re taking a page out of your book and resorting to a brute force method! It’s time to end this broadcast!”
Alastor spared just a split second to jerk up the sleeve of his other arm such that the doctor would have access to it as well, before shifting his position to also grasp his mic with both hands. Luffy copied the motion as directed, lining up their hands along the staff, and grinned at Alastor as he continued speaking into the radio, “Our adventure won’t end, Merry! It never will! Because I’ll always want to be with you and the rest of our Nakama! The crew’s not all here unless you’re here too! So come back to us… and let’s set sail with all of us together!”
Gritting through his grin, Alastor forcefully drew out as much of Luffy’s divine power as physically possible, the green glow of his own power bursting with the gold tint of it. The gold seared through his system like liquid iron. The insides of his hands and arms both burning aflame and crushed under heel of pressure.
Only for cherry blossoms to bloom all across his limbs under Chopper’s gentle touch, the pain seemingly sucked into the petals and growth, until they took in all they could and fell off of their own accord. Whenever the pain returned, more flowers would bloom. The cycle of the Ouroboros.
The golden-green light of ritual grew larger as the ship continued to take form. It was the same conjuring process as with the Sunny, but even while the Merry itself was smaller, it took more power. Its materials and body had long since been lost into the sea, so to recreate them piece by piece cast a heavier toll. But in channeling this much of a God’s power, there would be no wall.
It wasn’t too long before there was a crash of water and ice, the thin sheet atop the surface having been broken. And, after three years of being lost to the Straw Hat Crew… that sheep head that Alastor still thought looked a bit too cute stood tall above the waters off the dock.
“MEEERRRRYYYYYY!!!!!”
Alastor cut off his signal with a quiet huff, his body finally given rest. Though there was not much rest to be had from the rubber body that crashed into his front.
Luffy crushed the tiny doctor between the two of them in his inescapable hug. Alastor couldn’t help the way the edge of his smile twitched as the boy pushed the side of his too-wet cheek into his own, soaked wet with a seemingly endless stream of tears.
“MERRY! SHE’S HERE!!! YOU DID IT AL!”
“Merryyyy!” Chopper echoed the captain’s sob against Alastor’s newly healed chest. He was evidently too busy holding onto Alastor himself to care about his current trapped state.
His straits only worsened when another body piled on against him from the side, and then a much larger form from behind his back. Usopp sobbed from his place clinging onto Alastor’s shoulder, “MERRY! After all this time– She looks even better than when we lost her! I knew you could do it, Alastor! Thank you so much!”
At the same time, robotic arms crushed the four of them together as Franky cried from atop Alastor’s head, “Both the Merry and the Sunny in one go– you’re a certified SUUUPER STAR, Al! I can’t thank you enough for this! You’re a real one bro! I’m cryin’ so hard I’m gonna run outta Cola!”
Wriggling to no success, Alastor groaned out as well as he could from his human prison, “This is ridiculously over the top even considering how ridiculous the lot of you are– ”
“Alastor, thank you! You really brought them back! Even Merry! I missed her so much!” Unexpectedly, Nami threw herself against the group, taking up Alastor’s other side to embrace his shoulder and neck. Looking her way, Alastor had to keep his smile from balking at seeing that she was also crying in full, even when she smiled through the tears. “They both have Bellemere’s tangerine trees still! I never thought I’d get those back!”
“I-I’m a sobbing mess! E-Even when I don’t have eyes! Yoho-ooh! This is all SO BEAUTIFUL!!!” in a way that only his lanky, tall skeleton body would allow, Brook slotted himself right between Luffy and Usopp to join the huddle. His long arms wrapped around the other side of Alastor’s neck in a bonier hug, and indeed, tears were also dripping off his face from empty eye sockets. “Thank you so very much, Alastor! This is a tremendous gift to me and everyone else! Oh Sunny, I’m so sorry! I’m so glad you’re alright! And the Merry is so adorable! I’m so glad I get to see her! Even if I don’t have eyes with which to see! I don’t even care that I just used that one already!”
Alastor couldn’t move at all at this point. Frankly, he could hardly breath, and of course attempting to dissolve into shadow did absolutely nothing with his utterly empty energy reserve. “You– You’re all crying? Why are you all crying?! Don’t cry on me! Unhand me and cry on the ships I just summoned for you– ”
“Just let them have their moment, will you Al? No one’s letting you go anywhere.” While he stood off to the side of the huddle, just to make matters worse, Sanji was also crying. He smiled boyishly at Alastor as he rubbed at on eye with his wrist.
“That’s right. This is a very precious moment. It’s no good if you don’t let us all give you our appreciation, Alastor.” A pair of violet arms sprouted from Alastor’s lower back in the small space left underneath where Franky’s bulky torso was pressed into him, embracing him, Chopper, and Luffy together.
Cricking his neck just to be able to turn his face to the other side, Alastor knew he was well and truly fucked when he saw that Robin was crying. Wiping at the tears above her smile with a dainty finger. He might as well resign himself to dying in this chokehold of a group hug, because he is never fucking getting out of it...
“It’s alright, Alastor, just bear with it until they’ve had their time. And there’s no shame in letting yourself enjoy everyone’s gratitude. You should carry yourself with pride! You and Luffy both did great.” Jinbei grinned from behind Luffy over the boy’s head, and, oh thank God, he wasn’t crying. The man had apparently decided on being a nuisance to Alastor a whole different way, however, when he wrapped his arms from all the way around Usopp to Nami, and promptly lifted the majority of the group off the ground in his hug. Franky then exclaimed in agreement and assisted the effort by helping to lift the other side. Luffy sounded a bubbly laugh at the act that was only contested by Alastor’s own throaty growl.
It was only when Vaggie spoke up from farther off to the sidelines that Alastor remembered that this embarrassing scene had witnesses, “Charlie… Are you crying too? Bartolomeo’s one thing, but why are you crying?”
“Because Brook was right– hic– THIS IS SO BEAUTIFUL!!! They all love each other so much! I’m so happy for them and Alastor…! But also he’s been HURT this whole time from his fight with Adam and we never noticed! How could we?!”
“Don’t say that last part so loud, Princess. I’m pretty sure that guy didn’t want us to notice…” Husk muttered back in warning.
Bartolomeo the eternal fanboy, meanwhile, was basically incomprehensible and falling apart at the seams, “Both the Straw Hat ships at once…! And this Straw Hat Nakamaship…! It’s TOO STRONG…!!! My heart can’t handle it…!”
It was getting difficult to keep his glare and grin in place. Not only could Alastor feel the corners of his mouth straining, but his vision itself was waning, taking more and more effort to keep its focus on Luffy’s still stupid crying face. And finally, the whole wretched affair was interrupted by Zoro –who was also thankfully not crying– stepping closer with smile to reach out and place the captain’s Straw Hat back in its rightful place from where it’d fallen to hang from his neck. “Luffy, Al’s about to pass out. You all need to let him go so he can sleep it off.”
Suddenly popping back to awareness from where he was stuck in between Luffy and Alastor, Chopper sounded a fretful yell, “That’s right– I’m the doctor! Along with all the magic he used, I had to heal Alastor a lot just now guys, so we should give him space and let him rest– ”
“You couldn’t have said that EARLIER?”
Luffy cheerfully spoke right over Alastor’s complaint, “Oh right! Come on Al! I usually nap on Sunny or Merry’s head, but I got just the nap spot for ya!”
Seeing as it was apparently his only ticket out of this mess of bodies and limbs, Alastor restrained himself from fighting against his appointed naptime. Luffy unraveling himself led to the rest of the pirates pulling themselves away. Though rather than the waterworks stopping, the majority of them just began to look over at the ships in tearful joy –he cannot get away from these people fast enough. Eight out of the ten crewmates crying, eleven including himself, was eight too many! Alastor just resigned himself to his fate when Luffy pulled him against his side and stretched an arm out to the deck of the Sunny Go. Internally bracing himself did not make the abrupt slingshot jerk upwards and poor landing that followed any better.
Taking Alastor by the hand to force compliance, Luffy led him across the ship while showing it off, “This ‘s the deck! It has grass ‘n’ a slide ‘n’ a swing, so it’s really fun to play around here– ”
“Is this a pirate ship or a playground?”
“ –But I think Al’d like sleepin’ here more!” Luffy opened the door to inside the ship none too gently, careless even after having just reunited with the thing. Alastor was pulled in behind the boy, and had to take a moment to examine the curious room, his interest involuntarily drawn in.
It looked to be something of an aquarium set around a dim-lit bar, though the only reason why one could discern it wasn’t just an aquarium was due to the small circular bar with stools set in the center, the booth seating lining the curved aquarium wall, and the wine and alcohol stored in the wall at the side of the entrance. The ship had, rather miraculously, been conjured with the fish still on board, and various species of various sizes were swimming about the tank. Around the sides of the room seemed to lead to a hallway that led to doors likely leading out to a balcony, and peaking his head around allowed him a view of the way the fish tank continued out around the top such that it provided a stunning ceiling for the hallway with the fish swimming up above.
The aquarium was a practical addition by providing a method for storing fresh fish for consumption as well as an aesthetic one, doing much to set a sophisticated atmosphere for the bar. Assuming the entirety of the ship design had been drafted by the shipwright, Alastor had to reluctantly give a point of favor towards Franklin for the inclusion. Though it was not explicitly a napping location, the extended booth made for a sufficient couch, and the aquarium did lend to a relaxed, almost serene ambiance. He could see why Luffy had thought to take him here.
“I don’t see why I couldn’t simply go back to my quarters if you’re so insistent on me resting…” while he said this, however, Alastor was already shucking off his suit jacket and bowtie to fold onto the bar table. He then rebuttoned the bottom half of his shirt seeing that it’d never been righted after the doctor’s sudden treatment, though he left his sleeves pushed up his forearms.
If the way his vision was going in and out was any indication, he truly would have passed out in the midst of that atrocious group hug if Zoro hadn’t brought attention to it, and he was caught between being infuriated at the man announcing his weakness as such and being begrudgingly thankful that he’d given Alastor the chance to make his exit with at least partial dignity. “Fair warning that if anyone comes in, I will wake up to deliver upon them a most gruesome death. I guess you could say they’ll be sleeping with the fishes. Haha!”
“Don’t worry ‘bout that, I won’t let anyone in. Promise!”
Glancing back at Luffy, Alastor saw that that while he was no longer crying, his face was still wet from their streaks. He sighed quietly before procuring a napkin from the stack on the bar table, setting his mic down at one end of the booth before taking the boy’s face in hand to wipe at it. “You should at least clean yourself up… Do you mean to stay with me, my dear? That seems like a waste. I’m sure the others will get right to making themselves at home and settling into both ships. And you haven’t been on the Going Merry in some time, correct? You should join them. Unless you’re also feeling fatigued from the ritual? I did use your energy quite liberally by the end of it.”
After discarding the napkin, Alastor walked back over to the booth beside where he’d set his microphone, kicking off his shoes before lying down with a graceless groan. He could feel exhaustion settling into his bones and face as he threw an arm over his eyes. When Luffy sat down next to his head, though, he adjusted his arm to look up with one eye at the smile that shined down upon him.
“ ‘M kinda tired, yeah, so I’ll nap too. But that’s okay. I’d rather stay with Alastor anyway! You sleep better when I’m with ya, and I want ya to feel better. It’s cause of you that I’ll have time to see the rest ‘a Sunny ‘n’ Merry later.”
When Luffy’s hand carded through Alastor’s hair and over his ears, he couldn’t help the pleased hum that escaped him at the soothing feeling of it. Closing his eyes, Alastor shifted onto his side facing into the backrest cushion, his legs curving in slightly as his arms curled up against his chest.
As his body took on a boneless, drifting sensation, Alastor finally allowed face to relax. His smile fell without his sutures to keep it in place.
He usually kept it even in his sleep. It was such a vulnerable state, after all. The feeling of having his protective mask in place was a reassuring safeguard. But as he was now, with his face hidden from the room and his captain beside him… It felt safe to allow himself this moment of weakness.
In the inner corners of his mind, he recognized that the reason why he slept well with Luffy was precisely because he provided a feeling of protection. He does not need to be on guard in his vulnerability because Luffy is there to guard him. It was a strange feeling, to take such comfort in another person. So very strange, and yet, so very breathtaking. Never in all of his prior existence would he have believed that the story of his life would lead to such a chapter, and yet… the warm presence beside him proves it to not be a lie.
And so, it was with the reassuring feeling of Luffy’s hand smoothing over his ears that Alastor fell into a deep, deep sleep.
Notes:
The aquarium bar is probably my favorite location on the Sunny even though we don't get to see it much, so here's Oda's diagram for it as a reference:
Chapter 20: Ship of Theseus
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
A dim glow cast over the room. The only light around came from the large aquarium set into the surrounding walls, providing a soft, deep blue illumination that wavered as the water moved. The sharks within the tank swam about their personal sea, either unknowing or uncaring that their lives were contained to just that of a glorified fishbowl.
But on the other hand, there was no true sea for them to swim in the Pride Ring of Hell. Without this life inside this purposefully constructed cage, they would have nothing. And something was better than nothing, surely.
–Or perhaps not–
“Cool, huh? I’ve always wanted this kind of thing, so I just had to get a room like this made! And I can even use these bad boys to eat up any pesky people that are making trouble for me.”
“Oh? You’d give away my meals so easily, dear pal?”
“C– Course not! You’ll always get first dibs, Al, you know that! They can just eat any of the parts you don’t want.”
“Hmm~ It is best not to let food go to waste, true. Even if the food is not to my tastes. Ahaha!”
Vox smiled at Alastor as he laughed, in that way he always did. Like he was staring at the most beautiful full moon of a starry night sky, or admiring the divinity who’d hung those stars in the dark. It was one that Alastor did his best to ignore.
Turning away from Vox, Alastor used the swimming creatures as an excuse to look away. His gaze fell half-lidded as he commented, “I must say, out of all of this fanciful skyrise that you’ve constructed, this is likely the only feature that I can appreciate. Everything else is either painfully corporate or laughably gaudy.”
“Seriously? You aren’t impressed by anything else?” Vox’s tone dipped into annoyance at the insult, causing Alastor’s grin to pull wider, amused by how unfailingly easy it was to get a rise out of the man. “I guess I should just be glad there was at least one thing you liked, but it’d really be a lot easier if you just weren’t this particular in the first place!”
To that, he just kept up his teasing, “I don’t know why you’re so upset by my one-star review, Vox dear. It’s not as though my opinion will make or break the bank seeing that it’s your tower and not mine. If you are satisfied with the state of it, that should be enough. Even if that state is an unsightly, bland thing. Ha!”
Rather than snapping back as Alastor had expected, however, Vox fell silent for a moment. The quiet drew Alastor back into glancing to the side over at his conversation partner. Vox’s expression had fallen into pensiveness.
While he didn’t visually react to it, the look clawed at Alastor’s insides. The void that always sat in his chest grew heavy, staining his previous amusement with a cold, black smear. He’d had an inkling as to why Vox had been so insistent on him touring his newly built tower, but he’d rather been hoping for his expectations to be wrong, this time.
“Alastor…” Vox geared up, forcing a hint of that showboat grin back on his face as his hands clasped together. Looking the image of a greenhorn businessman about to make his first pitch rather than the legitimate CEO that he was. “About that… I– I was thinking, actually– ”
“Not a typical pastime for you. I suppose congratulations are in order?”
“Oh fuck you! Shut up for a second!” Despite himself, Alastor couldn’t help the evil little snicker he let out at the swift return of Vox’s temper, or the fact that he’d made such a quip in the current tense situation to begin with.
The anger flashed away just as quick as it’d come, seemingly washed away by the sound of his laughter, before Vox visually built himself back up once more. “As I was saying– This tower, as you know, will be the headquarters conglomerate for my alliance with Val and Velv. It’s not just where we’ll run our business, it’s a symbol of our rise to the top! Of the power I’ve cultivated across all these years to finally be respected as an Overlord of the Pride Ring!”
Vox spread his arms out as he spoke of his rise to power, confidence and pride bolstering his speech. Alastor had noticed that the other had begun to speak that way more, ever since the final member of his alliance Velvette had agreed to join forces. Or perhaps it had been built from when his association to Valentino began a good number of years back. While he’d worked with Valentino before though, it was nothing so intermingled as what was intended with The Vees, and the fact that their association was only growing stronger didn’t suit Alastor’s tastes.
–Grow in strength all you’d like, but if you stick out too much, you’ll be hammered down, dear pal. Your capitalistic brainwashing is already bad enough without adding on Velvette’s influence or Valentino’s distasteful work. If you lot cause too much trouble, the Queen will tell me to take care of it. And what do you expect me to do then? It’s not as though I can decline–
“I’ve worked so hard to get to this point. To become an Overlord, just like you! To– to become someone at your level… Alastor… ” Vox’s proud stance fell away as he whispered Alastor’s name, spoken so very, obviously fondly to the point where it was almost painful to hear.
He looked at Alastor with big eyes, grin falling away as he clutched a hand to his chest to say, “So, I have to ask you again… Won’t you join me? Please? I just– I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want to work with me. Do you– Do you really hate my tech that much? Y-You don’t have to do anything with it if you don’t want to. You can just have your radio studio set on the top of the tower and do your broadcasts and murder like you always do, you’ll just be with me while you do is all… And maybe, just give a short ad break here and a review or interview there– but we won’t ask for too much! Really! If Val and Velv get too pushy, I’ll side with you! I promise! It’ll literally only be like 0.01% of your time and for the rest it’ll be like nothing changed at all– ”
“Vox,” the man immediately cut himself off upon Alastor’s blunt interruption, fretting, wide eyes still staring at Alastor. Alastor just returned the look with a thin smile. “I already said no.”
Crestfallen, just the same way he’d reacted the first time he’d made his proposal, frustration bled into Vox’s grief as pixelated brows furrowed. “But WHY?! You won’t even tell me that much! What am I doing wrong? I won’t know what to change if you don’t tell me– ”
“This is part of the problem, Vox. Always so eager to change yourself. To conform to the shapes of an ever-changing societal mold. Somedays I wonder if you’re even the same person I’d first met, with how easily you rebuild and remold yourself. Attempting to appease me by changing yourself or your practices would just be compounding the aspect of your personality which I most dislike.”
Vox flinched back like he’d been struck, the picture of heartbroken. It drew out an unpleasant feeling from Alastor’s chest. Similar to a strange mix of pity and revilement, but also not quite. It was nothing so harsh and cutting as what Alastor tended to associate with those emotions. It was much more… sympathetic than that.
Still, he continued, “But the core issue here is that I truly have no interest in the type of business that you are pursuing. Both in terms of the actual business as well as your involvement with the Vees. What reason is there for me to join when I find the matter so distasteful and there’s no need to change anything on my end? You’ll have your frivolous picture-boxes, and I’ll have my radio. Is that not the natural course of things?”
–And even if I wanted to agree, I can’t. Not with the collar around my neck and my soul in the hands of a royal whose purpose behind our deal is to curb the power of overbearing Overlords. You can’t be blamed for not taking into consideration what you don’t know, though. You also would not think so highly of me if you knew…–
The more Alastor spoke, the more anger rose to the surface of Vox’s screen, until he hissed out, “But that– that’s what I’m saying! It won’t be this huge change you’re making it out to be! And why do the ways that it will change have to be bad, huh?! I know you like your old-timey shtick, but change is a good thing! You need to change to stay on top! Isn’t that what you want? Wealth! Fame! Power! THAT’S what the Vees are in the business of! How can you say you don’t want in on that? It’s what being an Overlord is all about!”
To that, Alastor couldn’t help but scoff, “All such fleeting desires. Wealth is only worth what you trade it for. Fame is a byproduct of one’s notoriety. As a radio host I do admit to enjoying aspects of it, but not to the point of it being my end goal. Respect is much more valuable. And as for power… Always a necessity, certainly something worth seeking out. But even with that, it is not for the sake of power in and of itself that it is sought after. The real point of attaining power is to use it to attain the goals one truly wishes to accomplish… Which I can do just fine on my own. Therefore, my lack of interest in your endeavors. There’s still no reason for me to join– ”
“Then the reason is ME! Is that not enough for you, asshole?!” Vox slapped a hand to his chest, clawing at it lightly as his face fell further into something close to desperation.
“It’s so that we can be– us! Together! Real partners! Not just you taking pity on the funny new ‘picture-box’ guy! Is it so bad that I want you to look at me and see me as your equal? Everything I worked for– ! Everything… was just to become worthy enough to be with you… Do you really not care about that? …There’s no point in any of it if you aren’t there!”
–Surely that’s not the case, even if you’ve deluded yourself into believing that thought. You’re perfectly prepared to go off with your new compatriots to that brand new future you so look forward to. To seek that wealth, fame, and power with them which you believe to be so important. Perfectly prepared to leave me behind… Once you’ve realized I can’t give you what you want… Because that’s exactly what you did, isn’t it? It’s only natural for one to leave behind a deal one is unsatisfied with, and lack of reciprocation is the height of dissatisfaction–
“ …And that’s another issue, Vox.”
“What? That I want you to be my partner?! Do you still look down on me so much that I’m not good enough for– ”
“That you want me to be your partner in the context of more than business.”
Vox choked on the words in his mouth.
His eyes blew out wide in dread, this time. The hand on his chest clenched into a fist, trembling under the tension. After a heavy pause, Vox attempted to stutter out, “Th-That’s not… That’s not what I meant– ”
“Not explicitly, no, but that’s what you’ll equate the feeling to. Within whatever twisted machinery or organ lying inside that chest of yours which acts as a heart, me accepting your business proposal would be likened to me accepting your desire for me,” after gesturing a claw towards Vox’s chest and the still trembling hand that covered it, Alastor twisted his words in like a knife, “Which I don’t.”
There was a hiss of a breath, air taken in too sharply. Vox’s eyes were still so very big, like he was staring at the end of the world as he knew it. Like the day after the ‘eternity’ he had wished to last forever was upon him. “A-Alastor– I– ”
Alastor just glanced away from the other, closing his eyes with a sigh. Even with the thin smile still on his face, his brows furrowed in a show of the ache that had set into him. “I’ve tried very hard not to pay mind to your infatuation for all these years, but your attempts to dismantle our perfectly suitable boundaries have made it impossible to ignore further. So I must make it clear now– I have no interest in you sensually. I have no interest in you romantically. And to be perfectly honest, I find the fact that you desire my person in such a way to be rather discomforting.”
There was a long moment of tense silence, after that.
“ …I know that.”
Vox sounded utterly gutted to admit it out loud. Alastor opened his eyes to glance back and see the face on Vox’s screen screwed up as though the very words themselves were painful to utter, “I– I could already tell that– you don’t feel the same way about me, Alastor, but– that– That’s okay! I’ve accepted that. I’m not– trying to force a relationship with you or anything when I know that’s not what you want! That’s not what I want. That’s not what this is about. I just– I want– ”
“What you want is to have me. And if things keep going as they have, that won’t change. Especially if I agree to join this little group of yours… I can’t give you what you want, Vox. Just accept the reality of the situation,” averting his half-lidded gaze away from Vox back towards the aquarium, Alastor tacked on a biting jeer, “You’ll be just fine without me. After all, Valentino is already lying in wait to become your ‘business partner’ that you can fuck on the side. Exactly what you’re looking for! Ha!”
Brutal, cutting, without mercy– What Alastor was subjecting Vox to was likely the worst possible way to be rejected.
But in the long run, it will be for the better. It was best to put an end to those sorts of delusions and dreams before hope anchored into them too deeply. Better to cut the spider’s thread before the sinner climbs too high. The longer those that linger above wait to cast their judgement, the harder the fall. Isn’t that just common sense?
At the mention of Valentino, Vox sucked in another sharp intake of air, eyes twitching even wider. As though he couldn’t believe what Alastor had said.
All at once, despair burst into rage. The energy of Vox’s anger leaked off him in electric sparks and streaks. Bearing his shark-like fangs in a scowl, Vox snapped back, “You– You did not just say that… Are you fucking for real?! You think THAT’S what this is?! That what I want from you– what I feel for you, is that! Fucking! SHALLOW?!?! That I can just fuck ANY damn guy and it’ll be the same?! THAT’S NOT WHAT THIS IS!!! Val’s fine but he’s not YOU!!!”
–Oh please. You let him crawl into your bed the first chance you got, didn’t you? Just like I said. Such a petty thing to get so offended over an accurate prediction–
Narrowing his eyes, Alastor’s grin pulled into a sharp sneer. “I didn’t bring up the moth merely to heckle you. It’s a legitimate possibility. You can make things much easier for yourself if only you’d shift your desires over to a person who may actually provide you with fulfillment for them. As I said, you won’t receive such a thing from me, but it’s evident that V– ”
“Valentino ISN’T YOU!” Vox reiterated in a scream, outright stomping a foot on the ground that flashed with barely contained electric lightning, fists shaking at his sides. “I don’t care about– The way I feel isn’t– I can’t just choose someone else like that! What I feel for you is just what I feel, alright?! Even if you don’t like it! Just the same way you can’t change how you feel about me… I– I’ve felt this way for almost as long as I’ve known you, Alastor. More than sixty damn years! So– so even if it doesn’t mean anything to you, don’t act like it’s some insignificant thing you can fucking laugh off! Because it means a shit ton to ME! If you’re gonna break my heart, at least have the fucking DECENCY to TAKE ME SERIOUSLY!!!”
“…Well, it is somewhat funny, isn’t it? In the ironic sense that is. Always the innovator you are, looking for supposed improvements to things that are unneeding of them, and yet you won’t change in the aspect that would arguably bring you the most benefit. I fail to comprehend why you’re so insistent on making this point. Shouldn’t you want to move on from a lost cause?” Alastor knew perfectly well he was just twisting in the knife, and fully intended on stabbing it in further. Until that beating heart was well as truly dead…
“Perhaps you should consider switching out your heart the same way you did your head? That would be an appropriate upgrade, wouldn’t it? Especially if it’s already broken. Ahahaha!”
For an extended moment, Vox just stared at him with an empty sort of look, digital pupils constricted into pinpricks in those wide eyes. Long gone was the smile he would usually show at the sound of Alastor’s laughter. But even still, Alastor’s own smile never faltered.
“ …You know what? …Fuck this… Fuck YOU, ALASTOR! If you’re gonna use ‘what I want’ as an excuse like this, you are going to do what I want and SHUT UP AND LISTEN TO ME!!!”
Vox’s eye flashed into a spiral of red and black. Alastor’s own gaze involuntarily twitched wider at the sight of it.
Usually, that mind control of Vox’s meant nothing to him, easily cast off without much effort. It was much closer to a hypnotic suggestion than a rewiring of the brain, intended for controlling the weak sheep of the populous that Vox could lord over as much as he pleased. Alastor, in the deepest, hidden corners of his mind, could admit to the fear of losing control, but he had never need be afraid of Vox’s ability in controlling other people.
However, in this current moment, concerning this current matter– something about the scales had tipped. Vox’s will, his desire to be with Alastor was stronger than anything Alastor had seen of his friend prior. And as for Alastor himself… in that same hidden place, deep inside… he’d always known he was so, so weak when it came to those he held dear.
–It’s not as though I enjoyed breaking the heart of a person who I honestly considered my friend. That I felt no pain in hurting you. But it’s better to get it over and done with. You will not find happiness, like this…–
– … I tried. So very hard, before… to feel something of what you seemed to feel for me. So that I may give proper respect to that impossibly high regard you held for me... And yet, there were no flowery words or fluttering nerves or lingering eyes that are so often described. I just had to accept the reality of the situation. This void inside my being was just as empty as it’s always been… –
– …I am so very sorry, that you had the misfortune of loving such a heartless creature–
Alastor’s vision was fully consumed by spiraling black on red. The sound of Vox’s screaming echoed in his head more than it did in his ears.
“I LOVE YOU!!! I’M IN LOVE WITH YOU DAMMIT!!! DON’T YOU BELITTLE THAT! YOU DON’T NEED TO FEEL THE SAME, JUST DON’T LOOK DOWN ON ME! MY LOVE FOR YOU MEANS SOMETHING!!! IT’S NOT ABOUT SEX! IT’S NOT ABOUT BEING IN A RELATIONSHIP! IT’S NOT ABOUT WHAT’S EASY– I DON’T WANT EASY IF IT’S NOT YOU!!! WHY CAN’T YOU SEE THAT?! WHY CAN’T YOU SEE ME?! MY HEART ISN’T JUST SOME MACHINE YOU CAN TURN OFF OR REPROGRAM AT YOUR CONVENIENCE! IT’S REAL!!! IT ALWAYS HAS BEEN, AND IT ALWAYS WILL BE! AND I WON’T LET YOU LEAVE UNTIL YOU LOOK ME IN THE EYE AND ACKNOWLEDGE THAT!!!”
Claws harshly grasped at the sides of Alastor’s face to pull him forward. He managed to blink his vision back into awareness at the feeling of Vox’s lips forcefully, desperately pressing against his own.
A feeling like ice spiked through his ribs, piercing through his lungs and stomach in a frigid burn. His hand instinctively lashed out.
He didn’t think before he tore it through Vox’s head.
Red claws pierced right out the other side of that spiraling eye before Alastor jerked it away, leaving a gaping hole with live wires and jagged metal exposed. Vox stumbled back, falling to his knees. His remaining eye was wide and utterly shocked as he slowly raised a hand to the hole in his screen and the cracks that branched out from it. Like he’d only just realized what had happened.
The pixelated eye glistened, wavering with tears welling up. Reaching a limp hand towards Alastor and volume reduced to but a whimper, Vox stumbled over his words, “W-Wait, I… I didn’t mean… To do that… Alastor… Please, I– I’m sorry– ”
“It’s just like I said isn’t it, oLd PaL?! That you would not be sAtIsFiEd with just me…!”
“NO! Th-That’s not– !”
“SILENCE!” the feedback of his radio was just as prominent as his voice, out of control and untamed, “If you want for more, you will always want for more, and you will never have it! I can never gIvE iT tO yOu…! If you are so intent on driving yourself mad, then suffer the MiSeRy that comes from it! Such a fool you are, to the very end!”
With his smile straining its viridian sutures to the limit of their breaking point, the Radio Demon turned his back on the pathetic whelp. He sunk down into the darkness. Leaving for good.
–Being the one left behind? No. It’s unacceptable. Between being the fool left behind and being the one to leave first… of course the Radio Demon must leave–
“A– ALASTOR-R-R– !!!”
He knows how this ends. As he leaves, Vox calls out to him, unable to accept Alastor turning his back on him. Vox manages to follow him, and Alastor strikes first –because the Radio Demon must be the one to strike first– and it finally escalates to a full fight. By the time Alastor has Vox on the ground just before he gets summoned away to be enslaved by Eve in Lilith’s body, Vox is sobbing in full, screaming in anguished bitterness that he HATES him. And Alastor forces himself to laugh at his enemy’s misery.
If he hadn’t been summoned away, he probably would have followed through with killing Vox. It was always smarter to tie up loose ends, to cut strings that were left to dangle. And with the trajectory the Vees had been headed in, it had only been a matter of time before the Queen sent the Radio Demon after them anyway. It was best to make the decision for himself while it was still within his grasp. Before it became another aspect of his life he had no control over.
However, instead of his vision resurfacing to the scarlet scenery that ever permeates the Pride Ring of Hell… It just fades further into the cold, black void. Utterly empty. Entirely alone.
–Yes… This is where I’m meant to be. Isolated inside the pitch-black darkness… It’s the only way I know how to live, feigning life like the corpse that I am. The void of my chest betrays my stilled heart. It beats for no one. By persisting without it, I remain in control, my being safeguarded and shielded from vulnerability imposed upon me by others. For if there is no one for it to beat for, it will not ache. It will not regain life, only to be stilled once more… It’s easier this way. Discarding useless, painful things I don’t need. Until there’s nothing left…–
“You were right, before… It’s hard to dream… But that’s cause things that matter the most hurt the most, so they make people the happiest, too. It’s only when ya don’t care that it doesn’t hurt, right? But then it’s not fun anymore! And you wanna still have fun, don’t ya?”
– …Fun…? Yes, I suppose… for the most part… it had been entertaining to be with Vox... But there’s no point to thinking on that now. I can curse my weakness all I’d like, but such despair won’t change events that have already occurred. It won’t change the way I’ve purposefully constructed my world such that I am in this place, alone in the dark…–
“No one is born into this world to be alone… Those same words count for you as well, Alastor. You were not born to be alone, and you shall not be. Luffy won’t allow it. So just as you no longer fear the love he holds for you, do not fear the love you hold for him. For he shall protect those feelings of yours.”
“I won’t break. It doesn’t matter how heavy it is, or how hard it is, or who we gotta fight– Whatever you’re carrying, I’ll hold it with you. Wherever you’re climbing to, I’ll climb with you. That’s what I decided when I set out to sea as the captain of my crew.”
– …That’s right, it’s already been sometime since this scene played out. You did tell me that, didn’t you? I had hated that what you said made me want to believe in you. Was it fate that I was found by you? Or is it just that you are a force greater than fate? It doesn’t matter either way… You make things seem so simple, Luffy. As though it’s the easiest decision in the world to just stay by your side. Easier even than being alone… –
– …Thank you so very much, for loving a person as weakhearted as me–
When Alastor awakened, it was to the feeling of being jostled as someone pressed into him from behind, pushing him further against the cushion of the cramped booth seat and brushing against his tail.
His bleary eyes pried themselves open as he unconsciously reached back to push against Luffy’s head, stretching out his neck half an arm’s length. Alastor murmured, groggy and full of static, “There’s not nearly enough room for the both of us…”
Speaking beside his ear at a thankfully mindful volume, Luffy insisted, “Just make more room then. You had a nightmare, right? When you’re lonely, it feels better to be with someone.”
Alastor startled upon the realization that his face felt inexplicitly wet. He’d been crying.
How disgustingly awful. He hadn’t cried during that confrontation with Vox, so why was he crying now, after a mere dream? It was illogical to the extreme…
Retracting his hand and allowing Luffy’s head to retract with it, Alastor groaned an agitated sigh as he harshly rubbed at his eyes and the tears on his cheeks. He stretched out his leg to feel with his foot for where he’d set his microphone down, too unbothered to get up properly, and succeeded in guiding it up into his hand. With his conduit in hand, he could feel that his magic wasn’t quite up to speed yet, but it had vastly recovered from before his rest, and thus he was able to grow out the seat of the booth with a tap of his mic. Seeing that Luffy was clearly not going to remove himself, Alastor reached out to place his mic down above his head where the boy had been seated previously, next to where his straw hat now was.
After adjusting himself such that he was no longer pressed right up into the backrest, Alastor realized that, along with Luffy resting his arm around him, Luffy’s shirt was covering him as well to act as a makeshift blanket. It’d likely been on him even before the boy had laid down beside him, as he hadn’t noticed Luffy placing on top of him. A warm feeling radiated from it.
After an extended moment of staring at the blue light the aquarium tank cast onto the scarlet booth cushion, Alastor slid his hand down to rest it on top of Luffy’s where it rested over his chest. Intuitive as always, Luffy noted the behavior and asked, “What’s wrong?”
“ …Nothing. I’m just mulling over pointless questions. There’s no need to ask them.”
“Well if ya still wanna ask ‘em then it’s fine. It doesn’t matter if it’s stupid. I say stupid stuff all the time!”
“That isn’t exactly an encouraging statement,” after the short quip, however, Alastor quieted his voice further as he hesitantly asked, “ …If I …ever left you, purposefully so. As in, I did everything I possibly could to distance myself from you– Said the most awful things to you. Fought you to the pain of death. Did things that would make you hate me… Well now I can’t think of how to finish the question, since I can’t actually think of what would draw hatred out of you. I suppose I’d have to kill at least one of the crew. Surely that would do it.”
“Alastor would never do that,” Luffy replied in full confidence.
“There are a specific three…” Wait, if the cook is dead his food goes with him. “ …Two crewmates I wouldn’t mind sacrificing for this hypothetical scenario,” he stated just to be contrary.
Still, Luffy remained stubborn as always, “That doesn’t mean anything. Al wouldn’t do it for real, so it doesn’t count.”
“There has to be some circumstance that could possibly occur that can lead to it. What if I’d been led astray or fell into the control of someone else? Or what if– I convinced myself I needed to part from you and the crew, for whatever reason…”
“Mingo’s will isn’t stronger than yours, so his strings won’t work on you like that. And if you get a weird idea like that, I’ll just find a way to change your mind. That’s how it goes when one ‘a my crew tries leavin’.”
After a single beat, Alastor has to crane his head up just to glance over at Luffy with an unimpressed stare. “ …Is that what that flamingo does? That would’ve been useful to know ahead of time! Thankfully he decided to play the long game!”
Luffy just ignored his perfectly reasonable objection, bulldozing on through the conversation, “It’s fine! And anyway, nothin’ like that’s gonna happen. Al wouldn’t hurt any of our Nakama. You say mean things all the time and I just ignore it, but I guess if it was really mean, I’d cry and you’d feel bad and say sorry. If you fought me and didn’t mean it, I just wouldn’t fight back, and you’d stop doin’ what you don’t want and say sorry. But if you did mean it, we’d fight and I’d win, and we’d both say sorry after. And if someone tried takin’ ya, I’d just beat ‘em up. But you already know that. You’re thinkin’ too much.”
“ …You evidently have experience with this sort of thing already. All this has proved is that my question was indeed stupid.”
“Yeah, but I already said it’s fine that it’s stupid,” before Alastor could bristle in too much offense at that, Luffy drove his point home with a slight smile, “Since ya don’t wanna leave, I won’t let ya. I won’t leave you alone even if you’re being mean. Promise.”
Alastor’s mouth screwed up at the promise, and it was only then that he remembered his stitches hadn’t been redone yet. He’d not been smiling since he’d woken up.
His face was far from the perfect mask of control that he usually exuded. Likely miserable looking, with tear tracks not yet even fully dried. However, despite such weakness, despite what must have been a very noticeable change– Luffy hadn’t mentioned it even after Alastor had looked straight at him. Even now, the boy just stared at him with wide eyes as he continued, “If you’re still tired, you should sleep more. I’ll stay with you.”
“ …Yes. I believe… I will sleep more, yes.”
Alastor turned so that he was now fully facing Luffy. He positioned himself lower such that he could hide his face in the others’ neck and collar bone. The boy giggled at Alastor’s ears brushing into his face, rubbing his cheek against them further.
Alastor mumbled against the rubbery flesh, “Careful not to gore your eye on an antler.”
“I won’t– OW!” Right on cue, the captain’s occasionally hilarious idiocy was as reliable as ever. “ …‘K, I won’t now.”
Chuckling softly to himself, Alastor allowed Luffy to reposition his arm around his person, before he readjusted the shirt atop him to mostly cover Luffy instead. He then also reached out to hold the other in his arms. Sharp claws carefully trailed over the other’s back, just a twitch away from clawing into the flesh underneath.
The gesture felt more possessive than affectionate. Even in this moment when Alastor held nothing but genuine intentions, his wickedness distorted them into something wretched and dark. To the point that he ominously warned, “You know, Luffy… If you ever tried to leave me behind, I would not treat you so kindly as you would me. In fact… I would hate you for the rest of eternity.”
“I already said I won’t, and I know that. Al likes keepin’ grudges,” Luffy responded offhand, as though Alastor’s ultimatum was a perfectly normal thing to say when they were, dare say, cuddled up against one another. “You wouldn’t hate hate me. You’d just hate me cause you miss me.”
…Because you miss me …Is that how it is?
Embracing the comfort of the Sun close against himself, with the light of the aquarium tank still cast over them, Alastor drifted back into the dark. But it was warmer, this time.
He woke again after who knows how long, now feeling much more wakeful and rested. Luffy was still with him, so he had to extract himself and wake the boy up. Alastor righted his shirt, jacket, and bowtie while Luffy rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. He took his time fixing his hair before summoning a needle of glowing viridian thread to sew his smile back into place. But it wasn’t too long afterwards that the captain was energetically raring to go, fully ready to start on refamiliarizing himself with the ships now that Alastor had recovered.
Luffy’s stomach was also fully awake and ready to go if the groaning roar that sounded from within its depths was any indication. Alastor himself was also feeling quite famished. The reason for this was made clear as soon as they stepped out into the bright light of the day, only to accosted by Brook’s tall form as though the skeleton had been keeping lookout for them. Standing in between them with his arms around both their shoulders, Brook turned them around to guide them up the stairs to the next level of the ship as he explained, “Oh thank goodness, you’re both awake now! It’s been almost two full days since you’ve been resting! Sanji has been cooking up a storm ever since he settled back into Sunny’s kitchen, worrying about all the meals you’ve missed. You must be starved! Let’s eat together, shall we? I was just starting to get peckish myself… even though I don’t have a stomach. Yohohoho~ ”
“YEAH! Did Sanji make meat?!”
Since they were walking through the door to the dining area as Luffy had shouted this, Sanji called out from the kitchen, “Of course I did, shitty captain! You think I’m an idiot or something? You and Al both missed six meals, so I made about sixty servings worth of chicken and beef– ”
“I’m not quite sure the math for that works out.”
“ –We’re saving the venison for the party.” Because of course there would be a party. The chef just skipped right over Alastor’s sardonic remark to place an absolute mountain of drumsticks, wings, ribs, and other barbecue dishes on the table in front of the trio.
Luffy drooled over the sight of it with sparkles in his eyes before digging right in, Brook following right behind though scooping less food onto his plate. Alastor allowed himself a moment to be intimidated by the overwhelming amount, because he knows very well that Sanji intends for them to finish all of it, before sighing in resignation as he started on his own portion. He internally geared himself up to put in as fair of an effort as possible.
He was vaguely surprised to find that they were, in fact, able to finish the feast. And while Luffy certainly ate more than him, Alastor had underestimated his own voracity. It was like the void he typically felt in his chest had moved down to his stomach with how he’d been able to continuously devour bite after bite. He supposed it made sense that his body would require an extreme amount of sustenance after expending such an extreme amount of energy, though. The knowledge that Sanji had somehow come to have an even better understanding of his appetite than Alastor himself did was as disconcerting as it was convenient.
After stuffing his face, Luffy only spent half a minute to lie about in satisfaction before he rushed out of the room, eager to spend some time on the Going Merry likely. Alastor meanwhile was held up by some pleasant small talk with Brook, who was taking the time to show him one of those Denden Mushi snails the pirates tended to reference on occasion. Both ships had apparently been conjured with the Denden Mushi they’d previously held on board in life, meaning Alastor could finally see one for himself.
The creature was definitely a snail of some sort, though with rather “alien” like features with its large mouth and eyes. The phone-like device incorporated into its shell was also much more analog than Alastor had assumed it’d be. Brook had Jinbei call up the Sunny from the Merry to demonstrate the creature’s curious ability to partially shift into the facial structure and expression of the caller on the other end of the line. Overall, the creature was peculiar to the point that it was more uncanny than anything else. So in other words, he found it to be quite charming.
It was around then that he was greeted by the entrance of Chopper, Robin, and Nami. Robin held a book with a weathered cover while Nami a bowl of tangerines and large scroll of paper in the crook of her elbow. With a bright smile, Chopper was the first to hurry towards Alastor.
He pressed himself into a hug against Alastor’s side from where he was seated in front of the table, and Alastor spent a brief second adjusting his arm from an awkward hover as it moved out of the doctor’s way to rest itself around Chopper’s back. “Alastor, you’re up! Are your arms and chest doing alright? I know I healed your scar all the way, but you spent so long asleep, I wasn’t sure if you were sore or not. Do you need me to check it for you? That plan of yours was crazy though! Don’t hurt yourself like that again!”
“I’m in tip-top shape now thanks to your efforts, darling deerling! There’s no need for any follow up. I just exhausted myself is all,” Alastor replied with ease while returning the smile. As Robin sat down beside him, he asked her, “What’s that tome you’ve got there, Robin dear? It’s not part of the Morningstar collection, correct? It doesn’t look familiar to me.”
“This book used to be one of my favorites as a child, from the library of Ohara,” Robin smiled softly at him while explaining, “When the island was under bombardment, the researchers spent their final moments throwing all the books into the lake to save them from the fire, and my friend Saul coordinated an effort with the giants of Elbalf to recover and restore them. When we traveled to Elbalf, I was offered the chance to take as many of them as I wished, seeing that they believed I had a right to them. Knowing that the collection would be safer on Elbalf than on our ship, I only took about a bookshelf’s worth and left the rest under their care, but they were all books that remembered fondly from my childhood. Ones I would have missed if I’d left them behind.”
She held out the book towards him, and after a hesitant pause, Alastor carefully accepted the item to leaf through. It looked to be something similar to an encyclopedia. And while there was slight noticeable water staining, it was wonderfully persevered considering there’d been a point where it had been completely submerged for some time. At Chopper’s curious stare, Alastor lowered the book into his lap so that the deerling could look at the pages along with him.
As he turned the pages, Robin continued to explain, “This one is a compilation of the prior known make up of our world, it’s known history, as well as the theories of its creation. There’s much more I came to discover about the history of the world that hadn’t been known before, but the information in this book was one of those which became the foundation of my knowledge and instilled in me the curiosity to learn more for myself. Since you still know little about where we came from, I wanted to give this to you to read for yourself. It’s yours now.”
Alastor froze in place at that last sentence, a page still held in between two of his fingers, gingerly held in consideration of the hazard his sharp claws posed to the delicate material. Blinking up to the woman’s face with raised eyebrows, he insisted, “Surely not? This book is akin to an artifact recovered from your lost Library of Alexandria! I couldn’t possibly take something so valuable from you, dearie– ”
“Of course you can,” Robin cut him off with the same level tone she’d started with, but just a tad firmer, “Even though I’m giving it to you, you aren’t really ‘taking’ it from me. You’re staying with us aren’t you? So it will still be in the Sunny’s library for me or anyone else to read, it will just be ‘yours’ instead of ‘mine’. There’s little point in gaining knowledge if I don’t share it with others who wish to learn. When I finish writing my book detailing the truth behind the history of our world, I’ll let you read that as well. I only have this book because you brought all those books of Ohara back to me along with this ship, Alastor.”
He couldn’t argue with that logic, but at the same time, even just the symbolic transfer of ownership was a gift of such great value, it felt wrong to accept without having made a deal for it. It made for an interesting thought though that this book, even when it was being gifted to him, was still something to be shared with the rest of the crew partly just due to them sharing everything on the ship. It almost likened it to an item passed over to a relative. Even when having been given away, it wasn’t being “taken” since it was staying within the family.
“That’s right. And when it comes to learning about all the different places in our world…” speaking up with a grin, Nami laid the scroll she’d been carrying down onto the cleared table with a grand flourish, revealing it to be a large map, “ …my world map is the just the thing for us to be able to tell you about all the islands we went to! A full world map had never been made before this one, so it was my dream to make one myself. Our library is also our surveying room so that’s where I usually keep it, but I brought it out just for you! Isn’t that nice of me?”
“Very much so Nami dear, thank you for your magnanimous consideration. Please, do enlighten me,” Alastor quipped back to match the Nami’s purposeful cheekiness. When Chopper parted from his side to stand up on a chair and get a better look at the map even when he’d likely already seen it before, Alastor stood up as well to better examine all its features.
The map’s most prominent feature was that it was evenly divided into four quadrants, with there being some peculiar land mass striking down the center in a line between the east and west, and lines of separate segments of ocean dividing the north from south. Alastor’s eyes tracked Nami’s finger as she started on one of the corners, “Ohara was in the West Blue, but Luffy, Zoro, Usopp, Sanji, and me are all from islands of the East Blue. Well, I guess Sanji is from the North Blue technically, but he spent a lot of time in the East because that’s where the restaurant owned by his teacher and dad Zeff is– ”
“Even if he took me in, that shitty geezer would keel over if he heard someone calling him that…” Sanji commented with a sigh from the kitchen. Alastor glanced over to see the chef was in the middle of peeling the tangerines Nami had brought in.
The navigator just continued without a hitch, “ –Most people don’t travel between the different seas because of how difficult it is. This continent is the Red Line. These straight seas here are the Calm Belts, a section of the ocean where there’s no wind and little to no current on top of being infested with Sea Kings, so you can’t get through unless you have the right ship for it. Then the sea in between them is the Grand Line, where we did most of our adventuring. If you don’t go through a Calm Belt, the only way to get into the Grand Line is by traveling up the current of Reverse Mountain on the Red Line that feeds into the Grand Line– Oh, thanks Sanji!”
“It’s my pleasure, Miss Nami,” Sanji replied as he passed Nami her tangerines, now peeled and divided into slices. He also pulled over an extra side table for her to place the bowl on to make sure it didn’t have to fight the map for space. When she held out the bowl for all the Straw Hats in the room to take a slice, Sanji himself included, Alastor didn’t think on it too much before taking a slice for himself when she held it out towards him.
The fruit was ripe; sweet, tangy, and juicy on his tongue. Chopper and Brook both let out pleased hums, with Chopper being the one to mention, “These are from your grove right Nami? They still taste so good even though they were magicked up along with the Merry!”
“Right? And maybe it’s just cause it’s been a while since I had them, but I almost feel like they taste better than usual!” Nami happily agreed.
Out of slight curiosity, Alastor asked, “You mentioned previously that your trees were from a certain Bellemare…?”
Turning back towards him, Nami replied easily enough, “Yeah, I don’t think I’ve mentioned it to you yet. Bellemare was my mom. She had a tangerine grove that my sister Nojiko owns now. I took these trees with me on the Merry when we left my island and then moved them over to the Sunny. It’s weird that both of them have the trees when they’re technically the same trees, but I won’t complain about having double!”
While Alastor noted the use of past tense when referring to her mother, he didn’t make mention of it even when he inferred the presumed death, “The grove was included on both ships simply due to being a feature on both of them. All of the materials of the ships as well as everything on them is a recreation of the actual thing. Only their souls are the exact same as what your previous ships had. I do hope that’s not too much of a disappointment.”
It occurred to him then that that detail may also change how Robin viewed the authenticity of the Ohara books, but based on the easygoing reactions, it thankfully wasn’t an issue. Robin herself just mused, “That makes sense considering much of the Merry would have been decayed and lost to the sea. But as long as Merry and Sunny themselves are with us, that’s all that matters. They’ve just been given new bodies is all.”
“It also makes sense why the tangerines taste better, too.” Nami playfully winked at him as she plopped another slice in her mouth, chiming, “They were made by both your and Luffy’s power! That’s gotta supercharge them or something!”
“Indeed, hopefully there are no unintended side effects from their consumption.”
“ …Oh. Yoho– What a frightening thought! As to be expected of Robin.”
“Do– Do I need to give us all an examination?!”
“Calm down guys. I’m sure Al would’ve said something if we weren’t supposed to eat anything on the ship,” Sanji cooly interjected before glancing over at Alastor for confirmation.
He went a deliberate five seconds without responding, just staring at the chef with a thin smile. Then, after an appropriate amount of suspense had built up, he said plainly, “ ...Yes.”
“You took way too long to answer that! Shitty red ears, be serious about this!”
Placing a hand over his chest in an overly dramatized gesture, Alastor cajoled with as much obviously false cheer as possible, “I’m being quite serious. I would never purposefully withhold information that may potentially bring about harm. Certainly not~ Honest to our Sun God himself!”
“Why do you say that like you’re lying then?! And as a general statement that’s definitely a lie! A shitty one at that!”
Despite the apparent concern, they finished off the tangerines while Nami continued to go through the islands they stopped at in the Grand Line, making special mention of where the ‘Princess Vivi, now Queen Vivi’ Luffy had previously referenced ruled over as well as the islands Chopper and Franky came from. She had just gone over the Florian Triangle Brook’s ship had been deserted in, the Sabaody Archipelago, and Fishman Island underneath the sea when Jinbei peeked his head in through the doorway.
“Alastor, do you have a moment– ”
“Al! Come see what they made you– !” Luffy’s head burst through underneath Jinbei’s frame only for the boy to be immediately pulled back by two sets of hands and a curse from the swordsman they were attached to.
“Just wait a minute they’re literally getting him right now! Seriously, why am I always the one told to watch you for this kinda stuff?!”
“Well it’s not like you’re good for anything else, mosshead,” Sanji scoffed while coming out from the behind the kitchen counter. Glancing around to see the rest of the Straw Hats all preparing to leave the dining area, it was only then that Alastor realized they’d intentionally been keeping him confined to the room up until this time.
Stepping outside, Alastor first noticed the strange sight of Usopp on the grass lawn of the deck, clutching an empty bucket of red paint to his chest as he snored in his sleep. Jinbei noted, “Don’t mind Usopp. He’s quite tired since he worked through the nights along with Franky to try and finish before you woke up. I told them you wouldn’t mind if they took their time, but they wanted to surprise you! Waha! As it is they barely made it!”
“Hehe~ Alastor didn’t notice we were distracting him, huh? Supervillain level deception!” Chopper giggled while rubbing his hoofed hands together in a manner much too adorable to be likened to a ‘supervillain’.
With a playful salute, Brook added on in a cheer, “Yohoho~ That’s right! Mission accomplished!”
“You guys are lucky we were there to make sure you didn’t make any slips. If it was only you two, you would’ve messed up right away…” Nami sighed with clear fondness, shifting her weight while placing a hand on her hip. When she looked away from the two to look up, Alastor saw that most of the others were also looking at the same place, and craned his neck to follow their gazes upward.
The large crow’s nest atop the mast, if he remembered correctly, used to have a dome-shaped roof to it. Now however, the top portion of the striped roof had been cut off to place a new room on top of it. It was a very familiar shape, otherwise standing out amongst the overall design of the ship with its angled roof, tinted windows, and prominent antlers. Though the fact that it was painted a bright red to match the red used to accent the ship rather than Alastor’s usual darker pallet helped to make it look less like a last-minute addition. And sticking out even higher than the branching antlers, the Straw Hat jolly roger waved in the wind from where it was tied near the top of an antenna.
Leaning over the spiked railing of a small balcony attached to the side of the room, Franky slammed his forearms together to form a star as he showed off his work, “Drrrrrrum roll, please! For the grand opening of the Straw Hat RRRRRADIO STUUUUDIO!!! Our radio star DJ’s gotta have a place to work aboard the ships, and since his radio’s gotta be high up, on top of one ‘a the Sunny’s masts is the place to be! Ow! It’s a SUUUUPER studio! Come up ‘n’ check out your new place, Al! Just watch the paint, Usopp just finished the last coat!”
With the wind of the sea sweeping through his hair, Alastor stared up at what was undeniably a faithful, though not exact, recreation of his radio tower. Speechless at the sight of it.
He remembered how he’d felt similarly upon coming back from licking the wounds he’d gained from Adam to see that Charlie had thought to include his tower in the new hotel even when he’d been missing. Though he never made mention of it to her, he’d found her thoughtfulness to be quite endearing. But even that gesture could be partially attributed to how he’d forced his own addition upon the original hotel. He hadn’t even made mention of making a studio for himself on one the ships, and the crew had gone straight to making one for him. And even more than that, they’d made the decision completely independent of their captain, who’d been holed up with Alastor the whole time. Alastor wouldn’t have been surprised if Luffy requested something like this on his behalf, but for Franky and Usopp to take the initiative themselves… he was rather stunned.
A tap on his shoulder brought him out of the daze. Robin held out her hand, offering to take her book back from where Alastor was clutching it tight against his chest with a smile and gesturing for him to go up to the studio. After another brief pause, Alastor handed her the book, then slipped into the shadows to swiftly crawl all the way up the foremast.
Alastor rematerialized inside the room to see it was mostly barren with the exception of some equipment off to one of the sides. It was of a fair size, circular with windows all around such that one could view the entirety of the ship as well as far off into the distance similar to the crow’s nest itself. Slipping back inside from the door leading out to the balcony, Franky lifted his sunglasses to wink at him with a beaming grin.
“Let’s go over specs yeah? Technically the lookout should always be the highest place on the ship, so it’s kinda weird to put ya on top of it, but ya spend so much time watchin’ everything and stayin’ awake at night that I figured you’d like bein’ able to keep an eye on things yourself. I also figured you’ll always do your creepy shadow thing to get up here, but for anyone else, they can come up through the trap door leading from the crow’s nest.” The shipwright walked over to the door in question to kneel down and open it up in demonstration. Alastor peered down through it to see the room that made up the enclosed crow’s nest also featured a good number of weights, apparently doubling as a workout area. The muscle-brained swordsman no doubt spends a good amount of time in there. How unfortunate…
“Since I built this place on top of the crow’s nest, it could only be as wide as the lower level, but when it’s one room like this it should be a good amount of space if you wanna do any big band work with Brook up here. I figured you’d want your own room too though, so you could either keep it all one room and set it up how ya like, or– ”
Stepping into the center of the room, Franky reached up to pull down an additional wall that had been retracted. It divided the studio in half with a door built into the wall on one side to maximize wall space. “ –You can pull this baby down and keep yer livin’ space separate from yer workspace! That should make it easier for you to have people up here without it feelin’ like you don’t got any privacy. One section alone should make for a cozy bedroom. There’re also curtains to cover all the windows when you need ‘em. I didn’t put anythin’ up here cause I figured you’d wanna use your own stuff, but I built this system for you over here– ”
They walked over to the radio equipment set on the side, featuring a control panel and make similar to his own system along with some extra microphones. Franky patted the top of it as he further explained, “This is the last thing I finished! Had to look at what ya have up in yer tower, ‘n’ don’t worry, I didn’t break nothin’ I couldn’t fix– ” Implying that he did in fact break something, of course. “ –Since I’ve worked with VoxTek stuff I wasn’t completely new to your kinda gadgets, but you’ve got a more retro fit, so I still had to figure some stuff out. I think I did a good job, but let me know if somethin’ isn’t workin’ right yeah?”
Pulling out his mic, Alastor obliged by putting the shipwright’s handiwork to the test. Without a word, he was able to connect the signal of his mic to the broadcaster, and he could feel the signal travel up to the radio antenna on the roof. Following the signal out, he felt it being received by the radio he had inside the hotel still, a couple receivers on the Sunny including lower down the foremast they were currently on top of, and more receivers on the Going Merry. Cutting off the broadcast, Alastor spoke for the first time since Franky had begun his longwinded advertising, “So far it seems to be functional. Did you perhaps install radios on both the ships?”
“Yeah! That’s our SUUUPER new sound system!” Franky confirmed with another grin, “This way when you’re doin’ a show or playin’ music, the crew on both decks can tune in. You can also use the extra mics on your and Brook’s instruments so both ships can hear when you’re playin’ live, or you can use it if we need to make an announcement, gather the crew, all that junk. Since we’ll be spread across two separate ships, we needed somethin’ like that anyway along with the Denden Mushi to make calls with each other.”
“Oh? I’ll also be able to assist with direct communication on that end of things. Even if the speakers you set up have no form of input themselves, when I’m connected to a radio, I am capable of sensing what is occurring at the receiving end. The others could communicate with me through that method as well should there be a need for it.”
“That’s SUUUPER convenient! Nice!” the affirmative was delivered along with a thumbs up to match, though Franky ruined the complement by commenting, “Guess havin’ a radio operator on the ship ‘ll actually be pretty useful even outside of ya movin’ in on Big News Morgan’s turf.”
The ends of Alastor’s smile pulled taunt into almost a sneer, at that. “Yes. Quite.”
Franky’s grin and thumbs up faltered at the change in attitude. “Aw don’t be like that, Al pal, I didn’t mean anythin’ bad by– ”
“Do not call me that,” Alastor hissed through his grinning teeth, and with his mood having dropped, he moved onto the defensive, “And what’s even the point of this, anyway?”
The other just raised an eyebrow at him, confused. “Huh? What’cha mean?”
“Of this– ” Alastor gestured to the room they were currently standing in with both hands, glancing around it before his gaze settled back onto the shipwright, “You made this all just for me, without being asked– Why? It’s not as though I’ve endeared myself to you. If anything, me summoning your ship back to you should just break even with the distaste I’ve shown for you personally prior to this. Are you trying to win me over? Because while I appreciate your efforts, I’m afraid that there is simply nothing about you as a person that I respect– ”
“Woah woah woah– Woah there! Hold up a sec! I can answer the question without ya gettin’ into insultin’ me, dammit!” Franky held up a large palm to Alastor’s face to emphasize his demand to stop. After which, the cyborg huffed under his breath, leaning back while crossing his arms over his chest with a cautious glance over of Alastor’s person.
“Ya know… I get the feelin’ you didn’t really hang with a lot ‘a people, before. Or at least ya didn’t keep ‘em close.”
Alastor just quipped back, smile still in a slight sneer, “What can I say? People prefer keeping a known cannibal at arm’s length– Who would’ve guessed!”
“The cannibal thing’s one thing, but ya literally have that other cannibal gal ‘a yours! It’s not about people keepin’ you away, it’s about you keepin’ them away. But that’s not how we roll on this ship– Well, ships now– ”
“I had an inkling as to that already with everyone’s great emphasis on this ‘Nakama’ concept of yours.”
“ –Then ya should know, right? What bein’ on the crew means. It means Chopper’ll fix ya up without askin’. Sanji’ll cook ya yer favs without askin’. Brook’ll play whatever ya want without askin’. Course it’s the same for me! I’m the shipwright, which means that I’ll make ya whatever you need on the ship without askin’. This is your home now, I want ya to be comfortable.”
The man said this like it was such a simple thing. As though the last time Alastor had truly considered someplace “home” wasn’t a good century prior, when he was young and alive and came home from school every day to a home-cooked meal made by his mother, even during the times it was hard to get food on the table. As though the last time Alastor had even approached a similar sort of feeling, he hadn’t ripped it all to shreds along with the person associated with it, in fear of his own weakness…
But at the same time… While a pirate ship was a far cry from the small house by the bayou that had been his home in life, somehow, something about the place felt the same. To wake up to another’s presence after having had a bad dream. To wake up to food ready and waiting to fill him up. Tangerines picked and peeled to be shared, a new book to read at his leisure, someone to check on his wellbeing and provide him company. A room that had been made and painted just for him. All those things… felt very much like something, didn’t they?
Despite Alastor’s lack of response, Franky continued on, “I don’t think you’ve heard ‘bout what I was like, before I joined the crew. Guess you could say I had kind of a gang goin’. Lived in a city known for its shipwright companies, but not everyone makes the cut for that kinda standard. After gettin’ some territory, I rounded up a bunch’a layaways ‘n’ punks and put ‘em to work for me. People with nowhere else to go. ‘The Franky Family’– I miss those guys! They better live good lives before we meet up again! We messed around a lot, picked fights with pirates ‘n’ people that messed with the city. I even beat up Usopp and stole all the Straw Hats’ berri the first time I met ‘em! But we were family, through ‘n’ through.”
Pointing his thumb behind him back towards one of the windows, Franky asserted, “This crew’s a family, too. We live together and we die together, what else would ya call that? Doesn’t matter how much Zoro ‘n’ Sanji fight, when the chips ‘re down, they’d do anythin’ to help each other. So it doesn’t matter how much ya like or don’t like me– I’m gonna do my job ‘n’ get ya settled anyway! I’d trust you with my life, ya know that? Even if ya talk big ‘n’ sneer at me, I know you’d save me if I really needed ya. I just want ya to realize you can trust me too.”
He ended that point with a large shrug, as though it really was that simple to him, when to Alastor it was anything but. Alastor was thankfully saved from having to come up with a response though when Franky chose to move on, “And also– I don’t get why you’ve got a problem with me anyway! Is it cause I’m a pervert? Actually now that I say it, ya really don’t like that type huh– ”
“Indeed.”
“ –But it’s gotta be more than that! Sanji’s a bigger pervert than me and Brook’s also a perv but you’re friendly with him! It can’t just be that one ride on the Franky Rocket Racecar! That’s not enough to permanently land me on the shitlist. So what gives?”
“You underestimate how much I loathe that monstrosity of yours,” Alastor felt the need to make very clear just how much he hated that car, before moving back into a serious, hesitant mood.
“ …I dislike the prospect that things are supposedly ‘better’ because they are newer. People are easily tempted to look down on the old-fashioned in comparison despite the fact that every ‘advancement’ can only come about because of what has come before it. I also find those who are quick to change themselves in changing times to be less reliable. It’s easier to trust in something with longevity than that which is constantly changing. It’s that along with all your other unsavory traits and annoying personality that I don’t care for. If one doesn’t make a stand against the changing tides of outside forces, and in fact chases after said changes to make up for what they perceive themselves to be lacking, then I am disinclined to believe that they will make a stand for either themselves or matters that should be important to them.”
“Huh… That’s how it is…?” after thinking over the response for a respectable amount of time, face still furrowed in that curious look of his, Franky commented, “It kinda sounds like ya also don’t like the idea of someone movin’ onto somethin’ new cause, being the Radio Demon ‘n’ all, that kinda old-school tech’s associated with you, so ya think it’s like they’re lookin’ down on ya.”
The ends of his grin curling into a jagged snarl, Alastor stated firmly, “I know very well my worth and superiority, so it’s only natural I won’t accept any sheep deluding themselves into believing my powerbase is anything less than what it is!”
“But that’s got nothin’ to do with me!” Franky outright objected. Leaning forward as he rose both eyebrows in emphasis, he gestured a hand towards the radio system he’d built. “This radio tech might be old news to everyone from where you come from, but to me, this is new stuff! And I think it’s SUUUPER COOL! It’s crazy how your world was able to make stuff that we use Denden Mushi for! We can improve those guys with our own upgrades, but they already got the base to work with. It’s totally different havin’ to build it all from scratch. That’s my favorite thing ‘bout makin’ stuff, so I like it this way more!”
Whatever complaint Alastor had cued up next fell down through the cracks. Examining the man with a discerning stare, it seemed that Franky was truly being genuine with his admiration. A literal cyborg built to run on a soft drink of all things, an utterly ridiculous yet simultaneously miraculous advancement in technology, was honestly impressed by the creation of the humble radio –as he rightfully should be, but still.
–It reminded him of Vox, in a way. With every upgrade the picture-box had gone through, every advancement in technology he’d jumped on, Alastor had waited for the day that Vox would look back at him to see him and his radio as something inferior. And yet, no matter how mechanics of his television or the internet that came after had changed, Vox still admired him with that ache-inducing smile he seemed to only use for Alastor alone… Until Alastor gave Vox a reason to spite him, that is. Nowadays the picture-box had no issue with disparaging him and his work–
“Not only that, but ya got the wrong idea about me when it comes to that other thing, too,” Franky proclaimed while pointing into his chest with his thumb.
“Someone changin’ themself makes ‘em unreliable? You just decided that on your own! There are probably some people like that, yeah, but that’s not the way I roll! When I first became a cyborg, it’s not like I did it just for the heck of it– My body was busted, and I fixed it up with the shipyard scrap metal that was lyin’ around to survive and make myself stronger. But did that change who I was? NO WAY!!! I was still Frrrranky, the guy who liked buildin’ ships ‘n’ anythin’ else I could figure out how to make!” Franky accented the declaration with a roll of his forearms that led into their raised, star-shaped pose above his head, grinning like a maniac.
“And it doesn’t matter how much I upgraded my body after that in life or even how much I change my body now– as long as I got this same hot-blooded spirit in my chest, I’m the same guy I’ve always been! I’m a cyborg, and that’s SUUUPER awesome, but that won’t change the fact that I’m human too! I won’t let it! Ya get what I’m sayin’? It’s my heart that matters the most!”
An imaged flashed behind his mind’s eye. One of Vox with his spiraling, slightly tearful eye yelling at him that his heart –his love, was real. That it could not be turned off or reprogrammed or changed so easily.
–For all that he berated Vox for his transient nature… It was indeed true that, when the time came, he had made his stand for that one aspect of himself that remained unchanging. Even when it had been against Alastor himself. But even still, he had torn apart that heart with such careless cruelty… So how was it that Vox still vied for him so? Did not even that leave lasting change upon his heart? …No, it had changed in some respects, hadn’t it? But in the opposite way of what he’d been trying to accomplish…–
Alastor glanced away from Franky at the unwanted thoughts. Walking up to the closest window, he looked outside to see a number of the colorful crew scurrying about the ship. He was on the side closest to the dock, and thus he could see the Going Merry as well. In the crow’s nest of the much smaller ship was a familiar red spot sticking out of the neutral background.
When Luffy raised his hand high to wave up at Alastor, somehow able to tell he was being watched, Alastor knew without being able to see the details of the boy’s face that he was smiling at him. Yet another unchanging thing standing firm against an ever-changing world. Despite being an instigator of change himself, even. Alastor’s hand lightly pressed against the glass, minding the sharp tips of his claws.
And as a physical reminder of another unchanging thing, hovering a good ways away from the ship was none other than another one of those accursed VoxTek drones, likely pointing its camera right at the very conspicuous radio station that had been added to the Thousand Sunny. Vox would be completely inconsolable upon seeing Alastor’s station, the addition Vox himself had dearly wanted to add to his own tower, was now a feature of the pirates’ ship.
It wasn’t too long afterwards that Alastor replied, somewhat quietly, “ …Perhaps you are right. Perhaps, I am simply judging you based on my own assumptions. There is a philosophical parable known as the Ship of Theseus. It asks the question as to whether a ship that has had all of its parts replaced is still the same ship as it was before, or if it is a new ship entirely. Even without explicitly addressing the question, I guess you could say that my answer has always been that it is a different ship.”
Even when it came to himself… While he was not a saint in life, he was not nearly as much of a monster as he was down here in the pits. To look in the mirror and see the same human he had been prior was impossible, wasn’t it?
“ …Well, kinda sucks to go against my own point like this, but from a shipwright’s perspective it is a different ship, yeah,” Franky sheepishly admitted.
“But that does not take into account a ship with a soul, now does it?” Turning back towards Franky, Alastor’s grin tilted into an easygoing mischief, his fingertip tapped at the glass with tiny tinks. “I’ve already personally proven that, so long as the soul remains, the ship is in fact the same ship indeed! Isn’t that right?
Franky blinked at him in surprise for a second. Before his grin stretched out wide again. He approached Alastor to attempt a vigorous pat to his back, only for his large hand to be swatted away by Alastor’s much slighter one. The man himself didn’t seem too disheartened by the rejection as agreed, “You’re right! Sunny’s still Sunny! And Merry’s still Merry! So that means ya get it, right?!”
Despite the apparent agreement they’d reached, Alastor still made it a point to be contrary, “Hm. While I understand the logic behind your illogical form and contraptions a bit more… I’m quite certain I will never come to an understanding in regards to your atrocious choice of attire and attitude. It’s viscerally disgusting, truly.”
“That’s A-OKAY!” for whatever illogical reason, Franky agreed with his sullenness, large thumbs up included, “My speedo ‘n’ bein’ a perv is all me! So hate it all ya want! Just don’t go givin’ me attitude for stuff that isn’t me, and that’d be SUUUPER!”
“You really have no semblance of shame whatsoever…” Alastor snarked with a sigh.
Averting his gaze back out the window, he thought of how best to say what needed to be said without throwing the man too much of a bone. “ …Thank you for making this studio for me, Franklin. It was a thoughtful gesture.”
The cyborg stared at him for a bit. “ …You’re still goin’ with FRANKLIN?!?!”
“It’s an objectively better name than Franky. Ugh– It feels even more brutish saying it aloud.”
“Hey– That’s the name someone important to me gave me! My old name was way worse! Like actually!”
After a brief second of consideration, Alastor’s curiosity took the bait, “Really now? What was it?”
“ …Cutty Flam.”
“ …My condolences for how much your parents clearly hated you. I will admit there was an improvement, Franklin.”
“That’s seriously not my name!”
Alastor just waved the objection off with a laugh, “And neither is Franky apparently– Haha! So does it actually matter if I improve upon it myself?”
“YES!!!”
Outwardly, Alastor bickered with Franky for a while longer, satisfied like a cat who’d tipped something valuable over the counter edge at having gotten a proper rise out of the usually insufferable weirdo. But inwardly, he was musing over the matters they’d discussed.
This crew is so very candid with such personal bonds. Easily speaking of things such as home and family, friends and love– It’s all wrapped up in that one little word of theirs: “Nakama”… It was no wonder the captain couldn’t properly explain it to Husk, all that time ago.
And, if he is to be part of this crew of theirs, it stands to reason that assimilation is required. Or rather, they have already been assimilating him into these bonds of theirs, along with all the weakness brought on by them… He’s certain that, if he had been the same as he had been seven years ago, he would have already brought such foolishness to a cruel end long before it’d reached this point.
So it stands to reason… He is not the same as he was, before. He has not been the same ever since he bore witness to the way Luffy defeated one of the divine in the salvation of his soul. Since he made his proverbial leap of faith and accepted Luffy’s hand and climbed up that spider’s thread, since he basked in the joy and light of Luffy’s smile, and recalled how much he’d missed the feeling of the Sun and Sea…
His heart beats once more. And with each member of this motley crew, the life inside of him grew just a bit stronger, until he reached this point. Ninety years he has been dead in this Hell, and he feels more alive than he had in the later years of his life in the mortal realm. It should have been impossible, to resuscitate such a corpse, long gone and without hope… But these are people that have no fear of “impossibility”, so it’s really no wonder they’d managed to pull off such a miraculous act.
…Maybe it’s about time he stopped being afraid as well.
“Uhh… Yeaaah… ‘K, here’s the thing– I wanna fuck with that Monkey God and red fucker too, but if I join in on the kinda thing you’re tryin’, that’d probably be enough for Brook ‘n’ Jinbei to wanna call our band a quits, so…”
Shrugging a shoulder while pausing to throw another fry into his mouth, the former First Man Adam carelessly muttered through the food in his mouth, “ ‘S a no-go fer me. ‘Ll keep quiet so ye c’n still do yer thin’, though. Sound’s like ‘ll be fun t’ watch.”
Vox put his hard-earned business associate composure to work to keep his salesman smile in place even as he internally glowered at both the negative answer and the slobber that went along with it, his digital brows twitching in annoyance. Instead, he brought about his retribution in the way he knew would most hurt.
“Well in that case… Looks like you’re paying for your own bill then! Have a nice day– ”
“Woah the FUCK?!” Adam objected harshly, abruptly standing from his seat over his fries and steak as Vox stood from his own seat. “I thought ya brought me here to treat me as a bribe?!”
“And since you aren’t accepting the bribe, I don’t have to pay. Like I said.” Grin sharpening, Vox flashed an eyebrow as he questioned, “Unless you’ve changed your mind…?”
Adam’s expression wavered for a moment, as though the man really was shallow enough that he’d betray his so-called ‘bandmate’ for a free meal, before the hope for that sort of outcome died as the guy shifted into a scowl. “Well fuck you then I guess! Fuckin’ bringin’ me to a restaurant above my paygrade and not treating, asshat…”
“Uhuh. Very eloquent comeback.” No longer looking to play nice, Vox’s fake grin twitched down into its own sneer as he pulled out his wallet and threw a random wad of cash at the clown snake. Enough to pay for the whole meal and not much extra. Since if he actually left the guy with nothing, he was just the spiteful sort of type to lash back at the Vees for it. Adam snatched his hand out to take it, faster than he’d seen the lethargic man move for the entire time prior.
“Here’s your hush money, so remember to keep those lips sealed. Since we’re not doing business, I’m leaving. If you change your mind you know where to find us.”
After stepping out of the steakhouse, he used a nearby security feed to zap back into his workstation at the tower. Vox ignored the way his stomping footsteps crunched with plastic and glass under his tread.
Usually, his workspace was void of much around him but cluttered with images and feeds all over the screens. Now, however, a solid half of his screens were in pieces, shattered and fried with their parts littering the floor and desk. He’d blown them out in a surge after seeing Alastor’s radio studio had been built on that fucking pirate ship. By fucking Franky of course. The bastard. If he’d been connected directly to the city in a broadcast, he probably would’ve taken out the entire Pentagram’s power grid.
Pacing just to have a use for his restlessness, his hand clawed down the left side of his face, leaving tracks in their wake. The marks in his vision would regenerate on its own later, but he didn’t give a shit right now.
Even now after all this time, he can’t help but think– If only he’d been able to speak his mind more clearly. If only he’d kept in control of himself, all those years ago… Of course Alastor had lost his shit when his eye actually worked on him, not to mention the fucking disaster kiss his stupid ass impulse had thrown in. If he tore that eye out would Alastor prefer him like that? No, that won’t work. He already knows it–
Vox tried to think things through to reassure himself. It didn’t matter whether the First Man had agreed to help or not, having more people was just a way to have more options. If things went like they wanted then it wasn’t necessary. They had considered whether to ask after that Goetia that apparently had a beef with some of the Straw Hats, but he still thought their decision to not pursue that was for the best. Those Hellborn highborn were a pain in the ass on a good day. There was very little chance they’d get one to agree to follow their instructions. Since they’d struck out with Adam, there wasn’t much to do but wait until after Heaven open fired on Hell because Blackbeard refused to make a move beforehand. They wanted to wait and see how their opponents came out the other end of the fight. But Vox was going fucking insane waiting. A storm made of lightning is brewing in his chest, with no relief and nothing to tear apart but his own insides
How can he just stand around while Alastor was out there, making himself at home without him. How can he just watch from a screen while the number one person he’s ever really wanted in his life so easily makes a place for that damn Monkey when he refused to even consider the option for Vox. Why does Straw Hat and his damn crew get to be friends with Alastor when HE can’t be? Why do they get to be important to Alastor when HE isn’t? Vox would’ve made him his studio– would’ve made him as many radios as he wanted, would’ve brought him to whatever restaurant in any part of the city at any time of day, would’ve sang and danced with him all he wanted, would’ve given him whatever his heart desired– The only thing that would’ve mattered was if Alastor was happy with him, he didn’t NEED anything other than that!!!
–…Is my love really so disgusting to Alastor that all of that would be tainted, just because it’s me?–
But he couldn’t help it. It didn’t matter how long Alastor had been away, didn’t matter how much him and Val fucked, it didn’t even matter that he’d decided to hate the bastard forever after the bullshit he pulled seven years ago– As soon as the Radio Demon came back around with someone else at his side, Vox had immediately caved like the spineless weakling Al had always believed him to be. It was easier when Alastor had been alone. It hadn’t been his fault. It was just that the fucker wanted to be a brooding loner. But if other people can come in and Alastor could just let them in, that meant it IS Vox’s fault they couldn’t stay friends. What other reason could there be? Of course it was him. Him and all the things Alastor hated about him. Him and his fucking feelings that Alastor hated enough to verbally spit in his face about. It didn’t matter how much power he gained or how much he changed himself, he knew the part of himself that Alastor hated the most was something he couldn’t change so what else was he supposed to fucking do–
One of the remaining screens lit bright with the feed of that colorful pirate ship. Vox’s eyes latched on it to see that Alastor was singing that stupid pirate song with the skeleton musician playing the piano. The fucking bandmate Adam didn’t wanna piss off, typical. The party that the pirates were throwing was likely completely unrelated, but it felt as though they were celebrating Vox’s misery. And he also wouldn’t put it past Al to do something like that anyway.
He was about to blast another surge through the screen, wanting to be done with the scene, only for the electric current to catch in his veins when Alastor smiles. Eyes partly closed but oh-so bright.
Involuntarily, he paused the feed. Stuck in place admiring that beautiful face from too far away. He reached out to it, and the feeling of the screen under his hand was cold and unwelcoming.
Even with his hand gently placed upon the screen, the distance between them is like that between Heaven and Hell itself.
–…If there’s no room for me in your life, I’ll tear a place out for myself. I’ll tear out that God and those people to make a place for myself. I’ll pull you down from Heaven to burn in Hell with me. Because if you already think this love of mine is disgusting, if you already hate it so much… then it doesn’t matter how low I sink, right?–
Notes:
So we’ve finally reached Complicated and Sad, the One Piece Flashback Edition…
_(」∠ 、ン、)_ I even hurt myself with this one
Chapter 21: To the End of the World
Chapter Text
The Straw Hat ship reunion party –a ludicrous concept, but he wouldn’t expect anything less from them really– was as joyous of an affair as Alastor had anticipated. It was smaller than the Straw Hat reunion proper, only the crew itself, Trafalgar, and their close counterparts of Hazbin Hotel had been invited. Bartolomeo had been given doctor’s orders to skip the event, as Chopper believed the man’s heart really would give out from that much exuberance, and the Snake Princess had been quite busy the past several days training her new warriors in preparation for Heaven’s siege. Overall, Alastor had no complaints about who was in attendance. Even Queen Lilith had deigned to give an excuse as to not make an appearance, much to his own approval.
The party was split across the two ships, which was, frankly speaking, extremely impractical. Not only due to the physical separation of the two ships, but also the sheer difference in size between the two of them. They couldn’t exactly line up the vessels and walk a plank between the two when one was five times the size of the other.
Franky had just finished up making something of a zipline rope system to connect the deck of the Thousand Sunny with the crow’s nest of the Going Merry when the ships were docked, such that those traveling from the large ship to the smaller could glide down while those traveling back just had to hold on as the rope pulled them up. Or if they were adept enough as Luffy and Alastor were they could traverse between the two on their own, but there needed to be something to assist the more normal members of the crew and their guests with how regularly people moved between the two ships.
Even still, all of the crew had insisted that both ships must be part of the party as it was being thrown in the honor of both of them, and so they made it work. The majority of the partygoers lingered on the Sunny, since as the bigger ship that’s where the food was served and the music was played. But Usopp was quick to take a plate and carefully take it over to the Merry to have his meal, and Franky’s sound system ensured those on the Merry would hear Brook’s and Alastor’s playing as well. The degree of separation could even prove to be of use in some cases, as the cook demonstrated shortly after Binks’ Brew had finished playing…
“Chopper, I’m coming out with Al’s meal now.”
“Oh– Got it! Thanks for the warning, Sanji,” the deerling chimed back with a little salute. He then packed a lunch box of extra food to bring with him and shifted into a more deerlike form to launch off the Sunny’s deck and onto the Merry.
The reason for the warning was made clear when Sanji returned with a cart full of deer carcass and various dishes that had been made with different parts of it. Just the same way he’d made it for Alastor that first dinner he served for the Hazbin Hotel in his gratitude for Alastor having fed the captain in his absence. Perhaps in consideration of Chopper’s reintroduction into the group, he’d yet to remake the meal since.
Alastor felt himself salivate at the sight of it, ears perking as he remembered just how exquisite Sanji’s preparation of the raw venison had tasted the first time. He rubbed his hands together as he sat himself down at the table that’d been set up on the deck, even as he quipped, “With how much you fed me earlier, I’d think you’re trying to fatten me up to cook me instead, dear chef!”
“I’m feeding you this much cause you’re hungry enough to eat it all, and it’s a reward for bringing back the Sunny Go and Merry,” Sanji insisted as he placed out the food in front of Alastor, “So eat up! We’re having the beignets you helped me prep earlier today for dessert.”
“You really are spoiling me~ ” As Alastor eagerly dug in, Jinbei let out a hardy belly-laugh from the seat next to him. Nami meanwhile, who hadn’t been around for the first time Sanji had served this to Alastor, paled away from the scene of his maw opening wide to consume a large chunk of the deer, squealing quietly as she hid her face behind Jinbei’s frame.
As for the visitors invited to the party, Charlie, Cherri Bomb, and Angel had a blast walking across the decks and inside the cabins of ‘actual, real pirate ships’, with Husk and Vaggie also showing an interest despite their lower level of exuberance. And dear Niffty even put aside her grudge against the Sunny to play on the slide and swing set with Charlie. This was shortly followed by the girl pulling out a cage of newly captured cockroaches to throw them overboard and manically laugh as they drowned in the sea, so that put a thankful end to the Princess cooing over the little gremlin’s apparent ‘adorableness’.
It was a merry time for everyone all around –pun intended. When Alastor had set up some shades to play along with Brook for the time being, a dancefloor started on the Sunny when Charlie pulled Vaggie into a dance for a slower number, while Husk followed suit with Angel much to the spider’s uncharacteristic bashfulness at the gesture. Franky on the other hand was still dancing in a ridiculous disco fashion as though there was still a beat going, with Niffty following suit in an attempt to “dance with him”. Luffy was spending quite a bit of time talking up Trafalgar as it’d been a couple days since the doctor had shown his face, and the man was barely pretending not to care. While the group on the Sunny was a lively bunch, the Going Merry had a calmer air about it. Usopp, Chopper, and Robin had all collected together by the figurehead to quietly talk amongst themselves while Zoro napped against the bottom of the mast.
After he’d gorged himself, Alastor felt like a change in atmosphere might be nice, and thus took his plate of beignets to go. He sunk down into the darkness to reappear where his shadow had settled in the much smaller crow’s nest of the Going Merry. After starting on his beignet, he threw his silhouetted likeness a pastry as one would a treat to a dog before it dissolved back into the shadows of the surrounding area.
Seated on his knees with his elbows on the edge of the nest and chin leaning into his palms, Alastor gazed down upon the grouped crewmates. The sound of Brook’s music was faint, seeing that the radio speaker was further down the mast, and so he summoned his own radio to tune back in. He’d have to suggest to the shipwright to add another speaker up here.
Shifting his gaze to look up at the now towering Sunny, Alastor contemplated the sight of its sunny figurehead –pun again intended. While he did agree with Franky’s decision to build his studio on the larger of the ships, Alastor also thought it was a bit of a shame he couldn’t set up shop on the quant little Going Merry instead. It was almost guaranteed to be the less busy ship between the two of them, what with more of the crew being required to stay on the Sunny to keep it running versus Merry only needing a handful. Still, there was nothing stopping Alastor from hopping over to enjoy this open-air lookout whenever it suited him. And it’s not that he didn’t enjoy being in his new studio as well. He’d already finished furnishing his room and had set out a small patio set for the balcony, even. He looked forward to inviting Robin, Brook, and Jinbei to partake in coffee and tea with him the next day.
“So this is where you slunk off to! Glad I didn’t have to look through that whole ship just to find you…”
Alastor’s gaze narrowed a tad at the sight of angel wings descending above him. Lucifer plopped himself down in the crow’s nest across from him, just giving a short smile and wave down at the pirates below who waved back without further reaction. Alastor turned around to sit in his seat properly and give the glass of whiskey that was offered to him a suspicious glance.
“What’s that look for? A guy can’t come over with the universal peace offering of alcohol?” Lucifer feigned a casual grin and shrug as he brought his own wine glass to his lips for a sip, as though to demonstrate the drinking that was meant to take place.
“Do you perhaps believe I was born yesterday, Sire?” was all he had to say to that.
“ …Okay, fine. I wanna drink with you because you’re easier to talk to when you’re drunk and I saw you’ve only had one so far. Happy now? It’s not like it’s poisoned or anything! Come on! That cook of yours would find a way to serve my ass on a platter if I tried something like that with a drink he handed off to me to give to you.”
“He would indeed…” Alastor agreed before he, somewhat hesitantly, accepted the glass.
After taking a few sips, he leaned back with his arm over the edge of the nest to question, “And should I be dreading whatever topic of conversation you intend to start with me during this previously fine evening.”
The King failed to withhold his guilty wince and the way he hid his face slightly behind his wine even as he scoffed, “Whaaa? Pff– There’s nothin’ you need to worry about! I didn’t come over here with anything like that in mind!”
“…”
“…Please finish your drink first, and then have another.”
“I’m rather hesitate to become inebriated any further around you now, considering your intentions.”
“God– Why do you always have to make everything so hard? FINE!” Giving up on the guise, Lucifer downed his full 12-ounce glass of red wine in one go, apparently fully believing that at least one of them need to be drunk to have whatever accursed conversation he was about to start. He snapped a wine bottle into existence to pour himself another as he began, “So. You and Lilith.”
Alastor immediate stood from his seat to leave, causing the King hold his hand out in a stop gesture and cry, “WAIT! See, this is why I wanted you drunk first! So sit your ass back down and drink!”
“I don’t see how that’s a preferable option to leaving you to get drunk all on your own and avoiding this farce entirely,” he almost growled back, the edges of his grin pulling taunt into a snarl. He was already in the middle of turning his back to the other.
“Listen, I know you don’t really wanna talk about this, but– Think of Charlie! She’d be so upset if she found out you weren’t getting along with her mom!”
“Do you intend on telling your daughter about my personal affairs? Because if so, I would still prefer the option of tearing out your tongue over this!”
With another wince, Lucifer predictable denied, “No! Course not!”
“Then it’s a moot point!”
“That’s– Well…” after trailing off, Lucifer deflated in a huff before conceding, “Okay. I guess you don’t have to talk if you don’t want to, but– it’s just kinda weird? For me, that is?”
Barely avoiding splashing wine on himself as he used his now full glass to gesture between himself and Alastor, Lucifer awkwardly asserted, “Like– I know we’re not really friends, but we’re not at each other’s throats anymore. We have a– acquaintanceship? I guess? Our banter changed from a fuck this guy banter to a fun banter! We can actually talk together once in a while. But it feels weird being on almost good terms with you when I know you somehow hate my wife more than you hate me now??? Lilith didn’t ask me to talk to you, she actually told me not to, but I just want to discuss the situation with you once. Like a real adult… Adulting with other adults. In real life.”
“I think you’ve had too much wine. You’ve been an ‘adult’ for how many millennia now?”
“That was kinda the point, yeah,” said point was accented by another large gulp of wine.
Alastor systematically went through all the reasons why staying was an absolutely awful no-good idea, then put this against the chances of Lucifer continuing his apparently self-appointed duty of having this talk until Alastor finally caved. Upon deciding that he’d just be delaying the inevitable, he sounded an annoyed sigh before sitting back down. Then, he tilted back his head, distending his jaw open wide to down the rest of his rye in a single gulp.
“The whiskey…?”
“Uh– Right,” Lucifer replied hesitantly, looking fairly concerned about the unnatural breakage of Alastor’s mouth. He materialized a bottle of rye before Alastor, who took it in hand to pour out another glass. Only to repeat the process of distending his jaw and swallowing it in one go. And then repeat it again…
It was upon pouring out his fourth glass within that timeframe, with his face now much warmer than it had been a minute prior, that Alastor sighed, “For the record, I’ve always hated your wife more than you. At least starting from when I first encountered you at the hotel that is."
“Fucking Christ…” Lucifer squinted harshly at the offhand comment as though he hadn’t been the one to force this whole mess upon Alastor, before shaking himself out of it to return to a more composed look. “Despite how you felt about both of us, you didn’t seem to treat Charlie that badly though.”
Alastor sipped on his glass in a return to normal drinking behavior as he dismissed the non-issue, “Your darling daughter she might be, but she is neither you nor Lilith. She also has a much more charming personality than either of you.”
The tension in Lucifer’s face softened at that. He paused to drink another half of his wine glass before continuing, “…Thanks for that. To get back to Lilith, though…”
A dark look cast over Lucifer’s face as he stared down at his wine. The look of a person ruminating over something they’d rather not.
“Lilith didn’t get into what her deal had been about since you didn’t want to listen to her, but… I thought it might help you if you knew. It’s a private matter, though, so please don’t tell anyone else about this. Not even Charlie– no, especially not Charlie. Got it?”
It was true he had no patience to hear out Lilith’s excuses, but with such delectable information being offered by another party… A twinge of curiosity rose in Alastor’s mind. Seeing that the man had paused to wait for his verbal agreement, Alastor huffed, “If you’re insistent on telling me, then I suppose, yes. I will agree to your terms of silence.”
“Alright… Well, I think the most relevant thing about the deal with Eve for you to know is that Lilith had actually made it a long time ago. Like, a long time ago. Before Charlie was born. Because… Eve offered to use her power to help Lilith conceive.”
Alastor’s hand unconsciously stilled in the middle of bringing his glass up to his mouth. He had to blink himself out of staring at the pensive Lucifer sitting before him, gaze still lowered to the glass of wine cupped in both his hands in his lap.
He found himself quietly commenting, “ …While it’s known sinners cannot conceive, the consensus concerning Queen Lilith seemed to be that she held enough power to be an exception. Either that, or that your power overcame this limitation.”
“She wasn’t. And while I can still do a lot, I’m not a true angel anymore. That’s not the way it works.”
Please tell that to Vox– While that was the first thought to come to mind, there was not a chance in Hell –pun not intended– that he could say anything about that in a conversation as serious as this. And in any case, he was fairly certain Vox would still find some convoluted argument around the proof against his braindead conspiracy theory even if Lucifer himself said as much straight to his face.
While Alastor’s mental tangent faded off, Lucifer continued with his explanation, “But Eve, on the other hand, is– was I guess, the Mother of Humanity. A blessing of fertility was very much something within the means of her power. We… had already gone a long time without having had any children, we knew technically we didn’t need to have any, but… we still wanted one, ya know? It’s no surprise we gave into the temptation when it was offered to us. Kinda our thing, right? And neither of us would ever regret it even considering what came of the deal afterwards, because that deal is the reason why our daughter was born. But– we should have been smarter about the terms, really…”
With a swirl of his wine, Lucifer raised his glass as though to drink from it, only to hold the rim just before his lips as he recited, “Eve wanted a favor from Lilith, at some point in the future. We stipulated that it couldn’t involve Lilith killing or hurting anyone we didn’t want dead or hurt, it couldn’t involve Lilith harming even a single hair on our daughter’s head or our family in general, and that couldn’t involve Lilith working against the betterment of Hell. Eve agreed to these terms. We never thought she’d come back around to ask for Lilith’s body of all things. She didn’t used to do that sort of thing. None of the terms covered that sort of circumstance, since the possession didn’t hurt Lilith in any way. But once she was in Lilith’s body, she could still use it to work against Hell or hurt others, because it wouldn’t technically be Lilith doing those things. So… Lilith had to let her take her dues, and there was nothing I could do about it when I also agreed to the deal. It… It was awful…”
There was a poignant silence, before Lucifer finally lifted his gaze back to Alastor, his eyes wavering slightly from the unpleasant memories even as the King tried to pull himself back together. “There was really nothing she could do for you, Alastor. It was just– an unfortunate situation for all of us. She didn’t mean to involve you in that sort of trouble. Maybe you don’t believe her, but she really does feel bad about what happened with you. And– it’s not like I’m saying you have to forgive her, but I want you to know that you weren’t just collateral damage, okay? You meant something to her, and she both regrets that she couldn’t help you and that she lost your friendship. Does… that mean anything to you?”
There was a large, gaping silence, before Alastor quietly admitted, “ …We weren’t friends.”
“You’re seriously going with that– ”
“Yes. I’m being serious,” he cut off the King’s complaint before Lucifer could get too into it, just wanting the conversation to be over and done with. His half-lidded gaze drifted over to the Thousand Sunny and the people onboard, and after a beat, he decided that the King had made the right call in getting them both wasted. There was no way he would’ve had loose enough lips to speak of this otherwise, even with the amount of personal information Lucifer had shared about his family in turn. His free hand rose to cover his eyes and pinch at the bridge of his nose at the utter irritation of it all.
“Even if what you say is true, and even if from Lilith’s perspective we were friends… I did not have the luxury to assume that much familiarity with my owner, Lucifer.”
He could almost feel the way Lucifer’s face must’ve dropped into shock at the statement, but even so, Alastor pushed forward without looking at the other, “Even if I recognized that she was treating me fairly, I knew very well what it meant to be owned by another person. I did not sign my soul away with no thought to that. Do you realize I’ve spent almost the entirety of my afterlife being owned by her? Lilith, not Eve. The Mother of Humanity was only my owner for seven of the ninety years I’ve had in Hell. Ninety years– even including my time alive, my soul has been in the possession of another for much longer than not! Haven’t I given her enough of my time?!”
“Even when we were cordial and ‘friendly’ with one another, I had always been perfectly aware that I was at the mercy of the Queen’s whims. I very much took care to police my own behavior in her presence. The version of myself that Lilith is ‘friends’ with is the version that performed their role in such a way to ensure she would want to keep it that way. And in the end it didn’t even matter, since I was just passed on to someone worse despite my best efforts!” At that point he gestured the glass in his hand harshly enough that some of the rye sloshed out over the side, but he didn’t particularly care. His grin pinched painfully against their sewn edges, as though in the short time his face had gone without them, the skin was no longer accustomed to the irritation of them.
“Additionally, her control over me affected more of my life than just when I was in her presence or the orders she instructed me to carry out. I lived my life fully knowing I did not have complete freedom over it or what I chose to do with it. There were difficulties I had to deal with that stemmed from me knowing I was constrained by her. Decisions I made that– I will never know if I would have decided the way I had or not because my constraints did not allow me the option of considering any differently…!”
Alastor forcefully killed that thought before it could trail off too far. He banished the flashing remembrance of Vox, sobbing and screaming of his hatred on the ground beneath his heel along with it.
Not only was it pointless to ruminate on events that have already occurred, but it didn’t matter how much he’d had to drink, he still wasn’t drunk enough to allow himself THAT topic of rumination. To think on that potential endless spiral of what could have been…
Removing his hand from his face to lean his cheek against the palm of it, elbow propped up on the side of the nest, Alastor brought his glass back to his lips for a long drink. It was only after that pause that he finally forced himself to regain eye contact with fretful-looking Lucifer.
“Criticize me all you like for placing all that bitterness onto her when I willingly agreed to the deal, when everything was merely a consequence of my own pursuit of power– but it’s an unavoidable association. The fact that the Queen allowed my ownership to pass on to the Mother of Humanity is something I resent her for, though the reasoning for that outcome is an understandable one. But it only makes up one aspect of my affliction. There is no way to fix this, and I do not care to try. I truly, genuinely do not want anything to do with her anymore. And if that’s a problem for you that you’re unable to reconcile with, then I won’t regret losing your poor excuse for company either.”
Lips pursing to match the deep, concerned furrow of his brow, Lucifer was quiet for a moment.
When he finally responded, his voice was soft, “ …I never said we couldn’t be on good terms if you didn’t make up with her…”
Glancing down at his wine to swirl it in place, the man continued, “I mean– I had been hoping for it, but… I really didn’t understand how… bad you felt about this. It’s probably why Lilith told me I shouldn’t bother you. I’m not gonna tell you you’re wrong to feel the way you do or anything like that… I’m sorry… Thanks for– being honest, I guess? I didn’t think I’d actually get you to talk this much about it! This plan worked way better than I thought it would!”
He sounded surprised even when commenting on it, gesturing the swirl of his wine in Alastor’s direction before taking a drink. Alastor rolled his eyes even as a good portion of his internal tension unwound itself, thankful to see the answer he’d provided was enough and that he need not speak more on the matter. “Don’t give yourself too much credit, Sire. This is less attributed to your half-baked ‘plan’ and more so that… Well, I suppose I just don’t really give enough of a shit anymore.”
Lucifer thankfully had the wherewithal to spit his drink out over the side of the crow’s nest rather than directly into Alastor’s face when he choked on it. After a good amount of hacking, Lucifer managed to cough out, “Wh– Wha?”
“I don’t give a shit!” Alastor reiterated with a perfect smile, raising his glass at the other. Only to notice it was empty and pour himself another. So maybe the Devil did have some logic behind this ‘drinking gives him looser lips’ plan… “Political maneuvering, acting in advance of potential schemes, withholding as much as possible so as to not give any other too much leverage; It all gets so tiring, sometimes. There’s a party going on right now where people I appreciate are enjoying themselves– I don’t want to be dealing with this unpleasantness, I want to enjoy myself too!”
Alastor held up the now full glass towards Lucifer’s surprised expression, kicking a foot you with his grin confidently in place as always. “I want to eat and drink and sing and dance with my friends! Or at the very least relax in a calmer atmosphere removed from daily annoyances. I have the freedom to enjoy myself now, so I will. Therefore, I resolved this issue as efficiently as possible rather than trying to maneuver around it. That’s all there is to it.”
Staring at him with wide eyes for a good half minute, Lucifer blinked away his bewilderment to give a smile in return, though softer than Alastor’s. The King clinked their glasses together in a cheers before returning it to his lips to speak against the rim before sipping on it. “I knew there was a reason you weren’t as annoying anymore. You’re way more laidback now, it suits you! These pirates actually managed to pull that stick outta your ass! Like wow!”
“Unfortunately I can’t say the same for you, still pestering me even now! Why do I even bother humoring you?” Alastor sniped back with a flicker of narrowed eyes, but it didn’t last long as he sipped on his own drink. “I’m hedonistic by nature. It’s just that I’m also practical and mindful of how one need always maintain control. Or rather… I’ve come to the realization that always need not be always. In many respects, control is the opposite of freedom, and I want to live freely, thus… It feels nice to let go of it, once in a while. When the timing is appropriate.”
Blinking his eyes wide once more, Lucifer noted, “That sounds like the kind of thing Luffy would say. Or, well, not exactly. With nowhere near as many words, but ya know…”
With a slight snicker, Alastor casually waved his glass at the comment, “Certainly! As it happens, me and the good captain do share some specific similarities, you realize? The intriguing overlap that coexists with our contrasting natures is the reason why he invited me into the crew to begin with. He’s proudly professed that his dream is to live free, and I hold respect for that value of his.”
“…Well, must be nice to be livin’ the dream now, huh?” Lucifer chimed good-naturedly after a brief pause. When Alastor glanced over at him, the King sent him a playful wink. His eyes twitched with a mix of annoyance and disgust that in turn started Lucifer into a fit of laughter, “HAHAHA– It’s good to see that it’s not too hard to rile you up still, though!”
Without much notice, the music that had been playing on the radio faded out into nothing. The sarcasm dripped out of his voice almost on its own, “Oh ‘HaHaHa’– yes, very funny, isn’t it? How nice it must be to have a proportionally smaller brain to go along with that smaller body of yours. Much easier to find amusement in stupidity! Aha!”
“So you’re back to the short jokes and calling me stupid?! For as smart as you pretend to be, I think you’re runnin’ out of material Al– ”
“Hehehehe~ You two are so funny together!”
Lucifer came to a halt with his mouth still open wide, staring wide-eyed at Alastor. The Radio Demon stared back at him, eyes also widening slightly. Neither of them had been the ones to speak.
In unison, they pivoted to look down at the radio the voice had played from.
“ …Is this, like, a new ventriloquist act or somethin’?”
“While it is my radio that was not me, no.”
Once again, the soft, youthful voice sounded over the radio, “Oh, sorry. I interrupted, didn’t I? It’s just that I’ve been wanting to talk to Alastor so I was gonna wait until you were done, but then I ended up laughing instead!”
While Lucifer leaned away from the device with a spooked look about him, Alastor leaned forward, feeling out the energy of the radio waves and the way his own signal intertwined with it. He recognized the warm, light sensation he found.
“You are… the Going Merry, correct? Your soul is still connected to my radio?” he asked in genuine curiosity.
“It’s THE SHIP that’s talking– ?!”
“That’s right! I guess I should’ve introduced myself, sorry,” the ship, likely unintentionally, cut off the now mystified King, “Because we came back through Alastor’s radio, it’s not too difficult for us to reconnect to it again. I was able to speak a little in the living world, but it’s easier this way! Though it still feels weird, I don’t really like it…”
“I’m here too!!!” a livelier, though still young voice tuned in. Alastor could feel it when the soul of the other ship entered the broadcast now that he was paying attention to it. “Hey Alastor! I’m really happy Franky added your studio so fast! I was afraid Merry was gonna get to have ya instead.”
“Sunny… Don’t think about it like that. We both hold all of the crew together… Also that’s not what we wanted to talk to him about either. We need to save our energy to speak about important things, you know.”
“I get that already…! Fine. Sorry.”
“The ships are talking to each other???” Lucifer questioned in a stage whisper with a severe head tilt and squinted stare.
While Alastor somewhat empathized with the reaction, he couldn’t help but scoff at the man, “You could tell for yourself that they both have souls. Is this really so strange considering that?”
“Well– I guess not, but this isn’t exactly a normal thing either!” Lucifer insisted while gesturing both hands towards the radio. After a hum of thought, however, his expression brightened as he poofed that ridiculous apple-cane of his back into existence. “Oh! But how about if I do this…”
With a slow twirl of his cane, light came into being, a soft golden glow that circled out of the apple-top. The light gently coalesced together in a spot beside Alastor. And soon, it took the shape of a small humanoid silhouette.
“ –A soul we can see is way less creepy than a disembodied talking voice!”
The Klabautermann spirit of the Going Merry waved at them with a smile on their otherwise featureless face, before lowering their hand to rest over where Alastor’s rested on the seat. There was no physical sensation to it other than his hand becoming warmer. He stared down at the strange sight of it.
“Alastor, Sunny and I just wanted to say… thank you for finding us. And thank you for bringing us here. I was sad when I couldn’t take everyone any farther than I had, before. I never thought I’d get another chance to! It’s like a dream come true!”
“Seriously, this is the best!” the Sunny interjected again, still just a voice on the radio, “I’m so happy I get to be back with everyone again! They’re all so much fun! And you’re fun too, Alastor!”
“And also, thank you for taking care of everyone so much. You gave them a home to stay in when we weren’t here, right? You and Charlie and Lucifer too with your hotel and this sea. You’re very kind. I’m glad Luffy brought you onto the crew… I hope you can feel at home with us, too. I want to take you anywhere you want to go. I want to give you that sort of freedom.”
“We’re gonna go to the ends of HELL!!! Isn’t that COOL?! Franky told me so when he was doing the diagnostic! He’s gonna give Merry and me the coolest upgrades so we can take you guys wherever! No matter the terrain! Just leave it all to us!”
“Oh my word… These ships are absolutely adorable...” Lucifer squeaked in a hushed sort of whisper, face screwing up with shining eyes and a dumb grin at the apparent ‘adorableness’ as his hands clasped together in front of him. It was extremely clear who Charlie took after in this instance. Alastor spared a split second to send a judging squint the other’s way.
“Ignoring that fool over there…” Alastor couldn’t help the quick slip in, even as he moved onto his more serious sentiment just as swiftly. He returned the spirit’s smile with the direct focus of his own, fully relieved of its previous tension.
“There’s no need to thank me, dearies. I was just trying to do my best for Luffy and everyone else. I… do feel at home, thank you. And thank you for welcoming me aboard. You both have what could be said to be the toughest job out of everyone else of the crew, making sure they all stay afloat and have a safe place to reside even when the waters are rough and treacherous. I can see why it is they hold the both of you so dear to their hearts. It’s powerful magicks indeed, to impart a living, sentient soul onto the non-living… The entertaining times have only just begun. I’m quite certain there will never be a boring moment on either of your decks!”
“That’s right! HAHA!” the Sunny agreed with a bubbling laugh, “Welcome home, Alastor!”
“Thank you still, Alastor. Welcome home,” Merry chimed in along.
His chest lit up with warmth, more than just the feeling of the alcohol he’d been coasting on this whole time. This was a strange sort of circumstance, it almost had a fairytale feel to it, but there was something about it that felt real at the same time. Alastor’s mind drifted back to the time when his mother used to welcome him the same way, always glad to see that he’d made it back safely. He had to take in a slow, deep breath. This was no time to let his composure slip too heavily.
“Come now– This party is being held for the both of you! While you still have a strong connection, greet the rest of the crew! They’ll be ecstatic to hear from you! You are the stage on which we play– so give us a proper curtain call!” Alastor materialized his microphone to tap the top of it against his radio, looping the local broadcast into the rest of the sound system. After blinking at him for a second, Lucifer quickly caught on and got to work summoning more light into the air.
This time, it drifted over to the Thousand Sunny, over the top of Alastor’s radio studio. When the Klabautermann took form, they were standing in between the two antlers branching off the roof. Sunny sent them a large grin and wave from the distance.
“Wow! Thanks!”
“H-Hey! Isn’t that– ?!”
Usopp’s voice sounded from below when Merry’s spirit stood atop the edge of the crow’s nest. Alastor and Lucifer both looked down to see the group of pirates on board stare up at the sight with wide eyes. Even Zoro had woken up to stand and get a better look.
When Merry next spoke, it was echoed by the rest of the speakers, “Hello, everyone! I’m happy I get to be with all of you again. Welcome home!”
“ME-MERRY!!!”
“SUNNY!!!” the shouting was loud enough that it could be heard all the way over onto the other ship. Alastor could see the way the spirit held on precariously by one of the antlers, leaning over the edge of the studio’s roof to let themselves be seen.
“The adventure’s not over yet right?! As the ship of the King of the Pirates, I’m gonna bring you all to the ends of the world again! Welcome home, everyone!”
“Sunny…! Merry…! It’s us that should be telling you welcome home, ya know!”
Luffy burst up to the top of the Sunny’s mast, laughing as he slipped right through the intangible light that made up the soul’s form. Sunny laughed along with him. After circling around like a particularly excited dog for a bit, the boy threw his hand out to stretch it all the way to the crow’s next Alastor still stood in.
He and Lucifer both just barely had enough time to jump out of the path of trajectory before Luffy launched himself over. He ran through the light of Merry’s spirit with both arms out wide like a hug, even when this time he knew it wouldn’t connect. The grin on his face beamed like the Sun itself in his uproarious laughter.
“You’re really here! Hahaha~ Ya wanted to talk to Al, huh?! I knew ya would!”
“Luffy…” With a gentle smile, Merry’s form rested their arms around the boy. A mimicry of an embrace. “I’m glad I get to see your smile again. It always looks so bright. When we parted ways, you were crying. It made me sad…”
“Of course I was! We were sending you off!” Luffy insisted with a bullish attitude, “It made me really, really sad!”
“Hehe… Thank you… I’m going to do my best to go the whole way with you this time, I promise.”
“And we’ll make sure you can make it! Franky will always fix you up, and we’ll all take care of you! Right Al?!”
“But of course, dear captain,” he agreed without hesitation, not at all surprised Luffy had asked after him. With a show of a twirl, he folded his hands and his cane behind his back with the statement.
While the non-pirates of the party looked on in astonishment, the Straw Hats fussed over the souls of their ships for a while longer, before Alastor felt their connection gradually become weaker. Usopp cried over Merry. A lot. And the same for Franky concerning his own creation. Thankfully however, Alastor was able to find an opening to bring his personal radio over to a secluded Brook, such that Sunny could speak to him personally…
“Brook… Thanks for apologizing and everything, but you really don’t need to feel sorry about sending me off with you and everyone. I’m glad I got to go with you! I would’ve been really sad if you left me behind, or if you had to leave by yourself… So don’t feel sad about it anymore, got it!”
“Oh Sunny…” Alastor had to restrain himself from shying away as the skeleton’s illogical waterworks started up once again. “…Thank you so much! I’ll always be thankful that even during that dark time, you were there with me. I wasn’t completely alone because of you, even if I couldn’t remember that in the moment. I’m so very thankful that wasn’t our end! Welcome back! Truly!”
Since the visual Klabautermann spirit wasn’t around, Brook threw a large, bony hug around the radio itself, which since Alastor was holding meant he was included in the hug as well. While he initially tensed under the hold, Alastor soon deflated with a sigh, giving into the inevitable and allowing his heavy head to rest against the thin shoulder.
“Alastor…? Have you had a good amount to drink, perchance?” Brook noted the drastic change in his usual reaction, even as he continued the hug.
“If by a good amount you mean… Well actually, I don’t think there’s a way to count it to not make it a good amount, so yes. If Lucifer attempts to talk to me again, do not let him. I’m officially done with him for the evening, understand?”
“If that’s what you wish... Perhaps we should do one more play of Binks’ Brew, while we still have the Klabautermann around? The King wouldn’t wish to disturb you on stage after all!”
“Oh! YEAH YEAH! I wanna hear you play! Merry would love it too!” Sunny gave a resounding agreement.
With another though less put on sigh, he agreed, “I’d be amendable to that…”
And so him and Brook played their rendition once more, with himself on the piano and Brook on the violin. The sounds of their music drifted across both ships with the use of Alastor’s signal and the sound system Franky had made. The rest of the crew sang along with it, and even Charlie happily joined in at the end now that she’d learned the lyrics.
As they played the ending bars, the light of both the Klabautermann on the Sunny’s deck and the one in the Merry’s crow’s nest faded away, waving as they slipped out of sight and their voices faded from the radio. But everyone knew that even if they could not be seen nor heard, they were still present. Their souls would remain for however long the ships they resided in remained, and if the crew had any say in it, that would be for a long, long time. They potentially had the rest of eternity to continue their adventure, after all. And in the eyes of the captain, there was no adventure without their ships to take them along on their journey.
When the late evening was upon them, those residing in the hotel set about leaving for the night. Trafalgar already started making his way off the ship after a few last parting words to the captain. Whatever he had said lit up Luffy’s sleepy face to great effect and left the doctor making a hasty retreat to hide his bashfulness. Alastor was glad he’d chosen not to eavesdrop on them, only having interacted with Trafalgar to request that he meet up with Robin and himself tomorrow to discuss more about the Blackbeard situation, and while he didn’t mention it, he also wished to learn more about Blackbeard and his abilities. He disliked being unprepared for an enemy expected on the horizon. There were also other preparations he had in mind, many of them involving the assistance and labor of the Straw Hats’ shipwright, to carryout leading up to the uncertain deadline that was the impending Extermination.
After Trafalgar, the Hazbin residents began filing out themselves. Niffty was already sleeping in Angel’s arms as the spider made his way off the ship with Husk right behind him. Cherri took one last mug of beer to-go despite the fact that she and the swordsman had both almost decimated the cook’s stores, much to Sanji’s grumbling disapproval. Vaggie and Lucifer, however, stopped at the edge of the ship, waiting for Charlie as the Princess walked up to where Alastor stood at the base of the mast. She gazed up at the new addition of Alastor’s studio with a soft smile that closely resembled the one her father had worn earlier that evening.
“Are you moving out of the hotel now, Alastor? I’ve been around to try to check on you the past couple of days, but they said you were still sleeping… After I saw what Franky started building for you, though, I– thought I should ask…”
Alastor could recognize that, while the girl still had a cheery lift in her tone, she was trying not to sound sad for his sake. So he replied with a tad more gentleness than he would usually bother with, “ …You would be correct, my dear. I assume the rest of the crew has already moved out, and someone needs to keep an eye on these troublemakers. Why, what would they do without me around to keep Luffy out of the fridge? You yourself know what a trial that is. It’s a wonder they’ve made it this far to begin with! And the room they’ve made me has such a splendid view of the ocean! It’d be a shame to let it go to waste.”
Charlie turned to him with a bright, sunny smile. “Yeah, your new place does look great! You need to promise to invite me up later, alright? But I’m not sure how you guys get up that high anyway? I know that won’t be a problem for you, though. You probably actually like that it’s– ”
“Charlie dear…” he interrupted the girl in a hush.
Leaning forward with his own smile, he materialized a handkerchief to carefully wipe at the few stray tears that fell down the Princess’s fair face. “There’s no need to cry… We still won’t leave for some time. Franklin hasn’t even started his work on the modifications we need before setting out.”
Charlie startled with wide, watery eyes, her brow furrowing as she tried to keep the now trembling smile on her face. When it became clear her tears were nowhere near stopping, she took the handkerchief from him to hold against her cheek.
“It’s– It’s silly, I know. I-I’m sorry. It’s just– even though you still have a while longer with us, it really does feel like you’ll be leaving, now. And… you really have done a lot for me and the hotel, Alastor. I… It’s not going to be same, with you gone… I’ll miss you…”
“These are words to be saved for my actual departure, dearie,” while he chastised the girl, it was more of a soft reminder than anything. Placing one hand on her shoulder, Alastor used a single claw of the other to gently tilt her chin up from its downward, gloomy stare. Wide, shining eyes glanced up at him.
“But when the time comes… I suppose I will miss you, too. As Rosie is quick to mention, you have a moxie about you that is a delight indeed. This little endeavor with your hotel has been an entertaining time for me as well… But there’s no need to despair. Luffy is not the type to intend on lasting farewells to friends. I’m certain we will return and visit. For we are friends, are we not?”
The dying tears renew once more, filling Charlie’s large eyes to the brim. She managed to squeak out a barely comprehendible “yeEEEEESSSss!!!” before she forced herself upon Alastor’s person in a large hug. His arms hovered a bit before, with a quiet huff, he lowered them around her slight frame to return the gesture.
“ ...How much did that guy have to drink tonight?”
“Not enough for THIS. What the Hell was in that whiskey I gave him– ”
He snapped back at the former angels’ side commentary, snapping his neck along with it to twist his head all the way around to glare at their now spooked faces, “This is not due to the DRINKING, you IMBECILE KING!!! If you’re going to listen in to your daughter’s private conversations to this extent, at least have the wherewithal to come console her! Do you need me to write a manual concerning the basics of childrearing?! Because I somehow understand more of this than you do despite having no children!”
“Not in Vox’s opinion you don’t…” Lucifer immediately snarked, only to pale drastically at the distortion on Alastor’s face and the squirming tendrils that leaked out from his shadow. He quickly turned to a now very confused Vaggie to point at her and order, “Forget I said that! It didn’t happen!” he then fast-walked over to finally commit to his parental duties, with a slightly awkward smile pulling at his lips, “Hey now, Char-Char– It’s alright! Why don’t ya tuck in for the night? Al ‘ll still be here tomorrow, promise…”
And with that, the last of their visitors took their leave. As he had stated, Alastor stayed on the ship, though he didn’t intend to sleep that night. He’d already gotten more than usual previously due to his magical exhaustion.
So instead, he thought to quietly ask Brook as the rest of the crew with their sleepy eyes set about tucking in, “Would you like to help me break in the new studio, dear pal? I have an idea for a song or two I’d like to make.”
“Yo ho ho? Another party song perhaps?” the other asked with growing excitement.
“Oh, nothing like that this time. Actually… I wasn’t quite sure if I’d even want to play this song for anyone, truly. Maybe the captain and the crew, but surely no one else.”
“A song you wouldn’t want to play for anyone…?” Brook sounded dumbfounded by the suggestion, like the idea had never occurred to him. Tilting his head questioningly, he professed, “ …I’m afraid I don’t quite understand, Alastor. In my eyes –or lack thereof, yohoho~ music is always meant to be shared with others!”
“Well it’d be a personal song,” Alastor defended himself with just a bit of attitude, narrowing his eyes at the other, “I am not one inclined to broadcast such weakness for everyone and their mother to hear! However– it’d still be a nice song to make. A way to speak aloud this sentiment I would otherwise have a difficult time gathering words for… Do you understand that at least?”
Even as the skeleton face couldn’t change expressions much, Alastor could see it when Brook fell into sense of somberness. “…I think so, yes. Thank you for allowing me to take part in this with you. It is an honor indeed to be included in such a treasured piece of music!”
“The song wouldn’t come out as good if you didn’t help, so it’s a matter of practicality,” while he brushed aside the sentiment, Alastor also had to admit, “And I think it’s a song you would like to make, too.”
“We let’s get started on it then! My heart can hardly take the suspense… except I don’t have one. Yohohoho!”
Piano notes drifted about his new abode for the rest of the night. The acoustics were wonderful, Franky had clearly constructed the room with music in mind. By the time the morn’s brighter shade of red was upon them, it had felt like hardly any time had passed. Alastor looked out the window to see Sanji traversing his way across the deck from the men’s quarters to the kitchen, and wondered if he should offer to help the cook with breakfast. He was already looking forward to what might be served.
And, deep inside his chest, in that place that was usually just a void but was now full to the brim with some warm sensation… He hoped that this might be how all his days play out, from now on. On this colorful stage with these colorful people. And while he was still wary of this hope, just a dimly lit candle that may easily be snuffed out in the all-encompassing darkness, he also knew… he treasured it oh-so dearly.
He will not allow the light to fade. He will not. Come Hell or Heaven or high water, he will keep what is his. For what else was the purpose of his soul-forsaken power, if not to keep the things he dearly wished to keep…
…And it was with these thoughts in mind that about two weeks passed by, until the time of Heaven’s reckoning was upon them.
“W– Wait! Pleasssse, Madam Ssssera, wait– !”
Sir Pentious tripped over as he was suddenly halted by a spear blocking his path, thrown right in front of him to stick out of the ground. It left him sprawled across one of Heaven’s large halls, much like an insignificant, unwelcome pest marring an otherwise pristine floor.
The act was coupled by a hiss of a reprimand, “Know your place, former sinner… You have no right to approach one of the Seraphim! Let alone demand she waste her time on your woes– ”
“That’s enough, Lute. Please, make your leave up ahead. I’ll follow shortly.”
The newly appointed General stalled for short while, looking as though she wished to object. But she knew that wasn’t the order of things in Heaven. So instead, she nodded at Sera before quickly walking down to the end of the hall, disappearing behind a heavy set of doors. The Seraph finally looked back at him with a quiet sigh.
Seeing he had apparently been given the floor, Sir Pentious began his pleading, “I– I learned what the purpose of the resssearch the engineering department has been doing all thisss time is meant for, and– Pleassse! You mussst reconsider!”
“Sir Pentious, there’s no need for this… You should take pride in your work. You have contributed much to Heaven in the short time you’ve been with us. You’ve proven to those who were doubtful of you that redeemed sinners may have a place here. And now is the time to trust in the decisions of those serving in the protection of you and the rest of Heaven’s populace– ”
“I wouldn’t have helped with this if I’d known you’d be using my work to HURT MY FRIENDSSS!!!”
“Sera!” a young voice called from down the hall Sir Pentious had emerged from.
The other Seraph, Emily, rushed forward towards him, kneeling down to clutch at his shoulders in comfort even as she rebuked her counterpart, “Sera! You and the council are wrong! This– something like this can never be the right thing to do! You can’t convince me of that! How can such a widespread destruction of people, of human souls, ever be right?!”
Closing her eyes with a slightly pained look, Sera sighed, “You still aren’t seeing the larger picture here, Emily. That’s why the council and high angels took my position over yours…”
The Seraph turned her back to them, folding her hands behind her as she spoke, “Never has Hell been in such an advantageous position against the order of the divine. The First Man, the Mother of Humanity– both lost to us despite having been around for millennia. And with Eve gone, Lilith is back in their fold. The First Sinner with the power to imbue her people with further strength, and with her presence, the fallen Morningstar will be emboldened. After they successfully fended off Adam, the sinners will hold more delusions than they ever have before that they can work against us. They even have a fledgling demi-god on their side. If we do not suppress them now, it will only be a matter of time before a fight is brought to our doorstep instead. More than anything else, we cannot allow that. Our duty is to our people above all else.”
“They’re preparing to defend themselves! There’s no guarantee that if we leave them be they’ll go any farther than that! Shouldn’t aiming for peace be our first option?! Annihilation our last resort?!” Emily denied with a frantic insistence, tears brimming in her eyes, “And doesn’t the fact that Nika’s reincarnation decided that Hell and its people were worthy of his freedom mean that they are worthy of divine protection?! The angels are only assuming how God wants them to act, but the God we can see wants something completely different! Seraphim and angels are only meant to act in God’s stead, not supersede Them! The one who taught me that was you!”
Sera’s eyes narrowed a tad at that mention. “If he were a True God in full, that would be one thing, but he is not. Additionally, it’s already been proven that this reincarnation of Nika’s is too influenced by his mortal way of thinking. He would not have chosen such an accursed sinner for his following otherwise. He even struck down the Mother of Humanity, a holy figure, in that sinner’s name. He’s made his position against Heaven’s intentions clear with that alone.”
To that, Sir Pentious attempted to bolster Emily’s stance, “But Alassstor– the Radio Demon, hasn’t actually been acting that evil recently! Not since the Sssun God recruited him! Truly! I’ve been keeping watch on the hotel, and I say thisss as a man who was once a wretched enemy of hisss!”
Sera glanced back just to send him a doubtful look. “Doesn’t he still eat people?”
“ …Don’t we all have areas we …can improve upon?” Shit. Shit. He made it worse. Of course he made worse, since when has he ever made anything better–
“Sera…” this time, a deep, resounding voice echoed through the hall. Hope lit in Sir Pentious’s chest at the sound of it.
Everyone present looked down the hall to see none other than Vice Admiral Monkey D. Garp step forward. Though, he was technically no longer a vice admiral as that had been his title in life, but his name just sounded so much cooler with the title included! And he was still a respected person amongst those of his world who resided in Heaven, so Sir Pentious never felt out of place referring to him in a similar manner as they did.
Her cool complexion finally dropping into an almost scowl, Sera turned around to face the man as she levied, “Garp… How many times do I have to remind you that you have no authority within the context of Heaven proper? You may be one of those that your people deign to follow the leadership of, but that does not extend to an official position. You have no say in the matters of Heaven’s decisions.”
“Oh, I’m not here to try and tell you what to do. I know I have no power over you and your choices,” the man stated calmly with his arms crossed over his chest, much more level-headed than the behavior Sir Pentious has witnessed from him prior. Rather than lash out in stubborn anger, Vice Admiral Garp grinned at the Serph instead. “I’m just here to warn you that you’ll regret this choice of yours. My grandson is no weakling. Even if the judgement Heaven itself falls down on him, he’ll manage to come out standing on top. That’s the way I raised him to be!”
Sera fully narrowed her many eyes on the man, her tone falling into something even colder, “Of the divine your grandchild may be, but he is not yet a God proper. Constrained to his mortal flesh and bonds. A single, out of place nail will not be sufficient enough to contest the force of a hammer. If you care for your blood, you should pray for his ascension. That would be the best path forward for him.”
Gaze straying back to her counterpart, Sera professed to Emily’s wide, infuriated eyes with a much softer voice, “Ideally, we should aim for peace, yes… But an ideal situation this is not. This is not the first time Heaven has made such a decision, Emily… We all know of the tale of Noah’s Flood, do we not?”
Glancing away in rumination, the Seraph intoned, “The world and its people were deemed unsalvageable. Thus, the world was reset such that goodness may find purchase to grow once more. We cannot allow corruption to take hold and prosper. Should the rebellion of the Morningstars and Monkey D. Luffy fail to be suppressed by normal means… the might of Heaven’s divine power will be called upon. That is our final decision.”
Emily stared up at her fellow Seraph, face pale and aghast. Sir Pentious could feel the tremble of her hands against his shoulders, and tried to keep his frame steady such that she may find support in it.
And finally, Sera glanced down at him directly. After she stared at him for a tense few seconds, a small, consoling smile lifted the corners of her mouth, her brows furrowing in a familiar expression of sympathy. “And Sir Pentious… In regards to your friends, you need not hold such a heavy heart…”
For a brief moment, despite what she had just finished saying prior, hope spurred once more inside him.
“If they are worthy of redemption, they will be welcomed at Heaven’s gates. Just as the unknown will of Heaven knew you were worthy, so too will it know for your sinner friends. That’s part of the reason why your research was so important. We want to replicate the attack Adam used against you as much as possible for our main force of judgement to ensure that sinners who are worthy of redemption make it up here the same way you did. In this way, your work will help provide salvation to many potential virtuous souls. So hold your head high.”
With that said, Sera walked the rest of the way down the corridor, her echoing footsteps fading once she reached the large, heavy door down the end of the hall.
Sir Pentious collapsed further onto himself when the damning sound of the door closing shut resounded all around him.
“S– Sir Pentious– !”
“I thought I was doing good…” he hiccuped in a sob, crying into both his hands. The image of the pathetic, cowardly whelp he always knew himself to be.
“For once in my life and afterlife… I thought I was doing good!!! I thought– I thought I was helping! That I– could do MORE than just make creations meant for dessstruction! That I could be an inventor worthy of making something for Heaven itself! But instead, I’ve only proven that I’m nothing but an idiotic FOOL!!! The most logical use for the deviccce we created is as a weapon, and I was naïve enough to believe they’d use it for peacccce!!! And now all my friends are going to DIE and it’ll be all my fault– ”
“Hey Pentious… calm down, okay? None of your friends are going to die. They’ll be alright…”
When he lowered his hands enough to see through his blurry eyes, only then did Sir Pentious see the light that was now cast in front of him. So caught up in his turmoil that he hadn’t noticed the other’s arrival.
Moving against the feeling of Emily’s petite hands still on his shoulders, he looked up through his tears to see the one known as Portgas D. Ace kneeling in front of him, smiling kindly at him. He was only tangentially associated with the man, since they would watch over the same area of Hell, they would frequently use the same viewing spot. It was a curious feature of Heaven most of the winners seemed ignorant of. And likely purposefully so, as the point of the paradise was for souls to rest in eternal happiness, and watching the suffering of their less-virtuous loved ones was counter to this.
They were nothing more than acquaintances. And yet, he regarded Sir Pentious with a deep-seated empathy he would only expect from a friend, “Didn’t you hear gramps over there? Luffy and his crew won’t let anything happen to your friends, cause they’re their friends too. That’s the way it works with him.”
“…You… really believe that? That he can win?”
“I’d bet my soul on it,” Ace confirmed with a solid nod and unwavering gaze.
Stepping next to both Sir Pentious and Emily, Garp gazed down at them with a nod of his own. “Exactly! Ace knows what he’s talkin’ about. The Straw Hat Pirates ‘n’ their new pals will defend against Heaven just fine, leave that to them! The thing they can’t do, however, is bring a permanent end to this nonsense. Even if the Morningstars turn to diplomacy afterwards, these high-horse angels can’t be trusted to admit they were in the wrong. There’s too much of a chance they’ll try something again after recouping their power.”
After pensively staring down into her lap, Emily looked back up at the man to agree, “That’s right… So what should we do then, Garp? No matter how much I try, my voice isn’t strong enough to contest against both Sera and the high angels! Most of the winners in Heaven don’t even know what’s going on, but we’re not allowed to tell them. Sera set a divine ordainment on it. Do you think there might be a way to get around it?”
“You mean rallying the people to pressure the council into changing their position…? It’s not a bad idea, but it’s not the best, either. Not only is it not a guarantee they’ll change their mind, it’ll probably lead to a fight. With my Pops, gramps, and that bastard Roger we won’t be bad off, but it’ll take a while to both win a total assault and get the entire population of Heaven on board after. If there was a faster way to resolve this, that would be better…” Ace mused instead, cupping his chin in thought.
Leaning back with his hands moving to his waist, Garp bellowed out, “You were right to ask for what I had in mind, Miss Emily! I’ve spent quite a long life bein’ annoyed at the horrid politics that came with my sorta position, as well as bein’ under the authority of a self-imposing government! I know just the thing we should do! It’s not somethin’ that’d always work in our own government, but we just have to bet on things different here. Bet that this paradise isn’t all just smoke ‘n’ mirrors…”
Then, crouching forward with a conspiratorial smirk, the Vice Admiral pointed a finger upwards. “Ya see, when high-ranking middlemen ‘re causin’ trouble… all you really need to do is go above their heads! That’s the best way to put a stop to ‘em!”
“Go… above their headsss…?” Sir Pentious repeated faintly, brows furrowing slighting in confusion.
“Yeah! And since Sera ‘n’ the high angels ‘re the highest around these parts, that means we need to go high! Straight to the top of the chain of command!”
“ …You’re going to take it up with GOD?!” Emily all but squeaked, suddenly letting go of Sir Pentious to hold both her cheeks in her palms. When he almost toppled over due to the unexpected changeup, Ace caught him before he could fall flat faced on the hard floor again. “But– We haven’t heard from the real deal in centuries! And not even the high angels know how to reach the Land of the Gods! How are we gonna find Them?!”
“We’ll figure it out!” Garp confidently declared, thumbs up and all.
“…Figure it out?!?! That’s the plan?!”
“Yeah, there a problem with that?”
“That it’s not a plan at all!!!”
“How did you even make it up the chain so far in the marines anyway, Garp? Aren’t vice admirals supposed to be more strategic than this…?” Ace muttered with an unimpressed side-eye.
“Hey now– I know strategy! And I used this strategy all the time in my youth!” the man still insisted, pointing into his burly chest with a thumb, “There’s a problem in my way, and I punch it outta the way! It worked almost 70% of the time! And 20% out ‘a the 30% that it didn’t work was cause of Roger himself!”
“The resemblance to Luffy is so on the nose that it’s freaky…”
“Can we really do that?” upon the attention being draw his way, Sir Pentious wanted to flinch away. But instead, he forced himself to sit up straighter, looking the Vice Admiral straight in the eye as he questioned, “Can we really… find the Land of the Gods and convince Them? Even though we’re nothing more than mortal soulsss? Well, besides Madam Emily, that isss…”
After examining him in an intense, intimidating stare, Garp explained, “It’s not a matter of can you do it– Either ya do or ya don’t! If you really need to do somethin’, ya figure it out! Because if you don’t, you lose everything. That’s how it is…”
The man held out a hand to Sir Pentious. After blinking at it in surprise, he took it, and couldn’t help the oof that escaped him when he was hauled back up with monstrous strength. The other two that had been kneeling on the ground for him stood up in turn.
“Listen here, mister inventor. The scientist who was known as the smartest man in the world back where we come from was a man who wanted nothing but world peace and the betterment of everyone, but still ended up contributing to the worst weapon the world’s ever known for the use of a corrupt ruler. It wasn’t because he was an idiot, it’s because he believed in the good of people. And sometimes, that’s the wrong choice, because sometimes people let ya down. Don’t let the ways you’ve been used and the bad choices you’ve made in past define what you choose to do next.”
Sir Pentious was stuck like that, staring at the vice admiral, before his attention was drawn away by the familiar pitter patter of feet. He looked down to see his Eggs approaching him, faces all wide and smiling, unknowing of the danger that was about to be brought down upon countless souls.
“There ya are, Boss! We’s been lookin’ all over fer ya! What’re ya doin’ now?” one of them asked. Sir Pentious stared down at the little ones just a bit longer, his mouth screwing up tight. Before it forced itself open to whisper…
“ …I’m going to figure it out…”
Scratching at the inside of his ear, Garp annoyingly pestered, “Huh? What’s that? I couldn’t hear ya!”
“I will FIGURE IT OUT, Vice Admiral Garp Sssir!”
Sir Pentious snapped to attention all at once, fist shaking and clenched at his sides. He faced Emily’s and Ace’s surprised glances with a glare of determination. “Leave it to me! And in exchange, I’ll leave making our cassse to the rest of you! That’s the plan!”
“That’s great Boss! …Any ‘a ya guys knows what Boss ‘s talkin’ about?” the Egg Boys’ commentary, as usual, was ignored.
“Now THAT’S what I like to hear!” the Vice Admiral praised with a cheer. When he turned his wide grin onto the remaining Seraph, Emily stared back at him with that wide-eyed gaze of hers. “And as for the negotiation, we can leave it to you, right Emily? Not only are ya the only higher-up we got, you’re good at that kinda thing!”
“M-Me? Talk with God?” the Seraph reiterated with a frazzled look about her, her hands clutching together in front of her nervously.
“I… I don’t know… if I’ll be able to do it… Even when I’ve been trying so hard with Sera, it hasn’t been working. No one’s listening to me… If I can’t even get someone who cares about me to listen, how can I get God to…?”
Tilting his head slightly, Garp replied, “Well that’s why we’re doin’ this, right? Cause this God of yers ain’t Sera! Ya won’t know until ya give it a shot! And if they’re the type that won’t listen anyway, that’s when I come in with Plan B.”
Emily brightened just a tad, at that, smiling back at the man. “Really? Then– you have a backup to try if my words don’t go through? What is it?”
Before the Vice Admiral even responded, Ace raised a hand to rest his head into it with an enduring sigh. Garp proudly held out a clenched hand towards the Seraph, proclaiming, “Ya got that right! Plan B… stands for Brawlin’ it out! If God doesn’t wanna listen, we’ll make ‘em! Got it?!”
“I knew he was gonna say that…” was Ace’s resounding sigh.
Emily stared at the man for a long moment. Despite having already been convinced of the Vice Admiral’s greatness, Sir Pentious also stared. Until her mouth finally started to work again, opening, only to close, and then open once more.
“ …You’re gonna FIGHT GOD?!?! How– How even– ?!”
“With the greatest weapons I have! These Fists of Love, right here.”
“YOU’RE GONNA FISTFIGHT GOD?!?!?!”
“Only if your negotiations don’t work, of course.”
“PLEASE DON’T PUT THAT ON ME!!!”
“…Welp. I need to go start on– figuring it out, as you know, so… I’ll leave the rest to you Madam Emily!” Sir Pentious immediately took the opportunity to flee, slithering out of the hall as fast as his tail could carry him.
“H-Hey! Don’t you leave me with him!”
“Emily, if it makes you feel any better…” Ace spoke up with a quiet sort of pity, “…There’s actually a good chance this guy can win the fight. He’s batshit crazy, so he won’t be afraid even when his opponent is God themselves. That’s something a sane person wouldn’t be capable of.”
“THAT DOESN’T MAKE ME FEEL BETTER AT ALL!!!!!”
That entire family is batshit crazy! From the grandfather to the adopted grandson to the legitimate grandson! Off their rockers, each and every one of them! Sir Pentious cursed in his mind as he slammed the exit door behind him. Though not before making sure all his Eggies had followed him properly. As he continued his rushed slithering, his mind was a jumble of possible devices and equations. But even still, he turned one last thought over on the matter.
But if ‘crazy’ is what it takes to accomplish the impossible… He’ll take them any day over a sane person! If that Monkey D. Luffy he’s been watching have fun with his friends is batshit enough to make a stand against Heaven for their sakes, then he’s just the sort of fellow Sir Pentious should be relying on! There’s no time to fret, so just focus on the job that needs to get done!
Chapter 22: Judgement, Reversed
Notes:
The song featured in this chapter is Pat Benatar's Invincible. Thought I'd add the link to the beginning to the chapter so you can either listen to it ahead of time or when it comes up in the story.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
After a number of weeks since the idea was first considered, Charlie finally put on her “Hazbin Hotel Exclusive Lu Lu World Extravaganza”– This was the exact wording that had been used on the invites that had been sent out.
Everyone who resided within the hotel was invited. Or rather, those who resided within the hotel proper along with the Straw Hat Pirates who were settled at the hotel’s dock, considering it’d been some time since they’d moved onto their ships. Members of the Straw Hat Grand Fleet who didn’t reside in the hotel were also granted invites as a membership perk, causing a peak in sinners applying to join the cult up until the day of as word of the bribery got around. As the invite suggested, those who confirmed attendance would be permitted a full day’s access to the amusement park, with the park being reserved exclusively for hotel use for that time. The Straw Hats, of course, were all going. And while all of them were eager for the event, Alastor rather suspected that any who did attempt to no show would be dragged kicking and screaming to the park gates by the captain himself– the case in point being Trafalgar. Who while not outright dragged, very much carried the stubborn silence of someone who believed they had something better to be doing as Luffy almost pulled his arm off leading him into the place.
And it’s not as though Alastor failed to see the reason behind the doctor’s reluctance, outside of his generally withdrawn demeanor. Spending a day dallying about in a theme park when Hell as a whole was waiting on edge for when Heaven would finally make its move would be interpreted by many as a ridiculous waste of time. If this event had been organized by anyone else, he would likely view it that exact same way. However, this event had been organized by both Charlie and himself for the specific benefit of his friends, and therefore it was perfectly acceptable to take a break from the busyness that had been going around the hotel for a day devoted purely to having an entertaining time.
While Alastor had initially been somewhat displeased to have to make the compromise of allowing more than the Straw Hats and Charlie’s companions for the event, he had to admit that the park would have felt rather barren without having more bodies to fill it. It was the largest amusement park Hell had to offer, and one of the only ones at that excluding Mammon’s knock-off versions, so there was plenty of space for the extras and those Alastor was less inclined to spend time with such as the Snake Princess and Queen of Hell to roam about while he amused himself with preferred company.
Luffy, Chopper, Usopp, Franky, and Brook had all gone starry-eyed upon entering the park, excitedly buzzing in place at the promise of thrills and sweets, but all of the crew carried about them a similar show of joyful anticipation. Jinbei, the member of the crew Alastor had thought of first and foremost for this activity, was gazing around at the park with a wide grin. Just the sort of reaction he’d been hoping for. And of course, Charlie herself was close to bouncing off the proverbial walls, with Vaggie watching over her overly excited girlfriend with a fond smile. They ran ahead alongside the more excitable of the crew, as well as Angel, Cherri, and Niffty, who fully intended on taking the rides by storm. Alastor meanwhile chose to hang back alongside those taking a more leisured stroll through the happenings.
However, in his decision to do so, he found himself surrounded on either side by the two ladies of the crew, with Robin taking his arm on the right and Nami the left. An unamused Zoro had to hold the cook back when Sanji promptly combusted into a raging fire, and Husk cursed a storm as he quickly fast-walked away from the walking hazard. Alastor and the girls meanwhile continued to walk forward to leave the scene of the crime.
Alastor glanced back and forth between the two in an obvious look of confusion once they’d gained an appropriate amount of distance. “While I would never say no to escorting either of you two around as a gentleman, I do have to question as to what brought this on…?”
“Oh come on Alastor~ Did you really think we wouldn’t figure it out?” Like a cat who’d caught a money-stuffed canary, Nami looked up at him through her eyelashes in a particularly catty teasing grin as she poked a finger into Alastor’s cheek. He had to hold himself back from the reflex of snapping at it. “It wasn’t just Charlie who put this on for us. You had a hand in it too!”
“Requesting our use of the amusement park for Jinbei’s sake was a very kind idea. I’m not sure why it is you would want to withhold that information from us,” Robin backed up the point with a much more casual smile, but her matter-of-fact delivery was all the more damning.
The ends of his grin twitched against his unseen sutures as his brow set into a scowl. He turned his face away from looking at either of them as he growled under his breath, “That captain of ours and his inability to lie is quite the annoyance…”
Nami clarified, “We didn’t get this from Luffy, actually. Robin cornered Charlie and well, you should see Robin when she wants to know something. The poor Princess didn’t stand a chance! I just happened to be around since I was helping Charlie with the financial side of things.”
“I had a feeling that the choice of an amusement park when our last trip to one was cut short was more than a coincidence. Fufu~ ”
“I’m not sure that’s any sort of improvement for me,” Alastor muttered with a slight eyeroll, before he forced himself to set his now irritated stare back on the ladies on either side, insisting, “I have a specific, personal reason for why it is I felt empathetic regarding Jinbei’s experiences that I am reluctant to speak to at large. This excursion is also meant to be a self-serving remedy on my own part.”
“What do you mean?” Nami was the one to question with a curious blink, the teasing expression falling away from her face.
“In my world where I came from, they were liberal in designating facilities not meant for my sort of people. But rather than wishing to one day partake in shared festivities… I often fantasized of BURNING DOWN the whites-only amusement park of the local area, with all the miserable whelps still inside!” he curled his claws in front of his face as he proclaimed this, as though he was imaging the burning flesh and cinders collecting into the palm of his hand. His grin curled sharply, his eyes darkening at the thought of such an act.
“If only I’d worked out a plan before I died as to how to accomplish this revenge without being caught– such a shame! But of course, going through with inflicting the same plan on an unrelated amusement park in Hell has no purpose. So instead, I placed myself in a position where I designate who is and is not allowed in the park! Temporarily, that is. It holds nowhere near the same amount of satisfaction as the mass murder and arson would have, but at least it’s something– ”
“Oh my. If that’s how it is, then it’s no good to be lingering back like this. You should be where all the action is occurring with Luffy and the others to fully enjoy yourself,” raising a fair hand towards her mouth, Robin stated this with a blasé sort of tone, completely skipping over Alastor’s plans for widespread slaughter and violence.
Nami however was more mindful of what he’d actually said and squinted a concerned look at him, which was the objectively correct attitude to take, but undercut this by saying, “That’s– kind of a lot… But it’s also sad. Like Robin said– What are you doing holding back like this?! You should be focusing on your own fun too right now! So let’s get to it!”
With that, he was summarily pulled forward without any indication of agreement from him whatsoever. And any resistance he could have attempted was futile. There was no arguing with the combined force of the women of the Straw Hat Crew. Period.
They caught up with the others shortly after that, and from then, it was a whirlwind of a time. Luffy and Charlie wanted to go on each and every ride, and everyone had to join in on the fun. Compared to the theme park rides of his time, while these new-fangled sleek designs went faster, the actual safety of the contraptions also proportionally increased. So unlike Franklin’s deathtrap of a racecar, riders were able to experience the thrill of the ride without the fear of crashing into oncoming traffic. What a concept! Alastor had a fairly entertaining time laughing at the frightened faces of the cowardly trio of the crew when approaching the largest rollercoaster of the park, and then had a pleasant experience on the ride itself. Trafalgar’s face as they forced ridiculous looking apple hats onto him also made for quite the laugh.
The only real point of contention Alastor faced was when Boa tried luring Luffy into the Tunnel of Love using a turkey leg. But once she succeeded in getting the captain into the boat with her, Trafalgar was quick to switch the two of them out with his Shambles. And Alastor had no issue with Trafalgar being the one to go on the ride with Luffy since he knew the man would absolutely hate it. Luffy came out of the other end of the dark tunnel with the turkey leg having been consumed down to the bone, looking confused as to what the point of such a “boring” ride was. Trafalgar came out the other end with his head in his hands looking as though he wished for nothing but the sweet release of death. It was a riot, truly.
In comparison, Charlie and Vaggie seemed like… they had a bit too much fun in the tunnel. The darling Princess could hardly look her father in the face for the next hour or so. And in contrast to that, Angel complained for the entirety of that very same hour about how “Husky wouldn’t fuck me in the damn tunnel why else would ya go in there if not ta fuck”. Cherri gave her condolences to the spider while Husk was clearly holding himself back from taking out the flask of alcohol he’d sneaked inside the park. Alastor took that as his cue to spend as much time as possible away from that assortment of people and with Luffy and the crew instead.
After a couple more rides, everyone stopped to have a lunch consisting of mediocre park food –he really was spoiled from the chef’s cooking, now. Eating out anywhere of substantially less quality had become a trial to be endeavored since he’d gotten accustomed to it. And it was from this point on that their day went from surprisingly nice to downright awful–
High above their heads in the red sky, ominous clouds gathered over the city as though to act as an omen for what was to come. From within them, not too far off from where the Hotel sat underneath, circles of light materialized from the aether, before they expanded out to form a distinct, halo-like portal.
On the other side, the illumination of Heaven could be seen as countless masked exorcists began to descend upon their realm. Pesky, annoying bees swarming out of their hive at the behest of the queen.
“Are ya fuckin’ serious?! Of all the damn days they decide to show, they choose our Lu Lu World day?! This ‘s BULLSHIT!!!” Cherri accented the curse by throwing her vodka-spiked soft drink onto the ground. She then threw up a double set of middle fingers at the encroaching army.
After a long, deadpan stare up at the descending army, Trafalgar quietly and reluctantly confessed, “ …When I wished for the Extermination to start while I was in the tunnel just to have an excuse leave, I didn’t actually mean it.”
“ARE YOU FOR FUCKIN’ REAL?!?!”
“It’s certainly unfortunate. Perhaps even more so than when our friend was kidnapped and almost sold on the slave market the last time we went to a theme park. When that happened, Luffy picked a fight with a World Noble, which led to our defeat at the hands of an Admiral and one of the Seven Warlords,” was Robin’s ‘helpful’ commentary. Many non-pirates gave her a side-eye for it, with Husk showing the most incredulous of the bunch.
“Are ya guys cursed ‘r somethin’?! You lot better not lose this time around!”
“You don’t need to tell us that. We got stronger to make sure nothing like that will ever happen again. Not on our watch,” Zoro replied firmly, withdrawing his extra arms for use.
“I believe they are ‘or something’, dear Husker. I also believe we don’t have much time to be wasting on such trivial chatter, now do we?” as Alastor said this, he was already in the midst of gathering the shadows around everyone, sinking them down into his own portal. As for the rest of the park-goers, he left them to the King’s power.
Reacting with appropriate promptness, Lucifer announced over the amusement park speakers, “Sorry to cut the party short, folks, but it looks like showtime’s on! I’m taking everyone back to the hotel! You should know the drill by now! Noncombatants take cover inside! Combatants and fleet members, prepare for battle!”
When they materialized from the darkness inside the hotel, lockdown procedure was already underway. Franky had thought to enable remote activation for himself. Steel shutters began closing in across the entire building and all its windows, reinforcing the hotel into a fortress. Still, remaining amongst the higher floors posed the potential for danger should the angels bombard the structure hard enough to cause a collapse, so Franky had modified the basement into a proper bomb-shelter for additional protection, complete with a hidden secondary escape route that let out a good ways away from the hotel where the Straw Hat Grand Hell Fleet base and Sun God church were located.
The shipwright got all this done within a remarkably short amount of time even considering the fleet members who’d been recruited to take part in his construction crew, which including just about all the sinners who had jumped ship from the Vees who had also formerly been in Vox’s engineering department. It seemed the annoying cyborg had somehow managed to endear himself to the lot of them, and thus, they were all to eager to help the man. The majority of them were even in the process of learning ship design and construction, and were transitioning into forming a company the man had dubbed “The Franky Galley”. Alastor wasn’t quite sure how Franky planned to set up the leadership of his company post his inevitable extended absences from the Pride Ring, but he supposed that was an issue to be had only after the battle was over and done with.
“Charlie, we’re headed out first!” Amidst the chaos of others preparing their angelic weapons, Luffy opened the hotel doors in a purposeful motion. There was no question as to which group would be acting as the vanguard. “The weaker guys ‘ll get taken out too if they’re too close, so make sure they wait a bit til after my first attack.”
Straightening up from where the Princess had crouched to equip her new shield, she called back with a serious expression, “You got it!”
Vaggie was quick to counter, back into her military mindset, “Make sure you guys put your earpieces in! We need to stay in communication amongst ourselves along with the other factions.”
To that, Alastor was the one to speak up with a twirl of his microphone, “They already have them, dearie. I am the radio operator for this operation after all. Not to mention dear Franklin and Usopp were the ones who mass produced those little trinkets.”
“Still not my name! Ow!”
“It was no work at all for the great, genius inventor Usopp! Ohoho~ ”
While they hadn’t made enough for every expected combatant, their faction or otherwise, the efforts of the two combined allowed Franky to produce enough of their curious tiny radio ear-microphones and speakers to have enough for everyone deemed important enough to have one, as well as the entirety of the Straw Hat Crew. Their transmissions were all interconnected with each other via Alastor’s radio system and signal. Franky had designed the creation, then taught Usopp how to manufacture them with his adeptness for tinkering, leaving himself free to work on the hotel defenses. While Alastor was usually hesitant to mix himself into more progressive technology, he made an exception for the occasion, seeing that the shipwright was showing a proper respect for the usefulness of the radio in his utilization of it.
“If that’s all that’s left to be said…” Jinbei started with a decisive nod towards the door, “It is time to show this heavenly army what it means to draw arms against the Straw Hat Pirates!”
“Oh– Yohoho! Well said indeed, Jinbei!”
And with that, Luffy walked past the doorway, and the rest of the crew followed behind.
They strolled at an almost leisurely pace through the courtyard and outside the hotel gates, not at all looking bothered by the winged army gathering and dispersing in turn above their heads. While many encroached on the hotel, many also flew off to attack other parts of the city. Despite the nonchalance, however, the pirates carried a sense of anticipation about them. The weight of it built in the air until they came to a halt in the street at Luffy’s behest. Raising his arms in front of his chest, the captain held one fist within the palm of the other to crack his knuckles.
With one last drag from his cigarette, Sanji tossed the thing on the ground to put out with his shoe. He brought a hand to his ear to report into the radio, “They brought out a good number of ladies to the fight. It’s hard tell with them spreading out so much, but eyeballing it, there are well over 100,000 of them. Even with their hateful glares, all of them are very lovely and beautiful.”
“Didn’t need that last part since yer simp card ain’t declinin’ any time soon, but thanks for the heads up…” Angel of all people was the one to snark back over the line.
“Wait a second… Sanji, they’re all girls! Are you not gonna fight with us?!” Chopper, currently in his purely reindeer form, exclaimed in worry. Nami was already in the middle of sighing into the palm of her hand in agitation.
“I will never hit a woman. But in this case, I don’t need to hit them directly. I can still fight by aiming for their weapons,” Sanji replied while pointing at the weapons in question. While still fitted with their spears holstered on their backs, all the angels were now equipped with their own weapons upgrade in the form of modernized guns. A concerning number of which were now pointed directly down and at them.
Alastor spoke into his own radio to inform the others, “It seems that the exorcists have switched to arming themselves with firearms so as to better avoid close range combat, now that they know we have the means of felling them.”
Vaggie’s voice was the one to respond this time, “Lute might’ve been Adam’s yes-man, but she’s smart enough at least to know better than to go into the fight with the same battle strategy as last time. It still sounds calm on your end. Are they not shooting at you yet?”
“They are now.”
Thin rays of light beamed from the angelic guns. Enough to kill a sinner if properly aimed, certainly, but nowhere near as large of an attack as what Adam had shown himself capable of. Alastor slammed the end of his cane into the ground to form a translucent, shadowy shield around the crew. He could feel where the divine power burned against the shield, but his power was strong enough to withstand the pressure. Even still, Usopp, Nami, and Chopper all took refuge behind different members of the crew with intimidated shrieks, with the reindeer being the one to stick his head behind Alastor and inadvertently leave the rest of his body uncovered. Not that Alastor’s current form was even large enough to shield all of the reindeer’s body. Everyone else just stared at the coming attacks, entirely unconcerned.
“Other way around, darling deerling. To continue the report– their ammo consists of concentrated divine energy. Be warned against taking a hit unguarded.”
“We could’a figured that, yeah,” Husk snarked back over the line.
“More than 100,000 opponents, is that so…” Jinbei considered the matter, before concluding, “They should have brought more people. Hody’s crew was 100,000 strong, and we handled him with only the ten of us.”
After cracking the knuckles of his other hand and neck, Luffy’s grin split wide at he glared up at the army.
“You got that right!”
Waves of pressure emanated out of the captain. Alastor could feel them pressing against his skin to resound in his chest, mixing slightly with his ever-present radio static. But as they reached the angels above, it seemed that his sensitivity to the pressure was not as extreme as could be.
The rain of firepower cut short as the exorcists in the area flinched back from the pressure. A portion of them shook under the feeling, seemingly racked with pain or overwhelming sensation. Those individuals knocked out completely, falling from the sky as their wings failed them. They dropped in streaks through the red sky like falling stars.
It was nothing new to the rest of the Straw Hats, but Alastor watched the proceedings with a curious stare, tilting his head slightly with the flicker of an ear. “Such overwhelming might… The captain just took out a good fifth of the currently surrounding army without even moving! What did he do exactly?”
Robin explained succinctly, “That was his Conqueror’s Will. Those without a strong enough constitution cannot withstand the pressure of it. Amongst an average army, more than half would fall at his feet usually. In comparison, they faired quite well. It would make sense that an angelic army would veer towards being stronger than average however.”
“ …The fuck?! Do you guys even need us?!” Cherri Bomb called back over the line, and based on initial proceedings at least, it was a valid question.
With his strategic mind, Jinbei offered, “We likely won’t constrain ourselves to staying solely in this region, so I would suggest you focus your efforts on defending the hotel and its people as we disperse into the city. With the type of personalities we have, our crew tends towards an offensive rather than defensive battle!”
It was a decisive first blow on their end. Even with the majority of the exorcists still remaining in the sky, they all looked shaken by the effect of the captain’s Will. Cowed at the sight of so many of them falling to what they now surely remembered was a God.
Such a detriment in morale would have been enough to end the fight before it’d even started, if they hadn’t been rallied once more…
“What are you all waiting for?! THAT was enough to scare you?! Pull yourselves together!”
Above the heads of the exorcists who’d been shooting at them, the First Man’s former lieutenant spread her wings out wide. They were matched by three pairs of a mechanical set attached to her shining golden armor in an image reminiscence to a holy gladiator. She’d evidently been promoted to head of the army.
In Lute’s hands was her spear rather than a gun. She pointed it down at the pirates with a scowl shaded under the shadow cast by her helmet. “We are the hands that carry out Heaven’s Will! Do not fall to the Will of this outside Conqueror! Our purpose is greater than his might! You have your orders! Now get your shit back together and open fire!”
The mechanical wings on Lute’s back spread out to form points of light at each end of them. They fired in unison, blending together to form one larger beam of divine energy aim directly at them. When it hit Alastor’s shield, his power held up, but he could feel the intensity was much stronger than the individual gunfire they’d been under. Lute’s armor continuously fired, keeping up the beam of light for an extended period, until he could sense that it was about to break through.
Instead of waiting for it to happen, he redirected the magic of his shield outward, breaking it himself to inflict a wave of power upon the exorcists. Not enough to fully knock them back, but enough to interrupt their fire. “Look alive dearies! It’s time to begin our scheduled broadcast!”
“This is gonna be FUN! Hehyahaha!!!” the cadence of Luffy’s laughter shifted as the boy shifted into his divine form, hair turning white and curly with a smile as big as the Sun itself. It was upon the captain launching himself forward that his crew burst into action.
As the captain’s “wings”, the chef and swordsman flashed into the fray. Sanji kicked at the bottom of Zoro’s feet to assist the man in jumping high in the air, bringing various exorcists within the reach of his Heavenly steel blade. They fell from the sky with the blow. Meanwhile, Sanji himself had brought out his extra set of legs to launch himself up and set about kicking the guns out of their hands, blurring and ricocheting between them so fast they hardly had the time to take aim at him.
“Apologies ladies, but I can’t allow any guns to be aimed at our marvelous Miss Nami or Miss Robin. Feel free to take a shot at the mosshead though.”
“Why don’t you just sit this one out if you’re not gonna treat the enemy seriously, swirly brow! You’re in my way!”
“HUH?! Who’s in who’s way?! You have a lot of nerve running your mouth when you’re being so cruel to these ladies in my presence!”
“Hey! What’re you doing tryin’ to hit me?! They’re literally shooting at us!!!”
“Those three should be sufficient to cover this area, let’s spread out in groups!” Jinbei suggested before running off towards another pocket of exorcists hanging in the air. Brook laughed his distinctive laughter as he followed without comment. When Robin also wordlessly split off, Alastor took one look at the remaining group in question consisting of Franklin and the trembling trio, and took the opportunity to even things out by sinking down into the shadows to move on as well.
“W-Wait! Why’re all the strong people leaving?! Don’t leave your sniper behind!”
“What’cha talkin’ ‘bout, Usopp bro? Ya got all the STRRRRRONG ya need right here! It’s time to bring out GENERRRRRAL FRRRRRANKY!!!”
“OoOoOoOhhh!!! Robot Franky’s back!!!!” It would seem he’d left just in time. He had no patience to deal with that mecha-monstrosity…
Even from a distance however, he could see that ludicrous giant robot stomping its way through the city, laser beam cannons looking fairly similar to the attacks brought on by the exorcists but without the divine aspect of course. However, even without being of a Heavenly property, a laser beam to the face was rather difficult to ignore and was sufficient to damage the opposing weapons themselves. The robot’s outer steel also proved sufficient to take damage from the divine energy shot out by the exorcist’s guns, though Alastor suspected it would be similar to his own shield in that a strong enough attack could break through. Still, Franky had until that occurred to make use of his ridiculous contraption, so there was no harm in the indulgence until that point.
Storms brewed as their resident weather witch released electrified clouds into the surrounding sky. They proved to be the same set she’d sucked up when Alastor had conjured their ships, laced with both his own power and a more reduced portion of the captain’s divinity. That mixture would prove to be quite painful to the exorcists struck by lightning in the air, with no avenue for retreat from such an all-encompassing attack other than to retreat from the sky itself. He spared a moment to wonder if Nami had even realized that the device she used for battle, her aforementioned “Clima-tact”, was now her magic conduit proper. More similar to his own microphone then Franklin’s technological constructions. She could likely do more with it in death than she’d been capable of in life. He supposed that was a quandary he could pose to her another day, though.
Alastor was able to use his radio’s connection to the earpieces on the field to monitor what was occurring even after leaving the scene. This was a large part of the reason why he insisted all of the Straw Hat Crew was to receive one. He used this connection to check on the most “cowardly” crew member to ensure the man hadn’t been left hanging.
The exorcists who fell prone or dove too far down close to the ground found themselves fired upon themselves, though by plant-like projectiles rather than bullets. Their sniper’s variety of ammo proved to be vast indeed, including anything that could be of use such as explosives, entrapment devices, flash-bangs, paralytics, etc. He had also recently been equipped with holy grenades from Carmilla’s collaboration with Cherri Bomb to provide more lasting damage, but seemed either hesitant to use them or was merely being mindful as to their more limited stock. While generally having a more limited area of effect than the larger attacks provided by others on the crew, his keen senses allowed him to provide specific, precise coverage to protect gaps in his crewmate’s offense and defense, not to mention allowing for precise long-range shots. Usopp could really do to grow an extra nerve or two however, considering he was doing just fine.
And of course… it wasn’t long before something monstrous entered the street. A creature of dark, blood red fur. Antlers strong and branched out, perfect for crashing into overhead enemies as large hands reached out to directly claw them out of the air. Its maw let out a mighty roar as the creature was fired upon, but to no effect. The monster deer’s durability had increased to the point where it would take more than such puny attacks to cut through its hide. Or rather– the monster reindeer he should say. Seeing that the only giant blood red monster deer that was currently on the field was the usually small and adorable Chopper, rather than Alastor himself…
“ …Holy Shit. Wait a sec… Smiles, are you ‘n’ Bambi Rudolph related– ”
“You will shut your whore mouth Angel or this Extermination will become the last thing you need worry about!”
“Geeze. Touchy much! ‘M just sayin’! It’s a HUGE fuckin’ coincidence that Luffers now has TWO giant red monster deer people! Like the fuck?! It was one thing when ya’s was just both deer, but this ‘s a whole new level ‘a similarity!”
He knows that. By God does he know that– If he’d in any way succeeded in talking Vox down from his braindead conspiracy as to him being the parent of the little deerling, it was well and truly dead in the water now. There was no way a man that obsessive would accept this as just a coincidence. Alastor can only pray that he has the patience necessary to deal with his old pal when the topic resurfaces once more…
Enlarged violet arms grew out of the ground, loosely surrounding their group to block some of the gunfire. Robin’s extra appendages didn’t have the durability of either steel armor or a monster’s hide, the spots where divine energy burned into them left scorches in their wake, but as they weren’t of the main body Robin herself was able to withstand the damage. With her actual arms crossed over her body in that peculiar stance she used, she commented, “I don’t believe I’ve seen this form of yours that Angel Dust is referring to, Alastor. There’s no need to hold back for this sort of battle.”
“Well, usually for this sort of circumstance, I would refrain from growing larger as that also implies becoming a larger target,” he started, before glancing around at the new set of large violet arms growing out of the pavement like a strange tree amongst the concrete jungle of the city. “But as we’ll be fighting together, I suppose I can entrust my back to the lot of you. There’s no point to having such monsters aboard the crew if we don’t fight like it– ”
The Radio Demon’s form grew larger as he spoke, his limbs elongated while his size enlarged and his antlers branched out wide. His grin wide and sharp, eyes glowing red dials within pits of black void and red X in prominent illumination on his forehead. Black tendrils surrounded by the green glow of his magic grew out along with him, whiping through the air with spears collected from fallen exorcists to reach up and take out a number of them.
A rush of water burst from the sun on Jinbei’s chest to swirl around as well. The stream knocked back a couple of exorcists outside of Alastor’s reach to interrupt their aim. Meanwhile, a blur ran up one of his tendrils, like a wind passing by a different set of exorcists. When Brook finished his great leap, landing along the side of one of Robin’s large arms, his sword gleamed more than usual as he slid it back into his sheath. Seeing that rather than his usual cane sword, he was using one of Heavenly steel sourced by Carmilla. “Indeed– That Miss Carmine was considerate enough to permit me this weapon, so I best use it! The thrumming anticipation of the battle chills me to the bone! Literally! Yohohoho– ”
The exorcists cried out as golden blood split upon the final clink of the skeleton’s sword. When they fell from the sky, Alastor spared a tendril to swat at the lot of them and collect their spears, and Jinbei and Robin pressed an offense during his moment of distraction. Exorcists fell either under a cruel, spine-cracking clutch of a multi-handed hold, or by a blast of a blow landed to their insides, the water in their bodies being used against them to force them back
“AaAaAaAaAaAAAAAAHHHH– !!! The Straw Hat Pirates! All out and fighting in full force for the first time with their newest member– ! This is such a momentous occasion!!! If only I was free to sneak in a pic!”
When the Radio Demon spoke this time, his voice was laced through his radio and its distortion, “I’m hoping for your own sake, dear Bartolomeo, that if you have the freedom to speak so carelessly over the line, then you are already in position?”
Mentally tracking the signal back to Bartolomeo’s earpiece, Alastor could tell that the man was standing on the docks. With his fingers crossed and a large barrier covering himself along with both the stationed ships, no gunfire was able to penetrate the defense. The missionary proudly proclaimed, “Of course! You’ve all given me such an important task– I would rather die than fail to protect the Straw Hat ships! My Barrier will only fall when I do!”
“See to that, then. Since if you did indeed fail while still being alive, I would kill you regardless.”
Vaggie’s voice rudely cut in at that point, “If you guys are gonna shoot the shit like this, we might as well do a sound off. All sectors report!”
Alastor was able to check for himself how the different scenes were progressing as well. Following the signal of Charlie’s earpiece rather than her paramour’s, the Princess herself was playing more defense than offense. All of Lute’s firepower was focused on her and her shield, which she seemed to have thankfully learned how to reinforce with her own divine energy that she’d inherited from her father, or it would have fallen under such a concentrated attack. Niffty was under the shield with her, pouting up at the attacking exorcist while she lightly flinched away from the heat. Charlie reported nervously over the line, “I think Lute– is trying to get back at Niffty for killing Adam! She’s so mad she’s not even trying to shit talk me!”
“We’ll circle back and come help, Charlie. Don’t worry,” was Vaggie’s reassuring response. Alastor sensed the former exorcist move as mentioned along with Husk, who’d been in the midst of throwing his exploding cards as well as he could while dodging the gunfire. In their place, Angel Dust with his many guns and Cherri with her bombs took lead of the hotel’s defense, escalating their attacks against the other exorcists present.
“Reporting from the Morningstar Manner in the inner city– It seems that the exorcists have only just caught on that we weren’t at the hotel and are now shifting more troops over here, but I’ve got it all taken care of! Lilith’s starting her concert now, so you’ve all got a nice boost comin’ your way! And if they wanna get to my Queen they’ve gotta go through ME first!”
Alastor followed the signal to the manner to take stock of the scene. While the King defended his proverbial castle from the front, along the edges of the manner some exorcists were attempting to infiltrate and ambush the Queen from behind to stop her from using her power. However, they all faced the gunfire of angelic bullets before they could complete their breech. Upon realizing there were more enemies to be had, the exorcists swarmed that location as well, only for a demonic visage to fall upon them.
From the signal of the transformed Prince Stolas’s earpiece, Alastor overheard that imp of his complain as he reloaded his gun, “We are making damn sure that catty weather witch knows we are EVEN after this!”
“Come now Blitzy~ With my more familiar association with King Lucifer, it was only appropriate to come to his aid as both a citizen of Hell and a friend. You were the one who insisted on coming with me.”
“Well of fuckin’ course I’m not leaving ya to fight by yourself, mega-powerful prince or not! I’m just pissed the rest of them butted their way into joining in too! We’re supposed to have immunity for fuck’s sake and my team is fighting it out for sinners who aren’t paying us!”
“I could always request that he compensate your business. I do not believe he would refuse, as he is quite reasonable. As expected of a person with such a charming collection of rubber duck toys!”
“ …Well in that case, we’re working fuckin’ overtime! You know how LOADED the damn fucking King of Hell must be?! I’m movin’ Loonie into a bigger apartment after this gig!”
Ignoring the rabble, Alastor felt the moment when Lilith connected her own microphone to not only Alastor’s radio signal, but to his wider network connected to the city speakers at large. With the overseeing balcony of the Morningstar mansion having been changed into a makeshift, barricaded stage, the Queen’s calm visage looking out over the chaos was as cutting as ever. Lucifer grinned wide as his wings spread out wide and an entire line up of exorcists were blown away from their approach.
There had been a reason why Lilith sought out Alastor in particular for his service, out of all the souls who had the potential to become Overlords. She’d been able to discern upon his death that his demonic attributes would overlap nicely with her own and wished to have this sort of card in her pocket to play, just in the very case this sort of circumstance were to occur…
“This bloody road remains a mystery… This sudden darkness fills the air…”
Her melodic voice projecting across the entire Pentagram, Lilith raised a hand over her chest as a commanding tone rose amidst the calm, “What are we waiting for…? Won't anybody help us? What are we waiting for?”
And as the beat landed and her hand cut into the air, pointing out at the distant armies as a general of the battlefield would, her voice resonated within Alastor’s chest along with surely every other sinner fighting out in the fray of this Hell–
“We can't afford to be innocent! Stand up and face the enemy! It's a do or die situation! We will be invincible!”
“Oh my! What a haunting voice! I feel reenergized even just listening to her!” Brook commented as leaped back up into the sky using one of Robin’s arms as a platform.
A multitude of renewed, wriggling tendrils broke out from Alastor’s back. He explained not over the line, but still with that distorted radio screech, “That’s because you are being reenergized, dear pal! So long as her own will is intact, Queen Lilith is able to boost the strength and power of any sinner who listens to her sing.”
“What a fearsome ability for a ruler to possess. It’s no wonder Heaven was wary of her,” Jinbei replied, the wave he crashed over a collection of exorcists was notably larger than what he’d been producing prior. It was evident that Lilith’s song was taking effect.
“This shattered dream you cannot justify… We're gonna scream until we're satisfied…”
Ever the pragmatic, Carmilla Carmine confirmed over the line, “Reporting from the south-west quadrant– The Queen’s power is indeed taking effect on myself and Zestial. We have our region covered.”
With a crunch between her words, a clear sign she’d already begun her snacking, Rosie chimed, “Speakin’ from Cannibal Town’s lil’ ol’ section of the pie– My cannibals gotta work a bit harder to deal with these divine guns they got this time, but with that darlin’ Empress Hancock helpin’ me out, we’ve been dealin’ with it!”
“What are we running for? We've got the right to be angry! What are we running for? When there's nowhere we can run to anymore– ”
“It is magnanimous of this one, indeed,” Alastor could hear the Snake Princess speak even when she wasn’t speaking into the radio, seeing that she had her own earpiece. Standing atop one of the buildings, she pulled back one of her hands, pulling at the strange heart that materialized before her.
From up above, any exorcist who was too close had their gazes forcibly drawn to the woman. They muttered quietly amongst each other, gossiping about her bewitching face. “That’s a sinner? But she’s so beautiful…” It was much too late for them already, even if they should realize their folly.
“Slave Arrow!” Boa released her volley of arrows upon them, turning any exorcist who happened to be struck to stone. And like the stone that they were, they dropped down from the sky in their heaviness, crashing to the ground to shatter to pieces.
“We can't afford to be innocent! Stand up and face the enemy! It's a do or die situation! We will be invincible!”
“Yes, because even for these beings originating from Heaven itself… In my presence, they all fall to the temptation of sin regardless. Such is the strength of my beauty.”
“Kyaaaaa~ !!! The Empress is sooo cool!” The moment perhaps might have been improved without the echoing chorus of her followers calling out from behind her.
A deep sigh sounded before Crocodile drawled, “Reporting from Cross Guild’s position in the north-east. We’ve got it handled. And by that I mean that if Mihawk were to start losing at this point, I would be extremely shocked.”
“AAAHahaha– That’s right men! We don’t need any royal family to cover our asses! We’re plenty strong enough to deal with these wanna-be exorcists just fine! This ‘s nothing compared to the war for the One Piece we faced in life!” Alastor overheard Buggy declare to the Cross Guild troops.
There was a roaring cry of approval, even as the swordsman of the group was the one who made the next move to strike instead of the clown. The blow took out not only several exorcists within close proximity to one another, but also the building that had been nearby them.
“And with the power of conviction, there is no sacrifice! It's a do or die situation! We will be invincible!”
“We’ll follow you forever Captain Buggy!”
“Our Captain is the best!”
In a needed distraction, Trafalgar came onto the line from where he was stationed by his clinic to finish off the roll call, “Reporting on the streets of the inner city– Things are going smoothly, but don’t get overconfident. We still need to stay vigilant as to what else Heaven has planned.”
And, as though the man’s pessimism had directly set a curse upon them for the second time mind you, that was when what Alastor considered the first real set back of the day began.
While they’d intentionally split up, Alastor had already noticed that the separate Straw Hat groups were gravitating back towards one another, such that they could at least keep an eye on where the others were delivering their larger attacks. The furthest one off was likely the captain himself, though they could still see him from the distance with how utterly noticeable his divine form was. It was nothing to be alarmed over.
Until one of them sounded over the radio frequency, that is–
“W– Wait– ! Wha– WATCH OUT!!!”
Usopp’s shrieking tone instantly drew Alastor’s attention towards his signal, following it a couple blocks away to sense the sniper had fired a shot from his large slingshot. He instinctively turned around to face the other’s direction, seeing Jinbei rush into his line of vision as the fishman had shot himself up with a geyser of a stream to reach his height.
It was only when a flash of an explosion landed against the man’s chest, only partly buffered by the water he’d swirled around himself, that Alastor realized he’d been the target. Jinbei had blocked a hit meant for Alastor’s head.
Brook cried out in shock, rushing over even when Alastor was quick to reach out and catch the gravity-bond fishman in his claws and palm. “J-Jinbei– ?!”
“I-I’m alright. It’s a superficial wound…” Jinbei tried to assure with a groan, holding a hand against his now bloody torso with a wince. While he put on a strong front, however, Alastor could already tell based on the scorch of the blast wound that that had been a holy grenade he’d been hit with. The wound wouldn’t heal until they got him to Chopper, who was currently preoccupied just as everyone else. The only positive was that, seeing as he’d been hit with a bomb, the burn effectively cauterized the wound for the most part, so the man wouldn’t bleed out in the meantime at least.
Despite the pain, a deep scowl settled into Jinbei’s expression as he remained focused on the situation, harshly growling out, “Doflamingo… I knew he would make his move when it was inopportune, but to divert our attention from the Extermination– ?! He and his crew need to survive this as well!”
Another explosion sounded. This time, the flash went off against the palm of one of Robin’s giant arms, causing it to dissolve into a flurry of petal. She called out, tone pulled with just enough stress to be noticeable, “I apologize, Jinbei! I should have been the one to block that first one! I didn’t notice fast enough!”
“There’s no need to apologize for such a thing! Just keep your mind on the fight!”
The apology was echoed at the other end of the line that Alastor was still mentally tuned into. Up on the roof of a building, far off enough to not be within any of their range but close enough for Usopp to make his shot, the puppet’s hand jerked back down in an unnatural motion towards his ammo bag. Tears began streaking down his wooden face as he sobbed inconsolably, “I– I’M SO SORRY!!! I can’t control what I’m doing! I’m not strong enough! Someone stop me! Please!!!”
Alastor thought to stretch out the shadows to include both Brook and Robin as well before he sunk them all into the black. He rematerialized still in his full enlarged demonic form beside the building Usopp was standing on. His cries had also drawn Franky’s attention, the large robot in the middle of making his way over, but Alastor had beat him to it.
“A– Alastor! Jinbei! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to– ”
“I know, Usopp dear. It’s that dReAdFuL fLaMiNgO, isn’t it? I’ll take care of it.”
Robin was already in the midst of constraining the puppets limbs with a many-handed hold, pinning him down as Alastor placed Jinbei down and shrunk in size to fit on the rooftop, though without shifting fully out of his more demonic traits. He kept his face fully averted from looking directly at the still crying Usopp, knowing that if the other were to look at it, he’d seen the murder clear as day in the pits of Alastor’s eyes. He didn’t feel up to purposefully scaring the coward at the moment.
It was only up close that one could see the thin, barely visible strings. Reaching out to one of the strings, a harsh tug proved that the connection was not so easily broken. Perhaps it was even stronger than would normally be, seeing that Lilith’s song would empower the wretched bird just the same as any other sinner.
So instead, Alastor switched to sending his signal out to follow the path. It led his senses right back to the grinning puppet-master set on the other end, the strings ensnaring Usopp attached to his feathery fingers.
With his mic in his free hand, Alastor tuned into just one radio in particular, not wanting to cause an unnecessary panic elsewhere, or even worse, display their weakness to those external to the crew. “Trafalgar. That accursed flamingo of yours just attempted to cause a stir of internal strife by puppeteering our sniper into firing upon us.”
“That bastard… He does have it out for Nose-ya in particular yeah. He screwed over Doflamingo’s control over his island by taking out an important officer of his crew. If you know where he is, take me there! You can do that can’t you?!”
“I wouldn’t have called upon you if I didn’t intend to have you assist me in dealing with him, yes.”
“So you’re dealing with it too? That would be useful, he’s a tricky bastard to fight alone. Just be aware that some of his crew will likely be with him right now. He’s not the type to pick a fight he can’t win, so he’s probably betting that we’ll be too busy to send enough people after him to take him out.”
“Of course I am dealing with it! That man just took control over one of my crew to attack me and wounded another in the process! I will deliver upon him his rightful punishment of EXECUTION!!!” Alastor hissed back in a crackle of static, his grin straining sharp and taunt in the overwhelming rage that broiled inside. There was just enough presence of mind left in him to question demandingly, “Now including whoever may be fighting with the flamingo, do we need any more than just the two of us, or are we sufficient?!”
There was a notable pause indicating the doctor was legitimately considering the question, before he responded, “We can take them.”
“Good enough for me!” With Franky and Robin defending the two prone Straw Hats from fire as well as assisting Brook with an offense, Alastor would be free to depart. He paused just long enough to turn and face Jinbei, saying calmly, “I thank you for your consideration, dear Jinbei, but the next time you pull such an idiotic move– I will be the one to finish the job and kill you.”
Instead of giving a proper reaction, the fishman just sent him a wide smile, at that. “There’s no need for thanks. It was the right move to make. I do believe I was more capable of withstanding the attack, especially since I was better able to sense for it and put up a guard.”
“Such logic will not grant you mercy from myself.” The fact that it was his own failing that contributed to this outcome just made the anger burn all the brighter. Without another word, he sunk down into the shadows.
From the street where Trafalgar had been working in tandem with a scarecrow sinner in the city, he swallowed up the man with another set of shadows. When the darkness spit them both back up, it was less than a block away from where he recognized Doflamingo to be.
The snow leopard didn’t look particularly enthused by the transportation, brushing down his coat after getting his feet under him. He was also additionally disgruntled due to a previous matter, as he mentioned, “Hawkins was mouthing off at me for being around when he didn’t need me anyway, so this is a better use of time at least.”
“Another pirating associate of yours I presume?”
“He was considered one of the worst of my and Luffy’s generation previously along with the two of us and Roronoa, yeah. I went to him to get predictions on the future, including the one about Blackbeard and the Vees. His voodoo abilities are basically maxed out now that he’s in Hell, so he’s been a cocky piece of shit. He can hold a hundred straw dolls now. The exorcists just stopped attacking him since they can’t kill him without killing a full hundred of their own first.”
That IS useful. Very much so. And he always appreciated a respectable voodoo practitioner. Still Alastor had to spare a second to give the other a narrow-eyed, judging glance. “And you withheld the knowledge that you know a person that can predict the future upon request because…?”
“It’s not always a sure thing. The guy’s big on percentages. And it won’t always tell you about what you actually asked for,” this had clearly happened to Trafalgar previously, for him to gain just a scowling look and tone, “And why would I tell you? It’s not like you offered a trade or anything.”
“You’re telling me now.”
“You’ve giving me another shot at killing the person I hate most in all my life and death, that’s worth a trade.”
“…Well now. At least I’m in good company concerning another who knows a thing or two of vengeance, I suppose,” and with that, Alastor led the way through another shaded pathway to their opponent’s precise location.
Immediately upon materializing up on the roof the flamingo had chosen to roost on, they were rushed at by two other sinners, a harpy woman made of pure white snow with cold, piercing yellow eyes and a stone-faced man with sunglasses with a form similar to a secretary bird. Presumably the crew members that Trafalgar had mentioned prior. While Alastor bat them back with a large, thick tendril, Trafalgar formed his Room.
“Law… The Radio Demon was able to pick you up before comin’ for a visit? How nice for ya! Fufufu!”
His tendrils lashed out in a crisscrossing defense, clashing with a multitude of thin, sharp strings that had threatened to cut through them. Trafalgar drew his blade during that time, not the usual large one on his back, but the smaller Heavenly steel sword he’d gotten from Carmilla. It was just as easy to bisect the two minions with the new blade, but with its make, the damage would keep. Their separated pieces floated for a brief period within the liminal space of that Room, still alive with wide, shocked eyes at the lightning quick outcome.
The Surgeon of Death sounded cooly, “If you think I haven’t improved since we last fought, Doflamingo, you’re not nearly as smart as you think you are.”
“Tch.” The beaked grin twitched into a scowl that only deepened further upon the puppeteer tugging at the strings connected to his wings, testing the strength of Alastor’s shadows to find that they would neither be cut through nor give way. “To be honest, I really wasn’t expectin’ ya to show up too. I just wanted to take out Straw Hat’s newest crewmate to make a statement. Either that or get him to turn on them, but I already knew that outcome was less likely. But you– you’re just so talented when it comes to messing with my plans! I should’ve expected it!”
Doflamingo’s string-like neck twisted over itself. Trafalgar just barely had the chance to shout at Alastor to jump before the roof they’d been standing on seemed to dissolve, coalescing into countless flickering strings underneath their feet. The unusual flamingo continued with a bullish tone, “Your shadow magic is a bit too much like Blackbeard’s Fruit for my liking though, Radio Demon. Nullification is a pain in the ass to deal with, ya know? So let’s see how much it can take!”
He felt the sensation of Trafalgar’s power take hold of him before he could fall back into writhing pit, seeing that they were both in his Room still. With a Shambles, they were switched out with some random air conditioning units on a different roof, not directly next to the growing pit but still within sight. After the relocation, Trafalgar questioned in a harsh hush, “I heard you handled Akainu’s magma awakening in Cannibal Town. How’d you do it?”
“I had enough opportunity to imbue my energy into all of the ground underneath his lava to absorb it into my darkness.” Carefully watching the free movement of the strings as more and more of them split off the buildings of the area surrounding Doflamingo, he noted, “I rather suspect that won’t work as well, in this case. The Red Dog was similar to a volcano, being the source of the lava even when he was generating it with the ground surrounding him. It all centered around him, and he’d made himself rather stationary due to his positioning. The flamingo is fully separate from his strings. Even if I were to encircle him, he’ll just move and either bring them with him or make more outside the area of effect.”
“So it’d be more efficient to just evade the strings and go straight for the guy instead of neutralizing them first,” Trafalgar concluded, “I can do that, but you need to cover me– ”
The other’s sentence was cut short by the burst of a squirming mass of strings crashing forward like a wave. As he’d been requested, Alastor swiftly sunk the both of them into the shadows before they could be hit. This time he deposited them in a wide street rather than a rooftop, and it was only then that he noticed all the pieces of cut up exorcists that were scattered across the ground. At least that explained why they hadn’t been around to accost the flamingo during his antics. He and his minions must’ve swept the area clean prior to initiating this conflict. He didn’t have long to consider this fact, however, as Doflamingo came swinging into view. He’d likely gone straight for their new location rather than attempt to reach them at their now vacated position.
“It’s real annoying that you went and brought back up instead of just coming on your own though, Alastor~ ” Doflamingo jeered with a sneering grin as he held himself aloft with his wings. This time when strings shot towards them from all around, Alastor summoned a shadowy shield to provide complete coverage. The strings failed to break through, but swirled around their relatively small enclosure like water, just waiting for a split second of weakness to squirm their way inside.
“Everyone I talked to all said the same thing about you being prideful, not playing well with others. And while I knew it was probably a bit different now that you’re with Straw Hat, I still wouldn’t have thought your budding sense of teamwork would include someone outside of your crew. Didn’t you even try to take on that First Man you sinners sometimes talk about on your own? Straw Hat really has you all tied up in his strings now! Just like his creepy cute voodoo doll puppet. How’s that goin’ for ya?”
“Well seeing that having a second person has made this fight much more convenient, I’d say it’s going rather swimmingly at the moment! While I do prefer to work independently, I also don’t wish to make things purposefully harder for myself, you realize,” Alastor threw back his retort with a false cheer and smile even as the flamingo’s words prodded at him in the most annoying way.
“Oh, don’t play coy now! Fufufu~ I can recognize your type easy!” Doflamingo loudly proclaimed while sweeping a wing to the side. With the motion, it seemed that he attempted to turn the ground underneath them into string, but Alastor’s shadow had already invaded the space. There was nothing but void left beneath the circle of their protection. He saw the flamingo’s beak grit tighter at the set back.
“You’re a control freak, through and through! Your kind doesn’t like anythin’ or anyone it can’t manipulate with the strings attached to your own fingers.” His feathered fingers wriggled at the words as though in demonstration. “Inviting a third party into this– doesn’t it just eat at you? Who knows what that Trafalgar Law is thinkin’? Do you even know how much he hates me? You don’t hold nearly enough value to him compared to that! He could easily turn you into a pawn to sacrifice for the sake of taking me down if you aren’t careful! Not to mention how quick you are to throw yourself into fire for the sake of your new crew! Was this the first time someone’s taken a hit for you, all of their own freewill? You must feel so warm and cozy! So much so that you’ve completely forgotten the value your own life should hold for you! FuAHAHAHA!!!”
Even as the still boiling rage turned deadly cold, like a frigid burn made of pure ice against thin delicate skin, Alastor just channeled the feeling into growing out his antlers and blackening his eyes rather than lash out in a rash move. From between his tightly clenched serrated teeth, he hissed back, “I believe you will find that I have freed myself from the cage of that sort of thinking… Unlike yourself. And while it’s true I would not trust just any random hand reached out to me, you are discounting a very significant factor when it comes to Trafalgar, in concerns to my perception of him.”
The man evidently didn’t like the circle-around with his own accusations, outright glaring at Alastor as he constricted the strings around his shield. Alastor could feel the pressure attempt to crush his defense, but it held strong. “Oh yeah. And what’s that? Enlighten me!”
“This man is important to my captain, and my captain, important to him,” he laid out with a feigned careless twirl of his finger in the aforementioned man’s direction, “Trafalgar has at least proven to be a smart enough person to avoid committing an act that would cause the man he is disgustingly in love with to hate him, and sacrificing one of his crew would be just that. Therefore, I am safely assured that our interests are properly aligned! And also– ”
His maw stretching his grin out wide and his neck cracking with a twitch to the side, the Radio Demon chimed with a voice full of static, “ –I do believe you tAlK tOo MuCh…”
From beside him, the Surgeon of Death signaled that he was finished gathering whatever power or preparation that had been needed for his attack as he intoned, “K-ROOM…”
In single instance, Trafalgar thrust the Heavenly steel sword forward, and the blade of it continued extending forward like a metal gunshot. Or perhaps even like the very strings their opponent was currently using. It passed through Alastor’s shield to no effect. Then through the wall of strings beyond it.
Until it was suddenly beyond even that, only now having a material effect and dissecting the annoying bird before them.
That previously jeering beak gasped with a cough of scarlet blood.
“ …Divine Amputation!” With a jerk of the blade, Trafalgar bisected Doflamingo in a diagonal slash, from shoulder to hip.
He then switched the blade around and backhanded the sword to deliver a second slash, this time cutting through that long stretch of string that made up the flamingo’s neck that had just been begging to be torn apart.
The disembodied head rolled into a fall, coughing up all the blood remaining within the portion of the neck it’d been left with to gasp out, “Wha… You’ve never– been able to– ! M-My Armament– !!!”
“Only goes so far. This is angelic weaponry after all. And adding my awakening on top of that…” Trafalgar continued his morbid, cold intonation as he retracted the now bloody sword and returned it to its sheath with a click.
“ …My Devil Fruit abilities– no, my Devil abilities have already surpassed you, Doflamingo. I’ve already battled with Emperors far above your level. Just as the rest of the Celestial Dragons who remained above you, you’ve been brought down by your pride, thinking you were unreachable to the grasp of human hands. Now stay dead this time, you fucking bastard…”
With the wave of his microphone, Alastor disassembled his shield in a great outward burst, blasting apart the now dying, weak strings surrounding them. His body suddenly grew monstrously large once more as he reached out a spindly arm with sharp claws. “While you’ve had your fun, I’ve not quite had my fill of this wretch. Let us see who eats at who, now…!”
Despite his beheading, the so-called “Heavenly Demon” was still a slippery one. The portion of neck connected to the head stretched out towards the free-falling body, trying to string the pieces back together. The Radio Demon’s sharp enlarged claws blocked its way.
Then, plucking the bird head out of the sky, he tossed the snack into the void of his maw set within serrated teeth.
He swallowed the morsal in one go, his neck large enough at this size to take the skull, beak, and all. After his gulp, he spared a short moment of consideration for the fallen two pieces of the bird’s corpse.
He concluded, “While I don’t necessarily always consume the entirety of my enemies, and the feathers in particular are a rather unappealing texture… The chef would be upset indeed if he heard I’d let food go to waste! Chicken is a proper meal after all! AHAHAHA– ”
Thus, he reached down to collect those pieces and plop them into his maw as well for good measure. There was some bone-cracking chewing, followed by a large gulp.
Alastor shrunk back to his normal form within a couple of blinks. He pulled out a handkerchief to dab at the blood around his mouth as he took in Trafalgar’s wide, dead-eyed stare.
“Is there a problem…? I thought you rather disliked that fellow?”
It took the man a few seconds to decide on a response, “No shit. I just… didn’t expect you to eat him…”
“You have heard of my cannibalistic nature, yes?”
“Hearing about it is very different than watching it. Do you know how surreal it is to see the person I previously devoted my entire life to hating just be eaten by a demon like that?”
“Hm. I suppose it would be a tad disconcerting. Aha!”
It seemed that his jovial cackle and indifferent hand wave reset the doctor’s brain once more. Blinking out of his vague shock to return to a more familiar grimace, Trafalgar shifted into an evil-eyed glare at his person.
Alastor mentally praised himself for showcasing the restraint necessary not to immediately roll his eyes at the testy man as he shifted to rest both hands atop his cane in front of his person. “Oh come now– What’s that look for?”
“For the bullshit you were spouting about to the enemy just now?!”
“Did I speak to anything that wasn’t true?”
“No comment!” Trafalgar deflected as though that wasn’t a confirmation in and of itself, “But– that doesn’t even matter! Don’t say shit like that to people who are actively looking for weaknesses to take advantage of!”
It was Alastor’s turn to give the other a long stare, at that. “ …My good man, if you truly believe a trickster that knowledgeable about you and your own didn’t already know about your feelings concerning my captain, you’re not nearly as smart as you think you are. And at this point it doesn’t matter regardless, because he’s double dead! And in my stomach! A bit hard for him to go gossiping to the city socialites from there, don’t you think?”
“I already said no comment!”
“…” He almost preferred Vox’s stupidly undying commitment to his love over this sort of stupidity. But only almost.
Both wanting to leave that awful topic behind as well as the doctor’s surliness towards it, Alastor glanced down at the sword at the other’s hip as another, much more important thought occurred to him. “…You used the power you inherited from your Devil Fruit on your sword just now to phase through anything you didn’t wish to cut, as you mentioned?”
After one last eye twitch, Trafalgar slowly transition back into a rational human being to confirm, “Yeah. What about it?”
“I would have thought that it would still clash with my shield, even considering that…” tapping at his chin in thought, Alastor mused, “Your Devil Fruit abilities are now demonic powers after all, as you also mentioned. I wouldn’t have expected them to work on Heavenly steel, or anything else imbued with divinity as such.”
“Your shield still defends against the exorcists’ weapons though.”
“Only to an extent. You must have realized after this long down here that divine power is not compatible with the demonic, and that demonic power is naturally weak against the divine. There’s a heavy disadvantage to be overcome. It’s not simply that your abilities effected the blade, it’s that it was able to effect it to the point that it neutralized the effect it usually would have against my shield. That you were fully capable of making it pass through like that is a curious thing to consider.”
Trafalgar gave the quandary a good amount of thought himself, before he glanced back at Alastor to pose, “ …Maybe not all Devil Fruit or demonic abilities can work on it like that, but my Fruit was known to be a particularly special one. And powerful. In life, a user could even sacrifice their own life to imbue another person with immortality. Luffy’s Fruit was special too, wasn’t it? It literally made him a God. So it could just be that there are some rare exceptions to the rule.”
“ …That is something to consider, indeed,” dismissing the matter for the time being, Alastor summoned the darkness around them once more to return to the group, “Let’s avoid dallying about any longer. The battle has been won, but not yet the war. There’s still more havoc to wreck!”
“Lady Seraph… It is to my shame to report that our troops are failing. These damned sinners– They’ve grown even stronger since last time! Not even the change to long range artillery is having as much of a benefit as we’d anticipated! I suggest we move onto the next phase already! Delaying any further will just cast our own toll even higher.”
Lute sounded deeply enraged as she reported back to HQ. And Sera knew it was due to more than just the poor showing of her soldiers. From where she stood above in Heaven to watch over events proceeding in Hell, Sera had borne witness to Lute attempting to cast her judgement upon the small female sinner who’d struck the last fatal blows against the First Man, only for her to be forced to retreat when she was overwhelmed by the Princess’s following. Sera had been concerned that the General might lose sight of her purpose, fighting to a bitter end for the sake of selfish vengeance, but thankfully Lute had remained mindful of her places in things and fell back when appropriate. To have lost their presiding leader of the troops would have been both a loss and an inconvenience.
It was also due to her surveying that Sera recognized Lute’s words as being the truth. It was just as they’d feared, the sinners had proven to be a legitimate threat. And so… it was with a heavy, but hardened heart that Sera cast her own judgement.
“I agree with your suggestion, General. Your orders are now to hold the line and then call for an immediate total fallback once we’ve descended. It won’t be long,” she replied, before she began walking out, calling out to the waiting room–
“It’s time… Power the Ark.”
Notes:
(The classic end card for added climax cliffhanger effect, since they'll be happening for a while... (・ω<)☆)
Chapter 23: The Sun, Upright
Notes:
The song featured in this chapter is In Hell We Live, Lament by Mili. Not all of the song is featured, but I'm adding the link to the beginning to the chapter again because in this case it would really help to listen ahead of time. There is a part of the lyrics that's overlayed that will make more sense in terms of reading if you already know what it sounds like...
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Shortly after the defeat and consumption of Doflamingo, Alastor returned both himself and Trafalgar to the group of Straw Hats he’d been with prior. Usopp had been released from Robin’s clutch now that the strings that had been controlling him had vanished. Though he was still seated on the ground, legs crossed and rubbing at where his wrists had been held with a dour, guilty look about him.
“I… I really am sorry, guys. I– really, I– ”
“If you have time to be moping about, you have time to be shooting down more of the enemy army!” Alastor shot the puppet’s line of thought down with a rude scoff. Pointing back at the sky behind him with the jerk of a thumb, he retorted, “They won’t be getting rid of themselves now will they? So let’s hop to it!”
Tapping his cheekbone with a boney clink, Brook mused, “Well actually, now that you mention it… It does look like that is exactly what they’re doing! Or is it that my eyes are deceiving me? Which would be impressive, considering I have none. Yohoho~ ”
Alastor looked back around with a confused blink. He did indeed see for himself that the skeleton had been correct. The exorcists were pulling out in droves, the gunfire coming to a halt before they flew off with those who were injured but still alive being carried by the relatively healthy. They flew back up to the cloudy portal they’d emerged from, bees returning to their hive.
“Oh! SUUUPER! That means we won, right?!” Franky, still in his ludicrous General Franky, was the one to suggest, even position the robot’s arms above its head into his usual star pose.
“One would think so, however…” from where he was still resting with a hand on his wound, Jinbei trailed off with uncertainty. He watched the proceedings of the exorcist army with the same sort of uncertain gaze.
Robin finished the thought with a more stony sense of unease, “ …It is unusual, isn’t it? Given how insistently they’d been fighting just before. There’s still a good amount of them left.”
“ …We’re returning to the hotel to regroup with Charlie,” Alastor decided on the spot. He was already summoning the shadows back to swallow up the group, as well as where he sensed the Straw Hats not present were currently at. “We need to prepare.”
Seemingly brought back into proper focus due to the circumstances, Usopp asked nervously, “P-Prepare? What do you think they’re planning?”
“Haven’t a clue. And I don’t like that…” was all he said before withdrawing them all into the dark.
Reforming in front of the fortified hotel that seemed to have held up quite well, some of the entourage had clearly not caught on to things as quickly. Various random fleet members and hotel residents were cheering in the street, with Angel Dust and Cherri Bomb twirling about in each other’s arms with Niffty in between the both of them like a gaggle of giggling, though feral, schoolgirls. Charlie had seemed like she’d originally had a similar reaction, but her smile slowly fading at the sight of Vaggie and Husk’s suspicious glances at the sky.
The last exorcist to pass through the portal was none other than the General herself. Lute glanced back at them for just a split second longer, face indiscernible due to the distance, before the now broken mechanical wings of her armor disappeared into Heaven’s blaring white.
Vigorously jumping out of the shadows Alastor had transported him with, the captain was still in his divine form. While his grin was still in prominence, there was still a feeling of anticipation in it as his spiraling eyes never drew away from the sky even as he bounced his way over to the group at large. Following their captain’s signal, Zoro, Sanji, Nami, and the still monstrously large Chopper carried themselves with similar tension in their movements as they walked out of the dark. All the Straw Hats gathered once more. Tightly coiled, waiting for whatever trap may spring.
“Don’t celebrate so early!” Trafalgar shouted with a bit of edge to his tone, causing the three to halt mid movement to glance over at him. His suspicion came with it anger at its base. He was also clearly someone who disliked being caught unawares. “They’ve given up too soon! They’re going to try something else, so get ready!”
“Get ready for what though?” Charlie was the one to question in obvious concern.
“I think we’re seein’ ‘what’ now…” Husk quipped back without joy, cat eyes still on the sky.
The portal to Heaven dissolved. But in its place, a new circle of gold formed. This time when it expanded, it didn’t stop at the size it had been prior, growing larger and larger. And larger and larger– It was difficult to tell from so far away, but rather than a circle of pure magical energy, it seemed this time to have a solid core to it. Like a glowing coil of enlarging metal.
It only stopped when the circle was the size of the entire island Pentagram City now sat on. It was as though a giant halo hung above. Above the empty circle, a fully transformed Seraph stared down upon them all from the clear view of Heaven it provided. In a slight, graceful movement, she held her arm out to the side in a signal.
Charlie recognized the woman, even as she hesitantly questioned, “S– Sera…?”
The Seraph’s voice seemed to echo from above and all around, “To those worthy of salvation… Heaven’s Ark will deliver you to paradise… To all others… I pray you may find peace in eternal rest…”
Then, it’s glow became brighter. Brighter and brighter and brighter until it was even more blinding than looking into the Sun itself–
“Everyone that can make a shield DEFEND NOW!!!” Lucifer yelled with demanding insistence over the radio at the same time Alastor jut his mic up above his head.
He stretched out his shadows as much as physically possible in a perfect circle to match the shape in the sky. He just caught sight of Bartolomeo’s Barrier doing the same along with Prince Stolas’s starry-night like barrier, Zestial’s cosmic void, and a floating desert of construction. All stacked atop one another before death fell from above in the form of a pure, holy light. A directed supernova of divine energy all focused on smiting the evil of Hell.
It felt as though the pressure of the entire universe had fallen upon his darkness. There was too much light, it was too bright–
The pressure crushed through his shield as well as every other barrier layered atop each other almost as soon as it’d collided. The last to break had been Bartolomeo’s, whose power was specifically devoted to the purest form of defense, and it only lasted two seconds longer.
The five meager seconds it’d earned them had been enough time, however, for a new golden barrier to take their place. An angelic shield as large as the entire city. Lucifer’s small, winged form was above their head in the middle of his creation, raising both hands above his head to hold it in place.
As he was still wearing his radio earpiece, Alastor could sense the tremble of his body. The Devil’s arms shook. His fangs bit golden blood into his lip under the overwhelming weight of fending off such intense divine might.
To hold more might than the fallen angel Morningstar held by far– Perhaps this attack was powered by the might of every high angel held within Heaven’s gates. It would suit them very much, wouldn’t it? To enact our deaths without needing to debase themselves in descending from paradise above. Once again, their spider’s thread is cut with such absentminded cruelty.
Alastor announced to the group at large, “He can’t hold it for long!”
“I’ll go!”
“Charlie– !” Vaggie called out as Charlie jumped onto her dragon steed upon Alastor’s warning, with a weak hand held out towards her.
With a gaze filled with nothing but determination, the Princess of Hell insisted, “I’ve got angelic power too! I can’t use it as well as Dad, but he’ll know how to take it and use it for himself! Just like how Alastor did with Luffy, right? I need to help him! …It’ll be alright!”
With that said, Razzle flew off with Charlie up to where Lucifer was. Once she was close enough, she reached over him to place both her hands atop of his, allowing for the most direct flow of energy possible. Lucifer glanced back at his daughter with a strained, but grateful slight curve of a smile.
“I walked down a path… leading to the past… Stole from the tree's hands… A regretter's friend– the forbidden fruit.”
Charlie wasn’t the last Morningstar to jump into action. Over the radio speakers, Lilith started up a new siren’s song…
“I bite off the skin, chewing on its tender flesh, quaff down its lukewarm pus… You became the "me" who you despised... We swallowed the time, let us rewind…”
At first a quiet beginning, then crescendoing into full lament. Her voice high-pitched and rising with building intensity, focusing all of its power on the King.
“LAMENT– If you wanted me to speak! If you wanted me to think! If you wanted me to carry on our dreams! Each loop we live through– The standards inside me, the line I drew for me, lowers to the Earth– !”
With the might of the entire royal family combined, Lucifer’s shield grew brighter. But even still… it was nothing compared to that blinding, holy light.
They’d bought more time, but it wouldn’t last. In comparison, even that haunting siren song fell to the background. Deafened to the sinners awaiting their judgement, who could hear nothing but the ringing in their ears.
“There’s– there’s gotta be something else– ! What if Luffy does what Charlie’s doing? So the King can use his power too!” Cherri offered to the group at large with uncharacteristic anxiety, waving a hand up at the impending annihilation.
Gazing up at Charlie with her hands limp at her sides, Vaggie disagreed with a quiet hopelessness, “Even with him… I… still don’t think it will be enough to overtake that attack. Even in Heaven, I– I’ve never seen so much concentrated divinity! It’s like they’re using all of Heaven’s power, with that Ark…”
“So what’re ya sayin’? That this ‘s IT? That this is THE END?!” one of Angel’s hands clawed into the hair of his head, while another the fur of his chest, a wide-eyed panic setting into him. “I did not finally fucking get my soul back after all this damn time just to be wiped from existence!!!”
“You’re preachin’ to the choir, Angel Darlin’…” Husk sighed softly. His gaze dropped down from the sight up above, as though he’d seen enough. After a heavy pause, he reached out to take one of Angel’s free hands, thus drawing the spider’s attention his way. The look he gave the other was such a delicate, soft weakness. “ …I really love you, ya know that?”
Angel’s many eyes grew even wider. After a shocked beat, he snapped back, “Wha– Don’t– Don’t go talkin’ like we’re all about to DIE dammit!”
“I mean… There’s a pretty good chance of it at this point, so… thought I might as well.”
“Well FUCK YOU then I guess!!! …But also I love ya too! You turned me into a fuckin’ sap! Goddammit!”
Alastor’s own attention was draw back down by a small hand tugging had his pantleg. Looking down at Niffty’s furrowed eye, she asked with a sorrowful naivete, “Sir, your– your shield broke! Are you okay? Will we… Does– Does this mean… there won’t be any more parties…?”
Something about those words rang through his chest, messing his insides with uncomfortable tightness and a panging wound. The unseen sutures on his face kept his smile from falling, however. Instead, he was just left to furrow his brows and reach down to smooth through curly red locks. “I am alright, dearie. No need to worry on that front… There will always be more parties, I promise.”
He didn’t know if he believed those words. Didn’t know if they were a bold-faced lie. But what else could he say, to that?
“This… This is just awful…” Nami forced out as she raised a trembling hand to her mouth. Always the quickest to attend to a woman’s comfort, Sanji was already beside her to place a steadying hand on her shoulder, without even a single annoying word to go along with the gesture. He knew what Nami needed wasn’t for him to speak, and had the decency to act accordingly. “This is– just like the ancient weapon the World Government would use, isn’t it?! Worse even!”
Scowling up at the sight, Jinbei scoffed with heavy derision, “It’s barbaric! Such careless disregard for life! All because they perceive these lives to be worth less than their own…”
“The weapon that erased entire islands off the face of the world and out of the annals of recorded history… It does hold a horrible likeness to it,” Robin quietly agreed. While her voice was unwavering, it was unmoving to the point of being deadened. Looking at her expression, the light reflected in her far-off eyes like she was seeing something else within it. A flash of the past, a home under threat of bombardment and annihilation once more…
“Lu– Luffy… What do we do?” Chopper’s voice was deeper in his monster form, but even then, the softly stuttering youth of it could still be heard. He crouched down a bit further off from the rest while facing them, his larges hands coming to rest on the ends of his knees as he looked to his captain to see what they could do to fix this.
And to that, Luffy sent a wide grin up to his crewmate, cheerfully replying, “I’ll go out and do something.”
He began to walk away immediately after that, as though that was all that needed to be said. Alastor’s hand shot out without conscious thought to take hold of his wrist.
Still, he forced his tone to remain as even as possible as he questioned, “What are you planning to do?”
“Don’t know. I’ll figure it out.”
“You’ll figure it– Do you HEAR YOURSELF?!” he snapped back in full agitation and that ice-cold feeling inside his void that he didn’t want to admit felt like dread, “To go out into that without a plan is to die! Not even your divine form could withstand that power! You’re still tethered to mortality too strongly! What can you even DO?!”
While he felt his own smile trying to waver, Luffy was the one to look back at him with an unmoving smile. He plainly stated, “It’s not about what I can do. Either I do or I don’t. If I don’t, we lose, so I’ll do it. That’s how it is.”
Alastor lost his voice, faced with such lionhearted certainty. But even still, his own heart was much weaker than that of the God’s who stood before him. “Even if… you say that… Not everything is that simple, Luffy.”
“If I don’t do anything everyone will be killed.”
“And I’d rather THEY ALL BURN than LOSE YOU!!!” he finally admitted with a shriek, his voice breaking at the end. The hand holding onto Luffy’s wrist tightened its grip even as it shook. “I– Surely I can transport all of the crew to somewhere else in the Ring! Fuck the rest of the city! Fuck Lucifer! We can still survive if we just leave them all behind and that will be good enough– ”
Luffy’s other hand came to rest over his own, the action causing his shouting to cut short. The smile he aimed at Alastor dimmed from its previous mania, shifting into a soft thing. “You don’t mean that. You want our friends to stay safe too. And I already promised you I wouldn’t leave, remember? I won’t die.”
The response gutted him. Somehow, his hand lost its strength on its own. Luffy’s own hand squeezed his in one final show of comfort, before the captain allowed it to fall away. And with that, Luffy turned away to take one great, bouncing leap. Alastor’s gaze instinctively followed him up into the gold-filled sky.
A strong hand settled on his shoulder. He didn’t need to glance over to recognize it was the first mate’s, so he didn’t. Zoro intoned with a deep, quiet voice, “Our job as his crew, especially in battle, is to trust in the decisions of our captain. Luffy is King of the Pirates, and we are his crew. Trust in that.”
“The Queen’s song… is so very beautiful. I wonder if Luffy feels its strength…” at Alastor’s side, Brook softly intoned with a distant sort of timbre, “Music is the power of the soul, in both life and death. That is what I’ve always believed…”
It was only after that comment that Lilith’s voice came back into his sense of awareness. He felt it on a further level than simply hearing it. A solo duet reverberated through his radio, like it was reverberating through his very being itself…
“ –I bite off your skin, exposing the angels on your ribs. They stare at us. ‘Hello, how may I help you today?’ Please, a one-way ticket to Heaven…”
Luffy’s white form made it up to where Charlie and Lucifer were keeping the barrier up. Both their heads turned to stare with wide eyes as he continued past them, passing through without issue.
And with that… he was consumed by the light. Out of all their sights, they could only hope that he was still somewhere, in there.
“Buckled up on velvet seats, sceneries were passing by… Not so different from our Hell, not so different from our home… Then I realized someone's Heaven, could be the source of my torment…”
A short distance away, Trafalgar sighed with a shaky breath, murmuring, “Once again, I have to leave it to you… If you win, I’ll watch you. And if you die… I’ll die along with you, Luffy…”
There was a moment of stillness. The only sound around was the echoing song of Hell’s Queen. No one said a thing after Trafalgar’s comment, all waiting with bated breath.
Then, amidst the light, still so blinding one could hardly lay their eyes upon it… There was a flicker, like a trick of the eye. The movement and bending of just a small portion of the light.
And in time with the slight shift, the voice of Hell shifted as well. Raising high above to scream to the Heavens themselves–
“ …Life is allowing yourself– Allowing yourself– to step on FIRE!!!”
Blending into the gold, the shape of a hand formed. Reaching even further up as though to grasp onto the light itself. When it lowered itself, it was in a mime to place something within the open, grinning mouth that had formed amongst the light as well.
“Woah, this stuff… tastes really good.”
Everyone’s collective breath restarted all at once. The awe of impossibility and relief. The void inside Alastor restarted with the beat of a heart within it.
Curling his shoulders inward, he clawed his fingers into his chest as though to take hold of it and never let go.
(Life is to consume. Life is to become food– )
From the hand and smile, a silhouette of a person formed. This silhouette grew larger and larger– taking up more and more of the light. And with it, that manic grin grew larger and larger as well. A crescent of pure light within the already blinding light.
“Shed tears on bloodied routes!”
( –for each other, no matter evil or good.)
“My body feels so light! It’s like I’m the freest, like this! HyeHAHAHA!”
“Luffy…!” Usopp called out tearful and joyful. Still inside that General Franky contraption, Franky moved its arm as though to rub at the overemotional tears streaking down his own face, echoing the name with a livelier energy from its speakers.
And even still, that silhouette of light continued to grow. Luffy continued to consume more and more of the holy light within his own. Taking it, cannibalizing it, to add to his own make. Despite the overabundance, it was as though his voracity knew no end.
(Life is fairness, life is inequality.)
“Eternally in Hell– !”
It wasn’t too long before he was the size of a giant. But even then, he was still covered by the light, and so he grew more.
And it was then that the balance shifted. The scales tipped the other way. That overwhelming light of Heaven’s angels began to thin and shrink. Absorbing directly into the giant silhouette and its grin.
Once it was reduced to but a stream of what it once was, the Seraph became visible once more. She threw out her arm in a sudden jerk, cutting off the power of Heaven that remain entirely. All of her many eyes, as well as Lute’s beside her, were wide with absolute shock as they stared down at the God. Because what else could this be, but a true God?
The Seraph gasped from above, “He’s… Brought himself to ascension…!”
Even with the power source gone, it was already too late. The giant silhouette of pure divine light she stared down at was as large as the city itself, taking up all the space in the scarlet red sky beneath the dim golden halo of the Ark.
(Life is in the motion– )
“ –We Live– BY DEFAULT!!!”
All the sinners in Hell below… stared up at the blinding white light of the Sun itself.
The Sun at its peak, a flurry of white burst out. Luffy’s fists lashed out so fast, they blurred into the image of many, many hands– all striking up at the Heavens above.
“Gum Gum– Dawn GattlingGGGGG!!!!!”
“LAMENT! –If our salvation does not lie with your rationalized sin! Ye who crown the most violent to be champions! NO! Our souls rise, they are freed– by the Grace of Dawn!”
The golden Ark was destroyed, demolished by the crushing light and pressure of the Sun. Its glimmering pieces fell out of the sky and down into Hell in a golden rain. As though the blood of angels spilled from the Heavens.
As the sight of Heaven’s gates disappeared, the Seraph was knocked out of the sky as well. Having flown too close to the Sun. The lead exorcist fell with her. Like falling stars, they fell through the scarlet sky to land somewhere out of view.
With a manic laugh, Luffy’s too large form leaned back while stretching his arms out wide, lowering from its height to just above the city’s tallest skyscrapers.
There was a brief hesitation, a moment of realization. Lucifer finally dispelled his shield, allowing it to flicker away as he and Charlie slowly descended back down to the ground. When her dragon landed on the pavement, the Princess of Hell was the one to speak, smile gradually resurfacing on her face, “Luffy… He really did it! The Extermination… is over!”
And with that, it was as though a signal had been fired. The sinners burst out into jubilant cheers. Loud roaring resounded from all around, not just at the hotel, but from all over the city. Running forward, Vaggie threw her arms around Charlie to pull her into a deep kiss. The Princess returned the embrace.
“But of course he did it… He’s Luffy, after all,” Robin was the one to speak for the crew at large, all of them standing tall with pride. With a hand resting on her chest, her expression bloomed with the most beautiful smile.
The day had been won. The war had been won. It was an irrevocable certainty.
However, just as Alastor began to settle back into a feeling of reassurance, he happened to glance at the King of Hell. Wanting to see the man’s own reaction to what had occurred.
The cold, dark void consumed his chest at the sight of Lucifer’s mournful gloom. At first, he was still looking up at Luffy and his light, before his gaze trailed down to glance back at Alastor, forlorn and consoling.
“Al… I… I’m sorry…”
“What’s the meaning of this?!” All at once, he was before Lucifer, grabbing the collar of his shirt to jerk the shorter man up closer to his face even as he leaned forward towards him. Lucifer winced at being jostled, but didn’t fight or protest otherwise, merely raising a hand to grasp onto one of Alastor’s wrists. “What is it, Lucifer?!”
“Huh? Oh– I feel… kinda… tired now…”
His glare jerked back to Luffy’s silhouette still hovering above them. His hands falling limp at his sides, the large crescent that had made his smile dissipated into the rest of his light. Like a God falling into a deep slumber.
It was then that his light reached up in streaks far into the sky. And steadily, with a consistent pace, the Sun began to rise once more.
“He’s ascending, Alastor…” Lucifer explained softly, as though the term explained anything at all, “He’s a True God now. There’s a reason why we don’t just have Gods running around normally, even in Heaven. Their power is too strong to be held on any plane intermixed with mortality. If any new God comes about… they ascend to where the rest of them reside in the immortal realm, in the Land of Gods. Above Heaven itself. Not even angels can reach that place...”
There was some voice inside of him that cried out, crying that this cannot be happening, while on the outside he furiously demanded, “Well then what do we do to stop it?!”
“I don’t know if there exists a way to stop it. Or at least, that sort of knowledge is also out of reach to angels…”
The Sun was still rising, so very high. It would keep rising, all the way up into the sky and beyond until it was out of reach to humanity. Out of Alastor’s reach–
Within the next split second, there was a chaotic flurry of movement.
He unceremoniously dropped Lucifer to turn around and grow out into his full-size demon form, as monstrously large as he could make it, such that he rivaled even the height of the city buildings. Thick shadowy tendrils shot out to reach up towards the light, attempting to take hold of the light of Luffy’s hand.
Only for them to immediately dissolve upon contact. He only vaguely noted that Franky’s robot had rocketed itself into the sky to try the same, latching its hands onto a finger that was as large as the mech itself. The metal burnt to scrap, falling apart into pieces under pressure it failed to withstand. The giant violet hands that had grown out on its back to try and take hold also instantly dispelled, burning up in a fiery storm of petals falling to ash.
Alastor didn’t think before he pushed his body upward, now using his tendrils to carry and lift his weight into the sky. He only had a split second to brace himself, one of the tendrils on his back holding out his comparatively smaller microphone to form a shadowed covering over his hands, as thick as he could possibly make it. Before his claws directly grasped onto the Sun by a finger made of divine light.
Scorching heat– down to flesh, blood, bone, heart, and soul– The shadows on his hands lasted but a second. Torn asunder to the point the damage transferred to his mic. His conduit burst into flames and broke apart into two, falling to the ground somewhere unknown to him.
He ignored it. What else could he do, but be incinerated by the Sun itself? If there was no other way to keep a hold of his dearest friend, if he must burn, then he shall burn–
Hands of blood red fur slammed over the backs of his own. Not only adding their own pressure on top of his, but also blossoming flowers all across his hands. They soothed their pain along with saving them from total destruction. Allowing Alastor to keep his hold.
“I knew you were gonna do that! What would you have done if I didn’t act fast enough?!” Chopper’s deeper timbre chastised from behind him. Matching the Radio Demon’s size in his Monster Point, he’d essentially climbed over Alastor’s back to stretch over him and reach his hands. “Now DON’T LET GO!!! Everyone, no one else is allowed to do this! I can only cover one person! Seriously! It’s doctor’s orders!”
“Understood! Thank you, Alastor! Chopper! For granting us our opportunity! We shall act at once!” Jinbei called out in a bellow, “We will not fail our captain! As the crew of the King of the Pirates, we much be able to do at least this much!”
While Alastor wasn’t given much leeway to divert his attention, fully involved in the fight to keep his strength and grip focused on keeping ahold of Luffy, it seemed that Jinbei had moved himself to the roof of a nearby building. He continued to speak, “There is no more water in Luffy’s body for me to manipulate, so Fishman Karate will have no effect on him. Nami, try blocking the light!”
“You got it! If some Land of Gods wants Luffy, they have to answer to US first! I won’t forgive them if they take him! Even if they bribed us with all the money in the universe!” Nami cried out with harsh anger as she thrust her staff into the air above her head. At her directive, clouds moved to form just a ways above the Sun that was Luffy in the sky.
The light connecting the Sun to the beyond above was thinner and less potent than the light of his form. While the clouds initially struggled to form, Nami continued to add onto them, making them grow darker and more numerous by the second, pouring more and more of her power into them. Until they could take root in the sky amongst the thinnest streaks of light, blocking some of the connection between the Sun and the Gods. They began to weep with rain, and the water sizzled into steam before even reaching the silhouette of light.
Alastor could feel the change take effect. The harsh pull on his hands holding onto Luffy, previously so strong that both he and Chopper were being carried up into the sky with the Sun, lessened, even as slight as it was.
This pull once again became stronger, however, in a way favorable to them. At the ends of his tendrils holding him up, a condensed forest of giant arms and hands grew out of the ground to clutch onto him. They kept him anchored. His body stretched out taunt as he weakly tethered Luffy to the land. He heard Robin shout up to him from her place still on the ground, “Don’t let go, Alastor! I’ll hold you steady! As long as Luffy’s still here, we can find a way to keep him!”
“I’m not used to working with steam, but water is water! I’ll make it work!” the fishman spoke once more, voice removed from the direction Robin’s had come from. Just as he suggested, the steam forming from the rain began to shift, pressing together into a more condensed form that mixed with the still liquid rain higher up. The thicker the mass became, the more the streaks of light were blotted out. Again, Alastor felt the almost unbearable tension resisting his hold lessen ever so slightly.
“If water is water… you should be able hold up a formation of ice, correct Jinbei? Let us implement a more solid obstacle to block the light!”
As Alastor and Chopper’s position was currently still set above the higher of the city buildings, Brook took a great leap from the roof Jinbei and Nami were standing on to land on a large violet hand that grew out of Chopper’s back. The hand drew back with his landing to quickly thrust up after, helping his jump by essentially throwing the skeleton further up into the air.
“Worry not, Luffy– We shall not allow you to go off anywhere to be alone! To be condemned to loneliness is such a horrid fate… I shall not allow it to befall onto you!”
Brook arched over the Sun and clouds, whipping out his sword to cut a wave of ice into the mixture of rain, steam, and cloud. Jinbei presumably kept the structure from falling under its weight as suggested, keeping it aloft in the sky to glitter amongst the light, further distorting the path of the rays. Again, Alastor felt the pull on his arms lessen.
But even still, the combined efforts of the three Straw Hats only did so much. They could not provide complete coverage over the massive Sun that their captain had become. It would take more to cut off the Gods hold on Luffy.
“Oh. Yo ho. It seems I did not think my landing through very well…” Brook stated in a remarkable calm fashion for a person currently on trajectory to literally fall into the Sun. With a flash, the skeleton was quickly taken into the arms of a savior, who landed back on a different roof than where he’d started. “Thank you very much, Sanji! You’re a lifesaver! If I had a life to be saving, that is.”
“Maybe try thinking about how NOT to fall into the shitty Sun after jumping over it next time, shitty skeleton!” the man roughly rebuked, “My arms are meant to hold fair maidens in need of saving! Not you or any other ugly man! And speaking of ugly men– Mosshead! When are you actually gonna to do something useful?! This is the only thing your swords-for-brains is supposed to be good at, so get to it!”
“Don’t tell me what to do dammit I’m going! I had to let them thin it out as much as possible first!
Even while the swordsman complained and the chef bickered, however, there was no hesitation in their movements when Zoro went running at the other. He jumped up, allowing Sanji to stick a couple legs under him to violently kick him into the air. He when flying like a shooting star in reverse, until he was above even the clouds.
There was a second of stillness, as though within their minds, time had slowed. Zoro was in no rush as he pulled the Wado Ichimonji, his sword of Heavenly steel, from its sheath. He breathed out heavily through his nose, coiling the muscles of his six arms tight as they pulled the sword back into position.
“In battle, our job is to leave things to you. And after the battle, our job is to handle the things you leave to us… I am the World’s Strongest Swordsman. A swordsman who can cut nothing, and who can cut anything… If I can’t even cut through light itself to protect my captain, I am not worthy of that title!”
–And with that said, he struck a heavy blow with the blade. There was a sound like wind blowing across sharp steel.
“One Sword Style– Shishi Sonson!”
All the remaining streaks of holy light connecting the Sun to the beyond were cut through in a thin line of separation.
Severed in two, the portion of light no longer connected to Luffy dissipated. Alastor jerked as there was suddenly a great amount of give. Robin pulled him down further to make up for the slack.
As Zoro fell back down from his leap, the blade of the Wado Ichimonji, which was still in his hands, fell to shattered pieces down along with him. Cutting through such pure divine power had taken all of its make.
But the man didn’t look grieved by the outcome. Instead, he slowly sheathed what was left on the sword back into its scabbard, closing his eye. “This sword was worthy of your honor, Kuina… Thank you, for granting me the strength I needed.”
As one wing of the Pirate King fell, another rose up to take its place. Sanji passed by Zoro as he shot himself up with the great strength of all four of his legs, kicking the swordsman a tad to adjust his trajectory back onto a roof. Neither of them spoke, just looking at one another for a single passing glance, before looking away as their paths diverged.
Sanji landed on the slightly melted structure of ice directly above Luffy’s silhouette. He leaned over slightly with his hand covering the tops of his eyes, as though that would help at all with blocking the blinding light directly in front of him.
“Making trouble for us as always, aren’t you Luffy? Well with us here, it’s not like you have to worry about cleaning things up… Even if they call it some fancy name like ‘the Land of Gods’, I can’t trust that they’ll have enough for you to eat there. So I won’t let you go! You’ll be hungry after this, so I’ll make a big dinner tonight– ”
He ricochetted off the patch of ice with such force, a portion of it cracked under his feet. Rushing down towards the Sun, all four of his legs stuck downward towards it in a kick, blazing with their own fire. Surrounding him on all sides, giant violet legs grew out around him, covering further out from what would have been a singular point of contact.
“Ifrit Jambe– Grande Finale!”
The kick landed, even as the additional legs burst apart into fiery petals immediately after. Robin’s arms pulled harshly on Alastor’s tendrils in time, providing an additional force as Sanji managed to significantly push Luffy back down towards the city and ground.
He was quick to draw out another tendril, focusing on length rather than overall size to reach out and catch Sanji from where he was falling off the side of light. As he was entirely on fire, Alastor threw the man over to the roof Jinbei was on, who was very quick to douse the flames.
“S-Sanji! Are you– ?!”
“I’m alright, N-Nami. Please don’t worry over me…”
Zoro gave a rough rebuke, presumably checking over the cook, “You’re lucky you still have legs after that stunt! It’s a good thing your body’s still as weirdly durable as it was in life. They look more messed up than your eyebrows now, but at least they’re still on there… Chopper can probably fix that.”
The aforementioned deerling doctor heavied a quiet, tired sigh from behind Alastor. It spoke volumes to the extent of the damage that, rather than immediately snap back in anger, Sanji instead hesitantly relented, “Yeah, well… I wasn’t too sure they’d make it through either. But I don’t need legs to cook, that’s why I fight with them anyway. I would’ve rather they burned off than lose Luffy.”
“You– ! You better not say that to Luffy when he’s back to normal! He’ll lose his shit!”
“You think I don’t know that already?! I don’t want to hear this from mister ‘Nothing Happened’!”
“Don’t bring that up! Nothing happened, remember?!”
It was at this point that Alastor began blocking out the bickering duo. They’d made great progress in pulling Luffy back down, to the point that there was now another issue to consider. Landing him fully on the ground would annihilate the city and everyone in it, essentially completing Heaven’s intended job for them. As it was, the tops of the very tallest skyscrapers were beginning to look rather crispy.
At the same time as the thought occurred to him, though, someone else had apparently already thought up a solution. Once again, the sight of Lucifer’s bright gold shield materialized above city, this time directly beneath the silhouette of light. Alastor’s eyes were drawn to where the Morningstar had taken station under the center of his creation. He stared up at Luffy with a determined set to his gaze, nothing like the forlorn look he’d shown prior.
Rosie’s voice suddenly shouted out, loud and forceful, “Everyone PULL!!! Pull like your damned afterlives depend on it!”
The others had been busier than Alastor had realized, having not paid attention to them in the slightest. All the way across the vast distance of the Sun, Charlie had taken hold of one of the fingers of Luffy’s other hand, needing to use her whole body to keep a grasp on it due to her much smaller size. It seemed that as one with the blood of a high angel, she suffered no harm from the light so long as it wasn’t directly being used in offense against her.
Vaggie was holding onto her back, her wings keeping her aloft. They both had multiple ropes wrapped around them that led back down to the ground. At the other ends, lines of sinners from both the hotel and Cannibal Town had formed, all tugging at the ropes like they were in a grand game of tug-a-war against the sky. Darling Rosie, Husk, Angel Dust, Cherri Bomb– they all brought their strength together. Even the small statured Niffty was trying to pull her weight.
Husk shouted back with a biting groan, “Our afterlives do depend on it! The Snake Princess ‘ll turn us to stone if we don’t pull hard enough!”
“That you are right! There shall be no mercy for slackers!” Boa snapped back, the snakes of her hair snapping their fangs along with her fury. She was the anchor for one of the lines that Bartolomeo was at the head of, the both of them pulling back with pure ferocity about them. “I command you all– PULL!!!”
At the signal, Robin, Alastor, and Chopper pulled along with them. With the added force, they managed to pull the Sun all the way down to where Lucifer’s shield sat, pinning the silhouette of light down onto it. It was the lowest point they could bring Luffy without extensive collateral damage.
He had the vague thought of wondering how they should proceed at this point, seeing that simply keeping the God from rising higher would not stop the ascension in full. Even with all the progress they’d made, he could already see it wouldn’t keep for good. The Sun’s light began streaking back up into the beyond, replacing the rays that had been cut and disrupted. They would need to enact a more lasting solution.
But once again, someone had thankful shown themselves to have thought of a plan to at least make an attempt.
“Room…!”
The largest transparent ‘Room’ construction he’s seen from Trafalgar yet came into being. The size of the city itself, it surrounded the Sun entirely along with Alastor and everyone else holding the light in place. In this new context, Lucifer’s shield came off remarkably similar to an operating table on which the God now lay. Though, making an attempt it was. As was proven to be the case when the doctor immediately cursed from where he stood on a roof close enough to also be enclosed in the liminal space, “Dammit– It’s not going to work! I can already feel that the divine energy won’t let me separate it from Luffy…”
“I’m surprised you thought that would work in the first place!” Alastor managed to growl out in a strained groan. Despite his transformed body, his voice was sans any distortion or filter due to losing his microphone and the connection it provided to his radio. His claws were beginning to tremble under the stress of holding onto the divine light for so long.
“It should work! My fruit is the Ope-Ope Fruit! I can perform any operation within the confines of the ‘operating room’, even intangible aspects can be transplanted or removed! This is exactly the sort of thing it should be able to do!” the Surgeon of Death fiercely insisted, his voice only breaking at the end as he admitted, “But– its limitation lies within my own lack of strength! My will… can’t overcome the will of Gods!”
“Well, that’s to be expected! Mortal soul you are…” Alastor gruffly mused, before his words trailed off. He realized that it wasn’t only his own hands that were trembling, but also the ones placed above them.
There was a gasping sniffle from behind him, Chopper’s large body shaking from the strain of his arms, and presumably also the strain of the constant use of his healing. His voice warbled as he cried, “A-Alastor… I… I can feel my energy running out! It’s gonna be all used up soon! I– I won’t be able to keep healing you, like this! I’m sorry!”
At that mention, Alastor realized that his hands were, indeed, becoming steadily more heated. Numbing under a burn, even. The healing was already beginning to slowdown, being unable to fully keep at the rate it needed to maintain to match the Sun’s holy scorch.
It was to be expected. Alastor couldn’t imagine the amount of magic it must be taking the doctor to continuously heal his hands from such extensive, severe divine damage, such that they would have long since burned off by this point. He kept his tone purposefully level as he soothed the other, “That’s alright, Chopper dear. You’ve done a fine job thus far. How ever long you can keep it up will be appreciated– ”
“It’s not alright!” Chopper quickly shot back, this time crying in full. Alastor could hear the tears muddle his throat as he despaired, “You’re– You’re gonna have to let go of Luffy when I stop! You can’t keep hold of him without it!”
They both knew perfectly very well that Alastor would not be letting go of Luffy, regardless. That he will allow his hands to burn to ash before he lets go.
He was unsure as to whether the young one’s tears were due to his perceived impending failure to his captain, or to Alastor himself. He tried and failed to form a response that would provide any genuine sense of comfort. They’d reached this point, certainly having gotten farther than Lucifer had initially assumed them capable of. Was there truly no way to overcome this last, most difficult trial as to keeping Luffy…
…No. They’ve made it this far, they would do it. They just had to figure it out. He knows that’s what the captain himself would tell them–
“ALASTOR!!!”
His attention was forcefully jerked out of his thoughts, and over and down towards the ground some distance away from the mass of Robin’s arms. Out of the corner of his eyes, he just caught sight of Franky, now outside his robot and pushing a welding mask up and away from his face, then Usopp, who’s voice had been the one to shout for him. He was holding up his slingshot in a somewhat unusual position, angling it more like an archer’s bow due to the length of the ammo he’d set into it. When he saw they’d made eye contact, he fired.
A small, slight tendril grew out of his side to catch what Usopp had aimed at him. Bringing it up to his face, he was somewhat astonished to see that it was his radio microphone.
Now reattached back into one piece, any damage that’d been inflicted by the divine power had been tended to. Even the internal equipment which likely burnt up in the flames and heat was fixed, seeing that his signal connected once again without a hitch. No doubt, either Franky or both him and Usopp together must have gone looking for it to repair it.
“There’s nowhere your radio broadcast can’t reach, right?!” Usopp yelled at the top of his lungs while cupping his hands around his mouth to be heard from his relatively far distance, “So call out to Luffy! Wake him up for us! If it’s you, he’ll hear your voice!”
A breathless feeling rose within him at the same time his magic rose to the surface. Focusing the entirety of his signal into reaching into the unknown of the Sun, trying to reach past all the divine energy that would surely impede its strength, Alastor could only hope the signal would be received as he obliged…
“Captain…” he started, the distortion and static of his radio back in place, “You’re being quite an inconvenience to us, currently. Both in regards to our crew and Charlie and everyone else. And while it’s understandable, this was an affliction brought on by you protecting us, that doesn’t make it any less of a pain! If you can hear my voice, you need to wake up!”
No response, and no evident reaction to his words. Alastor’s chest and lungs constricted, desperation twisting them up in pain.
“Luffy– ” he called once more, words pulled thin and strained as he pushed more power into the signal, because this must work, he must be heard, “This ascension business isn’t entertaining in the slightest! Everyone is already giving it their all to try and prevent you from leaving! Is this what it’s come to? Did you deny your place in Heaven and jump down into Hell only to allow some unknown Gods to take you away somewhere you won’t wish to be?! That can’t be right! We won’t be able to follow you to where you’re going! You won’t– You won’t be with us anymore, if you let them take you…!”
Still no response. His hands still shaking in their hold, channeling as much of his power as he could into his signal to bulldoze it through the divine mass, Alastor’s dewy eyes squeezed shut as he finally pleaded–
“Please! You need to wake up! For the crew! For ME! You promised me that you’d never leave! Don’t let that become a lie! I’ll HATE you if it becomes a lie, because I believed in what you said! You can’t just change my life so irrevocably, change me so irrevocably, and just abandon me afterwards! I won’t allow it! I’ll never recover from it! You’re the one who breathed life back into my cold, dead heart! If you leave, its life leaves with you! I won’t be able to bear being without you! So– HEAR ME SCREAM and WAKE UP!!!”
His scream rang out in an echo through a few seconds of otherwise silence, both through the air and over the radio. There was a beat, still with no response.
Then, in the next beat of his heart, Alastor felt an unmistakable disruption at the other end of his signal. The sensation of a transmission being received.
The life breathed back into his lungs in the beat after that, just a bit before the silhouette of light formed a mouth once again. This time, however, it was set into frown rather than its previous smile.
“This is no good… I can’t go off to some mystery place like this! I can’t leave my crew!”
“THERE– !” Trafalgar suddenly sounded off, thrusting his long sword out in front of him. At first raising it high, he brought it down in a mime towards the operation table.
“If the will of the doctor and the patient are one in the same– then the operation can’t fail! Malignant Divinity Curative Surgery!”
And just like that, from the center of the Sun, a mortal body slipped out. Or at least, it was a more mortal body than the divinity that had been encasing it prior, seeing that Luffy was still in his white-haired divine form.
He’d seemingly been removed straight out of the divine power, with the energy remaining intact. A perfect surgical removal. At first he was frowning, just as the light had been, but upon his release, his face turned towards them with a wide grin. “Oh! Thanks Law! And thanks for wakin’ me up, Al! Sorry I worried ya like that!”
“LUFFYYYYY!!!!”
There was a roaring, joyous cry from the majority of the crew as well as the crowd at large. Heaving a sigh of both relief and exhaustion, Trafalgar bowed his face so as to shadow his eyes with the brim of his hat, then gestured his hand to dispel the Room without a word.
Upon the collapse of the ‘operating room’, all the divine light that had been removed from Luffy instantly shot back up into the sky in streaks, removing itself from both Alastor’s and Charlie’s holds. Returning from the Heaven wince it came. And good fucking riddance too, in his opinion.
Lucifer also allowed his shield to dissipate, the gold flickering out of the sky to permit its untainted scarlet once again. Luffy began to fall from the sky, his body shifting itself out of his Nika features and back into his normal visage. One of Alastor’s tendrils, now free from its duty of keeping his form held up as he lowered himself and Robin’s large hands dissolved into petals, stretched out to catch the boy. Luffy stretched his own hand out to meet it, closing his eyes with a bright smile. He pulled Luffy back towards himself, and they all landed none-too gracefully back onto the ground.
Alastor had unconsciously shifted back to his normal size. As had the reindeer on his back apparently, as Chopper shuffled off from where he’d been held against Alastor’s back to jump into Luffy’s arms where the captain was partially seated in Alastor’s lap. Luffy smile down as he held Chopper to his chest, the deerling crying his tears into his red shirt and chest, “L-Luffyyy– ! Y-You really scared me just now! I– I really thought we might lose you…!”
“I know, I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you ‘n’ everyone like that,” the captain replied with considerably more tact than he’d typically bother with. He then leaned his side further into Alastor’s torso to look up at him and extend, “Sorry ‘bout scarin’ ya too, Alastor.”
He bristled at the apology. However, he also didn’t quite have it in him yet to deny the accusation as to being scared after all that embarrassing drivel he’d already professed to, and thus shifted his gaze away as his arm wound around the other’s frame to keep him close and sighed, “I won’t be so lenient with you, the next time something like this should occur…”
“It won’t! Promise.”
“Luffy!” an echo of the captain’s name was called out once more as Usopp, Nami, and Brook ran up to them, diving to their knees to hug either Luffy and Chopper or Luffy and Alastor, based on which angle they accosted the three from. Alastor had to hold himself back from reflexively snapping at the puppet’s neck in his irritation at being jostled so, only managing so by forcefully reminding himself how Usopp had assisted in repairing and returning his microphone to him.
“Luffy! Don’t worry us like that! You nearly gave me a heart attack, you know!” Nami chastised, her expression wavering in between her anger grief and inconsolably relief.
“It was the same for me! And I don’t even HAVE a heart!” Brook of course didn’t fail to take the opportunity to insert.
In support, Usopp emphasized, “That’s right! All that almost becoming a God stuff was crazy! I can’t keep up with you sometimes! Can’t you do things normally for once?!”
Luffy was a bit poutier this time as he repeated, “I got it already! Sorry! Sorry!”
“I’m SUUUUPER happy you’re okay, Luffy bro!” Franky cried while encasing the lot of them in a hug with his large arms. The overly emotive man had tears streaking from down his face, as to be expected from him at this point.
Alastor finally decided he’d suffered enough and dissolved himself into shadow, leaving the captain amongst his pile of crewmates as he got his feet back under him next to the group. When Trafalgar stepped forward towards them, Alastor glanced over at the man, along with following where he was pointing to behind himself. Jinbei was also approaching, but with slower, more labored steps, hand pressing against the reopened wound on his chest. Sanji meanwhile was being outright carried over by Zoro, which was going exactly as well as Alastor would have assumed such an absurd sight would, in that the two could hardly take a single step forward without shouting in each other’s faces.
“ –put me DOWN you shitty broken sword swordsman– ”
“Well SOMEONE has to carry you, idiot cook, since your legs don’t work!!! Look at how much extra weight you’re dragging us down with– ”
“Then someone who isn’t YOU can carry me!”
“If you’re gonna put up a fit I can always hand you off to Robin, she’s the only one free right now– ”
“Don’t you DARE burden Miss Robin like that!”
“Then what do you want me do about it?!?!”
“While I know you’re all glad to have your captain back,” Trafalgar’s deadpan cut into the overheard arguing as he spoke to Alastor and the others, “We have to deal with the follow up for the battle. Mainly, dealing with the injured. I used up all my juice on that last Room, so I won’t be able to use my abilities to help. Both the First Son of the Sea and Cook-ya will need treatment, with the cook being the worst off. Is there anyone else in your crew that needs medical attention? No minor scraps or bruises at this point, we need to triage accordingly.”
“Ah! That’s right! I’m the doctor!” Chopper called out from within the entangled limbs as though he’d just remembered the fact. Popping himself out, he shot a hoof out at Alastor’s wrist fast enough that he didn’t have time to react, thus forcing him to undergo the deerling doctor’s careful examination of his hand.
He declared, “Alastor’s hands have third degree burns. I– I used up all of my healing just now, so we’ll have to give standard medical treatment until either they regenerate on their own or I regenerate my energy, whichever comes first. If Sanji will take the longest to treat, how about I take care of Alastor and Jinbei while you handle Sanji? We also need to check with Charlie, there are probably more injured among the people from the hotel.”
“I can do that,” Trafalgar agreed, before commenting, “And since these would all be wounds dealt by divine power, they aren’t going to fully heal on their own. Along with burn treatment, the cook needs his legs set properly or they’re going to regenerate in the wrong shape. Frankly, just based on what I’ve seen from natural demon regeneration, he’s not going to be able to walk until you can heal him.”
“SERIOUSLY?! Sanji! Don’t be so careless with your body just cause ya know I can heal it, ya bastard!”
“I had to literally kick the shitty Sun! What else was I supposed to do?!”
Looking down at his own thoroughly scorched palms, Alastor added, “Oh dear. I hadn’t noticed my hands had ended up in such poor shape. But at least the nerves burning through means there’s no annoying pain to work around, haha! I can still use them just fine in the meantime.”
“Don’t do anything with them! Or at least not until I’ve bandaged them! Dammit! Each ‘n’ every one of you are gonna drive me insane at this rate!”
“My apologies on our behalf, Chopper. We realize that your job as our doctor is not an easy one and do not wish to make it even more difficult,” Jinbei had the courtesy to show some remorse for troubling the now fretful Chopper.
Before the other could give a response, however, Robin finally stepped forward from wherever she’d been lurking, her arms already back in their crossed position. She leveled an even stare at a nearby alleyway. “It seems we have company…”
The group immediately reorganized, those on the ground standing up in a hurry while they herded together. From the alley, Lute, still in her broken armor, stumbled out with a growl.
Though she was in poor enough shape that she ended up stumbling her way into the dirt as she growled, “You all… This is all your fault! The pirate winners are already trying to mess with the order of Heaven and skirt around the rules, and now you’re bolstering these damned sinners– ”
“That’s enough, Lute…” the quiet voice of the Seraph interrupted the woman, with Sera, now in a more humanoid form, stepping out of the same alley. Dragging one of her feet and wings slightly in the movement, the crown-like halo around her head had a large crack on the side of it.
“Alastor! Luffy! You guys– ” Charlie cut herself off after she finished running over to see their defeated enemies. Vaggie, who’d run over with her, valiantly held her arm out in front of the Princess in a protective move, scowling at the both of them.
Sera, however, only deigned to grant the Princess of Hell a short glance over before she focused her stare back onto Luffy, then across the Straw Hat Pirates as a whole, Alastor included. “Why… did you stop it?”
“Why– ?! Well of course we weren’t gonna let you kill all those people like that– !”
“I don’t refer to the Extermination…” Sera interjected before Nami could finish verbally sinking her teeth in, “Why did you stop the ascension? Do you not realize– To ascend to the level of True God, it is the pinnacle of Enlightenment one could achieve! The ultimate validity of a God’s existence, of how deserving they are of reverence and worship. Of how their word concerning the universe is to become law. Why ever would you prevent the God that you follow from ascending as such?!”
With narrowed eyes, Vaggie was the one to question, “You put all that effort into finishing the job with that Ark, and that’s what you’re worried about? Why would you even want the God that fought against you to ascend?”
“It is not a matter of what I want or do not want. If he ascends, it is because he was meant to. If he were to ascend and say that Heaven’s ruling is in the wrong, that would be all that is required for us to be in the wrong,” Sera plainly explained. So strictly adhered she was to Heaven’s hierarchy, it seemed that she truly would have conceded to the Sun God’s authority after this ‘ascension’. It may have been that her halting the attack had not been due to her attempting to cut off Luffy’s absorption of its energy, but because by that point, he had already become an existence to which she must yield to.
And to that, Luffy just leaned back with his hands on his waist, scoffing, “I don’t care about any of that stuff though! Not only do I not wanna follow rules, I don’t wanna make rules either!”
“But you are already imposing your order of ‘Freedom’ upon the denizens of Hell.”
“But that’s different! I’m just lettin’ people do what they want! If what they want gets in the way of what other people want, course they won’t like it,” Luffy explained away with the simplicity he was known for, before laying out, “I don’t care about order or power or whether people wanna follow me or not– I just wanna have fun with my friends. I wouldn’t be able to do that up there. They stopped me cause they knew I wouldn’t be happy without them. They did what I wanted ‘em to do!”
They all stood taller at the declaration, pleased that their efforts had been recognized so. Even still, the Seraph stared at their captain without comprehension. Like she could hardly fathom a God giving up their right to be amongst their power for a purpose as simple as having fun with friends. Admittedly, before he’d met the boy, Alastor would also have failed to comprehend such a concept.
Even still, while the Seraph had evidently reached some form of acceptance for their defeat, the same could not be said for the lead exorcist, who cried out in fury, “Sera, this– This can’t be the end! What about what happened to Adam! That bastard Lucifer and the little bitch killed him! We– We can’t let these sinners get away with such a grievous sin! I won’t let them– !”
She forced herself back onto her feet at her final statement, pulling out her spear in a stagger as though she planned to start another fight on the spot despite being so heavily outnumbered. Though, she had no attention to spare for the pirates now that the Princess and her girlfriend were present, focusing the entirety of her burning glare on them. While Charlie winced with concern, Vaggie was already in the middle of also pulling out her spear, preparing to defend.
“Woah woah woah hold up now! The fuck are ya doin’, Lute? You’re supposed to be way smarter than this! Don’t talk shit and pick a fight you know will kill you! Calm the fuck down!”
It was then that, with an incredible amount of impeccable timing, the former First Man himself burst onto the scene. He got right in front of Lute, holding out his hands as though he was trying to calm down a feral dog and carrying himself with just a tad show of panic about it. He likely assumed that if he didn’t immediately intervene, she would go through with her fit and end up in more dire straits.
Predictably, Lute just stared at the man. Face the picture of shock. After doing a long, thorough take where she looked all about his new form, she questioned in a pitch, “S– Sir? Is that you?! You– You’re a sinner now?! What are you doing here?!”
“I know. Shocker right…” he replied with an annoyed sigh, as though he truly had no idea a person who had regularly committed genocide would be sent to Hell. “And– I know I’m not really in charge of you anymore, but– Just don’t get yourself into trouble to avenge me or any of that bullshit. Okay? I don’t really like these guys –or most of these guys, that is, but it’s just not worth it. Also, what’dya mean ‘what’re you doin’ here?’ I wasn’t plannin’ to do shit ‘bout the fight, but when I saw the fucking GIANT HOLY DEATH RAY in the sky, course I came out to see what was up! Like holy shit– seriously?! I live here too now bitch!”
He seemed to direct that complaint more towards the Seraph than his former lieutenant. Sera just closed her eyes with a put-on sigh, clearly having held no fond remembrance for dealing with Adam’s charming personality previously. “Adam. If you were deserving of returning to your old position, I’m sure you would have been reincarnated in Heaven once more upon your second… third death.”
As expected, Adam did not take that reasoning with any sense of grace whatsoever, outright glaring as he whined, “Ooooh you Goddamn fucking– creepy-eyes! I always knew you had it fucking out for me with the way you bossed me around– ”
“WAIT!” the man allowed his words to stall at Lute shouting out all of a sudden. Now crowding in front of Sera, she looked up at her superior with narrowed slits for eyes as she interrogated, “You KNEW he was down here already? And you didn’t tell me?”
Sera met the look with a hesitant pause. Clearly, she understood the type of uneven ground she stood on with the exorcist, concerning this. “ …You didn’t need to know. I knew such knowledge would distract you, General, so I deigned not to inform you. And as your superior, that was a call I had the right to make.”
“But– You knew he would DIE if we succeeded! You knew we would be killing him too!”
“Yes, I did… While I understand why that would be… upsetting to you, it was a considerable part of the reason why I didn’t tell you, you need to understand that Adam is no longer the ‘First Man’, Lute. He lost that title upon being condemned to Hell. He’s just another sinner now– we should not grant him special treatment. And as I said, if he managed to improve himself during this life of his, then he would have been able to return Heaven. Wouldn’t that have been the most favorable outcome for him?”
Lute stared at the Seraph for a heavy, tense moment. Staring at the woman with what could only be described as an immeasurable amount of revulsion and consternation. Adam, in comparison, was swiveling his face back and forth between the two with a constipated look, as though he wasn’t quite sure who he should be focusing on the most.
It was after almost a full minute that, slowly, Lute reached up to take hold of the halo above her head. She threw it down on the ground at the feet of the Seraph with such insult, one would think it’d personally offended her.
“I quit.”
“ …You …what?” it took Sera a bit to realize what she’d said.
“I QUIT!!!” Lute repeated with a furious shriek, “I’m not– I’m not doing this job anymore! I’m not working for you anymore!”
Everyone was staring at Lute now, especially Vaggie and Adam himself, with Vaggie’s eyes looking as though they might pop out of her skull in not too long. The reaction was warranted. From Alastor’s more limited knowledge, as he understood it, exorcist angels were Heaven-born beings specifically created for the purpose of serving Heaven’s needs. Lute had said as much herself, describing them as being ‘the hands that carry out Heaven’s will’. The only case Alastor knew of where one left their service was Vaggie herself, who was more a case of excommunication than outright quitting. They likely have never encountered a case like this before. It’d be unthinkable to them, even.
Sera tried to counter in a stutter, still utterly caught off guard by the situation, “Lute– That’s– I understand why you’d be upset, and I’m sorry to have made decisions that upset you, but there’s no need to take things this far. Think it through. You had no issue with casting judgement onto every other one of the countless sinners of Hell, or even the Hellborn that lived amongst them. You’re going to give up your life’s purpose because you disagree with bringing that same judgement upon one single person?”
Lute sapped back without hesitation, “YES! He’s not just one single person! He’s not just a sinner! He’s the only one who matters! I didn’t follow him just because he was above me in the order, though that’s what it was like in the beginning– He’s important to me! And I ALMOST KILLED HIM!!! Because of YOU! I can’t forgive that! I won’t do this anymore! I– ”
Flickering her glare down to the ground for a split second, grinding her teeth all the while, Lute visibly steeled up her shoulders and posture as she glared back up a Sera to declare, “If the purpose I was created for makes it so that I have to treat him like how we treat every other sinner, makes it so I don’t even have a choice in treating him like less than the dirt that those of Heaven tread on, then I don’t want it anymore! And why can’t I choose to abandon it, huh?! That God over there fucking turned down Heaven and even the Land of the Gods itself– and for what?! For a handful of mortals that don’t mean anything to anyone else?! Why can’t I do that if HE gets to?! It’s not FAIR! THAT’S why I’m quitting!”
And with that last shout resonating through the street, Lute about-turned away from Sera’s bewildered stare to march back over to Adam, who also was in the midst of extreme wide-eyed bewilderment. She set herself right at his right side without another word, arms crossed and still pissed off. He gave her an extensive side-eye, clearly wanting to question the circumstances, but not willing to stick his neck out and accidently provoke the woman once more. As they’ve always said– A woman’s scorn is not to be trifled with, indeed.
“That was well said, Lute…” Goodness gracious, who else is joining this awful excuse of a social gathering?
A smaller golden portal opened on the street, this time. And out from Heaven’s gates stepped another Seraph, this one smaller and seemingly younger than the other. Charlie immediately brightened upon her entrance, so Alastor was assuming there was no need to resume battle once more. “Emily?! You’re here!”
The new Seraph Emily faced Sera’s shocked face with an expression of firm determination. “Emily? What are you doing here?”
“I’m here to give a new Divine Ordainment, Sera,” holding her hand up high towards the air, Emily proclaimed, “A true one! Delivered straight from the Land of the Gods…!”
In the air above her head, golden lettering began to write itself into existence. Though, it was unreadable to Alastor, likely being some unknown language of the Gods. Sera fell even further into shock at the sight of it.
“ –As of this day forward, there is to be no wide-scale Extermination of the souls of Hell! The council and reigning Seraph has been deemed unfit to rule in God’s stead, and is to be put on trial for their misuse of power! I have been granted the duty of reigning Seraph, and a new council, including winners of Heaven as well as lesser angels, is to be formed as soon as possible! So it has been said, so it shall be!”
“H-How– ” Despite all that had occurred prior to this, this was the instance that left Sera the most shocked of them all. “How– It’s– been so long, since– Did They impart a message onto you?!”
“No. I went to the Land of the Gods to bring this case to Them directly.”
“You went to the Land of the Gods?!?! HOW?!”
“Sir Pentious was able to rerig some of his equipment so that it could locate high sources of divine energy, since he’s been working on technology that interacts with it so much.”
“SIR PENTIOUS IS IN HEAVEN?!?! I knew it! I KNEW IT!” Charlie cried out in an overly excited squeak, palms pressing into her cheeks.
At the interruption, Emily shifted her focus onto Charlie, giving her a slight smile, “That’s right. Though, there’s no time to talk about that now, sorry. But Charlie, I just want to say… If you’re still willing to work with us, I’d like to be back soon to talk to you about your hotel. It’s about time that Heaven starts pulling their half of the weight in helping to redeem sinners, since Sir Pentious proved that its possible.”
Sobering up a bit from her overwhelming cheer, Charlie gained a more serious, though still joyful set to her smile as she agreed with a firm nod. “Of course! That’s what I’ve been trying to do all along! After you’ve– sorted yourselves out, ahem, we will receive you at either the Embassy or Hazbin Hotel! Whichever works for you!”
“In that case… Let’s set it at your hotel. I’d like to see it for myself!” Emily replied with a hint of cheekiness, before her expression dimmed back into an almost sorrowful firmness, “It’s time to go, Sera.”
The other half of the Seraphim looked back at the other for another beat, before Sera nodded solemnly. Head still held high, she walked herself through the portal with as much grace as she could considering her injuries. Before Emily went through, she paused to send Lute a kind, empathetic look, asking, “Do you want to come back, Lute? I– wasn’t sure if your decision would change or not, with Sera not being in charge…”
“Just fucking go Lute! Like, seriously! You don’t need to stay!” Adam forced himself to speak out, trying to look casual about it with his arms crossed over his chest and the rolling of his eyes, but also absolutely failing to conceal the internal tension laced throughout his entire posture.
Lute just glanced over at the man with an impressed raised eyebrow, scowling as she sassed, “I’m sorry, but I thought you said that you’re not in charge of me anymore? You don’t get to tell me what to do either!”
Adam outright gawked at the girl as she turned back Emily with a professional, military stance. “No thank you, Lady Seraph. Who’s in charge doesn’t change my decision. I am taking my leave.”
“Understood… I’m sure the new council will accept you being ‘exiled to Hell’ as a suitable punishment for leading the Extermination. I’m happy you were able to choose this for yourself,” turning back towards the portal in full, Emily left with just a few parting words, “The influence of the Sun God, of the freewill he inspires in people… It’s such a wonderful thing. It’s no wonder you almost ascended, but it’s also no surprise you chose for yourself not to, Monkey D. Luffy. You’re clearly right where you need to be. Until next time.”
And with that, the gates to Heaven closed once again. This time having left behind one extra person. There was an awkward silence as people tried to reconfigure themselves to the sudden extreme shift in dynamics.
“Well now…” Alastor decided he might as well be the one to break the tension, “I suppose it should be asked if there are any more unexpected and unwanted visitors…?”
“Wow. What a perfect introduction to start on! Thanks for that, Al.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake– That question was rhetorical!” he snapped back without even bother to contain his peaking irritation as fucking Vox, of course, was the one to step out next, having zapped himself out of a nearby camera. At the stupid picture-box’s amused smirk, he berated, “I am NOT in the mood for this, Vox! So I suggest you make yourself scare until I actually have time to entertain you!”
“Hm. Yeah. Sorry, but that doesn’t exactly match my schedule, sooo…” as he trailed off, Vox’s smirk curled further up into a shark-like grin as he stopped a few feet in front of the Straw Hat Crew. Before he’d even said anything more, Luffy was already stepping out from between the crowd of them to stand in front of the Overlord with a level expression. “I’ve kept our ceasefire agreement, right Princess? No fighting while the Extermination was going down. And now that it’s over, so is the ceasefire! I’m challenging you to a fight, Straw Hat! What do you say?”
Alastor inserted before the captain could respond, approaching the both of them from Luffy’s side, “You cannot possibly think you have any chance of winning against him at this point?! Did you just miss that whole spectacle of him destroying the ‘giant holy death ray’ as it’s been referred to and then almost ascending into true Godhood?! Even you can’t be this delusional!”
“Of course I noticed!” Vox countered with a hint of a growl to his words. His grin shifting down into a displeased scowl, his eyes noticeably darted to the burnt hands Alastor held up in his dramatic gesturing as he plainly said, “You got yourself hurt for him. He almost made you cry. I noticed.”
Alastor had to keep himself from bristling. Changing his expression like one would change the TV channel, Vox forced his scowl back into his cocky grin as he set his glare back onto Luffy’s. “He’s supposed to be your captain now, right? So let him fight for you Al! That’s what he wants, isn’t it? And you’re so confident of his power– surely there’s nothing for you to be worried about! So– !”
Holding out his hand like an angler would their lure, Vox finally offered, “Do you accept my challenge for a fight, Straw Hat…?”
“Of course I do!” Luffy immediately shouted, throwing out his hand to take Vox’s.
But in however many seconds it took between Luffy giving his verbal response and taking the handshake, Vox suddenly spouted out a rush of sped up words much like an advertisement disclaimer–
“ –a DAVY BACK FIGHT that is! Vees-terms-and-conditions-apply-no-refunds-redos-or-takesiebacksies”
The handshake was made amidst a mix of blue electric and divine white power. It swirled around the two in streaks, before dissipating.
Luffy stared down at their hands with a blank look for a single beat. Before he suddenly let go and jumped back with a wide-eyed yelp, “WHA– ?! A DAVY BACK?! You didn’t say that part before!!!”
“Doesn’t matter! I said it before we did the handshake, so it counts!” Meanwhile, while Vox still had that shit-eating grin of his, he also looked a bit taken aback, drawling out, “But wow… I wasn’t completely convinced that would work, ya know? But it turns out you’re just as stupid as that guy said you would be! Holy shit! That was writing in signing away soul ownership in the terms and conditions level of easy! It’s a good thing you’ve got that almost all-powerful God thing goin’ for you, since Al clearly didn’t join you for your BRAINS!”
“You IDIOT! Why would you even take his hand for that?!” Always one to jump on the captain’s stupidity, Nami was immediately beside him with the collar of his shirt in hand, shaking him back and forth. “Everyone knows that’s how dealmakers make deals! And he didn’t set out any terms beforehand! You didn’t need to shake his hand if it was just a regular fight!”
With his words coming out chopped due to the jostling of his head, Luffy stuttered, “Oh– Is that– why they do that? Guess– you’re right– ”
“HOW DID YOU NOT NOTICE?!?! You literally made one before, didn’t you?! Honestly! Chopper needs to check your head cause there’s something wrong with it!!!”
“A– A Davy Back Fight?! Oh no! Not again!” back within the rest of the Straw Hats, Chopper cried out in dismay with his hoofs on his head.
“How does this bastard even know about those?!” Zoro growled out with a tsk.
While Charlie and Vaggie looked confused in a wary sort of way, even those of the crew who didn’t say anything along with Trafalgar varied between expressions of ‘greatly displeased’ to ‘oh fucking dammit’. With great hesitancy considering how poorly they were taking this, Alastor asked with a sigh, “And may I ask as to what this ‘Davy Back Fight’ refers to?”
“It’s a pirate game! Originating from what was once known as ‘Pirate Island’, a pirate crew that had been known as the strongest, made up of legends with unbelievable bounties, had once been formed from their use. It’s a challenge where you put your crew and pride on the line! Zehahaha!”
Alastor tensed minutely as the shadows of the alley thickened, before parting to reveal the large man stepping out of them as well as the two other Vees flanking him. The both of them carried mean smirks about them.
Trafalgar tensed as well, even going so far as to place his hand on his sword handle as he cursed, “Blackbeard, you bastard. So this is what you cooked up…”
With a body made of smoky darkness itself, the aforementioned Blackbeard lived up to his name, having a large, thick beard of curly black hair that framed his hippopotamus face. His body was large and rotund, and he wore clothing much more typically associated with the image of a pirate, complete with a captain’s hat. His voice was deep and rough as he finished explaining, “Only the captains need’a agree to the challenge! And for these games, I’ve joined the Vees’ ‘crew’ with Vox over there actin’ as the ‘captain’. It’s their crew against the Straw Hat Pirates! Davy Backs let pirates plunder other crews for their best members! That’s their purpose!”
Alastor stilled at that, unable to keep his eyes from twitching wide out of their previous half-lidded glare. It instantly clicked as to what this was about.
“That’s right, Alastor…” Spreading his arms out in a showy flourish, Vox walked back a bit such that he was directly in front of his group, before he shoved one of his hands out to point right at Alastor. The blood-thirsty shark grin of his screen was back in full.
“The one who wins these games will win crewmates from the other team! And we’re playing to WIN! Prepare yourself! Cause after this is over– You’re finally joining the Vees!!! AHAHAHAHA!”
Notes:
Chapter 24: The Tower, Upright
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
A game where pirates can steal members from rival crews? Why would they have even developed such an annoying game?! It’s as though Vox came up with the idea himself, but based on how all the pirates recognized it, it was evidently a legitimate practice. What a pain to deal with…
“You bastard…!” Luffy cursed as he stomped forward, grabbing the collar of Vox’s suit to bare his teeth in his flatscreen face. Vox just glared back at the captain and his raised fist.
Vox twitched back into a mean grin when Blackbeard stuck a large hand out, pushing Luffy back by his shoulder to cajolingly chastise, “Careful there, Straw Hat! You know fightin’ ’s only allowed when it’s part of a game durin’ a Davy Back. You’ll get yourself disqualified before we even start! Zehaha!”
“SHUT UP! Don’t tell me what to do!” the captain snapped back like a wild dog, but it settled in Alastor the relative seriousness of these games and their circumstances when Luffy still backed off right after, angry scowl marring his expression. Vox looked smug as can be as he smoothed out the front of his suit after being released without further issue.
“While you’ve clearly come into this challenge prepared, can you even successfully play in a Davy Back? The typical rules require seven players per team,” Jinbei objected as a more practical counter.
To that, Blackbeard’s crooked grin stretched wider as his big head gestured down towards Vox, who stood much shorter compared to the hippo. “Usually that’d be a problem, yeah, but that guy set up the challenge based on ‘the Vees’ terms ‘n’ conditions’, and Straw Hat shook on it. We get to set up the rules however we want! To an extent, of course. They still gotta win their matches for real after all.”
“Ahhh that means they’ll be rigging everything in their favor! It’s the Foxy Pirates all over again!” Usopp cried out in agitation, leaning back with his hands covering his eyes.
“Not to mention our state coming out of the battle against Heaven. We haven’t even treated the wounded yet,” Robin added plainly in a further reminder of their misfortune, “Though, one point in our favor is that they likely won’t include actual fighting in the games. I doubt the Vees would want to try their chances against most individuals on our crew. The only one who’d be a problem is Blackbeard…”
While the Vees gained a sour expression of displeasure at the call out, Blackbeard just laughed, “Ha! Good head on yer shoulders as always, Devil Child. And you must figure I’m only in this to compete against yer captain, right? I’ll tell ya now so you can plan accordingly– I’m set to play in the final match! It’s a one-on-one, though not the usual final combat round. I’m looking forward to it!” holding out a hand with three fingers, he further explained, “It’s a three game Davy Back otherwise. Choose three crewmates each to play the first and second. You guys’ll choose yer teams, but the Vees get ‘a pick which ones go which round. And course, no substitutions on yer end, but we’re settin’ the rule so that the Vees can reuse crewmates. So all three will get to play in both!”
“How convenient for you. Don’t even have to do any work until your round…” Trafalgar deadpanned with a tsk. Despite not being on the crew itself, he was also upset by Blackbeard’s intervention.
“Well, it’s not like I got much stake in how they do overall in this. It’s just a bonus win if they actual manage to steal one ‘a yer crew. The only round that matters to me ‘s the last! So they’re playin’ for themselves the first two. That’s a fair deal considerin’ I’m the only reason why they knew how to set all this up in the first place, and they’re the ones that want yer guy.”
Still managing to come off as belligerent and pissed even when he was still being held up by Zoro, Sanji tried and failed to pull out a cigarette from his pocket before grouching, “And we don’t even want one of those shitty bastards for our crew…”
“Come to think of it, they don’t even have a flag to steal! What do we do take from them when we win anyway?” Brook questioned with a befuddled head tilt, tapping a boney finger to the chin of his skull.
To that, Robin spoke up again, offering, “I wouldn’t say that. In this case, they’re treating their Vee brand as a crew, so it’s the brand itself that’s their symbol, acting as their jolly roger. Therefore, I suggest we claim that as our prize.”
Startling in alarm, Velvette pushed her way past a disgruntled Valentino to demand, “Wait up a sec– What’dya mean by that, Robin?! You guys can do that?!”
“Oh, did he not tell you?” Robin returned her former employer’s glare with that blasé, slight curve of a smile of hers. “Davy Back Fights don’t only wager crewmates. The pride of the crew itself is on the line, their jolly roger. Any jolly roger claimed from a Davy Back can never again be flown. It’s a mark of great shame to lose it. And as I’ve said, with the Vees becoming a pirate crew for the purpose of these games, you’ve put your brand on the line.”
“So we lose our BRAND NAME if we lose?! You didn’t say anythin’ about THAT, you fucker!” Velvette immediately turned on her temporary ally, scowling up at him with her hands on her hips as best she could from her height disadvantage.
Even still, Blackbeard just grinned down at her, uncaring to the extreme. “Guess I did forget to mention that possibility, huh? Ha! Just don’t lose and it’s not a problem, right? Ya didn’t have an issue with puttin’ yer members on the line either.”
“We can still run a Vees duo if there’s only two of us! There was also the chance they’d take your sorry arse too– !”
“Not a chance in Hell of that. Literally…” Zoro snarked under his breath as an aside.
“ –It’s different if we can’t use the brand AT ALL! That’s where all our social capital is! If we can’t use it anymore, that’ll be all anyone talks about us! Our business rep would be completely in the toilet!”
“Our reputation is already damaged as it is, Velvette. Even if we don’t lose the Vee brand, it’ll be done for anyway if we don’t finally win against our enemies...”
In comparison to Velvette’s attitude and Valentino’s growing irritation, Vox himself seemed unmoved by the news. He laid out his reasoning simply as he pulled the woman away from her self-imposed staring contest with Blackbeard, though he also didn’t refrain from giving the pirate his own glance of suspicion as he did so. Turning back around, he trailed a lingering glance over Alastor, his own grin twitching sharp from his barely repressed fury, before Vox shifted over to glare fully at the still scowling Luffy.
“It’s like he said– if we win it’s not a problem. And we already came into this with the intention to win! We’re puttin’ it all on the line with this!”
“Bring it on!” the captain answered with a bullish provocation of his own, before he looked back at his crew to declare, “We’re winning this, guys! No matter what! We’re not letting them take Al from us! It’s captain’s orders!”
“You got it, Luffy!”
“There’s no way we’d let them get away with stealing Alastor like that!”
“If they want Al, they have to go through us first!”
“Don’t need to tell us the obvious!”
At the rousing response Luffy garnered, Alastor felt some of his tightly coiled tension unwind slightly.
That’s right. It’s just as Vox and that Blackbeard say– If they win it’s not a problem. Even if the games are set against them, the Straw Hats will find a way to win regardless. And in the case of three matches, he assumed they only needed best two out of three for his safety to be secured. They will win and the Vees will dearly regret it so as their carefully built empire finally collapses around them. There will be no other outcome than that. Of that he can be certain.
Thankfully, there had to be some amount of set up even on the Vees end, so after they relocated to behind the Hazbin Hotel where the games were set to take place, Chopper and Trafalgar were able to attend to himself, Jinbei, and Sanji. Though, as they discussed who to assign to the lineup, that did not matter too much in the context of the games themselves, seeing that two out of three of them were forbidden from entry…
“Sanji, if you try to go into this Davy Back, I’m letting Law take off your legs until you’ve proved I can trust you with them.”
“ …He can’t use his Room right now, though.”
“I know. But desperate times call for desperate measures,” considering Alastor has never heard the deerling doctor give such a morbid threat before, it spoke volumes as to the Chopper’s insistence on the matter. And as for Trafalgar himself, he had no issue in supporting the other’s case with a creepy, somewhat eager grin at the thought. The cook immediately saw a losing battle for what it was and averted his gaze with an awkward acceptance. Frankly speaking, Alastor wasn’t sure what else the man had expected when all four of his legs had been casted beyond recognition.
“And Jinbei– ” the now bandaged fishman sat up straighter at the mention, evidently on edge due to Chopper’s foul mood, “ –You’re also out. You made your wound a lot worse by straining yourself after receiving it. I won’t let you escalate the damage any further.”
It was only a few seconds before Jinbei closed his eyes with a deep sigh, acquiescing, “I agree. It would do no good to burden our chances by risking failure at a critical point due to my body’s poor condition. I’m leaving it to the rest of you.”
“I’m playing,” Alastor insisted almost in a contrast, sticking his bandaged hands out palms up to further emphasize, “It’s my person that’s on the line, and I can still use my hands just fine! I will not be talked out of this!”
While Chopper sent him a miffed pout, the doctor ultimately accepted with a huff, “Fine. It’s true you’re well enough to get by. But I’m only letting it go just this once!”
“It is my dearest hope that this is a onetime only occurrence, yes.”
Despite the sass, Chopper let go of the matter in short order. Only to straighten his own posture as he proclaimed to the crew at large, “And I’m playing too!”
The statement caught most somewhat off guard, Alastor himself included. While he knew the reindeer wouldn’t hesitate to fight when needed, he also was not typically one of the members who would volunteer themselves first and foremost. Consistent with this assessment, the other two counterparts of the ‘trembling trio’ as Alastor fondly referred to them on occasion, Nami and Usopp, leaned in close as the sniper was the one to ask, “Really? I mean– I guess one of us three needed to go, yeah, but I really wouldn’t have minded this time!”
“Really!” Chopper repeated, holding his head high as his small body would allow as he pressed, “I was the one taken last time when we lost a round in the Davy Back Fight against Foxy, and– It was really scary! Even just that short time until we won the next round felt so long, waiting to see what would happen, and I wasn’t able to do anything to help either. So I want to be one of the ones to fight for Alastor! I won’t just sit around waiting and being scared this time when I know I could be helping him instead!”
It was saccharine sweet to the point it should be disgusting. And yet, Alastor found himself warming up regardless, moved by the sentiment. He reflexively averted his face away, but still reached down to pat the deerling atop his round hat. Chopper immediately began to squirm about in poorly concealed satisfaction at the affectionate gesture.
Ever the pessimist and realist, Robin was the one to question, “Will you be okay to play though, Chopper? If you’ve run out of the energy necessary to use your healing ability, your transformation abilities may also be affected.”
“It’s okay! Honestly, I’m not sure if I’d be able to fully transform on my own right now, but– ” Reaching into his backpack, Chopper pulled out a small, medicinal ball. “I’ve still got my rumble balls! I can force the transformation to Monster Point the same way I did in life, if I need to use it. I’ll just be on the time limit again.”
“Well in that case it should be fine… I will also participate. Usually by now I would have run out of stamina as well with how many parts I’ve been propagating, but I found something useful in the Morningstar Library when Alastor and I perused it previously. I thought to prepare myself and apply it, as the time of the Extermination seemed to be approaching…”
Turning around to face away from the group, Nami swiftly leapt up over to where the pervert cook was seated to cover Sanji’s eyes as Robin pulled her shirt down from where her wings stuck out of them, such that her skin was bared. Alastor regarded the magic circle, featuring an ouroboros as its main motif, that she’d cut into her back with an appreciative eye, leaning in a tad as he hummed, “Oh my. You’ve got a steady hand to be capable of carving in such an intricate design into your skin without the pain interfering. But I suppose that’s to be expected of you! Aha!”
“What?! Robin’s skin?! Where– ?!”
“Just block it out, Sanji. Block it all out.”
“What the heck Robin?! You did this to yourself?! WHY?!” the doctor’s stress truly would never end with this crew of his as he began to fret about once more.
“It’s like I mentioned, it was a useful spell. If applied when a person’s magical reservoir is full, it will continue to propagate the energy until the circle has healed over. As the limitation of my Fruit has always been the exhausting of its stamina, I thought to try it out,” she explained as though it was a simple matter as she righted her shirt. And to Alastor, dark magic was indeed a relatively simple matter, but not so much for the deerling doctor who hardly had the patience necessary to deal with some of the foolhardier crewmates even without intentionally self-inflicted injuries.
“Seriously– Just let me heal you afterwards when I can! You’re damn idiots, all of ya!”
Continuing things along, Brook popped up with a hand raised high in the air, much like a child volunteering in class. “Yohoho– So it’ll be the three of you, and then I would also like to join in and play on Alastor’s behalf! I won’t let them take our dear friend from us! My stamina and body are OKAY! Or as much as they can be, as a skeleton!”
“I’m in it to win it too! Ow! Foxy Voxy is in for a SUUUPER bad surprise!” Franky popped up with his arms above in their star pose. “I don’t got the General Franky no more, but I’m refueled on Cola and good to go!”
“I still have eight swords to use,” was all Zoro said to confirm his own inclusion.
“So we’re good to go then.” Standing up from where he’d been crouched on the ground, Luffy stood tall as he glanced back at Alastor with a confident grin. “I’m leaving the first two rounds to you guys, then! Let’s go!”
A team consisting of Brook, Zoro, and Franky had been assigned the first round, the second Alastor, Chopper, and Robin, and of course Luffy for the final round. They had to submit their participants in advance of learning what game would take place each round –which was apparently standard for these ‘Davy Backs’, but the Vees certainly knew what they had planned so it was just another point in their favor– and then just to ensure their team assortment was the least optimal possible, the Vees had granted themselves the rule to pick the round assignment for them. In the time it’d taken the Straw Hats to patch themselves up and decide on their lineup, something of an event area had been organized far up on the beach a fair distance away from the water, with a ‘Davy Back Fight’ banner strung up and some cheap décor put up as though they were holding a festival. On the side of the beach closest to the hotel, a couple of metal bleachers had been set out to provide a spectator area. A nervous Charlie and her friends were seated there along with Trafalgar. They’d left dealing with the post-battle issues to Rosie, Boa, and Bartolomeo, so none of them were present. But in their place were a couple of unwelcome faces…
“Are we just gonna ignore that THESE GUYS ARE STILL HERE?!?!” Vaggie shouted while throwing both her hands in Adam and Lute’s direction from where they were seated in their own, relatively secluded section of the bleachers. Lute instantly returned the remark with a middle finger in Vaggie’s direction.
Tossing a piece of popcorn into his mouth, Adam carelessly muttered through his crunching, “Hey– They’re obvs settin’ this up like a sports match. Why shouldn’t I get ‘a watch? It’s the whole reason why I kept quiet that they were doin’ this anyway!”
To that, Brook gasped, disappointment bleeding through his tone as he asked, “Adam?! You KNEW about this?!”
“Adam…” Jinbei said with a groan in the exact same tone one would use concerning their misbehaving, unruly pet.
The man paused in the middle of taking more popcorn, at that. Worry finally came over him as he fret, “Uh– Oh, is that what I said? Ha! Ha… Sorry ‘bout that…” but not long after, after clearing his throat and resetting his mood, Adam leaned towards Lute to say in a stage whisper, “That reminds me. Brook’s cool ‘n’ part of my band so we’re cheerin’ for him, but we’re cheerin’ against the God and red fucker cause I hate ‘em. Got it?”
“Understood Sir!”
“Give me strength…” Vaggie groaned as she collapsed back into her seat in utter annoyance, rubbing her fingertips into her temples. Charlie patted her on the back consolingly.
On one end of the stretch of beach were the bleachers for the Straw Hats that wouldn’t be taking place in the match, with their jolly roger flying up on a flagpole directly behind. Their three participants stepped forward into the middle. They were opposed by the three Vees, and further back on their side, a stage with the Vees’ triple V brand symbol set at the top had been set up with a couple of chairs, one of which Blackbeard sat in as he oversaw everything with that irritating grin of his.
Taking out a mic, Vox gestured to the banner in a dramatic motion and announced with a wide showboat grin, “To those who are new to this, allow me to set the stage for our little gameshow we’re holding today! In this Davy Back Fight, each round ends with one crew the victor! The winner will choose a crewmate –or the crew’s flag– to take, and that crewmate will immediately switch loyalties to their new captain and join their new crew! This repeats each round, for a total of three rounds! Crewmates that have been stolen can be taken back in a subsequent round should their crew win! However, a crewmate attained by a Davy Back Fight cannot be taken back via a second Davy Back Fight! Whatever crew they’re with by the end of the three games is their new crew for good! These three rounds are the only shots they have! And in the case of the Vees, I have no issue in revealing that the prize we are vying for is none other than the newest member of the Straw Hat Crew, the Radio Demon Alastor himself!”
A round of canned applause sounded from the speakers. Vox allowed it to play out with significantly too much satisfaction before he moved on, “Now with the stakes laid out, it’s time to start the show and see what’s the first game we’ll be playing today– ”
“Ya know– With how much he’s treatin’ this like one ‘a his actual shows, I’m surprised Vox isn’t recordin’ this.”
Husk gruffly answered Angel from where they were seated next to each other in the spectator area, “Everyone knows they gotta stage a lot ‘a shit with those gameshows. Wouldn’t be dramatic enough otherwise. He can’t control what the Straw Hats do so it’d be hard for him to pull off a cohesive narrative. Also, even they gotta know there’s a chance of them losin’ ‘n’ lookin’ bad.”
“ –reminder to the audience that the players on the field CAN HEAR YOU PERFECTLY FINE!!! How the fuck am I supposed to record this when I’d have to pan to video-killer Alastor every other take?! Reaction shots are a must have! It has nothing to do with us losing, so SHUT UP!”
A screen lowered over the Vees’ stage, before it flashed through a bunch of words as though it were rolling a randomly selected event. Why even bother when they all knew perfectly well the Vees would just choose them beforehand? Still, Vox was very much into his theatrics, so they had to wait some ten seconds before the options began to slow down to end on a phrase.
Considering the Straw Hat team currently on the field, if the game involved absolutely any sort of physical test, they would stand a very good chance at winning. So it was no wonder that it was something else entirely…
“Our first game is Nothing but the Truth! What a great selection, but one that will need a bit of explaining. You see, through the never-ending progress of VoxTek technology, we have built a convenient to use lie detector– !”
One of his employees rolled out a bulky machine as well as they could over the sand at the signal. Vox gestured towards it in a grand manner as he expanded, “Each member of a team will ask one of their opponents a question, which they are required to answer. And they must answer with the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth! If the lie detector gives them a pass, they pass! But if it dings them for lying or they take too long to answer, it’s a loss! If the opposing team member that they’re up against hasn’t been asked their question yet, they still have the chance to make it a draw if their opponent also lies or doesn’t answer, in which case the game will continue. But if they pass their question, the game ends with the liar’s team defeated! No violence, physically preventing your opponent from answering, or communicating with the audience or crewmates not participating in the game to come up with questions during the match! All of these will result in an immediate disqualification and a loss for the violating team!”
“Woah there! Ya gotta be joking?!” Franky outright objected, pointing at the device himself, “This is the easiest game ever for ya guys to cheat at! You probably just programed that thing to react how ya want it to! We can’t trust it’ll give an accurate read out for either of the teams!”
With that shark-toothed smirk, Vox shrugged and jeered, “Well it’s the lie detector that we have on hand. The game has been selected, and we have to move forward with it. So unless you conveniently forgot to inform me in your interview that you have a lie detector that you’ve made ready and waiting, we have to use something to judge the match!”
“I think there might be a convenient solution to this issue, since you’ve brought it up…”
Vox’s smirk twitched down into a scowl, his pixelated eyebrows furrowing at the sight of the King of Hell lowering himself with his wings onto the top of the shady contraption in question. He sat down on it, crossing his legs and leaning back onto his hands as he offered Vox his own smirk and decided, “I can judge whether your ‘lie detector’ is working accurately, since I can tell when people are lying or not when I have the magic for it in place. And if I catch some fishy business, that’ll be a disqualification for your team instead. That way both teams have a way to validate the results. How about that?”
Alastor regarded Lucifer’s appearance and suggestion with just a bit of surprise. Vox visually forced his scowl back up into an irritated, fake smile as he drawled, “Your Majesty, what an honor, truly– however… These games have already been specifically set to be on the Vees’ conditions– ”
“And what goes on in this Hell is set to be on MY condition!” Lucifer interrupted with some fire and brimstone, his demon features appearing for a moment before fading in a show of casualness, “While you lot are apparently obligated to hold this Davy Back, I have a right to keep an eye on the petty disputes sinners hold between themselves. That this isn’t a physical fight doesn’t matter. I hold the right to judge the match and ensure you’re abiding by your own rules. Don’t act ungrateful when I just saved all your lives. Not to mention how Luffy saved your sorry asses…”
All the Vees were left scowling by that. Alastor almost laughed at the sight of them, already thrown off their own game by someone above their station preventing them from cheating as extensively as they’d planned to. The only reason he didn’t was because, while the situation wasn’t totally hopeless with Lucifer overseeing it, the Straw Hats’ position was still not as promising as he would have preferred…
“While those three aren’t the type to lie…” Nami sighed with a frown while leaning forward to rest her chin on her palm, “…I don’t really see them coming up with good questions to ask, either. This is a totally different type of game than what they usually do for Davy Backs. We didn’t balance the teams with this kind of thing in mind at all!”
Alastor was much more cutthroat in his assessment, “That’s putting it lightly. Even if those three pooled all their limited brain cells together, I doubt they’d come up with a question capable of throwing off the Vees. One of them doesn’t even have a brain…”
“And while Blackbeard stated he doesn’t care for how the Vees perform, on a practical level, he needs them to win the first round at least. The easiest way for us to deal with him would be to win and claim him as a crewmate, thus significantly lessening the risk of the last round. So he likely assisted them with his knowledge about us as to what questions they should ask,” Robin added on for good measure.
“While it’s important to be realistic, perhaps we could benefit from refraining from too much pessimism before the match has even started…” Jinbei somewhat awkwardly contested, trying to combat the rapidly decreasing morale.
Back on the field, Vox glowered at Lucifer for just a bit longer before he agreed, “Very well, if you insist… Let’s get this show on the road already! First players up!”
Two opposing podiums were placed in the middle of the field, each with their own microphone. The first up from the Straw Hats was Brook, with Velvette acting as his opponent. It was the Vees’ turn first, so Velvette was the one to start off the whole thing. The fact that she pulled out a very conspicuous index card to read suggested that the Vees did indeed have notes on the Straw Hats, and had already prepared questions in advance.
“So, we heard that this crew is actually the second crew you’ve been on…” Velvette started after looking back up and stashing the card away. Leaning forward while pointing at Brook with a coy look, she asked, “Between the two captains you’ve had, who’s your fav? And no stupid halfsies bs like they’re both my fav– Ya gotta pick one and one only!”
“Oh! That is such a mean question…!” Charlie muttered anxiously from the other set of bleachers, fists coiled against her chest under the pressure.
“YEAH! What the FUCK bitch?! Don’t ask him that! He’s a sensitive guy!” Adam yelled out in –very ironic, considering he’d once posed a similar question to Brook– outrage, even throwing a piece of popcorn in Velvette’s direction. Or rather, attempting to do so, seeing that it only made it far enough to bounce off of Niffty’s head and into her hands, to which she happily consumed the popcorn. “BOOOO!!!”
“SHUT UP! I asked the question already, he’s gotta answer!” Velvette retorted with full attitude.
Alastor understood Adam’s sentiment for once, also feeling a deep-seated irritation at the question. Brook is not the type to choose between the people who are important to him due to how much he values each and every one of them. To ask him to pick between Luffy and his former captain, a man he surely held both much respect and much sorrow over, was almost cruel. Which is why it was exactly the right question to ask. Blackbeard must have drafted these questions himself, with how on the nose it was. How wretched…
And Brook was clearly affected by the question, indeed. Going silent for a lengthy almost half minute before speaking softly, “Between Luffy and Yorki, oh… My dear friend… I miss him so very much. I would have given anything, back then, to change the fate he suffered. He was certainly a wonderful captain. However…”
Posture straightening, Brook’s tone rose from its previous quiet into a strong, confident reply, “Luffy is the one who saved me, after so many years alone in the dark. He is the one who has continued to bring light into my life to this day, even in death. If my hand is forced to choose between the two, I must choose him. And I am certain that Yorki will forgive me for this and be glad, even, that I was able to find such a great captain after his passing.”
Vox’s dreadful machine sounded off with a happy chime, the pixelated screen displaying a green circle of approval that was matched by Lucifer’s thumbs up of confirmation. Luffy squirmed about in his seat, rubbing at his head with a bashful smile at the praise. “Awww~ Thanks Brook~ ”
Alastor’s chest panged a bit, commiserating with Brook’s words extensively. From next to him, Chopper sniffled quietly at the answer, to which he passed the deerling a handkerchief to blow his nose into.
And he wasn’t the only one crying, seeing that Charlie had tears budding in her yes as she cupped her hands together to profess, “That answer– was so beautiful…! Way to go!”
The majority of the Straw Hat and spectator sections began cheering at upon Charlie’s start. Velvette just rolled her eyes at it all with a scoff.
“After a question like that, he’s gotta come up with something good to use against her!” Usopp insisted with vigor, even outright calling out, “Don’t let her get away with that lyin’ down Brook! Give as good as she gave ya!”
Looking back at Usopp’s yelling, Brook nodded while sticking out a thumbs up of agreement. Before turning back to face his opponent. Velvette eyed the skeleton in cautious examination.
“Young lady, I must ask… May I see your panties?”
“NO!!!!!”
The lie detector’s happy chime sounded at the same time an old radio popped into existence beside Brook’s skull. It played the most wretched, pain-inflicting screech it was capable of making. So much so that Brook was brought to his knees, screaming as he clutched at his non-existent ears to no avail. Just about everyone flinched back at the cacophony at the same time.
Silence rung out after it came to an abrupt stop, the radio disappearing once more. With an infuriated energy, Adam shot up from his seat to cursed out in Alastor’s direction, “You STILL HAVE HIM CURSED LIKE THAT?!?! My fucking EARS!!!”
“I can see why you two are friends now, Sir…” Lute groaned in resentment as she lifted her head and released her ears, giving the skeleton an evil-eye.
“Considering he’s gone this long without triggering it, it’d been my hope that he’d been successfully trained. Evidently not. It’d take a miracle to cure such complete and utter stupidity!” Forcing his ears to unpin themselves, Alastor’s eye was twitching under the stress of such tremendous exasperation, serrated teeth grit so hard in their frozen grin that he was a twitch away from cutting his lip.
Usopp was defeated, his head folded over all the way to his legs with his hands on his head in dismay. Sanji tsked before furiously pulling out a cigarette to light. “That shitty skeleton…! Even if Miss Velvette is beautiful, he can’t let himself get distracted right now!”
“That’s your takeaway?” Usopp incredulously questioned, still muttering against his legs.
Alastor turned towards Nami when she placed a hand on his shoulder. She gave him a serious look as she stated, “It’s okay, Alastor… Even if those idiots lose this round, Robin and Chopper will win the next one for sure to get you back! Really!”
Chopper took one of his hands into both of his hooves to agree, “That’s right! I promise we’ll win you back, Alastor!”
“You’ve gone straight to consoling him?!”
“Brook just used his question to ask to see his opponent’s underwear, Jinbei!” Nami snapped back at the helmsman like that was all the explanation that was needed, which, yes. Yes it was. Jinbei clearly agreed with that himself based on the pained sigh that was drawn out of him.
In comparison, Robin just gave a considering hum, “If she’d gotten mad enough to strike him, that might have proved successful actually. Provoking violence from your opponent is a legitimate strategy when there’s an explicit rule leading to such a reaction causing a disqualification. Unfortunately while Velvette is quick to anger, she has better control over herself than say Valentino.”
Alastor very much doubted that was the strategy the pervert skeleton had in mind, since he doubted there was even a strategy in mind in the first place. Picking himself up off the ground with weak, shaky arms, Brook stuttered, “S-Sorry… That… just slipped out. Old habits die hard... Just like me. Yoho…”
“Honestly… Pull it together and start taking this seriously!” Zoro chastised from where he stood next to Franky, who nodded in firm agreement.
As Brook walked off the podium with his arms dangling at his sides in defeat, Franky pat him on the shoulder as they passed by each other with the cyborg taking his place. He pointed his thumb at himself before boasting, “That’s right! Just watch and see how it’s done, Brook! Ya gotta be askin’ them the real tough questions.” Alastor felt not a hint of confidence for that statement, considering the pervert’s similar tendency for peculiar behavior…
Across from him at the Vees’ podium now stood Valentino, who glanced over Franky with a thorough, judging eye. After a few seconds, he shrugged, shifting his weight to one side as he brought his pipe up to his mouth for a smoke. He breathed out the red exhale as he questioned, “ ‘K, there’s so many interesting folks on your crew that I’m kinda curious– Who on your crew do you wanna fuck the most?”
There was the sound of record scratch over Vox’s speakers as well as Alastor’s radio. Among the spectators, Vaggie spat out her drink while Angel and Cherri leaned forward in interest. A great portion of the Straw Hats winced, very uninterested in the question. While Velvette just leveled an unimpressed stare, Vox pushed past her to glare at the moth and berate, “What the FUCK Val?! That wasn’t the question you were supposed to ask!”
“Oh come on Voxy, you know how Franky is, and you complained enough to me about it for me to know too. You really think this kinda thing is even gonna work on a guy like THAT? He doesn’t even wear pants! Clearly he feels no shame,” Valentino drawled unapologetically, and while that was a fair point, it was no true defense for the question that he had chosen, “So if I get to ask anything I want, I might as well get the tea!”
“Are you FUCKING SERIOUS?!?!”
“Yeah! Sooo~ who is it, Franky~ I’ve got a guess but I wanna hear your answer first!”
And of course, rather than react with any sort of outrage or disgust or even annoyance, Franky just leaned back a tad as he tapped a metal finger against his chin in thought. “Who on the crew… Well, we don’t really do that kinda thing, but since I gotta answer… That’d be me!”
Valentino’s expression instantly shifted from anticipation to a half-lidded deadpan. “Your hand doesn’t exactly count big guy…”
“That’s not what I meant,” Alastor had just a split second of internal confusion as to what that was supposed to mean before Franky continued, nonchalant and hands resting on his waist, “Back in our world, the development of cloning technology was considered a pinnacle of our science! The smartest scientist in the world Dr. Vegapunk had even created multiple different types of sentient clones. While I’m more a shipwright than a scientist, I want to rival his brilliance! I’d also want to someday develop my own cloning tech to clone myself and increase my work efficiency.”
Pointing a thumb into his chest, Franky ruined what could have been a respectable declaration as to his ambitions by adding, “But along with working with ‘em, I’d also wanna try fucking ‘em! Isn’t that everyone’s first thought when it comes to clonin’ themselves? It’d be interestin’ to see what it’s like! So that’s why I’d wanna fuck myself the most!” and then, almost as an aside, he hummed with an additional thought and tacked on, “Oh, but not includin’ that, it’d be Robin.”
The lie detector chimed in approval without Lucifer giving a response this time, seeing that he was too busy squinting his eyes in a questioning ‘what the fuck’ expression.
And, in total contrast to this, Valentino gave his opponent a long, wide-eyed stare… before he slowly began to clap. “Wow… That was a brilliant answer. I respect it, and need to remember to write up a similar script later…”
“Don’t fucking CLAP FOR HIM!!!” Vox exploded off at the sidelines, before slamming a hand into his screen in a violent facepalm, muttering to himself, “I can’t believe I ever thought it was a good idea to hire that freak, fuckin’ Christ…!”
“And I can’t believe you thought it was a good idea to fuck the guy that’s clappin’ for his answer!” Velvette countered and then further drove in, “And also– I fuckin’ TOLD ya not to hire him just cause his car turns into a robot!”
“But it was the fucking coolest car EVER because of that! Was I just supposed to ignore that?!”
“YES!”
Meanwhile, up in the stands, Angel leaned back to say, “Ya know, while I don’t wanna agree with my old boss like this… I also think that was a good answer. He’s gotta be honest right? No shame in some fantasy clone fuckin’!”
“I know I’d fuck myself in a heartbeat, but it bein’ his first choice is kinda weird. Robin was the obviously correct answer!” Cherri insisted with a hand wave in the woman’s general direction.
“That clone fucking answer is gay as shit is what it is! …But he’s got so much freak in him, ya kinda gotta give it props,” Adam also nodded with his add on at the end. Lute just turned to give her former superior a look of utter disgust.
“A harem of bestest bad boys, Oh My~ It’d be fucking paradise! eHEHEHEHE– ”
“Can any of ya even pretend to act normal for five fuckin’ minutes?!” Husk looked back over Niffty’s deranged laughter and the lot of them with exasperation. Charlie’s scandalized face and Vaggie’s prolonged facepalm spoke to their agreement with the cat. There was a clear divide between the clone fuckers and the normal people.
“Is it too late to get up and leave…” that was the first thing Trafalgar has said throughout this entire farce.
Alastor, on the other hand, was in middle of restraining himself from clawing his eyes out. His claws repeatedly tensed and untensed as his eye twitched even more furiously than last time, grin pulled taunt in a snarl. “Was any of that… even necessary? If he was going to end with Robin, he might as well have just started with that and saved the lot of us from being forced to hear such ABSURDITY!!! I am never going to be able to unhear that!”
Usopp, very hesitantly, suggested, “I mean… We can’t complain too much since he was honest and the answer passed…”
“And that’s supposed to make it BETTER?!”
“That shitty bastard! I won’t let you lay a single finger on Robin!!!” Sanji once again spoke as to the least relevant takeaway from the entire response. Nami meanwhile was rubbing at her temples in enduring exasperation, either at Franky, Sanji, or both. His outrage did bring up the question as to how the woman who’d been named –albeit after the clone fucking…– felt about the circumstance. Glancing back, Alastor saw that Robin showcased no reaction whatsoever, her face just as unemotive and indifferent as usual. She didn’t care in the slightest.
“ ‘K, it’s MY turn now, Valentine!” Franky started in a dramatic pose, before he returned to a more normal stance with his arms crossed over his chest. Tilting his head severely, he heavily eyed the pimp as he asked, “So– What’s the deal with you ‘n’ Vox?”
“What happened to ‘asking them the real tough questions’?!” Zoro shouted back at the sidelines.
Franky glanced over his shoulder to return the shout, “What?! Situationships are hard to explain! Also he’s the one who brought the fucking topic up, ‘n’ I’ve been curious ‘bout it! Like how does that even work when one of ‘em’s so obsessed over someone else?! Actually, Val was kinda like that too whenever Angel was brought up, so what gives?!”
“Hey, that… might actually be a kind of good question, right?”
Alastor shut down Usopp’s budding hope with about as much remorse as he felt for the pervert cyborg at the moment, which was to say none, “Valentino is a shameless adult film producer who has starred in his own films previously. Asking him after one of his sexual escapades is the opposite of a hard question.”
“Oh…”
After taking another smoke of his pipe, Valentino raised an eyebrow as he seemed to give his response some thought. It only took a slight pause before he lowered his pipe with a smirk to speak back towards his team with a forewarning, “Don’t complain too much Voxy. You know I have to actually answer since we can’t cheat out of your machine like we wanted.”
Vox just rolled his eyes and crossed his arms defensively, scoffing, “Yeah yeah– Just don’t lose the round for us!”
Looking back at Franky, Valentino answered through the red smoke of his pipe, “Well, I guess to start with, the sex is good. Since we’re on equal level, he can be feistier than my whores or even how Angel baby was. And a monogamous relationship was never what we were going for. We weren’t even dating, really. He basically threw himself at me after his fight with the Radio Demon over there. He was trying so desperately hard to rebound– It was sad. Kinda pathetic. It would’ve been better to turn him away probably, since it was clear he never really wanted to fuck, he was just trying to fix himself. But well…”
Gesturing the pipe towards Franky, Valentino’s smirk renewed once more. “The desperation was kind of a turn on for me. He was just so easy and eager to please in a way even a whore couldn’t fake! He’d try anything once! And most of the times I’d come onto him he’d be up for it. Anything to rewire his brain out of his fucking misery for a night! I knew I could get whatever fun I wanted out of him as long as I gave him a good time. Course, I also knew I could never expect to become his top priority, but it wasn’t like he was my top priority, and I got what I wanted out of what we had. He’s probably not gonna wanna fuck again after we win the Radio Demon, so that’s a shame, but it wasn’t too hard to keep myself from gettin’ too attached when he’d accidentally drop the V from ‘Val’ a solid third of the time.”
A happy chime of approval rang out from the lie detector. On top of it, Lucifer didn’t say anything again though he also didn’t protest, simply looking over the field with a disconcerted look about him.
“The Hell– that last part was NOT needed!” was Vox’s only objection, though based on how tightly he had his arms crossed, he also wasn’t as indifferent as he was projecting. His glare flickered towards Alastor for a brief second before it quickly averted away with a wince, like he hadn’t meant to give in to impulse and already regretted it even without taking in Alastor’s reaction.
…Is your amount of self-worth so abysmal that you can’t even object to any of the rest of that drivel?
A current of poisonous revilement bled into Alastor’s veins, biting and sharp, at the nonchalance with which Valentino dragged his bedpartner and their relations through the proverbial mud. Even with his current resentment towards Vox for instigating this ongoing strife Alastor was facing… He couldn’t avoid the deeply seeped distaste that arose in the back of his throat when hearing such a wretch disrespect his once-friend to this extent. And there was an additional, irritating staticky pitch of a thought that he also couldn’t avoid, hearing Valentino’s words…
Did he only pursue such a distasteful relation because Alastor had suggested it to him…? While he’d thought having a relationship with someone capable of fulfilling Vox’s needs would be the better outcome for him, this wasn’t what he had in mind for that… Though he supposed this would be the natural result, considering how Vox’s demeanor concerning the matter had been during their fight.
Rather than showing any sense of satisfaction at having his noted curiosity satiated, Franky pushed his sunglasses up to give his opponent a harsh look. He replied, voice low and gruff, “That was super not cool of you, dude.”
Losing some of his cockiness, Valentino’s face twitched into a glower as he sent back his own judging glance, scoffing with attitude, “What’s that look for? You’re the one who chose the question! I had to answer in the most honest way possible, that’s what the game is.”
“But you guys ‘re supposed to be friends! Who talks about their friend like that?! Who thinks about their friend like that? I already knew you were scum, but… It’s like the only way you know how to deal with people is by using ‘em. Between the two of ya, you’re way more desperate and sad, in my eyes.”
“YEAH!!! FUCKIN’ TELL ‘EM FRANKY!” Angel Dust burst out in the bleachers, standing up as he vented what could only be the pent-up frustration and pain he still carried for his former Contractor. Husk steadied the other with a supporting hand on one of Angel’s legs from where he was still seated next to the spider. “WHO’S THE BITCH NOW, HUH VAL?! GOIN’ ‘ROUND BRAGGIN’ ‘BOUT HOW NO ONE ACTUALLY WANTS TA FUCK YA?! WHAT A PATHETIC LOSER! IF I’D KNOWN IT’D PISS YA OFF, I WOULD’A CALLED YA ‘AL’ IN BED TOO JUST TA FUCK WITH YA!!!”
A burst of static screeched on his radio. Alastor’s eyes flashed black before they narrowed with a hiss, “That last part was most certainly not needed!”
Valentino let out a bestial growl, lunging towards the spider in time with both Vox and Velvette rushing forward to hold their fellow Vee back by the arms. “Fuckin’– Get your hands off me! I need’a remind that WHORE who he still belongs to– !”
“NO! You are NOT disqualifying us over fucking Angel Dust of all reasons! Calm the fuck down!” Vox shout back with instance, groaning as Valentino struggled in his hold. It went on a beat longer before Vox finally resorted to withdrawing his cables and cords to wrap around and restrain Valentino. He dragged the manchild off the podium and back to the sidelines, and after a moment longer for the anger to pass, released Valentino for him to stand next to an utterly put out Velvette. The Moth Man just huffed, muttering surely vile and uncomplimentary insults about the offending spider and cyborg under his breath as he crossed all four of his arms over his chest.
“Sooo, Al… What exactly is up with you and, uh, Vox– ”
“Why darling Usopp, if I’d known you were feeling suicidal today, I would’ve provided the exorcists a greater opportunity to put you out of your misery earlier today during the Extermination! You should have told me sooner, truly.”
Chopper rapidly scooted away from where he was seated directly beside Alastor, putting more distance between them to flee in fright. Wincing back, Usopp ducked behind Jinbei’s large frame, who observed the both of them with only slight exasperation, to hide himself from Alastor’s surely unpleasant expression while stammering, “S-Sorry! It’s just– I mean even you gotta admit at this point there’s something weird going on!”
“I don’t have to admit to a single Sun Goddamn thing since I’m not one of the people participating in the truth-telling game!” Alastor snarked in refusal. Though internally he recognized there wasn’t a high likelihood of going through this whole farce of a Davy Back without the details of Vox’s desire for Alastor being brought to light, he certainly wasn’t going to be the one explaining any of it.
Opposing each other on the podiums was now Zoro and Vox, with Zoro leveling the other with a glare while Vox regained some ground with his annoying smirk once more.
Alastor tried to settle himself as the tension of the prior round was replaced by the new. While he certainly ranked Zoro among the most idiotic of the crew, in this sort of circumstance, he at least seemed like he’d take this more seriously than either of his teammates, so there was that. Though he likely still would not fare as well as many others in the crew that could have taken his place. Even if they’d switched the team order that would have been much preferred for them, actually. While Chopper was not known for his guile, both himself and Robin would surely have had a good showing in this sort of mind game. But no use crying over current impossibilities…
Vox noticeably didn’t need to check any notes the same way Velvette had as he leaned towards the mic with a raised eyebrow to ask his question, “Roronoa Zoro, the former Pirate Hunter and now considered one of the “Wings” of Straw Hat Luffy… Apparently among the pirate world, one of the things you “Wings” are famously known for is your undying rivalry. But the audience and I are dying to know– What are the attributes you most like about your comrade, Black Leg Sanji?”
“Huh?! There’s not a single thing I like about that guy!”
The lie detector blared in distressed alarm, the pixelated screen displaying a red X for the first time in the match. Alastor felt his gut viscerally drop at the sound, his jaw dropping with it.
Still monitoring the match and machine, Lucifer slapped a hand into his face in an extreme facepalm at the instantaneous horrid, obvious lie.
There was a short moment of silence and shock. Zoro himself was shocked, even. He quickly backtracked, “Wait– That– That wasn’t my actual answer– ”
“Well, yes, seeing that you lied. But it was still an answer! You can’t undo it!” Vox was only too happy to cut in, the pinnacle of smug joy. Leaning forward onto the top of the podium, his shit-eating grin took up more than half his screen now with how large it was.
“I literally wasn’t thinking yet, I’ll answer for real! I was just– It was a damn reflex– ”
“And where, exactly, is ‘lied on reflex’ listed in ‘the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth’? You fucking LOST! Fair and square! HAHAHAHA~ ”
“Nothing about this is FAIR!!!”
While the shock still lingered among the crowd and Straw Hats, Sanji pulled himself up as much as he could with his legs casted up to yell, “WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT ZORO?! YOU CAN’T SAY ANYTHING GOOD ABOUT ME EVEN WITH OUR NAKAMA ON THE LINE?!”
Zoro instantly turned around to snap back, “IT WASN’T ON PURPOSE DAMMIT! YOU WOULD’VE DONE THE SAME THING!”
“I’M NOT THE ONE PLAYING THE GAME YOU SHITTY IDIOT! YOU BETTER COME UP WITH A DAMN GOOD QUESTION OR THE ROUND’S OVER FOR US!”
“WHAT THE HECK ZORO?!?!” Luffy exclaimed with his hands on the sides of his head. It was the first major reaction he’d shown since Brook’s answer, having just been blankly watching throughout Valentino and Franky’s blather. Jinbei tsked with heavy disapproval.
“That IDIOT…” Nami groaned into her hands, almost grieving over the matter, “Of course they would give him a question about Sanji– they’re so stupid about each other, it’s hopeless!”
Usopp tried deflecting, “It– It’s not over yet! They can still tie if he gives Vox a good question and the game can keep going!”
Alastor felt Chopper scoot over next to him again, pressing against his side to take one of his hands in a show of comfort. He didn’t look down at the deerling, but he was sure the other had a disgustingly doe-eyed look of sympathy at the moment. Closing his eyes to pinch at the bridge of his nose, Alastor felt the sutures begin to show on his face with how much they pulled at his mouth to keep its pained smile.
He sighed in a mutter, “Even if they were to finally come up with a passible question– I don’t think there’s a question in all the worlds that Vox wouldn’t answer right now with how close he is to getting what he wants…” With how close Vox is to getting him, he doesn’t say, despite it being obvious.
When he heard Adam whisper in a loud hush “oh damn it’s finally gettin’ good”, it took every ounce of restraint he could muster to keep himself from lashing out at the annoying pest with shadowy retribution. Zoro was now leaning away from the podium to huddle together with Franky and Brook, seeing that the rules only specified not discussing question choice with non-participating crewmates. They spent a good minute or two talking, before they all pulled away and Zoro resumed his place in front of the microphone. He glared at Vox’s still smug face with a considerable amount of edge and frustration.
“What’s everything you think and feel about Alastor?”
Everything is… nebulous. Even discounting their complicated relationship, it was a hard question in this context if only due to the implied amount of length that was required to answer completely. A multitude of points requiring complex explanation provided more opportunity to inadvertently misspeak, slip up, or lie by omission. He himself had to admit this was likely the best question they could have divined for Vox.
But even still…
“Hey, that’s– That’s actually a good one! That’s really good!” Nami began to perk up at the happy surprise. Jinbei resounded with a muted but agreeing hum.
“ …They don’t know this man at all,” was all Alastor had to say. He felt Chopper squeeze his hand and let the young one do as he pleased without comment.
Vox’s eyes had blown out wide with the question. It’d at least done well enough in wiping the stupid grin off his screen. But after the reflexive pause, his eyes narrowed in a serious scowl. Rather than keep his stance leaning against the podium, he took a step back, taking off its microphone to hold directly in front of himself.
“You must think you’re sooo smaaart– ‘Oh, just ask about Alastor. He’s clearly a fucking idiot when it comes to Alastor!’ Well, joke’s on you guys– !” holding his head high, Vox declared into the microphone while waving his hand directionless with his vehemence, “I KNOW I’m an idiot about Alastor! It’s like I lose my entire fucking brain whenever he walks into the same room as me! I can and will throw away every single bit of my pride into the Goddamn garbage disposal for this bastard! So you better get fucking comfortable, cause we are gonna be here a while– ”
“We’re gonna be here for the rest of our damned fucking eternity…” Valentino hissed while dragging his hands down his face in aggravation. Velvette tilted her face up with a commiserating groan and eyeroll.
“Where do I even start with that bastard? I know, how about with everything I fucking hate about him!” Vox began with a furious energy, counting on his fingers as he proceeded, “I hate how he’s an ASSHOLE! But only when he’s an asshole to me. When it’s to anyone else, it’s fucking hilarious. I hate how he acts like such a prissy, pompous bitch sometimes! Like nothing is ever good enough for him! But then when I do do something he likes, it’s insanely rewarding cause it’s like I won the damn lottery. I hate how he makes me so fucking ANGRY! It’s like he knows just what to do to crawl under my skin and tug at my nerves! Almost all my self-control flies out the damn window! And I hate how I like that he thinks it’s funny! It’s a fucking pain in the ass! And I hate– I hate how even when he treats me like a fucking laughingstock, like I’m just dirt he scraped off the bottom of his shoes– I’m still so absolutely IN LOVE WITH HIM!!!”
He didn’t even make it more than a paragraph before bringing that up… Alastor sighed into his hand, very much not making eye contact with anyone around him. Which was difficult, seeing that everyone was staring at him now.
Even in his shamelessness, Vox himself wasn’t completely unaffected either. The entirety of his screen was lit up bright red like the pigment of his eyes. Just the same however, he had no plans to stop his impending verbal train wreck. Though he did pause just long enough to open his big mouth, close it in thought, before opening it again to warn seriously, “Alastor, block out everything I’m about to say for, like, the next five minutes.”
“Was already planning on that…” Death would be kinder, truly…
“Great. So– I hate how much I love this bastard! He’s just– Everything! Handsome, cool, hot, cute, sexy, beautiful, gorgeous, radiant– I don’t know how it’s possible, but he’s got it all! There isn’t a single part of him that I don’t feel an irrational level of desire for! Like– His ears! And his tiny antlers! They’re so fucking CUTE! I wanna pet them so much! Just– the cuteness aggression is unreal! And his fucking face– is so handsome and kissable! I could probably just hold it in my hands and stare at him all day and it’d be the best day ever– ”
For a while, Vox rambling on and on. Alastor then carefully stood up from his seat in the Straw Hat stands. Anyone in his immediate vicinity fled to give him a wide berth as he made his way down in at a leisured pace. When he walked out onto the field, path heading directly towards the podium, Franky and Brook both notably side-stepped out of his way after a single glance at his face.
“ –and his hands, they’re so slender but still so strong! One time when I saw him rip a man in half using his hands alone– I was so turned on it was crazy! I even started thinking that it’d be hot if he ripped me apart with them! And yeah– not safe or sane, but it’d be so fucking consensual I’m not even joking– ”
Once Alastor reached the podium, Zoro was already wincing even before he reached up to claw a hand into the man’s broad shoulder. Jerking him down harshly, Alastor very calmly stated, “I’m going to kill you after this.”
“ –I saw his feet once and– the HOOVES! Are TOO CUTE! I don’t even have a foot kink I swear it’s just him! And his hooves– ”
“ …Understandable,” the swordsman doesn’t even try to argue against him. He couldn’t even look Alastor in the eyes. Alastor’s reasoning and justification was clearly self-evident.
“ –The way his waist is just– THERE! Tempting me to wrap my hands around them! He’d probably cut them off and I’d lose them entirely, but it’d be worth it, I just know it would– ”
Alastor continued, still very much too calm, “It was bad enough that you lost because of your stupid brainless three heads, but now I must endure this public humiliation and torture as well? When I’m through with you, you will be begging on your hands and knees for me to end your suffering– ”
“ –So yeah, that’s all the ways Alastor is unfairly hot and attractive. That being said, while I’ve definitely spent way too much of my time thinking about how hot he is, none of that is actually that important in terms of why I love him. If anything, I only feel so strongly about him in– uh, physical attraction because of how much I love him.”
The change in cadence inadvertently caught Alastor’s attention. It’s been five minutes almost to the second, and the fact that Vox knew exactly how long he’d take for THAT portion was another concern entirely, however– While he’d always known of Vox’s infatuation, he’d never given much thought as to what aspects of himself Vox somehow interpreted as being attractive.
Obviously the picture-box was attracted to him physically –hence the prior five minutes– as to be expected. But Alastor had always assumed that, even considering how highly Vox regarded his power and achievements, the physical attraction must’ve been doing the heavy lifting concerning Vox’s feelings seeing that his personality was not exactly one of a romance novel’s lead, to say the least. A horror novel’s conniving murderer would be more in line. To hear that it was in fact the opposite way around was somewhat befuddling. Therefore, a fully involuntary and borderline morbid interest in what Vox had to say drifted into his mind, very much similar to a pesky bug buzzing about beside his ear.
“Alastor is an asshole– just like I said earlier, but when he’s not being an asshole, he’s… nice…” Vox enunciated the word slowly, like it wasn’t quite what he was looking for. His loud vehemency dimmed down as a particular sort of pensiveness fell over his expression. He was quick to amend, “I love how he’s a lot more thoughtful than he lets on. He is– he was, the kindest person I know. I still remember the first time the anniversary of my death came around. I was a sappy bum about it, and even though he laughed at me to get over it, he told me that I should think of the end of my life as the first chapter of my afterlife. He brought me a present the next day too, like a happy death day joke, but I could tell he wanted to cheer me up, and it meant a lot to me. He got me a present every year after that for a while, too, and they’re still the best presents I’ve ever been given.”
Come to think of it, he did do something along those lines, yes. He hadn’t exactly been planning on making it a reoccurring event, but Vox had been so radiantly happy with his gift. It hadn’t been that much either, just a bottle of nice rye, in the scale of how those spirits went it’d been mid-shelf at best. It had half been a present meant for himself, even, since he’d known Vox would prefer to drink it in his company. But even still, Vox had truly treasured and valued that gift, and so Alastor had just ended up buying the same rye for the man using the date as an excuse in the years following.
He’d stopped around the point when he could no longer turn a completely blind eye to the growing intensity of Vox’s feelings for him. Thinking that the gesture may be interpreted as a sign of his own interest, he wanted to prevent any sort of misunderstanding in that regard and not unintentionally lead the other on.
“I love how smart he is– no, he’s even more than that– he’s brilliant. It felt like he knew just what to do for just about any problem I had, and I knew I could always come to him if I needed advice. He’s knowledgeable, skillful, strategic, and wise. It’s no wonder how he made so much of a name for himself as an Overlord, you need more than just strength to get you as far as he’s gone. It– It really made me feel stupid sometimes, though. Comparing myself to him. Like I was just faking any kind of intelligence I had, since if I was as smart as him, I should have it all more figured out like he did...” Vox paused for a moment then, looking down at the ground in thought.
“I loved how fun it’d been, to be with him. You’d think a guy like him would be a stickler, and when he needs to be he is, but when he can kickback he knows how to have a good time. I love how he loves food. He only likes the best whether he’s eating out or he’s the one making the meal. He’s such a great cook too– He’s cooked dinner for us a couple of times and I’d take his food over Michelin star steak any day. And he’d always get so happy whenever eating something he likes. I love it when he smiles like that, and the way the color of his eyes would shine and his ears would flick and perk up. I love how he loves music, and the way he liked to play the piano or violin or sing when we drank together. His voice– I love his voice, it’s the most beautiful I’ve ever heard. I love listening to him whenever he sings, or even just when he talks about something he likes, or the way it sounds over the radio, or when he laughs– I love his laugh so much, it’s why I could never stay mad at him even when he was annoying the shit out of me. I love how he loves to dance– He’s the one who taught me how to really dance. I was never any good at it before that. And since we– stopped being friends, I haven’t danced since, because he’s the only one I’d ever want to dance with anyway. It just wouldn’t be the same without him there…”
He remembered that too, teaching Vox how to dance. It’d been quite a hilarious experience. Vox had gotten so testy whenever he did the slightest thing wrong or made any missteps, it’d been amusing to see the man continuously get so mad at himself, and the angrier he’d gotten, the worse he’d do. A horrible and entertaining cycle to behold.
Of course, he didn’t stay at such a mediocre level for long. Not with Alastor acting as his teacher, and he himself could never stand to have a dance partner too far beneath his level on the semi-regular. After he’d had enough practice, Vox became quite skilled at dancing. To the point where Alastor would prefer to dance with him over may others, simply because he could expect to have a pleasant time. Vox had been taught to dance exactly the way Alastor most preferred, after all. It was hard to find a partner more suitable than that.
“ …I was a nobody, when I first fell down here. It was– a bit of a shock. To go from what I had been in life to being not much of anything in death. I realized how little I mattered in the grand scale of things. And even though I didn’t matter, even though I was a nobody, Alastor helped me get on my feet. I think it was just a whim for him. It probably didn’t mean much of anything at all in his eyes, but it meant everything to me. To know that– there was this wonderful, extraordinary person that would be with me just cause he wanted to. He was everything, to me…”
“I love how he– he carries himself with such pride, with such dignity– Even when he’s in the cesspool of Hell, it’s as though all that filth is far beneath him. It couldn’t even touch him with how high he held his head. And of course he would be proud, of course he would act above it all, when he’s such a powerful Overlord who could get away with doing whatever he wanted. Whenever he was just doing whatever, whenever he was just following a random whim he’d felt like doing– he carried himself so freely. I wanted to be like that. I wanted to be strong enough to be like that, instead of being a person that had to constantly rely on him and his whims…” again, Vox’s voice trailed off at the end as a remarkably clear sense of nostalgia mixed into his words.
“I– I wanted to be an Overlord, like him. To be strong like him. To not be weak, to not be a burden to him. I thought– I thought if I just gained enough wealth, enough fame, enough power, I would become a person that’s free to be like him. That I would become someone who was important enough to be important to him... But that’s not what he cared about at all. And I still– I don’t– ”
As his voice began to break down, Vox stared straight at Alastor, his gaze still just as beseeching and pained as it had been that day Alastor forced everything to fall apart. And he didn’t have it in himself to look away. “I still don’t understand it! I– I thought we were friends, but at the same time, I was never really sure! It never felt like you were being honest with me! I could never tell what you were thinking, and you would never say it. I could never tell if, whenever you did act kind towards me or spent time with me, it was because you actually cared about me, or if that’s just what you felt like doing. It– It didn’t feel like you actually respected me, sometimes, like it could just be that I was some pet project you spent your free time on. So– So I thought I just needed to become a person you can respect! That– yeah, you would feel like I was beneath you, because I was, so I just needed to raise myself to your level! I needed to become your equal! That’s what becoming an Overlord and starting the Vees was about! It was about earning your respect! It was never– about earning your love…”
“I love you! I’m in love with you, dammit, but I’ve never needed you to love me back!” Vox spoke the words like a man shouting something he’d needed to say for years on end, the fingers of his free hand curling inward in his insistence, “I could see that you didn’t love me, and I was okay with that! My love for you, my respect for you, had never been built on that sort of thing! I valued our friendship more than anything! It– would’ve been nice if you’d felt like that, of course I would’ve been happy, but I was happy without it too! Or– I was happy being friends, but I just needed to feel like we were actually friends. That there wasn’t this unseeable distance between us. That’s all I ever wanted! For us to be real friends! For you to be… as happy with me as I was with y-you… ”
“I tried to tell you and– you didn’t believe me! You wouldn’t listen! I had already accepted being in love with you while you didn’t feel the same! I would’ve never even brought it up! YOU were the one who brought it up because YOU were the one who had a problem with it! You HATED that I loved you, didn’t you?! Which– fine, hate it! It’s my own fucking fault for loving you when you don’t want it! But– you kept talking like I was the one drawing that line! You kept just TELLING me what you thought I wanted without listening to me tell you what I actually want! And when I was trying to figure out how to say what I wanted, you fucking cut me off and brought up Val and laughed at me, and I was being stupid and getting distracted and upset and not saying what I actually needed to until I straight up hypno-eyed you– And even then, I couldn’t say it in a way you understood! I was focused on the wrong fucking thing because what you were saying h-hurt so fucking much– What I needed to do was reinforce what I’d said earlier in the talk about how I really was okay with you not feeling the same, to explain that I didn’t feel like there was a real mutual respect between us and that I was doubting our friendship, and instead, I fucking lost it and was just trying to make you to understand! To feel like we were close, that there wasn’t that distance between us, and it wasn’t all just in my head, and– that came out as me kissing you! Okay?! I wasn’t thinking! And I’m sorry I did that! I really, REALLY am! Because I know that I hurt you, and I didn’t mean to!”
It was only upon his hoarse apology, purged deep from the gut like a rot that had festered inside the body for much too long, that Vox’s eyes began to glow and waver from tears brimming in them. But even still, he held them back desperately, trying to shield whatever vulnerable part of himself that he could under a circumstance that required he lay all his weakness out on display.
“B-But it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, right? Cause the worst part is– is that I was right, wasn’t I?! I was right to think that we weren’t friends! That you didn’t see me as a friend the same way I did you! That you didn’t respect me the way I did you! Because you– you really do care about your friends, Al– You would never have said the kind of things you did if you respected me as friend! You wouldn’t have laughed about breaking my heart! You wouldn’t have tried to kill me! Hurting me didn’t mean a thing to you, because I didn’t mean anything to you! Our friendship didn’t mean anything to you! You– really were just following your whims and finding ‘entertainment’ in me, and I’d just deluded myself into thinking it meant more than that! I was just STUPID for thinking that I could ever be someone you would care about!”
Vox grit his teeth hard, squeezing his eye shut in an expression of acute pain. Before his brows furrowed and his pain began to shift over to rage, as it so often did. He clawed at his chest with his hand not holding the microphone as he howled, “You’re the one who brought light into my life, and now it’s GONE! You changed my life so much, changed me so much, just to throw me away!!! And I’ve never gotten over it! I never will get over it! You destroyed any sense of self-confidence I had! I’ve just been faking it this entire time ever since! But I still miss you more than anything! And I’ve– been so ANGRY, for so many years! I’ve been so MISERABLE! I have all this success and money and a company leading the market share and NONE OF IT MATTERS!!! I’m an Overlord and it doesn’t matter! Nothing has mattered since you’ve been gone! And it’s never going to matter as long as you stay gone! But you’re never coming back! Because there’s nothing for you to come back to anyway! None of it has ever mattered anyway!”
“But even though I know this– even though I know there’s nothing I can do, no way I can change myself to become a person you would want to be with– I still want what you have with these people so fucking badly!!! It’s literally everything I ever wanted! And even now with this fucking Davy Back Fight, I know I’m never going to get what I want! I could make you be a Vee for the rest of your afterlife and you would never be happy with that! You would never be happy with me, so– ”
Forcing his eyes open with a deep grimace, Vox straightened his posture from its previous inwardly crouched position. When he glared right at Alastor, there were still tears brimming amidst their burning red vision.
“So I decided– If we can’t be happy together, we’ll be miserable together! Because if I’m gonna be miserable either way then it might as well be with you! Misery loves company! I’m a selfish, petty bitch! I HATE that you get to move on with your life and be happy while I’ve been stuck in the same place for seven fucking years! If I’m gonna be stuck in this misery, I’m dragging you down with me into it!” and with one last breath, he concluded, “ –And that’s basically Everything! YOU LOSE!!!”
The lie detector let out a happy chime of approval, passing everything that been said as the truth at the same time Vox threw his microphone carelessly down onto the sand. A distorted rustle of static feedback pitched over the speakers.
With that same glare still in place, he marched forward straight towards Alastor, and shot a hand out to grab his wrist. He didn’t look at Alastor any further when he turned his back to begin marching towards the Vees’ side of the field, forcibly pulling Alastor along with him.
At first, Alastor tried to pull back, only for his body to freeze as an impulse ran through him. Eyes jolting down to where Vox’s hand clasped the wrist of his right hand, they widened at the sight of a ring materializing on his finger as well as Vox’s. It was a ring showcasing the Vees’ brand logo, replacing the ring of the Straw Hat jolly roger that was the symbol of his and Luffy’s Soul Contract.
Vox owned his Soul Contract, now. Being the ‘captain’ of the ‘crew’ who’d won him.
“ALASTOR– !”
In the middle of stumbling forward, Alastor managed to glance back at the stricken look on Luffy’s face as well as the rest of the crew’s, before Vox’s incessant pulling forced his focus back onto walking. The man practically fast walked them all the way across the field, even passing the engagingly smug faces of his fellow Vees to head all the way to their stage. Velvette stepped up as they passed to announce to the Straw Hats and audience at large, “As you can see– The Vees win the first game! Read it ‘n’ weep, loves! We’ll have a short break before the next game! I suggest that your players change into somethin’ they wouldn’t mind gettin’ wet in the meantime– ”
Vox seemingly paid no mind to what she was saying. They passed right by Blackbeard and his satisfied, amused laughter without acknowledging the pirate to brush past the curtain and into backstage.
It was dark, being enclosed from all sides and not built with proper lighting in mind. The brightest source of light around was Vox’s screen. With the shock beginning to fade, that familiar rage of his was beginning to stir. Alastor’s vacant grin twitched, trying to pull into a grimace. He was about to hiss about how it wasn’t like his old pal to hide away the prize he’d won that he surely wished to show off, only for the words to catch in his throat when a loud sob burst out of Vox.
The back of Vox’s television head was still facing him as the man broke down crying, the tears he’d been holding back finally bursting like a dam now that he’d secluded himself. His shoulders and the hand still gripping Alastor’s wrist shook under the intensity of his sobbing. The arm of his free hand came up to violently rub at his screen, but it surely did no good, as the sobbing continued to persist.
Seeing how the other kept his face purposefully turned away, it was clear that Vox didn’t want Alastor to see him cry, either. But at the same time, he could not bear to let go of his hold on him. Thus, he was left like so, crying in his weakness in front of Alastor in the dark, and yet crying alone all the same.
“ …What’s even the point of winning, if not even you are happy with this?”
“I-I already told you– !” Vox gasped in between his hiccupping cry, shoulders hunching as he still won’t look back at Alastor, “I– Wouldn’t be ha-happy anyway– ! S-So it doesn’t matter a-anyway– !”
The silence after his response was filled by the choked sounds of Vox trying to restrain his sobs.
The void in Alastor grew cold. Dark and empty and aching until, almost absentmindedly, he found himself asking, “ …You truly meant it, when you said… that I don’t need to feel the same…?”
“Y-You fucking– YES!” that finally prompted Vox to whirl his head around, glaring at Alastor through his streaming tears, “Was the fucking lie detector not enough for you to believe me?! Go out and ask the damn King then, since he’s the one who insisted on having that job! I meant it then, and I mean it now! Why you’re still on that fucking point when you don’t even CARE is– Just get on with laughing at me for being a pathetic crying mess like you did when you tried killing me! L-Like I know you want– !”
Abruptly, Vox cut himself off. His glare slowly shifted into a considering stare that distracted him from his tears, the crying managing to subside on its own as he examined Alastor’s face. Just as slowly, he questioned, “ …What’s …that look for– ?”
From beyond the curtain, Valentino’s irritating voice interrupted, “Voxyyyy~ Are you gonna be done with your cry sesh soon? We’ve gotta get ready for the next game too you know!”
“F-Fucking– SHUT UP!!! Can’t a guy have five damn minutes– ! I’m the only one who had to fucking embarrass the crap outta myself for that game, the least they can do is wait…!” Vox whipped back between his returning shout and grumbling to himself, then went back to scrubbing his arm against his screen to wipe away the tears. Even now, he refused to let go of Alastor’s wrist.
Alastor continued to stare vacantly at him with whatever expression had caught Vox’s attention, unknowing of what exactly the man had seen through his still stitched in place, tight smile. His mind drifted back to his fight with Vox. As well as the conversation he’d had with Luffy after the Overlord meeting…
“I– I could already tell that– you don’t feel the same way about me, Alastor, but– that– That’s okay! I’ve accepted that. I’m not– trying to force a relationship with you or anything when I know that’s not what you want! That’s not what I want. That’s not what this is about. I just– I want – ”
“What you want is to have me. And if things keep going as they have, that won’t change. Especially if I agree to join this little group of yours… I can’t give you what you want, Vox. Just accept the reality of the situation. You’ll be just fine without me. After all, Valentino is already lying in wait to become your ‘business partner’ that you can fuck on the side. Exactly what you’re looking for! Ha! ”
“Sorry. I can beat ‘em up as many times as we need to, but I won’t be able to change his mind about how to be friends with you. He has to do that by himself.”
“I understand you are quite the innocent soul, dear captain, but what that malfunctioning picture-box wants is not to be ‘friends’ with me. What he actually wants is something he should know perfectly well I will never give him.”
“But he does. He just doesn’t know the right way to do it.”
Of course Luffy was right. Luffy is always right, when it comes to people. Compared to Alastor, who while insightful enough into the human mind to know how to manipulate it, often failed to truly understand the complexities of the heart. He only pretends that he understands so as to make up the difference. He should have realized from that alone that, should there be a discrepancy between his own opinion and the captain’s, the safest assumption is to bet on Luffy being the one in the right.
He should be furious right now. Boiling with wrath at how everything important to him, including his very freedom itself, was in the midst of being stolen straight from his grasp. And yet, when watching the line of Vox’s mouth tremble as he forcibly rubbed at his eyes and dried his tears… there was only an empty, echoing feeling of grief.
Grief and fear for what had the potential to be more than just a momentary separation from his friends, but also… grief for the friendship that he had once cherished, with Vox. Grief for this friendship that he’d torn apart and thrown away, due to his own weakheartedness. And for the irrevocable damage that had torn into his friend in turn.
He’s always known that for the most important things, he would fail to speak them aloud. And yet, for him to fail to such an extent that Vox hadn’t even known if they were truly friends or not… And it was more than that, wasn’t it? Alastor had been pulling away from him without explanation, precisely because he’d been wary of Vox’s love. How else was Vox supposed to interpret everything, after Alastor had very purposefully disrespected him and his feelings? The most logical assumption to make was that Alastor hadn’t cared for nor respected him from the very start. And hadn’t that been the point? To convince Vox, to convince everyone, that he didn’t care? Such that he would have no weakness…
– So afraid was he of the future where Vox left him due to the misery of his unrequited love, he didn’t consider for even a moment trying for the possible future where Vox stayed. Of hoping that Vox could be happy with just him… And the pain he had run away from he instead inflicted on his friend, such that he himself would be spared–
Throughout his spiraling thoughts, Vox had been calming himself down and cleaning up. Until Alastor’s train of thought was brought to a halt by the sound of Vox taking in a deep, strained breath. He kept his eyes closed until after the exhale finished. Opening them, his even gaze flit from Alastor’s face down to where’s he’d kept hold of Alastor’s wrist, eyeing the bandages covering the burns of his hand. He must see the rings there, his eyes flashing wide in shock at the sight of them. He must know what they mean. But after his gaze fell half-lidded in thought, Vox didn’t react or make mention of them as he turned away once more to grasp hold of the curtain separating them from the outside world.
“Alright. It’s fine. This is fine. Perfect, even. It’s showtime… Get comfortable, Alastor, cause you’re going to be watching from our side of the fence this time… Welcome to the Vees.”
With that said, Vox pulled the side of the curtain open with a flourish, then pulled Alastor back out into the now blinding light.
Notes:
(Those of you who fully agreed with Alastor's belief that Vox wouldn't accept just staying friends may find it interesting to reread the flashback scene in chapter 20, + the Alastor and Vox scene in chapter 18 if you're up for it but the most significant change in interpretation would be in the flashback)
Chapter 25: Wheel of Fortune, Reversed
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
A chair was brought out onto the Vees’ stage for Alastor to sit in, noticeably set a good number of feet apart from the large chair Blackbeard had seated himself in. He recognized the high back, dark wood, and red cushion of it immediately. This had been the chair he used to always sit in whenever he’d gone to Vox’s place for a drink or meal, back before the other had become an Overlord and built his tower when he’d had a humbler abode. When Vox guided him over to it by the wrist, he was almost tempted to remain standing out of spite, but ultimately decided there was no real meaning to such a pointless protest and took the seat. While it was just as comfortable as he remembered it to be, Alastor’s posture remained stiff and strained in the chair.
It was only then that Vox let go of him. Alastor rubbed at his wrist with his other hand in a pointed action. Vox’s grimace deepened into a scowl as he eyed Alastor’s bandaged hands, as well as the Vee ring that Alastor then forcibly unsummoned even while the Contract it represented still remained. Vox glanced back to his face to quietly, but roughly, question, “Why did Straw Hat own your soul?”
The questioned jerked him out of his lingering empathy for the other. Alastor’s already tense grin pulled even sharper while his eyes hardened into a narrow-eyed glare, internally bristling. Vox had connected the dots between their own rings and his and Luffy’s.
“Oh, so you’ve finally accepted that those were NOT, in fact, a symbol of matrimony? At least that’s one positive amongst the rest of this terrible, dreadful, bore of a game!” while Vox’s scowl widened to bare more of his shark-teeth at the insult, Alastor just scoffed as he rolled his eyes to avert his gaze, still answering, though in a hushed tone so as to not be overheard, “I’ll have you know, old pal, that my dear captain won the right to my soul by besting the Mother of Humanity Eve herself in single combat for it. And seeing that I wished to accept his request to join his crew, I let him keep it. I’m most displeased at the prospect of you keeping it.”
At the retort, Vox’s scowl twitched out of its irritation and back into a pensive grimace. He didn’t comment on the matter of the Soul Contract as he persisted in his questioning, “The Mother of Humanity…? Then how did she get your soul? When did that even happen?”
“Why, it happened seven years ago. I’m sure you can guess when. My soul transferring into her ownership is the very reason why you are still alive to this day to make a nuisance of yourself, seeing that my being summoned to her person was why I’d left our battle so abruptly unfinished,” Vox’s eyes flash wide at the explanation. Alastor’s tone deepened into something more serious as his mood began to drop out of its pettiness, in remembrance of that time, “I’ve always been under the ownership of another since I’ve been in Hell, Vox. For all the ‘mysterious tales’ behind my immediate rise to power, the truth is that even I made my own deal and compromise for that power. I’ve never been this special, naturally powerful existence that I projected myself to be. Before Eve it was the Queen, with my service being to help her control the Overlord population. Even if I wanted to accept your prior invitation for your Vees, I would not have been able to. It was a lost cause from the very start.”
Vox stared at Alastor with his wide eyes, visually processing what must be startling information for him. He was not given a chance to finish and comment on the matter, however, as their relative privacy was soon disturbed.
Valentino and Velvette sauntered over to them, now dressed in scantily clad beachwear and stylish coverups. Velvette glanced over Alastor’s person in a curious look but kept any comments she may have been thinking to herself. On the other hand, standing in front of where Alastor was seated in the chair and where Vox was standing at the side of one armrest, Valentino leaned down towards Vox with a teasing grin as he pinched one side of his screen as one would another’s cheeks. “Come on Voxy, you need to get ready too! We’re waitin’ on ya!”
Vox was quick to regain his scowl and slap the hand away, snapping back, “I get it already, yeah! But it doesn’t matter cause I’M the one running the schedule for this Davy Back anyway! We start when I damn well say we start!”
Valentino’s teasing dimmed into his own annoyance at the response. “Boo. You’re no fun. Why’re still so pouty, Voxy? I mean– yeah, you kinda had to confess your touchy-feely guts in front of everyone, but I would’ve thought finally getting your hands on the Radio Demon would make you feel better! Just think of how much fun you’ll get to have once we win the whole shebang and you get to keep him!”
The tension hidden inside Alastor’s chest tightened painfully at the comment. Vox just leveled his fellow Vee with an extremely unimpressed, borderline hateful look. “Don’t say that kind of shit! Did you listen to even a single damn thing I said during that ‘touchy-feely guts confession’?”
At that, Velvette side-eyed Vox with her own unimpressed look. Valentino gained a look of extreme confusion, like he failed to understand why such a concept would even come to mind. “Wha…? Of course I didn’t listen. You know we never bother paying attention to what you’re saying when ya talk about your thing for Alastor! I just blocked it all out like usual while playing games on my phone.”
“Same here,” Velvette added with a tad more sass for good measure.
“Of fuckin’ course you didn’t– Cause that’s not what the point of this is! If Alastor is a Vee, we’re fucking treating him like one!”
It took Valentino a couple of seconds to process that. Straightening back up, the hand holding his pipe rose to his face out of habit even as he didn’t bring it to his lips, while his other hands dropped to rest on his hips. He stared a Vox from behind his heart-shaped sunglasses for a solid moment, before almost hesitantly questioning, “ …You can’t be serious? All this effort and you’re just– gonna have him hang around? You’re not even gonna fuck him?! I know he’s technically a Vee Vox, but this really isn’t the same as if he’d joined willingly. Aren’t you supposed to be his ‘captain’ now? You can just make him do whatever you want– ”
“Shut the fuck up! What if this IS what I want, huh?! Why do YOU get to judge how I should want to deal with him?!”
“Oh come on– You can’t say you don’t want more. Last Extermination you literally got hard watching him lose in a fight against– ”
“DON’T– Don’t bring that up…!” Vox hissed in a low-lying panic. He glanced Alastor’s way only to see the half-lidded stare of pure judgement he was exuding, and looked away in a wince. Still, he continued to assert his point, “Look, I know– I sometimes get weird about him– ”
“Always. And very weird.”
“Extremely weird.”
“ –Holy shit shut the Hell up and LET ME FINISH!” he yelled at both the offending Vees, before restarting with a huff, “As I was saying! That was then, and this is now! When we win and Alastor is a Vee for good, he’s a Vee! End of story! I will die on this hill! We are NOT treating him like he’s one of our Contracted or an employee!”
Still trying to rationalize Vox’s thought process in a way more familiar to his tiny insect brain, Valentino drawled, “Sooo… Like Princess locked in the Tower vibes? A pretty bird-deer in an expensive gold cage? Or I guess man-eating shark-deer in a fancy aquarium is more your style– ”
“Bitch he’s literally the ONLY ACTUALLY RESPECTED OVERLORD between the four of us! We’re gonna work with him, as EQUALS, to build our powerbase back up! That was literally part of the plan for why we did this!” Vox emphasized the statement with much knife-hand gesturing. Until he paused in thought, then amended, “Or I guess, that was why you two did this. Since I don’t really give a shit about it as long as he’s one of us. Just– don’t give me shit, Val, when the main thing you want out of this is to stick it to Straw Hat for stealing Angel Dust from you by stealing one of his back. You’re still getting what you want regardless, so don’t complain!”
“ …I mean …even if you wanna roleplay being ‘real business partners’ with the guy, I don’t see why I have to play into that… If you’re not calling dibs, he can replace my Angel in– SHIT– ?!”
Valentino’s words stumbled into a curse when he was suddenly jerked down from his taller height to Vox’s level by two hands clawing into his collar, electricity snapping and sparking under their hold. He choked in the grasp as a screen filled with nothing but two sharp, red spiraling eyes stared into his, and Vox rasped with foreboding electronic distortion, “If you even think about finishing that sentence, the sinners working at the morgue are going to assume you were struck by lightning when your corpse gets carted off to them. Your meat won’t even be good enough for the sharks.”
“Okay now– That’s enough of this fuckery!” Velvette shouted while forcefully pulling the two apart. Though, she didn’t let go of the back of Valentino’s collar until she’d gotten a good slap to the back of his head. Straightening back up, the moth scowled heavily as he rubbed at the hit and glared down at the woman.
“Are ya medically braindead up there Val?! Don’t try testin’ that kinda shit with him when ya know how he is about the bastard! There’s clappin’ for clone fucking stupid, and there’s so stupid you’ll literally kill yourself! I will not save your bloody arse if ya set him off! That shit’s on you!” after going off at the idiot, she turned towards Vox with an incredulous sneer.
“While I’m in on usin’ the guy to recoup our image, you’re not bein’ fully realistic, Vox. Take your brain out of that delulu world ya live in for a sec and face the facts. He does not want to be here!”
“I KNOW that– ”
“Do ya?! He won’t work with us unless you MAKE him! To get what we want outta him, you need to be prepared to strongarm him! None ‘a this bendin’ over our own desk for him as soon as he walks into the place! Cause unlike you two tantrum driven man-babies, I am actually lookin’ out for MY business! If we’re riskin’ our brand on him, riskin’ it on YOUR everlastin’ pinin’ for a man who doesn’t give two shits ‘bout ya, then I want my investment paid!!! I don’t care if ya love him, hate him, fuck him, don’t fuck him, or wait on him like the Goddamned Queen of Hell on your own time– Just make sure you use him when we need’a! Capice?! Now go get ready for the next fuckin’ game!”
And with that last demand, Velvette bullishly took Vox’s arm to begin dragging him away rather than leaving the man to get himself ready, leaving Vox to scowl at her even as he stumbled after her. Crossing all four of his arms with a huff, Valentino followed suit a step behind. In an afterthought, Velvette paused just long enough to glance back at Alastor with a neutral stare to say, “Oh– I might as well say this now though. When we win the next game… it’s welcome to the Vees, love! Don’t fight it too hard, will ya? I don’t mind this idiot treatin’ ya right if you play along nice.”
He watched through a half-lidded gaze as they walked away after that. With that awful trio now absent, Alastor ignored the distraught looks Charlie, Niffty, and a good portion of the Hazbin spectators were giving him to redirect his attention across the field to check on how the Straw Hats were holding up. The first thing he caught sight of was Luffy, staring straight at him with a solid, level gaze. Seeing that Alastor was now looking his way, a confident but firm smile grew onto his face, and he nodded just as firmly, like he was making a promise. Alastor’s own smile was still only being held up by its stitching, but he nodded back.
He was then caught off guard by the sight of Jinbei standing tall in front of the team that’d played the first game, looking absolutely furious in a way that Alastor has never seen of eternally patient man previously. Brook, Franky, and especially Zoro all bowed their heads like a collection of chastised and frustrated children. And now that Alastor was paying attention and the sound of it wasn’t being covered up by the loudness of the Vees, he could hear that Jinbei was yelling loud enough to be heard even from this distance.
“ –to have given such a showing, were any of you even prepared to take this seriously?! Don’t get cocky just because it’s not a fight for our lives and you perceive the enemy to be weaker than us! We are supposed to be the crew of the King of the Pirates! Our captain ordered us to win! To even temporarily lose a crewmate for even one round is a shame we will bear for the rest of our days! Alastor is counting on us! And none of you could spare a single moment to stop and think things through before letting your mouths run?! This is inexcusable!”
“I’m SORRYYYYY– ” Brook warbled as he outright broke down into tears, falling to his knees as he covered his face with his hands, “I– I really didn’t want to let him down! Truly! I’m so sorry!”
Alastor felt a twinge at the sight of Brook’s pain on his behalf. At the reaction, even Jinbei’s indignation seemed to soften with a sigh. Stepping towards the skeleton, he crouched down to sooth a hand down Brook’s back. “Take this regret and remember it well. We will entrust our Nakama to make up for our mistakes. They will not fail. But it is important to take such mistakes and learn from them, for to fail to do so is the greatest failure of all.”
“Right! Leave it to us, Brook! Robin and I will win no matter what!” Chopper declared while waving his hoof above his head next to the mentioned woman. Both him and Robin were now donning their own beachwear in preparation for what would apparently be a water-based game.
“Zehahaha! Straw Hat’s lucky he managed to recruit the First Son of the Sea to handle that kinda work for him. He was one ‘a the Seven Warlords ‘n’ a captain in his own right before that kid charmed him, ya know. With him around, Straw Hat’s free to be the kinda captain he wants to!”
The commentary drew Alastor’s already taunt smile into a light sneer. With narrowing eyes, he glanced over at where Blackbeard still sat on the other half of the stage to see the man grinning at him with crooked teeth. “I suppose you are taking amusement in all of this. Eagerly anticipating your great final match, are you?”
“Course! But don’t think I’m dumb enough to go talkin’ ‘bout it before the fun starts. You’ll find out what’s up just the same as everyone else,” Blackbeard both acknowledged and bypassed the attempt to gather information with a casual drawl, before going back to address Alastor’s first statement, “And it’s nothin’ personal, but a loss for a rival captain ‘s a win for me! I gotta pay Straw Hat back for the way he wrecked me, my crew, ‘n’ my plans in life. This type ‘a play’s par for the course when it comes to pirates.”
“Naturally…” Alastor drawled back, tone leaning just a tad into sarcasm with the way he elongated the syllables. He raised his eyebrows at the other as he continued, “And you’ve taught the Vees a great deal about how to handle these pirates, haven’t you? All that fuss about letting them play their own games for the first two rounds only to hand them all the answers. Or questions, rather. Don’t make me laugh! You’re the type that plays to win even when you aren’t one of the players.”
“Well course, when you’re not one ‘a the players, that’s when it’s the easiest to win!” he carelessly pointed Alastor’s way in emphasis, grin stretching just a bit wider. “I saw a real easy path to victory, so I just let ‘em know what it was! While I gave ‘em questions for all the Straw Hats except the man himself, the plan was always centered ‘round either Roronoa ‘r Blackleg bein’ the target. Give either of ‘em a question ‘bout the other, ‘n’ it’s almost a guaranteed loss for yer side! And there was no chance that both of ‘em would skip out on the Davy Back. Whichever of yer teams got either one ‘r both of ‘em, that was the team the Vees would pick for the first game, and with that the round’s a shoo-in! No reason not to help ‘em out with at least that much when they can win just by settin’ things up right.”
As Blackbeard spoke, Alastor’s mind turned as he thought through the information. He’d been told that this Blackbeard, along with his dangerous set of multiple Devil Fruit abilities, was a crafty, strategic fellow, and this was stark proof as to the extent of that. While he spoke casually on how he’d thought through his plan, to know with such certainty that the best bet was to bet against two of Luffy’s strongest crewmates, to the point that the entire structure of the game had been centered around that single linchpin, implied a boldness most similarly plan-oriented people would shy away from. To know one’s enemy and their weaknesses to such a degree, and know when to strike without hesitation… This enemy of his captain’s was one to keep a wary eye on, certainly.
Still, he didn’t allow any of his own internal wariness to feed into his voice, keeping it level and light as he probed, “You must have been ecstatic to find such an easy alliance to take advantage of. You wanted a Davy Back Fight with the captain because you knew you couldn’t win in a straight fight against him, and what do you know– There just so happened to be some has-been Overlords who would instantly agree to such a convoluted game at the promise of winning one of your competitor’s crewmates! You must’ve been a lucky man in life indeed, Marshall D. Teach.”
It was only at that last tease that Blackbeard’s grin shifted into a slight, annoyed frown. He’d struck a nerve, very good. Blackbeard almost snorted with his retort, “Hardly. Even up above, that Straw Hat was always the one with the luck ‘a the Gods, ‘n’ now he’s one literally. People like me gotta make our own luck by makin’ use of every opportunity that we can, no matter how dirty. I won’t apologize for levelin’ a playin’ field that was against me from the start.”
Then, as though to forcibly take his advantage over the conversation back, Blackbeard’s grin grew right back into that irritating smirk as he verbally prodded Alastor back, “But you’re right ‘bout that other point– It was the easiest thing ever to convince your Vox to play in my game! And those other two weren’t too far behind, what with how much they wanted payback against the Straw Hats. Along with needin’ a team for a Davy Back, I needed a sinner of the other world that the Straw Hats wouldn’t expect to know about how these things work to be the ‘captain’ to declare the challenge, ‘n’ he was a good one at slippin’ in fast-talk to go along with it. Just what I was lookin’ for!”
Alastor made sure to keep his expression carefully unmoved as the large, shadowy hippo leaned back in his seat to ramble, “Those other two may not bother payin’ any mind when he goes off ‘bout ya, but I know better than most that it’s a good idea to pay attention to other people’s dreams. That’s the thing that really centers a person. If ya know their dream, ya know what they’ll fight for, if there’s a reason they’d fight you, ‘n’ if there’s a way you can use ‘em. And really, it was a perfect match! That Vox wants to be yer Nakama more than anythin’. He just didn’t know our word for it. And like I said, it wasn’t a bad deal for ‘em! He’ll get to keep ya for at least a while. How long they manage to last ’ll be up to them though.”
“And may I ask as to what you mean by that, exactly?” he asked with a feint of casual curiosity.
“Well, I didn’t tell ‘em ‘bout this part, but just cause pirates can win a crew usin’ a Davy Back Fight doesn’t mean they can keep it,” Blackbeard laid out with simplicity, and indeed, it was a simple trail of logic to follow, “On the Seas a pirate was bound by their honor to follow their new captain, and down here, it looks like you’re bound by yer soul, but that kinda obligation ain’t the same as a crew that’d give everythin’ for their captain. Even that infamous, powerful crew of the strongest of the strong eventually came to an end because there was too much buttin’ heads. Too many people with too much pride for a single deck to handle. The Vees ‘re already fightin’ ‘bout ya, and I’m assumin’ you’re not gonna make it any easier for ‘em. To top it off, Vox ‘s way too personally invested compared to the others! He’s not gonna hold back ‘r think twice if they try somethin’ with ya that he doesn’t like. You’ll be able to play him easy if ya play yer cards right. Here’s some free advice– I’d say you’ll likely get by just with waitin’ it out for a good couple ‘a years. I’d be surprised if they lasted longer than that! HA!”
“ …Hm. While your kind consideration is noted, I’m afraid I have no interest in waiting that long to return to my crew.” Alastor glanced away with a shrug of projected nonchalance.
“Yeah? That’s too bad. We’ll see how those chumps do in the next round, but I’m playin’ the last round, and I’m playin’ to win. So you’ll just have to make do with what ya get.”
Alastor internally wound tighter with irritation as Blackbeard’s voice dipped down into something darker. He need not respond, however, since the Vees soon walked back onto the field. Even as he was walking to the middle of the field now in swim trunks, a shirt pattered with grinning blue sharks, and a hat that looked like it’d come straight from a yacht club, Vox glanced back towards Alastor to noticeably check him. He then shifted into a squinting suspicious glare at Blackbeard before he looked forward once more to face the Straw Hats. He surely noticed that the two of them had had a discussion with whatever cameras he’d set up for surveillance of the stage and Alastor himself.
The Vees meet where Chopper and Robin stood in the center of the sand, Robin cast in her usual unreadable expression while Chopper glared up in defiance, an expression that would’ve been more effective had he not been such a tiny, adorable creature. Velvette and Valentino were both giving Robin the evil eye, but Vox just gave a sharp, showman smile to the both of them as he took out a mic and gestured a hand up towards the screen hanging above the Vees’ stage. “Now that our regularly scheduled commercial break is over and the Radio Demon has switched crews, it’s time to get into the second game we’ll be playing for this Davy Back Fight! I’m sure everyone is brimming with anticipation– ”
“Holy shit ‘s he just gonna act like he didn’t just confess every single part ‘a his undyin’ love for Alastor in front of all ‘a us– ”
“ –Angel I WILL make a new rule on the spot allowing Val to beat the shit out of you and only you if don’t SHUT THE FUCK UP! Fuckin’ TRY me! See what happens!”
Alastor had to crane his neck to look up at the screen since he was below it. The electronic reel rolled through various options in a blur, until it slowed down to land on one.
“Our second game is The Amazing Sea Race! More self-explanatory than the first game, we’ll be racing by water to this buoy one nautical mile out in the ocean– ” The screen switched to a feed showing a large buoy with a V on top floating on the water at the cue, presumably straight out from the beach in the direction Vox was pointing.
“ –The players will circle around the buoy, and then return to the starting line at the beach to finish the race! The first team to cross the finish with all their players wins the round! The King can watch the finish line all he wants if he feels like judging the round like last time! And it should go without saying, but no violence or help from the audience or crewmates not participating in the round is allowed, with any violations leading to a loss for that crew!” With the snap of his fingers, Vox’s grin tilted crooked as he remarked in the exact tone of a television advertiser, “But wait, that’s not all! For this round, the teams will be granted boats based on their performance in the prior game! As the previous winning crew, the Vees will be using this brand-new VoxTek Deluxe Cruiser, Sleek Gray Edition!”
The oversized boat contraption was carted out from behind the backstage area of the Vees’ area to be gently released into the water once it’d gotten far out enough from the beach, just a ways further down from where the banner indicating the start and finish line had been hung on two poles.
“And as the losing crew, the Straw Hats will be using this brand-new VoxTek Deluxe Cruiser… bathtub toy replica!”
Holding out his hand, Vox leaned down with an annoyingly bright smile to hand the little plastic toy model of his damned boat directly to Chopper. The poor deerling stood in shock, snout agape as the toy boat was dropped into both his hooves.
“We– WE DON’T GET A BOAT?! Wait– we, can just use some of our time to go get Merry? Right– ”
“Oh dear~ It seems you may have a misunderstanding concerning the rules I just laid out! Allow me to clarify for you– ” Vox cut in with a feigned sympathetic smile. Twirling a finger back towards the where the docks sat a distance away, he chimed, “Members of the crew not participating in the round are not allowed! And, from what I’ve been told, both your ships over there ARE considered part of your crew… or is that not the case?”
Alastor’s stomach dropped into a pit as he ground his teeth together in prickling frustration. At the same time, Chopper stammered helplessly, “I– I mean– of course they are– ”
“Then too-bad so-sad, you can’t use ‘em! And since FRANKY isn’t in this round either, he can’t make anything for you!”
“This– is SO NOT FAIR!!!” Charlie burst out, abruptly standing from her seat on the spectator bleachers in protest, waving both her hands at the farce of a competition she was witnessing, “How can you tell them to have a boat race without a boat?! It has to be against some rule somewhere!”
To that, Vox’s previously more faux-affable business smile twisted crooked into a smug smirk as he turned his face towards Charlie. “I AM the rules! They DO have a boat, it’s just a small one! Having penalties and bonuses based on team performance is nothing new in terms of game challenges, Princess. This is more extreme than usual, yeah, but the Vees set the terms and conditions of the challenge! This is nothing you or your father can overrule, seeing that it has nothing to do with going against the decided rules of the game! The Straw Hats just have to overcome a slightly larger hurdle than the Vees this round is all.”
“You call this slightly larger?!?! This is IMPOSSIBLE!” Charlie shouted back. Now seated at the other side of his daughter from where Vaggie was glowering, Lucifer’s face screwed up in clear agreement with her shouting. But at the same time, it seemed that he couldn’t intervene the same way he managed to last round concerning the objective validity of a shady lie detector that could infringe on the Vees own rules.
Shrugging with obvious indifference, Vox just chimed once more, “Technically it’s not impossible. They can still swim it. They just have to swim really really fast if they want to win…”
“There’s– There’s NO WAY! We just learned how to swim! I can’t even tread water without floaties yet!” Chopper grabbed the sides of his head in a panic, fretting over how the odds were overwhelmingly stacked against them.
It wouldn’t be too out of character for Vox to laugh at the deerling’s plight, especially after that admittance as to not being able to swim without a floatation device– so much for whatever sense of budding hope he may have had. Alastor had been expecting Vox to mock him, even.
However, instead, the annoying picture-box’s smirk reverted back to its exaggerated sympathy when he looked away from the audience and back to Chopper. Storing away the microphone, he snapped his fingers, and an aid came scurrying out with a box before scurrying away.
“There there now little buddy, try not to feel too bad alright? I heard you like sweets, so here, have some chocolate.” Vox leaned down to hand over the presumed box of chocolates with a smile.
Blinking in befuddled confusion, Chopper hesitantly reached out to accept the chocolate to stare vacantly at it. Vox then outright pet the other’s head, as one would a dog or toddler. “You have nothing to worry about, because YOU, you adorable little fawn, are going to be the Vees next pick!”
At the same time Alastor’s head dropped into his hands in the despair of understanding, Chopper startled and shrieked, “HUH?! WHY?!?!”
While he still kept his indulgent smile, Vox’s tone shifted a tad into a this should be obvious implication as he laid out, “Well the rest of your crew can jump off a cliff for all I care, but I’m not so cruel that I’d separate Alastor from his kid.”
“This cannot be happening right now…” Alastor straight up groaned in intolerable pain into his hands.
“ …His kid??? Who’s that?”
“You of course!”
“ME?!?!?! SINCE WHEN?!”
“Since NEVER CHOPPER! Don’t let that madman’s ravings confuse you!” Alastor finally had to stand up from his seat to shout out in denial, “Vox, for the last damn time– HE IS NOT MY CHILD!!!”
From the other end of the stage, Blackbeard leaned back while slapping his knee, laughing in an uproar, “ZEHAHAHAHA– I knew it’d be worth it to play along whenever that guy started up ‘bout this! This ‘s a RIOT!” He is going to find a way to kill this wretch, mark his words…!
“Oh– Oh nooo– Not THIS again…! My gut could hardly handle it the first time– !” the previous tension thoroughly destroyed, Lucifer began to dissolve into a fit of giggles amongst the rest of the crowd that was still trying to comprehend the absolute absurdity was being said. The more reactive of the Straw Hats began to shriek with their own bewildered exclamations, and Jinbei quietly parsed, “Is that… what led him being thrown out the window that meeting…? Oh my…”
Similar to the last time they’d had this dreadful conversation, Vox dismissed his objections with concerning ease, “There’s no need to pretend otherwise. It’s true you almost got me to rethink it, but that huge monster transformation the kid showed was all the proof that was needed, and Blackbeard even confirmed it! I mean– come on. You expect me to believe that it’s just a coincidence that the both of you are two completely unrelated giant red monster deer?”
“Yes, because IT IS! And as a matter of fact, you are incorrect in that he is a giant red monster reindeer! He is not a deer like I am!”
“Pff. Like that distinction matters.”
“It does when there is a QUESTION OF PARENTAL RELATION you FUCKING IDIOT!!! Are you still somehow under the impression that I am– ‘INVOLVED’! With– !” he can’t even say it, just violently waving his hand in Luffy’s direction
“Don’t tell me… Noooo that caaan’t be what he thinks…!” Usopp let out a scandalize gasp, hands holding the sides of his face in astonishment.
“I think this guy might actually be legitimately insane…” Nami whispered back to him, though harshly enough to still be heard from a distance.
“Oh– Fucking shit– It’s even better the second time…!” Valentino cackled to himself while Velvette, fed up, was clearly pretending not to be present. Adam was also hollering with laughter, having fallen over in his seat in the stands, along with Cherri next to Angel. The only saving grace was that Luffy, apparently, was thankfully tired of the joke enough to not find it funny anymore, and was instead just squinting in a concerned look at Vox’s oversized head.
And once again, despite the fact that a considerable number of people were laughing at him at this point, Vox just continued with belligerence, “Well, you guys did convince me that you weren’t married or fucking– ”
“So he DID think that– !”
“ –but I mean, in the context of Gods that’s not the only way to have a kid. Like, Jesus Christ is the most famous example EVER of that!”
Alastor just stared at Vox for a long moment. Aghast. Until slowly, he whispered, “ …You …cannot possibly be likening me …to the Holy Virgin Mother Mary…?”
“ …Well when you put it like that it sounds kinda stupid– ”
“THAT’S BECAUSE IT IS STUPID!!! IT’S THE STUPIDEST THING I’VE EVER HEARD IN MY ENTIRE EXISTENCE!!!!!”
“AHAHAHAHAHahaha– H-How the FUCK did he get EVEN WORSE?!” Lucifer cackled as he fully bent over his stomach, holding it in the throes of his laughter. Next to him, Charlie’s face was now permanently etched into a wince, while Vaggie seemed to be questioning all the choices in her life which led to this moment. Trafalgar just straight up seemed to be contemplating the pros of killing himself on the spot, staring at his sword for much too long to be normal.
“Is this conversation actually goin’ on, or did I somehow fall asleep ‘n’ the alcohol stupor is kickin’ in real weird…?” Husk muttered to the rest of the spectators in genuine consideration. He eyed the mouth of his empty bottle as though he might be able to spot the poison he’d potentially consumed.
Stuffing popcorn into his face, Angel nodded seriously. “Oh, it’s goin’ on alright. And damn– no wonder Al told me ta shut my whore mouth when I asked if they were related. I would’a told me ta shut my whore mouth too.”
And then… there was the sound of some rustling, followed by vigorous chewing. Chopper muffled out through a full mouth, “Woah! This is good!”
Both Alastor and Vox whipped their faces back towards the deerling to see that he was eating the chocolate– “Chopper, why in the Seven Rings of Hell would you EAT HIS BRIBE?!?! Haven’t you ever heard not to accept candy from strangers?! Do you not hold even a single ounce of restraint?! Be more concerned about this conversation!”
“S– Sorry!” Chopper cried back in a choke, hiding his face behind the open box of chocolates from Alastor’s furious, serrated grin.
Vox, on the other hand, beamed at the reindeer, overjoyed. “It IS good, right?! It’s the best brand money can buy down here, top of the line cacao! Haha! Only the best for a kid of Al’s!” ignoring Chopper’s now disconcerted expression to pat him on his head again, Vox preened, “Don’t listen to him– You can eat as much dessert as you want in the Vee Tower! Cotton-candy’s your favorite right? I’ll get a machine built for you, it’ll be an easy job. I am going to spoil you rotten!”
“You are enjoying the prospect of me have progeny to an extremely concerning degree…”
“Uhhhh… I’m really not actually Alastor’s calf– ”
“ –Anyway, the race starts in three, two– NOW!”
With all three Vees running down the beach and into the water to jump into their boat, Vox called back, “I’ll be back around to pick you up, little buddy, so enjoy the chocolate in the meantime!”
“AHHHH I FORGOT THIS IS WHAT WE WERE DOING!!!” They were so fucked, Alastor didn’t even have a measurable scale to describe it. With the now empty box having been discarded into the sand, Chopper ran in a tizzy of circles, having switched right back to panicking.
“We– ! We have to swim, right, we don’t have a boat– but there’s no way we’ll beat them like that– !”
Two pairs of violet hands grew out from the sand to catch the reindeer, holding him in place and cutting off the rambling. Approaching from the side, Robin stated with a firm calmness, “While that was certainly a surprising turn in the conversation– ” she said with only the vaguest hint of ‘surprise’, “ –you must not get distracted, Chopper. The game has only just begun. It’s much too early to be panicking.”
“R-Right… But what do we do?!”
“Let’s see some other options that are available to us. How many rumble balls do you have on hand?”
The question provided enough for Chopper to latch onto. With him now stationary, Robin’s hands placed him back onto the ground and dissipated into petals. Alastor felt his own prickling anxiety dim as he listened to Chopper’s answer in curious interest, “My rumble balls? Uh… I have five of them! I only need one for Monster Point.”
In a considering hum, Robin mused, “And your Monster Point, I would say, is only about fifty feet tall… It would’ve been too much for you in life, but as you are now, how many can you eat without it being fatal?”
At Chopper’s wide-eyed stare of surprise at the suggestion, Robin smiled mysteriously, and clarified, “It would stand to reason that the more you consume, the more monstrous you would become, correct? When faced against great odds, our crew always tends to do the best when we use a brute force method.
After a couple of seconds to think through what was being asked, Chopper straightened into a glare of determination.
He immediately brought his bag around to start rooting through it as he answered, “Since only things of divine nature can kill me now, I can eat them all! I don’t really know what’ll come of it, but I probably won’t be coherent anymore. I’m leaving guiding me to you!”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way. Fufu~ ”
And just like that, the mood completely flipped. The two of them then ran down the beach through the starting line. When they reached the waves, Chopper brought his bag close to his face to throw five medicinal balls into his mouth in short succession.
In a crack of extending bone and the wet sound of reorganizing flesh, the water burst around the reindeer as his form grew larger and larger– Limbs lengthening into thin spindles, fingers sharpening into deadly black claws, antlers branching out far and wide and turning pitch black amidst dark red fur. He was still growing even as he took one large step into the water, and then another.
Robin held herself in the middle of the antlers to keep herself steady and look out ahead. A chain of arms grew out like a fishing pole, dangling a single bar of chocolate on the end of it in front of the beast. Much like a mindless Frankenstein monster, the monstrous Chopper roared as he held his arms out in front of him and charged forward into the sea. Robin lightly teased, “You missed one, Chopper, but you can have it after we win the race.”
“YEAHHHH!!! Way to go Robin! Chopper! You can do it!” Luffy shouted in a cheer with his arms over his head. Nami cheered out beside him in an echo of equal vigor.
“You’re already doing way better than mosshead Miss Robin! You’re so beautiful when your brilliance is shining!” was Sanji’s unnecessary form of support.
“What a frightening sight Chopper makes now! Even more so than his usual Monster Point! My eyes are bursting out of their sockets at! Or at least they would be if I– ”
“Don’t let that Foxy Voxy’s cheatin’ beat ya down! Show ‘em how we Straw Hats make do!” Franky cheered in turn while also inadvertently cutting off Brook’s punchline.
“We can’t let a guy that crazy keep Al OR Chopper!” Usopp cried out a very sensible point thank you, “Don’t give up! Take the win for us!”
While there was a round of cheers from the spectator stands, however, Alastor also felt the visceral sensation of a multiple eyes looking at him. Then to Chopper. Then back to him…
Alastor turned back towards the lot of them to glare and hiss, “Do not. Try me. On this.”
“ …We didn’t say nothin’.” Angel and Cherri both quickly averted their gazes, properly threatened into submission.
Adam, meanwhile, stared heavily at Chopper’s monster form before looking back towards Alastor to rudely call out, “Are ya SURE he ain’t yours? Like, I was laughin’ at TV head too, but he’s got a point that there is a serious resemblance– FUCK YOU– !!!” he switched to cursing when a tendril slithered up behind him, pulling him back to fall down behind the bleachers. Lute gave Alastor a mean glare for his completely justified retribution before she dove back to pull the fat snake back up.
Out on the water, the screen on the stage was now showing a feed of the Vees speeding over the waves. The buoy was already within sight for them. They were noticeably distracted from what seemed to be a previously cocky mood when Velvette glanced up from her phone to catch sight of the looming figure approaching them.
Apparent the drone tracking them was set up for audio, because they could hear her over the feed, “Woah, hold up– I know the Radio Demon’s not kid had that monster thing goin’ also, but did it always look like that? That fucker’s big enough to stand up over the sea level!”
“Based on my estimates he’ll be big enough to stand in it up until a certain point, but…” Vox trailed off once he actually looked over from where he was steering the boat. His eyes twitched wider as the camera of his screen likely zoomed in, focusing on the creature and processing the sight.
It was only a single beat before he faced forward to shout fucking hold on and electric energy burst out from his hands. The boat jerked with a sudden acceleration that had both other Vees falling over in their seats, and the engine supercharged to jump them into a new top speed.
“What the fuck– is that guy FEEDING this kid dammit– ”
“What the Hell Vox?!” Valentino cursed while picking himself off the floor, clutching the seat he’d been in with three hands, “Was that really necessary– ”
“They are going to catch up to us Val! His other form that he used in the Extermination is like fifty feet. Including what we can’t see under the water, THAT ONE is closer to A HUNDRED FIFTY!!!” Vox grit his shark-teeth as he leaned into the steering wheel, claws clenched so tight the bone was stark against his skin. “We’re not going far enough to reach the end of the continental shelf! The ocean Lucifer made isn’t exactly to the same scale, but I checked the average downward slope starting from the waterline and it’s about one degree. At a mile out, the water would be around twenty-eight meters deep which is only around ninety feet– He can fucking WALK THIS now!”
“Are you for real?! He’s TALLER THAN THE OCEAN??? …How did you even do all that math so fast?! And how do you know all this ocean stuff?!”
“Are you fucking– My brain is literally a computer and there is a VoxTek channel called SharkWeek EveryWeek for a reason!”
“I thought that was only about sharks!”
“For the love ‘a God just SHUT YER TRAP ‘N’ LET HIM DRIVE!” Velvette finally cut in with a screech.
The boat curved around the buoy at a startling speed, the wake of water spraying out in a mess until Vox righted them into a straight away back towards the shore. Velvette and Valentino both craned their necks up to stare slack jawed as they passed the creature’s huge figure, his torso sticking fully out of the water as his large steps pushed through the water.
Robin curved her bait around such that Chopper curved around the buoy once they reached it, only needing a couple of steps to do so before heading straight for the shore as well. Soon, that looming figure reduced the gap between them and the boat step by large step, until both teams were within sight of the beach. The further the creature went as the water transitioned back to shallows, the more of his distorted body lifted out of the waves.
While Vox kept his glare firmly in the finish line, Velvette looked back at the beast and yelled, “Hey! Those bitches are gonna ram through us at this rate! ROBIN! YOU CAN’T HIT US! STAY THE FUCK BACK OR WE’LL CARD YA FOR VIOLENCE!!!”
Vox and Valentino both flinched hard. The woman’s screeching must be absurdly loud to be heard all the way up Robin’s proverbial tower. Robin, on the other hand, just needed to bloom a mouth on the console of the boat to chime, “How curious. Violence, you say… When you carelessly tread upon an ant, do you also consider that violence, Miss Velvette? I’d say it’s not the same thing at all…”
Velvette’s fury dimmed down into a dawning horror, at that response. “Fucking shit. They’ll kill us for real, that crazy bitch!”
“They can’t without losing! She’s bluffing– ”
“Have ya ever heard anyone say a line that cold and it turned out to be a BLUFF?!” Velvette objected Vox’s assertion even before he’d finished saying it. Her face swiveled from the colossal monster approaching their tail end in the distance, forward towards the beach, and then back again immediately after. With an angry scowl now bordering on panic, she judged, “We aren’t gonna make it!”
“Are you fucking serious– ?!”
“WE’LL MAKE IT!!!” cutting off Valentino’s fretting with a scream and one last electric burst to the motor, speeding up the jet even more, Vox refused to avert his glare away from the finish line, “We HAVE TO MAKE IT! NO MATTER WHAT!”
“I think this should be about right…” Robin mused from her perch.
In a flurry of petals, the chain of arms dissolved and was replaced by one monstrously large arm. With both the chocolate bar and Robin herself in hand, it stretched high above Chopper’s head, causing the creature to reach up with both hands to grab it. Simultaneously, a large hand grew around the back of his legs to push in the backs of the knees, and thus, the giant tipped forward much like a fallen tree.
The Vees’ boat and the water it was jetting over was soon covered in the shadow of the creature. A shadow that grew darker and darker as he fell from his tall height.
The beach was close. Incredibly close, now. But was it close enough that they’d make it? And even if they did make it before Robin and Chopper, would that matter, considering they would not have enough time to get out of the way? Whether the Vees win or lose, they will be crushed either way if they do not remove themselves from the monster’s path, insects caught underfoot of a careless, unknowable beast. A game of chicken at it’s finest.
With one last glance up at their impending demise and over at the still fully committed Vox, Valentino rushed to jerk the man out of the driver’s seat so Velvette could swoop in and take the wheel for herself. She veered sharply to the right with a spray of water. Their boat managed to clear the area where Chopper’s body slammed into the waves with a crash. Caught in the wake of displaced water, the VoxTek Cruiser capsized in a tumbling, giant wave.
Seeing that a miniature tsunami was now headed for them, Alastor quickly popped out his mic to cast a shield of shadows in front of all of the hotel’s beach and dock. He managed to make it just in time to block a crashing wave that must’ve been at least twenty feet tall. Jinbei also stood up from his spot with his hands raised in the air, helping to push back the water. It was only the mid-section of the beach where some of the water leaked through in a rush, as Alastor had left a spot for Chopper’s hands to land on top of the finish line, crushing the banner all together.
With a smiling Robin still in his hold, the both of them had crossed the finish. From the stands, Lucifer was the one to burst out of his seat and declare the match with a wave his hat, “This race is OVER! The Straw Hat Crew wins the round!”
There was a roar of cheers from all around, both Straw Hats and spectators alike standing from their seats in a cheer. When a rubbery hand stretched out far across the field to take his hand, Alastor held onto it with a grin, relieved even as he was pulled abruptly off the stage and into a dogpile of pirates consisting of Nami, Usopp, Brook, Franky, Jinbei, and of course Luffy himself.
“ALASTOR!”
“I’m so sorry I could not do better by you, Alastor! I’m so relieved that you’re back!”
“Al! Good to have ya back! Uh– sorry I didn’t do better in the last round either…”
“Welcome back, Alastor!”
“Sorry for the wait!”
“Sir! You’re back now! I’m so glad!” Niffty cried out joyously as she jumped into the mix, having rushed over from the other set of bleachers. Alastor returned her hug with a short squeeze and a pat to the head, before he set her back down and removed himself from the mess of arms. Checking his hand, he was glad to see that horrid Vee ring had once again been replaced with the Straw Hat jolly roger.
“Thank you, dear Niffty. And warm greetings to everyone else of course,” even as he verbally dismissed the matter, Alastor knew his smile must be shining as brightly as his captain’s right now.
Still rigged up with his leg casts, Sanji sighed with an exhale of his cigarette, though he also showcased a slight smile, “It’s a relief Robin won you back, Al. You’re the only one besides the ladies I trust in the kitchen, and I think I’m going to need your help cooking dinner tonight.”
Raising his brows with increasing incredulousness, Alastor pointed at the man’s broken legs with his mic to say, “You are not cooking dinner. I’m sure I can take care of things until you are properly mended.”
“What are you talking about? I only need my hands to cook! I’ll just need a bit of help getting around– ”
“Well you can be the one to take up that argument with the good doctor later tonight,” Alastor ended that pointless argument before it could even start. And speaking of the doctor, during the celebratory mood, Robin seemed to have directly fed the beast that last bar of chocolate, and shortly after, the monstrous creature shrunk back into the tiny deerling many tended to fawn over.
Robin went over to where his head had been close to the waterline to walk back up the beach with Chopper her arms, apparently immobilized for the time being. As they approached, he groaned, “W– Wait… What happened…? Did we win…?”
Robin replied with a slight lift in her tone, “That we did, Chopper. All thanks to your hard work.”
“Oh… thank goodness! I was scared for a bit that Alastor and I would be stuck with his evil Boa Hancock! …Even though his chocolate was really good…”
“You have my thanks, Robin. And thank you indeed for your splendid efforts, Chopper dear, but I’m afraid I have to make this clear– And I can’t believe I even have to explain this– ” Now that the reindeer was in arm’s length, Alastor gripped the back of the other’s head to force Chopper’s eyes to look up into his, causing the other to gulp nervously under the intensity of his stare. “ –If at any point in the future Vox, or anyone else for that matter, offers you candy to get into the back of their van or anything similar to that, do not accept the candy. Commit an act of violence upon them and leave immediately.”
“I– I won’t! I know that much!”
“The manner in which you instantly consumed the chocolate he bribed you with even as he rambled about how he wished to take you does not convince me of that…”
Coming up beside Alastor to greet the two while also patting his shoulder, Nami spoke in a sigh of relief, “Thanks Robin, Chopper! But man, Alastor… Why didn’t you tell us that you had your own evil version of a Boa Hancock stalking you?! Why are you even letting him monitor you with his drones like that?! That’s not behavior to be okay with!”
From behind her, Usopp added on with sympathy, “I didn’t realize there could be someone even worse than the actual Hancock! Your evil Hancock is really something. That’s rough…”
“It’s exactly like I called it! He’s your evil, jilted, tech-bro Hancock!”
“It’s certainly difficult indeed, needing to handle your own evil Boa Hancock like that…” Brook hummed in agreement with Franky’s exclamation, while also adding on, “Though considering the Pirate Empress took Bartolomeo’s life because she wished to take his ‘Number One’ Luffy fan title, I’m actually not sure how significant of an escalation this is.”
Trying and failing to contain the way his eye twitched every time one of these idiots called Vox ‘your evil Boa Hancock’ Alastor hissed out in time with Jinbei giving him a consoling pat of understanding on the back, “Can you please not refer to him as such… Actually, it would mean a great deal to me if all of you would just pretend like everything that occurred in those prior two rounds never happened! Wipe it from your minds! Nothing happened! Understand?!”
“I don’t think all the alcohol in the world would be enough to forget how all ‘a THAT just happened.” Upon Alastor cracking his head around to glare with a serrated grin at Husk amongst the spectators for the comment, the man just shrugged defensively, “What? It’s true! You orderin’ people otherwise doesn’t change nothin’!”
“Alastor…” his attention and head were turned back around at the sound of the idiot swordsman calling his name. Some of the Straw Hats crowding around him made way for Zoro to stand in front of him.
Alastor narrowed his eyes at the three-headed man’s even stare. “Well, if it isn’t the utterly inept first mate. Coming back around to receive me now that others of the crew have made up for your– ”
He unintentionally cut his words short when Zoro lowered into a kneel, until the man was bowing so low he was on his hands with his forehead pressed to the ground.
Alastor stared down at him with wide eyes, shocked by the action, as Zoro spoke from his position to firmly state, “I lost. That’s on me. I’m sorry I lost you, Alastor. As the first mate of the King of the Pirates, to have let down both one of my crew and my captain in such a way is unacceptable. The circumstances of how fair or unfair a match is means nothing– I should’ve overcome it either way. You’re right to be angry with me. I’ll accept whatever punishment that you see fit.”
“H-Hey! Zoro, don’t– !” startling, Nami looked away from the man on the ground to look at Alastor in concern, “Alastor, please don’t go overboard! Adding on a punishment is… It may not seem like it, but he was really trying for you! It’s the Vees and Blackbeard that we should be blaming! Right– ”
“Nami, don’t…” Zoro intoned deeply, halting Nami’s pleading on his behalf, “To just get by without consequences, there’s no honor that. I will accept responsibility for this.”
There was an extended moment of silence. Alastor stared down at Zoro, his wide gaze gradually falling into a half-lidded look of consideration.
It wasn’t too much longer before he turned his face away with a tsk. After an enduring sigh, he waved the man away with a huff, “Raise your head, you stupid man. There’s no use for honor in Hell. What good is it inflicting bodily injury or death upon you when it’d only serve to make our crew weaker? Just remember this as the day I spared your miserable life, and do not take such an outcome for granted. If we’d lost this race and I’d been stuck a Vee, I would have taken your life without a second thought.”
After lifting his head to look at Alastor in a confirming glance, Zoro just nodded before picking himself up off the ground. As he did this, Usopp spoke up somewhat awkwardly to muse, “Well technically, if we lost this one we could still win you back in the last round, but Luffy would’ve had to choose between you and Chopper… That would’ve been awful…”
“I would have made sure he picked Chopper,” was all Alastor had to say to that, sighing as his brows pinched in irritation at the very thought, “I can handle the Vees well enough, but he would fair much more poorly. So between the two of us that would’ve been the most practical decision.”
“Alastorrrr…” Chopper’s voice quivered as he called out to him, touched. Alastor ignored the tears budding in the deerling’s eyes by keeping his gaze very firmly averted from the other.
“What the FUCK VOX!!!”
Velvette shrill voice caught all their attention. Gaze drawn over back to the water, Alastor saw all three of the Vees had either swam to or washed up on the shore. Vox was still the middle of getting to his feet when Velvette grabbed the collar of his shirt, keeping him on his knees and therefore level with her height. “You could’ve KILLED US with what you were tryin’ to pull just now! Why wouldn’t ya get the fuck outta the way?!”
While he winced slightly from the accusation and volume it was delivered with, Vox still kept his face set into a stubborn scowl as he insisted, “We would’ve MADE IT! And we could’ve disqualified them for hitting us! We would’ve WON, and it would’ve been a temporary death at worst! This was no holy weaponry or anything so we would’ve revived– ”
Velvette cut him off as quick as a whip, and harsh as one too, “Bitch– I ain’t dyin’ even TEMPORARILY just so you can keep your deer bastard NOT boyfriend and his NOT kid! We just need two out of three! We don’t need’a be pullin’ that shit! That BB bastard as a plan to win the last game, so just let him pull his fuckin’ fat-arse weight and pull out when ya need to!”
“Usually I’d say pulling out is for pussies only, but in this case, I’m with Velv,” Valentino almost growled under his breath as he shook the water out of his wings. Glowering down at Vox from his taller height, he snarked sharply, “YOU might be ready to off yourself for the Radio Demon, but WE aren’t! Do me a favor, will ya? If you try fucking killing yourself again, do it when we aren’t in the goddamn boat with you!!!”
This time, Vox fully winced at the words. There was a split second where his expression dipped into something close to distraught. Before his anger hardened over it once more.
Scowl as deep as he could make it, Vox slapped Velvette’s hands away from him as he stood up and looked away to brush the wet sand off himself, snarking back in a low voice, “Got it. I’ll keep that in mind. Happy?”
As unwilling spectators, a quiet had fallen over the Straw Hats as they watched the opposing ‘crew’ head towards imploding on itself. Keeping with the quiet, Brook softly noted, “Oh my… That was rather harsh. Are those three truly friends? I was under the impression only Blackbeard’s addition was the temporary team up.”
Nami, in contrast, matched Velvette’s line of thinking with a scoff, “He was being stupid! I’d be pissed too if one of my team risked my life like that!”
“He’s the one who’s right, though.”
Luffy’s comment drew all their attention back to the captain. Staring blankly at the returning Vees, he plainly stated, “If they didn’t get in the way, he would’ve won. He was the only one who had the will they needed to win. Because the other two wouldn’t risk their lives, they’re gonna lose the Davy Back, cause I’m gonna win the next game.”
There was no doubt in the slightest within that declaration. With a nod, Robin confirmed shortly, “I had guessed that Vox wouldn’t be moved, but bet on Velvette and Valentino being the ones to bow them out. If we had actually hit them, we would have lost the match, since even if none of the Vees would be available to do so Blackbeard would have certainly called for our disqualification. But I had to take the gamble seeing that we wouldn’t have made it otherwise.”
Humming thoughtfully, Jinbei crossed his arms and agreed, “If a death is temporary, it’s not true death. If the positions had been reversed and members of our own crew had needed to make that same decision to keep Alastor, we would have accepted those consequences without hesitation. One must strive for victory at every available opportunity. They could’ve both won Alastor and kept their flag if they didn’t interfere with Vox, but because their will was weak, now they’ve lost both. Fear lends itself greatly to shortsightedness. Though, as it’s to our advantage, we can hardly complain.”
“It’s only natural for the ones with the strongest will to win,” Zoro added with a derisive scoff, “The point of a Davy Back is to fight as a crew. If only one out of three of their crew has the guts to win no matter what, then of course our crew ‘ll be the one that wins!”
“ …It’s incredible that you have the guts to say that when you’re the one who lost the last game, mosshead.”
“SHUT UP! I don’t wanna hear that from the guy who couldn’t even join the Davy Back cause he broke all his legs!” Zoro instantly snapped back at Sanji’s comment.
The Vees had made it back to the event field by this time. None of them looked pleased by the sight of all the happy faces. Valentino had to be held back when Angel turned around from his place in the stands to bend over and start slapping his butt, mocking KISS MY ASS LOSER in a rowdy jeer at the man’s loss. Husk and Vaggie, in their immense exasperation, were also quick to pull Angel back around and down into his seat even while Cherri was laughing along with the spider. After the moth calmed down enough to be left on his own, Vox looked over to the Straw Hats’ side to search out Alastor.
When their gazes meet, Alastor didn’t react much other than a slight tilt of the head, leaving the ball in the other’s court.
Seeing him, Vox’s only reaction was to renew his scowl. He shouted in a grumble, “Break for ten!” Then promptly turned his back to get ready for the next round.
They reconvened after the players on both sides dried off and changed into normal clothing. Chopper still wasn’t quite able to move, so Robin continued holding onto him similar to one would a stuffed animal, much to Sanji’s irrational envy. Before Alastor could prepare himself to endure the farce of Vox’s next announcement and fake random game selection, he felt himself minutely tense when instead, Blackbeard stood up from his seat on the stage. “Since this ‘s my game, I’ll be the one runnin’ it. There’s no need for any showy performance, yeah? I know what we’re doin’– I’ll just get right to settin’ up. Straw Hat, meet me in the middle!”
Face cast in a serious expression, Luffy followed the directive and walked out to the center of the sandy area. The majority of the crew –which excluded Sanji, who couldn’t move from where he’d been set up in his casts– followed behind him. Alastor was the one to assume a position directly behind the captain to his right, intending on watching over the proceedings as closely as possible. A hush fell over the spectators. Trafalgar was especially tense in his seat, eyes tracking Blackbeard, the man who’d killed him, like a hawk.
Blackbeard stood directly before Luffy now, with the Vees hanging back behind him spectating with a spectrum of unpleasant expressions. Between the two opposing pirates, a shadow rose to the surface of the sands. It was a tad unusual to watch Blackbeard use a power so similar to his own, rising a small table with a set of two chairs to place on the ground before the shadows dissipated in a wisp. Luffy’s level stare didn’t waver when Blackbeard leered at him with a wide, crooked grin.
“Now, I know usually the last round of a Davy Back is single combat, but we all know how that’d go for me. I lost to ya in life, I’ll lose down here too. And I don’t like playin’ games I know I can’t win.”
“Doesn’t matter what the game is. I’m gonna win either way,” Luffy asserted with an almost casual confidence, arms crossed over his chest.
“Zehahaha– That’s what I like to hear! Not that ya have a choice of playin’ either way. Remember, if ya back out, that new crewmate of yers ‘s goin’ straight to the Vees back there…”
Trailing off ominously, another smaller shadow appeared by Blackbeard’s side. He reached down into it to pull something out from within the darkness.
With a careless clatter, Blackbeard deposited a six-bullet revolver of angelic make onto the table, and beside it, a mixed casing of both regular and angelic bullets to match. Alastor felt a gut-wrenching twist in his chest at the sight of them.
“ ‘Round these parts, they call this game Russian Roulette.”
Notes:
Chapter 26: Death, Upright
Notes:
(This isn't important, but while editing this chapter I had the thought that if Vox had a song in this fic, it'd definitely be HYDRA by MYTH & ROID. I love that song so I thought I'd just mention it...)
Chapter Text
“You should figure what the rules are– One angelic bullet ‘ll be loaded, and the cylinder ‘ll get spun for a random start. We take turns firin’ the gun at ourselves, aimin’ for the head. The first one to get shot ‘n’ die loses. No complicated shit, real simple! The only thing we need’a check first ‘s to see that the gun actually works on ya in yer mortal form, seein’ that ya almost became a damn God just now. No point in playin’ a game like this if there ‘re no stakes. If ya do a test shot somewhere ‘n’ it bleeds, that’s good enough for me. I’ll let ya fix up the wound before we start.”
Stuttering with nerves, Usopp looked back and forth between the gun on the table and Luffy’s unmoving face, “It– It’s a game to the death? …You’re really gonna make him shoot himself?!”
“That’s how the game’s played, yeah,” Blackbeard answered with a grin, “I’m shootin’ myself too for this, so don’t be complainin’ like that.”
“Don’t complain?! How can you expect us not to?!” Nami lashed out while slamming her hands down onto the table, making the gun clatter once more. Blackbeard wasn’t intimidated by her cat-eyed glare. “You’re making our captain do a suicide game! What’s even the point of this?!”
“It should be easy enough to tell by now, shouldn’t it? It’s a two-fold win for me! I’ll have revenge for Straw Hat killin’ me ‘n’ ruinin’ my dreams, and when I kill him, his title’s up for grabs!” Blackbeard clenched his fist It makes sense that without any One Piece to find to decide the next Pirate King in the afterlife, killin’ the old King would be a valid way to take his place.”
Having stood up from seat to walk over to the Straw Hats, Trafalgar intoned with a severe scowl, “You’re still trying to become King of the Pirates?”
“Of course!” Blackbeard affirmed, like it was a simple thing, “Dreams never die! As long as Straw Hat ‘n’ I are both still kickin’, there’s a chance to get what I want. Us bein’ in Hell doesn’t change nothin’!”
The tension amongst the pirates and Hazbin residents was thick. Not even Adam broke the silence, appropriately stunned in the middle of bringing a hand of popcorn to his face. Alastor rather suspected he hadn’t been told of this portion of the Davy Back Fight, considering he’d surely know that, if Luffy truly died from this, Brook and Jinbei would never forgive him for his silence regarding the Vees’ plan.
“We’re not making him do anything. If he doesn’t want to play…” stepping forward with a scowl cast in proverbial stone, Vox gestured his picture-box head sharply towards Alastor without averting his eyes from Luffy’s, “…then you can pass on the round and lose!”
And lose Alastor along with it. Luffy would never agree to such a thing. Baring his sharp teeth, Alastor’s grin pinched with fury as his eyes turned black. “Vox… What a DeSpIcAbLe plan you’ve involved yourself with!”
“Blackbeard’s the one who wanted this game, I’m just not complaining about his choice!” scoffing at his anger, Vox finally looked back to him with a hard, unwavering stare, “If Straw Hat wants to keep you, he can damn well risk his life for it! I consider that fair!”
“I don’t think you know the meaning of that word!”
“I’m playing!” Luffy stated firmly, because what else would he have decided? Still glaring at Blackbeard, he roughly pulled out the chair on their side of the table to sit down, and Blackbeard sat down with a grin at the move.
From behind amongst the others, Robin quietly remarked, “This is most unusual… Blackbeard isn’t the type to risk his life on a luck-based game.”
“He must have a trick up his sleeve…” Jinbei agreed, trailing off in tumultuous thought.
Seeing that the game would be proceeding either way, Alastor racked his mind for what, if anything, he could do to mitigate the risk to Luffy and increase his odds of winning. It was clear that Blackbeard must have some specific plan in mind to win the game. Perhaps related to his abilities? There were a number of them, but in terms of which one could possibly be applicable for a situation like this…
Inadvertently, Alastor’s eye was drawn over to the side where his shadow had manifested onto the ground. It was observing Blackbeard in curiosity, having not come across a demon with power over the shadows and darkness to the same extent as Alastor himself. Likely more so, even, since it he was made of the darkness itself due to the properties he’d inherited from his Devil Fruit. The Dark-Dark Fruit, Trafalgar had referred to it as a Logia type Fruit with unique abilities for its kind, due to its innate ability to nullify other Devil Fruit abilities. As both the Red Dog and flamingo had specifically made mention of the nullification associated with Alastor’s shadows when directly comparing him to Blackbeard, that seemed to be its most prominent feature, even…
All at once, something clicked. He had an idea for what Blackbeard’s safeguard might be, a plan to mitigate his own risk in this game rather than increase Luffy’s. And if Alastor’s thoughts on the matter were correct… he also knew of a way to address that.
If this worked, then that trip to the Morningstar library he’d traded in his favor with Charlie for was about to be worth Blackbeard’s weight in gold. Not only due to the summoning circle he’d found to retrieve the ships, but also due to one other sigil he’d found amongst its tomes. One which would be just what he needed for the occasion…
“Now there, let’s not get ahead of ourselves…” forcibly twisting his words back into something more faux-affable, Alastor grinned sharply as he stepped behind Luffy’s chair. Leaning forward to the side, he reached out to rest his hands on the boy’s slight shoulders, his claws individually curling in their hold. Luffy glanced up at him at the move. Rather return the stare, Alastor smiled in a surely suspicious manner at Blackbeard.
“If you’re going to ask us to make an accommodation as large as testing the gun out on our captain, then we expect concessions in return.”
“Alastor…?” Chopper softly questioned. Amidst their nerves, Usopp and Nami had come together with Chopper held up in the middle of them, crowding into the reindeer like he was a stress toy. The others just watched him in silence. They trusted in whatever plans he may have divined without needing to ask after them.
His grin finally faltering a tad, Blackbeard roughly asked, “What concessions? Depends on what ya ask for.”
“Hmm~ Let’s see~ ” Alastor hummed in a feint of pondering, even making a show of glancing up to the corner of his eye with a tap of a single finger against his chin, before he looked back to the man. He stuck his hand out with three fingers raised.
“Just three agreements would suffice! Firstly, our side gets to load the gun. Secondly, there is an additional clause added specifying that a player leaving their side of the table and seat counts as forfeiting the game. And lastly, should our captain forfeit the game, while we would certainly lose the round still, that would not count as grounds to take his title as well, seeing that he would still be alive and therefore never truly defeated. That’s nothing too extreme, correct?”
“HEY! I’m not givin’ up the game! No matter what!” Luffy stubbornly objected to Alastor creating an out for him. Alastor didn’t pay him any mind. The point of adding those last two rules wasn’t actually for the purpose of giving Luffy an out he’d never take, but rather to place a veil of subterfuge over Alastor’s true intentions for his proposed rules.
Both the opposing pirate and Vox were examining him with great suspicion, now. Alastor just grinned wide at them. After a few seconds of thought, no longer smiling, Blackbeard replied sternly, “Three demands ‘s too much.”
To that, Alastor countered, “You know perfectly well only my first request is a genuine ask. The other two rules should be a given, I just want to ensure that there is an official process to forfeit put in place.”
“ ….You can load the gun if I watch ya do it. No funny business, or I’m cardin’ ya. The cylinder still needs to be spun randomly. As for the leavin’ the table thing, it makes sense, but it only counts if the player leaves on their own, not if someone else forced ‘em to move. I’ll agree to the last point also. I already went into this expectin’ I’d need’a kill him to be considered King.”
“Of course,” Alastor affirmed with ease. Assuming the role of the dealer, Alastor himself reached out for the gun and ammo, ignoring the stiffness of his bandaged, still burnt hands. As he had predicted, Blackbeard’s stare was focused solely on himself as he took a single angelic round out to slot it into the first position of the six-bullet revolver, watching him closely even before the game had begun in full. That was the natural reaction to take. Out of what he’d requested, the request to be the one loading the gun provided the most avenue to shake things up, so to speak.
Cocking the hammer, Alastor looked back down to Luffy’s plain stare while holding the gun out to him. “Go on then. I suppose I don’t need to specify that you shouldn’t shoot the test shot in a particularly dangerous location?”
“L– Luffy– !”
Charlie’s nervous fretting up in the stands was interrupted by Luffy promptly taking the gun. Without hesitation, he pointed the barrel into his left shoulder pointblank, and fired.
The shot rang out in a loud echo, with several people flinching at the sound. In comparison, Luffy didn’t even flinch despite being the one shot.
Golden blood spilling profusely from the wound, Luffy placed the gun back on the table with little fanfare or change in his still blank expression. Still just behind Blackbeard’s side, Vox fell into shock staring at Luffy, his mouth falling slightly agape. Further back, Valentino and Velvette were also watching the captain with a similar level of shock.
It was an intimidating thing, to see your opponent in Russian Roulette so unmoved when faced with the end of a gun. When being the one to shoot themselves, even. Luffy’s extreme level of reckless confidence, disregard for pain, and lack of hesitation was a sight to behold. Blackbeard, in contrast, renewed his grin at seeing his rival’s boldness.
Even so, Alastor still grinned at Vox to chime, “My dear captain isn’t a man you should play chicken with, Vox.”
With just that, Vox’s glare hardened his expression once again. Trafalgar was a silence presence as he approached to look at Luffy’s injury, moving his shirt out of the way to clean and bandage the entry and exit hole as well as he could in the limited timeframe. When he finished and stepped back, he did so with a lingering look of bitterness directed Blackbeard’s way, who didn’t even deign the man worthy of a glance.
“Well now that that’s been cleared up, game’s on!” Blackbeard declared with vigor.
Alastor took the gun and ammo once more, with Blackbeard once again tracking his movements insistently. He slipped a single angelic bullet into the first position, but this time, gave the cylinder a good spin with the flick of a finger. The gun clicked repeatedly with the motion, like the reel of a wheel of fortune. It didn’t take long before it landed on a random chamber.
However, with the gun still in his hand, Alastor had a good enough sense for divine energy that he could feel which position the bullet had ended up in. He’d be the only one to know though. It went without saying Luffy would have no sense for such magicks, but he doubted that even Blackbeard would’ve been able to learn such fine technique in the short time he’d been dead.
“ ‘K, now put the gun in the middle ‘a the table, and I’m gonna spin it. Whoever the barrel’s pointin’ at goes first.”
He supposed it would’ve been too easy if he’d been given the leniency to decide who shoots first. Following Blackbeard’s directive, Alastor carefully placed the gun down in the very center of the circular table, then stood back to return to Luffy’s side. Blackbeard reached forward to haphazardly spin the gun with a flick of the grip.
Alastor eyed the spiraling revolver with an unwavering, intense stare. Knowing what position the bullet was in, it would be simple math to know which player would end up with that chamber once the player going first had been decided. It was the luck of this draw, of this spinning wheel, that would decide the outcome of the whole game. To everyone else it’d be a mystery until the bullet was shot, but he would know right now, as soon as the gun stopped.
When the gun soon came to a halt pointed none other than at Luffy, Alastor carefully didn’t react to it.
“Zehaha– You’re up first, Straw Hat.”
“Got it!” Luffy carried just as little hesitation as he had shooting the gun previously when he reached out to take the revolver. He steadied the barrel against the side of his head, right at the temple. Cocking the hammer, Luffy then immediately pulled the trigger.
There was a set of frightened, quiet squeaks from the trembling trio and Charlie even as the gun clicked empty. The heightened tension of the crowd was brought down in a collective sigh of relief with Luffy’s turn being cleared. The gun was placed back down on the table, and everyone watched in morbid anticipation as Blackbeard took the gun for himself. Pointing it up into the air for now, he cocked the hammer with his grin still unmarred.
Only for the grin to falter, as he likely took stock of him and realized what was now amiss.
Blackbeard placed his free hand on the table like he was about to steady himself, only to freeze in place when he remembered he wasn’t allowed to get up. He swiftly glanced around himself as well as he could before glaring up at Alastor to demand, “YOU! You did this, didn’t ya?! What the Hell did ya do?!”
“Ah~ well that would be telling now, wouldn’t it? Where’s the fun in that!” Alastor cajoled brightly. Clasping his hands together, his neck cricked a tad unnatural in its tilt as his grin pulled sharp and deadly.
Alarmed, Vox’s glare swerved back and forth between the two of them as he interrogated, “What?! What’d he do?!”
“You see, old pal, I had a hunch as to what scheme your not-so little playmate here was trying for. And based on his reaction, it seems that I was right on the money! Oh, I do so enjoy being right!” leaning forward at the hip, Alastor pointed a sharp claw at Blackbeard’s now scowling face as he chimed joyfully.
“You have no one but yourself to blame, you realize? It’s rather unusual that you felt the need to specify in the rules that losing in the game was dependent on ‘getting shot and dying’, when to most, simply stating the ‘getting shot’ part would suffice! Not to mention you were careful enough to double check that Luffy could still be wounded via angelic weaponry. Thus, I did wonder so– If we had asked the same of you, to check to see if the gun worked on your body, would you have agreed? I don’t believe you would have!”
Blackbeard sneered, tensing at the accusation while Alastor continued with a theatrical tone, “It had been rather annoying, you see, the way sinners of your world would often compare my abilities to yours. It seems that there is indeed quite a bit of overlap between them, including the void of the dark. The way it consumes and extinguishes and thus neutralizes various demonic attributes. However, compared to my power over the dark, yours seemed more specialized for that aspect from what I’ve heard. I know where the limits of my abilities lie very well, and therefore, I know exactly in what ways it can be theoretically enhanced. For example, my main limitation comes into play when pit against divine power.”
Twirling his finger a bit until it was not pointing Trafalgar’s way, Alastor further explained, “However– It has already been proven that certain Devil Fruit inherited abilities are innately special enough that divine power is much less of a limitation for them despite now existing as demonic power! And yours was a special Fruit indeed, wasn’t it? So I simply proposed to myself, perhaps your darkness is strong enough that it can even swallow and nullify divine energy? If that was the case, with a body made of that pure darkness, you would have no fear of a bullet made of Heavenly steel! Hence why you would specify the terms of the game to require dying when getting shot. With that clause, even if you did shoot a bullet into your head, you still wouldn’t have lost! The game would continue until either Luffy forfeited or he finally ended up with the bullet! You are a tricky one indeed, Marshall Teach…”
“That’s Marshall D. Teach, I’ll have ya know,” Blackbeard clarified with a growl in his voice, glowering at Alastor as he moved on to complain, “You’re a real smartass, ain’t ya? Even if ya guessed all ‘a that, that doesn’t explain shit ‘bout how ya managed to cut me off from my power! Interferin’ with the game like this ‘s grounds for cheatin’!”
“Cheating?” while the gasp he let out was feigned, the offense laced into the word was only partially exaggerated. Taking a couple steps forward, Alastor rested a hand on the table to lean far into Blackbeard’s space, his face taking a turn for the demonic. “That’s a RiOt coming from you. What was it you said before? Oh, yes– ‘I won’t apologize for leveling a playing field that was against me from the start’. All I’ve done is even the playing field that was leaning completely in your favor, good sir. This is now a fair and just game of Russian Roulette with equal stakes! You’re the one who wanted to play this game, so play it… Or is it that you’re too much of a coward to truly risk your life on this?”
Based on the way Blackbeard further sneered at him, he didn’t appreciate the insult. All the better. By moving the topic onto whether Blackbeard would continue with this farce, Alastor had succeeded in avoiding his genuine question as to what Alastor had done. He would rather not clue the man in to how his shadow had drawn out and activated the sigil for suppressing demonic abilities that’d been detailed in the Morningstar library in the sand underneath his chair. Wary of these pirates’ tendency for extra sensory perception, his shadow had used the opportunity provided by Blackbeard’s focus being centered on Alastor loading the gun to get the job done, and the risk had paid off in dividends. That being said, the less Blackbeard knew about this the better, seeing that it prevented him from taking any measures to mitigate the effect of the sigil.
There was a bang on the other side of the table. Vox had moved forward to slam one of his hands onto the surface. Leaning towards Blackbeard’s face with one eye squinted and the other wide and spiraling, he ordered darkly, “You’re not forfeiting this game. This round was your plan– Hell, this entire fucking Davy Back was your plan! We played our games, it’s time you pulled your damn weight! If you try to back out, I swear to the fucking God sitting across the table from you that I WILL find a way to KILL YOU!”
Alastor wasn’t surprised by Vox’s insistence. He’d surely sacrifice Blackbeard’s life and soul for even just a chance at winning Alastor back. It was an easy call to make when it wasn’t Vox’s own life on the line. And in this case, his attitude was wholly welcome, since it served into Alastor’s intentions to pressure Blackbeard to continue.
“You don’t get ‘a order me around– ” Blackbeard snarled while bodily pushing Vox away from him, shoving him hard enough that Vox’s much slighter frame went tumbling to the ground. Even with that, however, Blackbeard turned away to ignore Vox’s scowling as he picked himself up off the ground, facing Alastor and Luffy with a darkened glare to say, “I ain’t no coward. Course I was gonna try a plan to win based on more than luck, but I know plans don’t always work out… I’m still in! Don’t think I’ll back down! This ‘s a match to decide the King ‘a the Pirates!”
And with that said, Blackbeard lined up the revolver with the side of his temple. He minutely tensed, bracing himself as subtly as possible as he pulled the trigger.
The click of an empty chamber rang out. The man’s grimace twisted back into a crooked grin at the sound of it.
As he placed the gun back down onto the table to slid it back to Luffy, Angel, ever the loudmouth, was the one among the crowd to muffle a curse of frustration, “Dammit. Luffer’s gotta shoot again now!”
“I hate gambles like these the most. There’s a reason why I stuck with card games…” Husk griped in a deep voice, agreeing with Angel.
In much less time than it’d taken to get through Blackbeard’s turn, Luffy accepted the gun to again line up the muzzle with his temple. Staring straight at his opponent, he cocked the gun, then fired.
When the gun clicked empty this time, Blackbeard’s grin twitched right back into a simmering glare. Another wave of visible relief passed through everyone. The revolver was placed on the table and slid right back over to his side.
This time when the man picked up the gun, he couldn’t hide his slight hesitation in doing so, the movement more careful than it had been last time. And it was an understandable hesitation. They’d gone through half the gun’s chambers by this point. With only three shots left, there was a considerable one-third probability of the next shot being the one to hold the bullet.
So of course, Alastor pounced upon the weakness, cheerfully jeering, “Oh dear. You can’t quite bury the fear, can you? Can’t quite escape that intrinsic instinct in your soul that tells you to flee for your life. Compare that to our captain, who has a will that surpasses the fear of death itself! Are you sure you’re a man worthy enough to crown yourself King? It’s like the difference between night and day, watching you prepare your shot versus Luffy. Oh, actually, that night and day metaphor is very apt for the both of you, now that I think of it. Haha! Hilarious!”
While his comments had their intended effect of enraging the pirate, the reaction they provoked wasn’t as strong as he’d wished for. Rather than lashing out with impulse, Blackbeard visibly steadied himself in his anger, like a witch deliberately brewing their caldron. There was poison in his cold stare as he levied back, “Anyone who doesn’t feel fear is a damn idiot. That’s not somethin’ to hark about. Why do ya think I lived so much longer than the kid Pirate King here, huh? It’s cause I actually gave a damn about keepin’ myself alive while he threw his life away! He was the King in life for barely anytime at all before he kicked the bucket, stretched out too far because he’d picked too many fights without ever thinkin’ ahead. And he even dragged his entire crew down with him. Does that really sound like a guy worthy of bein’ called a King to you?”
Alastor had to restrain a twitch of his eye, but he was not completely able to stop the way his grin pulled taunt and displeased, narrowing his gaze on the man. Before he could whip out an angry retort, though, Luffy finally deigned to speak for the first time since the game started.
“I don’t care what other people think,” was Luffy’s plain but insistent statement, “My crew followed me down here cause they think I’m worthy, and Al joined me cause he thinks I’m worthy. That’s all I need to know I deserve to be called King of the Pirates.”
While his words drew Blackbeard’s attention back onto him, Luffy didn’t quite hit home until he continued on further to state, “You needed Vox ‘n’ those other guys to play the Davy Back with ya cause none of your crew came back to you, right? They aren’t like my Nakama. They cared too much ‘bout whether you won or lost, so cause ya lost, they don’t want ya as their captain anymore. They don’t believe in you becomin’ King of the Pirates anymore.”
The struck cord rang out with discord, loud and clear. Blackbeard audibly grit his crooked teeth. Leaning forward to glare daggers at the still plain-faced Luffy, he practically hissed, “They’ll be fuckin’ crawlin’ back to me once they see I killed ya. Not that I fuckin’ need ‘em, seeing that they lost too! I started this shit alone, I can damn well end it alone!”
Sweeping a hand out, the man continued into his dramatics. “People need’a be able to go on ‘n’ live alone! Cause ya know what happens when they can’t? What happens ‘s that the people they were so dependent on die or leave, and then they fall to fuckin’ pieces cause they don’t know how to live without ‘em! Just look at the pathetic TV bastard behind me if ya want an example! And when you die that’s what’ll happen to your crew– they’ll fall apart without ya!”
“No one can live alone,” Luffy intoned in full seriousness, “Cause even though it hurts when people leave, it hurts even more to be alone. You can keep yourself alive bein’ alone, but just gettin’ by isn’t the same as living. To live, you need what other people give you. If you really think you can become the King of the Pirates by being alone… Put your life on the line.”
Raising his hand just enough to point at the gun Blackbeard still held in his hand, Luffy’s stare seemed to see right through the obscurity of the large, shadowy man.
“Now that you’ve drawn your pistol, put your life on the line. You should already know that those aren’t for threatening people.”
There was a single beat, Blackbeard’s eyes flashing wide with an almost disbelief about them.
Before, just as fast, the switch flipped to an unbridled, uncontrollable rage–
“You– ! This isn’t even a pistol, it’s a revolver– It’s not enough that ya got the hat he got from Roger, you even gotta sound like that damn bastard Shanks?! Don’t you look down on me!!!” Cocking the gun and bringing it to his temple in a single motion, Blackbeard’s pupils were like pinpricks of a dark void, cold and desperate.
“A one-in-three chance ‘s still better odds than a coinflip! When it’s your turn after this, it’s fifty-fifty– ”
When he pulled the trigger, the revolver fired true. The shot rang out loud like a bell with the bullet shooting right through his head and out the other side in an ink-black gore.
The gun fell out of Blackbeard’s large hand with a soft thud onto the sand. His body, with eyes still wide and bloodshot, leaned too far to the side, then tipped over out of the seat. The chair fell down along with him to make for an unceremonious heap.
Dead silence rang out loud afterwards. The captain just stood up from his seat without a word, hand holding onto the top of his straw hat. Even the Straw Hats who certainly had all been hoping for this outcome had to take a moment just to stare in shock as Blackbeard’s body almost collapsed upon itself, the darkness making it up dissolving back into the shadows of Hell. All of them expect for one, that is…
“ …Haha– Ahahahaha– AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA– ”
Alastor’s distorted laughter cut through the previous silence like a knife to the heart, delirious and maniacal and seemingly without end. At first leaning back with a hand over his eyes, he tilted forward in a violent jerk to with a smile that was all sharp teeth down upon the dissolving shadow that had once been a man, cackling, “ –HAHAHAHAHAH– How STUPID can the folly of man BE?! To think that his luck could be better than that of a God?! He was doomed from the very start! But that’s what happens, when you threaten me and make an enemy of my captain– ”
Making his way over to the inky, almost smoke-like pool, Alastor grinned even wider as he repeatedly stomped a foot into the center of the shadows, forcing them to dispel into their last remaining whisps under his heel. Until even those no longer lingered. And he declared, “ –LONG LIVE THE KING!!! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA– ”
“ …‘K, I know Blackbeard had it comin’… But he’s way too happy about this. It’s creepy.”
“He really, really is…” Usopp’s voice strained in his whisper as he agreed with Franky’s comment, properly intimidated by Alastor’s deranged laughter at the death of their enemy. Which was good, since he hadn’t had much opportunity to scare the man as of late. It was about time he put a healthy dose of fear back into him.
Alastor’s laugh cut short, however, upon movement occurring beside him. With his face frozen in it’s stretched out grin, he turned to see Vox leaning over to upright the chair.
He felt the edges of his smile strain against their sutures when Vox then crouched down to pick up the gun.
Depositing the revolver back onto the table with a clatter, Vox sat down in the chair, resting both hands palms down in front of him on the table as he did so. His expression was unwavering as he glared straight at Luffy, who turned to stare at him.
“This game is best two out of three.”
A single beat of silence. Before Luffy could respond, Alastor spoke first, though with hesitancy laced through his words, “ …You …can’t be serious…”
“I am,” was the simple reply, plainly stated even as Vox didn’t peel his eyes away from Luffy, “I’m my team’s captain. I decide the terms and conditions for the games, and for this game, I’ve decided it’s best two out of three. So either agree to play or forfeit.”
“Vox– ?! What the fuck?!” Suddenly, Valentino rushed up to the other’s side. Vox didn’t glance back at him even as the man grasped both his shoulders by all four of his hands and began to fret, “Best two out three in Russian Roulette? When we’ve already fucking lost once?! You’d have to win TWICE!!! That’s not playing a wager, that’s straight-up suicide– ”
“There’s still a chance. It’s not impossible to win twice.”
“IT MIGHT AS WELL BE!!! Really! Just– forget about the damn Radio Demon– ”
“Ooh, don’t you pretend to care now,” Vox seethed, full of distain and scorn as he finally glared back at Valentino, “Why do you think I even have to do this? If you and Velvette had let us win the fucking race, we would’ve been completely fine! But now if we don’t win this round, it’s fucking OVER! Don’t you give me shit when I’m the only chance we have at keeping our brand! Or did you and your insect short attention-span forget about that already?! You both should be THANKING me for betting my afterlife like this!”
Flinching back as Vox swatted his hands off his shoulders, Valentino attempted to recover, “But– I mean, that’s true– but you’re not even doing it for the brand! The three of us– don’t need to be the Vees! The cash goes down, yeah, but we can still go back to doing our own thing and we’ll get by! If you do this, it really will be over for you, and you’re doing it for a guy who’s never going to love you back– ”
A burst of mean laughter stopped Valentino short. After the mirthless chuckle, Vox averted his face away from the other while shaking his head, “Ha– You– You really didn’t hear a fucking word I said before, huh? You probably never fucking have. That’s not what this is about– ”
“Then what is it about– ?!”
“ –It’s about how I’d rather DIE than leave Alastor behind!” Vox’s hands slammed down on the table in a loud bang to emphasize the words, “I already decided that this is what I’d do if that damn asshole lost his game! I will be dead six feet under before the Davy Back ends like this! This is my last chance! I’ll never get another opportunity like this! Even if it’s only for a fraction of a possibility, if I pass on doing absolutely everything in my power to win, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life! I can’t live like this anymore! If I die trying, then I die! That’s that! And you’re not on the boat with me this time, right? Just like you asked! So FUCK OFF!!!”
Valentino stared with wide yes at Vox, mouth falling slightly in his shock. Any further reaction he might have had was interrupted by Velvette, who’d come up to the side of him to pull at one of his arms with a severe expression and shake of the head.
Looking down at her for a moment, Valentino internally debated what to do, before his mouth screwed up with wavering frustration. He followed Velvette in stepping back away from where Vox was at the table.
Alastor was rendered momentarily speechless. Back a distance away where he was still rigged up in his casts by the Straw Hat stands, Sanji spoke in a hush, but still just loud enough for Alastor to pick up on, “Of course he won’t give up… A fight for love is even greater than a fight for life. Say what you will about this shitty bastard, he’s as serious as a man can be when it comes to Al. His kind of love is more than just ‘romantic’, for better or for worse.”
…They’re really going to let him do this. After their years long alliance, they’re going to let Vox commit to a gamble that is almost guaranteed to end with him killing himself. Though, it’s not as though they could convince him otherwise, anyway–
When Luffy started moving to retake his seat, Alastor walked back over to their side of the table to shoot a hand out, holding him back from the chair. “No, you stand back. We’re switching out.”
“What.” Alastor ignored Vox’s flat question to pull the chair back, and then take a seat for himself. With a smile truly stitched in place, he looked forward to face Vox’s wide, shocked eyes and the revolver that still lied on the table between them.
“If your team gets to switch out its player, there shouldn’t be any reason why our team can’t. We would need a second player anyway if you got to the stage where you won a round, and I didn’t even play in the game I was supposed to, so I’m still available to play this one.”
While Alastor reached out to collect both the revolver and the case of bullets, Vox wasn’t paying attention at all to what Alastor was doing with his hands, flipping out the cylinder to reload the gun. Instead, he just stared straight at Alastor as he tried to parse out, “That’s– That’s not the point– You can’t play! What the Hell is the point of me playing the game if you die if I win?!”
“Who knows? That’s for you to decide,” the word hid a mountain of tension lying underneath its unemotive surface. Clicking the cylinder back into the barrel, Alastor spun it at random, then cocked the hammer as he laid out the rules, “The first side to get shot twice, including the shot from the last round, loses. And what’s the fun of waiting for the one out of six to finally show up? Let’s cut straight to the chase– I put in three bullets. It’s a fifty-fifty right from the start. And, just to make things extra fun– ”
Placing the loaded gun onto the table, he slid it forward to Vox’s side. Vox’s eyes were still so very wide as he stared down at it.
“ –we aren’t shooting ourselves, we’re shooting each other. You are going to take that gun and fire it at me.”
Vox stared at him for a long moment, even glancing down at the gun and distantly picking it up in disbelief, like he was checking by the weight of it that it was real, and that this was actually happening.
If he had the presence of mind to do so, he could’ve turned down all of the rules Alastor just put forth, and even forced Luffy back into the player’s seat. But thankfully, so caught up in his turmoil, Vox was instead entirely focused on his disbelief that Alastor would place himself in this sort of game to begin with. It was an action that was the antithesis to how he had prioritized himself above all others, in the many years Vox had known him prior.
Vox finally looked away from the gun and back to Alastor to say with a distant voice, still not having fully processed the moment, “You really… would rather die than be with me? Than be friends with me?”
“You wouldn’t be friends with me, this way,” he reminded Vox, knowing that he should already know that. Leaning forward with his elbows rested on the table, he clarified, “And no, it’s that I’d rather die than not be able to live freely. So if you want to take me, then you best be prepared to drag my dead body with you.”
After another extended pause where Vox only stared at him, Alastor decided to give him a little push, “This isn’t what you set out into these games for, I realize, but really– You should want this. What happened to all that anger of yours? Haven’t I caused you nothing but misery anyway? If you can’t have me, wouldn’t you want to kill me? To end the existence causing you such pain– ”
“No– Stop– I said fucking STOP TELLING ME WHAT I SHOULD WANT– !!!”
The revolver flashed up in a gleam, the barrel pointed right into Alastor’s face.
Just as quick as Vox had whipped it up in his impulse, however, the man stopped short just as fast. Leaning forward with his other hand clawing into the table, his hand holding the gun trembled. His finger wasn’t even resting over the trigger.
Vox was frozen in place like that, his hand and frame shaking as his teeth bared into a grief-stricken look. With his pixelated brows pinched above his still wide eyes, he looked as though he might start crying again.
Alastor could tell just by looking at him– He won’t pull the trigger. He can’t pull the trigger.
Ever so slowly, Vox’s hand began to sink down, lowering the gun bit by bit.
He’d drop it, and then the game would end. A kinder person would end things here. However, Alastor wasn’t quite done. There was still more he could do to test this man. There was still a point to be made. And so he said, “So prepared to shoot yourself, but when it comes to shooting me, you get cold feet? It seems you’re having some trouble taking your turn, dear pal. I’ll help you out with that– ”
Alastor shadow rose up along Vox’s back. Its hand followed along the length of his arm leading to the gun to steady Vox’s hand, and then pressed a single claw on the trigger to fire. Vox flinched back violently with the recoil, screaming, “ALASTOR– ?!?!”
There were several other screams as a bullet fired straight into Alastor’s forehead. His vision went black, his head and neck tilted back severely in his seat.
A single heartbeat passed, and his eyes shot open once more to the permeating red light of Hell.
He righted himself in a swift motion, slamming his palms down onto the table as he crouched forward over it. From the red X now bright and illuminated on the center of his forehead, an ink-like darkness spat out a misshapen bullet. It dropped onto the table’s surface with a small clink.
“Who lets the other side play dealer in Russian Roulette without any mind for what they’re doing? You should have checked what I put in the gun. Only one of the three bullets I loaded in were of angelic make, you see…”
Having retrieved the revolver from Vox, Alastor’s shadow handed it to him. Alastor straightened his posture upright, taking firm aim right at the center of the wide eyes displayed Vox’s picture-box head. With a viridian glow, the gun’s cylinder clicked through its chambers until it landed on the slot he knew held the angelic bullet.
“ –And it’s this one, right here!” Cocking the gun, Alastor’s head titled just a tad to the side with a smile that was just a tad too stiff.
“Out of curiosity, if you had any last words, what would they be? Perhaps you would like to make a lament of regret? For offering your life in exchange for this fruitless love and friendship of yours. This is a very poor deal you’ve made for yourself…”
Vox blinked up at Alastor, staring down the barrel of the gun with constricting pupils.
Until, after a lengthy silence, he closed his eyes all together.
A sad smile, wavering and slight, curved on his face. Vox softly replied, “…I can’t do that. Even though I should, I don’t regret it. Even if I’m going to end up dying for it… Even if none of it meant anything to you… the time I spent with you before was the happiest I’ve ever been… I can’t regret it… I know you hate it, and– I’m sorry, but I don’t regret… that I’ll always love you. And that I’ll always wish we could have been friends… I… was never going to get what I want. I was never going to make you happy anyway… So, it’s okay… Go ahead and shoot.”
There were another few seconds of silence on his own part.
“ …You’re a masochistic lunatic,” Alastor decided, thinking back once again to that conversation he’d had in the library. Along with making his decision on how he wanted to proceed from this, he adjusted the position of his hand ever so slightly. “Such a fool you are, to the very end…”
He pulled the trigger. The shot rang out loud amongst the relative silence. Vox’s body jerked back in his seat as he was struck, blood spurting out in a dark red splatter.
Taking a moment to gather himself, Vox first blinked up into the air. Before he slowly looked down at his now bleeding left shoulder, where the bullet had hit him.
With a tone matching his blank expression of incomprehension, he asked, “You… missed…?”
“This game is over,” Alastor declared while setting the gun onto the table. The weight of it lifted from his shoulders as well as his hand. “Your side was shot twice in total, and therefore, it’s your loss. This Davy Back is over. And our captain is set to claim the Vees’ ‘flag’.”
Stepping around the table to make his way over to the other side, Alastor intoned as he approached, “If you ever try a stunt like this again, I won’t miss next time. This was already enough of a horrid experience as it was. Every step of the way, you’ve been nothing but a nuisance to me. However, I won’t kill you…”
Leaning over into Vox’s space, Alastor’s hand lightly clawed into his shoulder and wound, smearing the blood onto the bandage on his hand and causing Vox to wince in pain. He spoke quietly right beside that picture-box head, around where it’s theoretical ‘ear’ would have been, so that only Vox would hear what he had to say…
“ …because I don’t want you to die… Luffy didn’t need me to play that last game. I didn’t do it for him, I did it for you…”
He felt Vox tense under his hold. But he didn’t look into the other’s face as he pressed forward, volume still low and hushed, “It’s about time that we… that I talked to you about this. Properly. And I realize I’ve been the main deterrent to that, previously, so… after let’s say, a couple of days to tie things up and cool down, I’ll let you know when. I know you’ll be watching either way...”
And with that said, Alastor released his grip to right himself, and walked away without looking back. Rather than walk back to Luffy, however, he instead headed for the hotel, calling out with a slight parting wave, “Well, now that that’s done with– I’m going to go help Rosie with the clean up! If I’m lucky there will still be some exorcist meat up for grabs.”
“Okay!” Luffy called back with a causal cheer. Very much not the tone one would typically use after seeing someone get shot in the head and then shoot someone else, but Alastor didn’t expect otherwise from the boy.
Even though he could feel Vox’s stare boring into his back as he left, he didn’t acknowledge it. Despite acting as though he’d completely divorced from the situation, however, Alastor was still keeping track of things using his shadow. It was through this method that he still watched on as Chopper directed, “Hey Usopp, can you bring the other chair around to him. Yeah, like that, now put me down. I can move enough now for this at least…”
“You sure you don’t want me to work on him instead, Tony-ya?”
“I’d rather do it instead. I probably won’t be able to work on other patients very much since I’m still recovering, so you should go and get started on helping the others with the people that were hurt during the battle.”
Silently agreeing with the point, Trafalgar began to walk back to the hotel as well. All the while Vox had begun to stare at where Chopper now stood on a chair beside his, stunned. Grabbing onto the left lapel of Vox’s jacket, the deerling stated with in professional manner, “I’m going to move aside your clothes to treat your gunshot wound, okay?”
The doctor didn’t wait for a response before going on ahead, which was good, since Vox spent a fair amount of time just blinking at him. Before finally questioning, “ …Huh? Why? Why– are you bothering with this, after all that?”
“Because I’m a doctor. It’s my job,” Chopper started with, sounding like that was all that needed to be said. Before he seemed to add on for the other man’s benefit, still not looking away from where his hooves were at work, “Also… If Alastor didn’t kill you, that means he wants you to get better. So I’m going to take care of you for him.”
Vox tensed up again at that, wincing as the movement inadvertently added pressure onto his injury. While he didn’t respond, still among the Straw Hats, Zoro sighed in a huff as he turned away to head back towards where Sanji was to collect the man, “It’s just like that guy to shoot him in the same place Luffy shot himself and leave it at that… What the Hell was the point of shooting himself like that though?! He makes things dramatic for no reason!”
“I’m sure Alastor had his reasons. Though it is true he likes to make a show of things much of the time, too,” Robin said plainly.
Huffing much more angrily, Nami turned to start walking away, “Well he gave me a damn heart attack with that ‘show’ of his! A warning would’ve been nice! I really thought he was about to die for a second!”
“That whole game was way too intense! I could hardly breathe the entire time. My heart’s gonna be actin’ funky for weeks now…” Usopp cried in exhaustion while clutching his head, walking alongside Nami.
“You can say that again…” Charlie agreed with a groan from where she was resting her forehead against Vaggie’s shoulder in exhaustion. Apparently, Alastor’s fake out headshot had taken quite a toll on the girl. Vaggie consoled the Princess by soothing the back of her head with a long sigh.
The group as a whole seemed to take that as the cue to disperse. Charlie and Lucifer awkwardly hung around, not wanting to leave the Vees unattended but also not wanting to be there. Vaggie was also sticking around to squint at Adam and Lute in suspicion. Responding to the mood, Brook hummed, “Ahh, it’s a bit awkward now, huh? Yeah… I’ll play some music to lift everyone’s spirits!” And then pulled out his violin to start on a tune.
Adam sent the musician a considering glance, before stepping down from the stands with a stretch of his arms over his head. Lute followed him without being asked, though sent Adam her own curious look when he rambled, “ ‘K, looks like the show’s over, so no point in hangin’ around here anymore… Uhh… We still good, Brook? You guys did beat the other guys’ asses, nice by the way, sooo…”
Brook didn’t pause in moving his bow across the strings even as he looked to Adam with his eye sockets. “Oh– Yoho! Certainly. All’s well that ends well!”
“Good! Good… I’ll see ya for the next band practice then. I’m thinkin’ Lute would rock on the bass, but it’ll take a bit to bring her up to our speed.”
“We will still be having a discussion about you keeping this from us, Adam…” Jinbei made Adam’s relief out to be short-lived. With a quick wince, Adam began to slither away faster than before, so as to prolong avoiding the situation. Lute didn’t say anything as she followed behind, just taking a moment to glance back and forth from Jinbei, Brook, and Adam as she tried to process the change-up regarding her former superior’s attitude.
Seeing that it was apparently safe to approach, the other two Vees finally came over flank Vox’s other side across from where Chopper was in the middle of cleaning up his injury. Leaning forward with a jittery energy, Valentino interrogated, “Wait– What even happened just now? Why did the Radio Demon spare you? What did he SAY?!”
“ …Well, what happened is what happened. I don’t know what else to say about that,” Vox started, before he averted his gaze off to the side away from anyone. “And… if he only wanted me to hear, I’m not gonna say anything.”
“Seriously?! Honey, you cannot just leave me hangin’ here– Spill the tea!!!”
“Hey! Back off, will ya?!” Velvette spoke up just to pull the gossip hungry man back, chastising, “The guy literally just failed a suicide attempt, Val. Ya gotta treat him with kiddy gloves for at least half an hour!”
Vox balked at that, “I did not– That is NOT what happened!”
“I’m pretty damn sure that’s what happened.”
“Just cause I didn’t care if I died doesn’t mean I wanted to die!”
“ …I don’t think that helps your point as much as you think it does,” Valentino was the one to say. Upon Vox’s glare whipping back his way, he held up his hands in a mock show of surrender.
“He just wanted somethin’ enough that he’d die for it.” The Vees’ attention was drawn over to where Luffy was still standing across the distance of the table. While they gauged the captain with a wary look, Luffy just gave a plain look back, directed straight at Vox while he stated, “You’re stronger than I thought you were. You still wouldn’t have got your dream even if ya did win, though. I won’t forgive you if ya try takin’ Alastor from us again, but I don’t think you’ll need’a try again, either.”
With that said, Luffy reeled back his arm to shoot it up and across the beach. He grabbed onto the top of the Vees’ triple V brand set above their stage, and then tore it off in one great pull. He let it fall and clatter to the stage floor, the lights from the sign flickering out in sparks at the abrupt disconnection.
And with his prize from the Davy Back claimed, Luffy turned around to walk away without saying anything else.
Chopper was left to finish up with Brook, who was playing his music, and the Morningstars still monitoring from a slight distance. The TV screen watched the captain’s back with a narrowed gaze of discontent, but also with a questioning glint to the look. Vox stayed silent for a moment longer, before he closed his eyes and let out a muted sigh. When he opened his eyes again, it was to stare down at Chopper’s handiwork.
Glancing back from their destroyed sign, Velvette commented with a sigh, “Well, I’d say this was fun while it lasted, but I haven’t decided yet if hangin’ with you two bloody idiots was an overall positive experience or not.”
“Fuck you too bitch…” Vox flatly stated as almost an instinct. He’d clearly already mentally moved on to another matter. Still staring at Chopper and brows furrowing in thought, Vox mused, “So you’re… the doctor of your crew? Then… you can’t possibly be Al’s kid. No child of his would ever dedicate themselves to helping the sick and injured, or even respect the sanctity of life.”
Now Chopper was back to balking at the idiot, “That’s what changed your mind?! He was trying to tell you that whole time that I’m not his calf you know!”
“Hey! You gotta admit it’s a weird fucking coincidence that you’re both giant red monster deer people! And the way he pets your head and lets you hide behind his legs when you’re scared is fuckin’ adorable– It totally makes it look like you’re his kid!”
“I’m a REINDEER, dammit! I’m not even human!”
“Well how was I supposed to know that the literal reindeer on the crew is also the DOCTOR?!” Vox emphasized the word as though that truly was the deciding factor in disproving his braindead conspiracy. With his mind having looped back around to his currently ongoing medical treatment, however, he deescalated into a put-on expression, asking with reluctant resignation, “Damn, actually, now that I think about it– How much is this gonna cost anyway? You’re not using anesthesia or a painkiller so it can’t be that much in terms of medical expense, right?”
Looking up at Vox properly now that his shoulder was bandaged up, Chopper casually explained, “Oh– Law charges people for treatment, but I don’t. I don’t usually get patients outside of the crew very often, so it’s not like I’m running a practice or anything. I just treat people when they need it.”
Vox stared at the deerling in shock. The other two Vees matched his look. Ever the capitalists, their business-driven minds failed to even consider the prospects of freely accessible healthcare. Vox even faintly questioned, uncomprehending, “ …You don’t charge for this???”
Seeing that nothing of importance was going on and that the Vees weren’t about to try anything, Alastor stopped focusing on the mismatched group. That better be the LAST he ever hears of anyone questioning his non-existent relation to Chopper. He will not be held responsible for his actions should it come up again.
“Alastor~ ! Finally finished up with that wacky game with the Vees? I knew ya guys had a handle on it,” Rosie chimed as he approached where she’d been in the middle of directing her cannibals back towards Cannibal Town, “So, any important details? Any of ‘em bite the bullet?”
Spinning his cane into a resting position in front of himself, Alastor lightly sighed, “You don’t know how apt a phrase that is, Rosie dear. But the full story can be saved for our next luncheon. For now, we can rest assured that my captain’s main enemy in life certainly bit the bullet. All of the Vees live, though the Vees they will no longer be.”
“That so? That’s good… Sounds like it was an interestin’ time!”
Noticing Rosie’s minute relieved reaction, Alastor rose a questioning eyebrow. “You are glad they’re still alive? I was not aware you had any stake in whether those has-been Overlords survived or not.”
Waving him off, Rosie’s smile pinched a tad empathetic as she explained, “Oh Alastor, ya should know I don’t care for those other two, but I can’t deny I was a little afraid you were gonna finally pull the plug on Vox. And I’m glad to hear ya didn’t! You would’ve been so upset with yourself, even if ya tried convincin’ yourself otherwise… Now don’t go bitin’ my head off for sayin’ this, but if the Vee alliance is dunzo, then maybe this would be a good time to try workin’ things out? If ya think it’s possible, that is.”
Alastor restrained himself from reacting to the assertion, simply averting his stare as his smile pinched at the edges. Rosie had yet to bring up Vox as a topic with Alastor since the time she’d made mention of it during one of their lunches that had occurred relatively soon after his seven-year absence, which he put a quick stop to. After he’d stormed off without returning, she knew not to pry any further.
Despite him not having explained anything concerning their falling out, however, she seemed to still have a general understanding that even if they had fought and their friendship had been broken, Alastor didn’t hate Vox. She intuitively recognized that Alastor still cared for him.
He had never hated Vox… And he had never hated that love of his, either. Despite the impression he’d given his dear pal about the matter…
Seeing that he still had some time before he had to think more on it, though, Alastor put it off. “Let’s not get into that now, shall we? You best have saved some choice parts for me, or I’ll feel quite betrayed, my dear.”
“Pah! Course I did! Come follow me, Alastor darlin’. I’ll send ya off with a nice lunch pack!”
And so it was with his focus now set onto reaping the rewards of the war that had been won that Alastor put the annoyance and absurdity of that Davy Back Fight behind him. However… he also did not quite plan on leaving everything behind, entirely.
Chapter 27: With Love
Chapter Text
Work had begun to repair the damage caused by what was now officially the last Extermination of Pentagram City. The hotel itself had done fairly well for itself with its improved defenses, especially compared to last year’s Extermination where the entire thing had needed to be rebuilt. But some slight repairs still needed to be had, and other portions of the city were not so well off. It would be some time before Pentagram City would return to the state it once was, though admittedly, that was not such prime condition regardless considering it was Hell.
The Vees’ portion of the city was one of those that had undergone drastic change. Not due to damages from the Extermination, but due to the end of their brand. The triple V symbol on their tower had seemingly disappeared into thin air all on its own, the magic of the Davy Back’s “deal” following through with their wager. It had also disappeared from every product and piece of merchandise that had used to feature it. Their era as Overlords, short-lived compared to someone like the Radio Demon, was essentially over. Though there was nothing stopping them from continuing their individual businesses, to climb back to the level of influence they once had would be a difficult trial. Alastor had a wandering thought as to what Vox’s plans for the future would be, before deciding that that Overlord business was very likely not the top of Vox’s priorities, at the moment.
Due to Hazbin Hotel only needing a touch up, however, its repairs had been finished in time to receive the Heaven’s delegation, which had been confirmed for their arrival three days after the Extermination. Knowing how the justice system worked at a speed likened to a snail’s pace, even giving Heaven the benefit of assuming they would expedite Sera and the council’s trial, Alastor doubted they would be done with the proceedings before the meeting with Charlie. Which meant the current Seraph “Emily” had made the time to prioritize the delegation. This was a good sign, but Alastor was still mentally prepared for things to go horribly, horribly wrong, waiting on the day of to see how close the Princess was to finally designating her hotel as an official establishment.
And, as the day had arrived, it seemed that she was actually very close. What a shocker that is!
“Charlie!”
“Emily!”
The Princess and Seraph greeted each other with a great hug upon the other’s arrival at the hotel entrance. Vaggie watched on from the side with a repressing squint, clearly trying and failing not to be envious of the interaction. She only relaxed the tension in her frame once the two parted, and Emily began to talk business, “So, like I mentioned before– I want to endorse your plans to help sinners on their path of redemption, Charlie! I’ve already got it cleared by the new interim council, and wanted to propose to you how Heaven wishes to be of help to your hotel.”
“Sounds great! I’m all ears!” Charlie enthusiastically agreed as she and Emily sat themselves in the lounge area. Emily smiled back, the enthusiasm apparently infectious.
“Excellent! Well, I was thinking, it’s a bit hard for you to keep in contact with us, isn’t it? You didn’t even know where Sir Pentious had ended up until I mentioned it. That’s why I thought that having some winners from Heaven be stationed here at the hotel with you would be a great idea! Not only could they help you out with running the place and the actual redemption part of things, but with them, Heaven and Hell would have more streamline communication! We could call them Heaven Ambassadors. What do you think?”
With a loud gasp, Charlie balled up her hands as she exclaimed, “That! Would! Be! Awesome~ ! We would love to accept any on-hands help like that!”
“But not too many,” Vaggie was quick to curb the expectations, leveling seriously, “A lot of sinners still don’t have much trust in Heaven, especially after that whole Giant Holy Death Ray thing. If we have too many people from Heaven interfering with the hotel, that will drive sinners away.”
While Charlie frowned at her girlfriend’s negativity, Emily gave the other an awkward though understanding smile. “I agree. That’s why, well… I didn’t want to impose or anything, but I already picked out who would be on the team. If it’s okay with you, I can call them here now, actually! So you can meet them right away to give your own approval! There’s only three of them! …Though, there will also be one more, uh– visitor. Who will be one of the people in charge of the Heaven Ambassadors on Heaven’s side of things rather than staying here.”
Vaggie gave a suspicious look at the hesitation that came along with mentioning the last ‘visitor’, while Charlie ignored the cue entirely, readily agreeing, “Of course! I’d LOVE to meet them all! I’m sure they’re wonderful!”
“Great!” Emily chimed back, before she winked with a tease, “I know for a fact you’re gonna be real excited for one of them! And the other two are excited to see some of the people at the hotel. While I call for them, why don’t you get the rest of your team, Luffy and his crew, and that friend of Luffy’s, Law.”
Seeing that Alastor had been shamelessly listening in via his shadow like usual, he set about collecting the pirates that had been requested. It was curious indeed. While he’d expect the Straw Hats to be desired company if only due to having the Sun God as their captain, the specific inclusion of Trafalgar was very intriguing. And as for requesting Charlie’s friends to be present… It didn’t take a genius to put the dots together as to which of the winners would be most suited for this sort of position that they would also be real excited for.
“Why hello, my good friendsss! It isss I– ”
“SIR PENTIOUS!!!!”
The snake was practically dogpiled with Charlie, Cherri, Angel, and Niffty all throwing themselves on Pentious, who now featured wings, a halo, and an overall lighter color palette. He startled as he tumbled to the ground under their weight, but recovered quicky, beaming from the overjoyed reaction. Even Husk and Vaggie looked over the man with appreciative smiles. And Alastor himself wasn’t complaining, even as Luffy excitedly pointed back at where Pentious’s portrait was hung, shouting next to him, “Oh! It’s the Snake Captain! He’s alive?”
Alastor explained, “He got sent to Heaven after his heroic death, apparently.”
“Cool!”
“Ow! What a SUUUPER chance!” Franky roused with a fist pump, “I’m gonna force that guy to help me with figurin’ out how to make the ships fly! If airships are his thing, he’s gotta have some tips!”
“Make sure you wait until they’re done catching up before you get him busy like that,” Nami ruled, looking over the reunion with evident fondness. From where she stood off to the side, Emily was also watching the group with a fond smile, hands clasped together.
After the dallying sappiness, Sir Pentious was finally allowed to stand upright again. Clearing his throat and not-so-subtly rubbing away his tear-tracks, he restarted his presumed introduction, “My friends! I am mossst overjoyed that I was permitted to return to this fine essstablishment. While my time in Heaven hasss been alright, I was even hired by– Actually you don’t need to know that part! Anyway! I jussst wished to say… I missssed you all very dearly.”
“Aww we missed you too, Pentious!” Cherri cooed while hip checking the other, causing Pentious to fidget with a wobbly, embarrassed grin, “I bet it’s no fun up there anyway! You’re back with the real peeps now! Welcome home!”
The greeting caused tears to bud at Pentious’s eyes once more. The snake had to shake his head about to get his mind back on track. Moving holding his arms behind his back, he shifted into a more military tone, “Thank you very much, Missss Bomb! I look forward to getting myself acquainted with everyone again. However, I also still must attend to my duties, and in this case, I have the honor of introducing the leader of the Heaven Ambassadors, who us Ambassadors stationed at the hotel will be reporting back to in Heaven!”
Slithering back and forth, Pentious waved a dramatic hand about as he proclaimed, “He was man of ssssuperb standing in life, known far and wide acrosssss all the seassss! A hero of hisss time! A ssscorge upon the wicked pirates that ravaged the innocent! As the man who fought againssst the first King of the Pirates, Gol D. Roger, his ssstrength was known to both marines and pirates alike! He inspired both myself and Missss Emily to take action against Madam Sssera’s depravity! He even threatened to fistfight God with a capital G if They didn’t listen to Missss Emily’s proposal! And very thankfully, this extreme plan was unneeded. However! He was also known for hisss lineage, the ancessstor to a line of greatsss! Despite being a ssstaunch marine, he sssired a man who had once been the most wanted man in their world! The great revolutionary Monkey D. Dragon who founded the Revolutionary Army that fought against the oppression of a tyrannical World Government, dedicating decadesss of his life to free the people! And of course, that man went on to sssire the man most inssstrumental to winning the freedom of their land! A man who surpassssed the limits of humanity to become one of the divine, died, and once again sssaved the people of Hell– Yesss, none other than the sssecond King of the Pirates, Monkey D. Luffy! That is the batshit crazy family that this equally batshit crazy man started– ”
Gesturing towards Heaven’s portal with a flourish, Pentious saluted as he announced, “My I introduce to you all, the one and only– Vice Admiral Monkey D. Garp!”
“GRANDPA?!?!”
Luffy dived behind Alastor’s frame in what was frankly a startling show of retreat. Holding onto Alastor’s shoulders, he peaked his head around his side as he watched the man that was apparently his grandfather enter the room.
“HA! There was no need for that ramblin’ intro, Pentious. I’m supposed to be retired from the Marines now after all!”
After a couple seconds, Luffy leaned to the side around Alastor to squint at the arrival, questioning, “Wha… Who’re you?”
“You brat! He just said who I am! Don’t go not recognizin’ your own grandpa just cause my clock rewound a bit!” a man who looked to be a spitting image of Luffy yelled back. Though, it was clear they didn’t look precisely the same. Monkey D. Garp had a more ruggish, masculine look to his face and a larger frame that contrasted Luffy’s eternally boyish look. He didn’t look a day over thirty, not looking at all the age appropriate to be a grandfather. Rather than having a monkey form, his was more gorilla-like if anything, with large arms and hands and a burly chest to match. And of course, he had the usual angel features of a halo and wings.
As the arrival pounded his chest in a gorilla manner, Luffy ducked back behind Alastor again while the young Garp started up, “Just cause people die old doesn’t mean their souls stay old! I’ve always been young at heart! I’m back in my prime now, boy! This ‘s how I looked when I was risin’ the ranks! Well, except the gorilla parts, course. ‘N’ now I’m here to do my part in a different way, but before that, let me get a look at ya– ”
“NO! I don’t wanna be a marine! I’m a pirate! I’m the Pirate King now!” Luffy stubbornly declared while still hiding behind Alastor.
“Boy, there aren’t marines to be joinin’ in these parts,” what had the promise to be a hopeful end to that absurdity then spiraled into something else entirely, “But on that note– Why the Hell did ya not go to Heaven?! Despite becomin’ the literal King ‘a the Pirates, you actually managed to make it into the good place only to go to Hell anyway?! What’s wrong with ya?!”
“I wouldn’t be free up there so I didn’t go! That’s that!”
“That’s where your grandpa is though! How was I supposed to check in on ya down here?!”
“I don’t care about that! You just try to get me to do stuff I don’t wanna do anyway!”
“You BRAT– Do I need’a remind ya of my Fists of Love– ”
Garp snatched his hand back from where he’d been trying to reach behind Alastor just in time to vacant the space Alastor snapped his bared, serrated teeth.
He grinned sharply at the man in full displeasure, eyes flashing into ticking radio dials as he growled through static, “Regardless of your apparent relation, if you try laying hands on my captain while he is under my protection, I will not hesitate to BiTe ThEm OfF…”
Giving Alastor a look of only slight annoyance, Garp cracked the knuckles of one of his hands with the other as a lopsided grin stretched across his face. “HA! Ya can try me if ya want, sure! Since you’re new ya wouldn’t know what you’re doin’ pickin’ a fight with me, though, so I don’t mind teachin’ ya– ”
“WOAH, HEY NOW! We’re not here to start any fights, Garp! Be good or I’m sending you back!” Emily was quick to rush in, pulling the gorilla back by the back of his shirt like an ineffective owner would their unruly mutt. Charlie also slid in between the two of them with her arms spread out wide and a fretful expression.
Off to the side still lingering around Pentious, Angel muttered to Husk and Cherri, “I feel like this explains a shit ton ‘bout why Luffers ‘s the way he is…”
“They definitely resemble each other in more than just looks, for sure…” Husk droned with underlying irritation.
Garp didn’t allow the manhandling for long, just letting himself be pulled back before he fixed himself back up again without seeming like he cared about it either way. “He’s the one who wanted to start somethin’! I just wanna have a proper reunion with my grandson!” he grumbled before scowling at where Luffy was poking his head out around Alastor again.
“I’m serious Luffy! I wanted ya to be a marine for a reason, ya know! Goin’ out to sea, makin’ enemies of the entire world, becomin’ King ‘a the Pirates– Ya would’ve been safer if ya didn’t live such a reckless life! It was the same for Ace too! Ya both just did whatever the Hell ya wanted without thinkin’ ‘bout where you’d end up! I lived a good life as a marine! I died in the line of duty, but it was my time to go! It was time for the next generation to take the reins! But you both– you– ”
With the tears that had been brimming in his eyes falling down his cheeks, Garp’s anger became tinged with sorrow as he cried, “ –you died so young! It ain’t right! Ya should’ve lived a nice, long life! Had kids ‘n’ grandkids of yer own! It was bad enough when Ace died, but you too?! And I couldn’t do anythin’ to protect any of ya! It’s way too early for me to be seein’ you again! Two of my grandsons dead, and for what?! Why– couldn’t you just do like I told ya…”
Watching his grandfather break down, Luffy gained a pensive pout, before he slowly removed himself from his hiding spot. With all the awkwardness of a reluctant child, Luffy offered a hug to the man, who wrapped his arms around the boy in what would be a crushing grip if not for the other’s rubbery body.
While Grap cried into his shoulder, Luffy glanced back at his crew with a questioning look, like he was checking if he really had to do this, to which Jinbei answered with a nod and Brook with a thumbs up of approval. Luffy then looked away to endure the moment in awkward silence.
Alastor looked away from the scene with a slight eyeroll. It was his opinion that Luffy shouldn’t have to comfort his grandfather, but he also realized his opinion would be of the minority. He did not have the best opinion of unwanted paternal figures in general, considering his own was a piece of rancid garbage who’d abandoned his family. But at the very least Garp did seem to be a better man than that…
While the two had their moment, Emily apparently deigned it appropriate to move on for the time being. “Okay! Let’s give them some privacy and bring out another one of the other Heaven Ambassadors now, yeah? Like how we did with Sir Pentious, we wanted to give this chance to winners who really missed and wanted to be with their loved ones who didn’t make it up to Heaven with them. That way they feel more empathetic for the struggles the sinners are going through and are more motivated to help! So, considering the people who were instrumental in helping out Luffy and the rest of you, and the fact that a certain crew was being very, VERY vocal about it– ”
“CAPTAAAAAAAIN!!!”
A large blur of white and orange streaked out of the portal to body slam Trafalgar to the ground. The man went down with a pained grunt. From his place on the ground underneath the beast however, rather than reacting with violence, he instead patted the new arrival on the back with only slight irritation, indulgent fondness prevailing.
“Bepo… I’d say it’s good to see you, if you didn’t tackle me just now…”
The large white polar bear wearing an orange jumpsuit, easily Jinbei’s size in both height and girth, cried in a rather pathetic warble as he rolled himself such that his back was now on the floor and his captain clutched into his stomach. His halo and wings were absurdly tiny for a frame his size, making it doubtful as to whether he’d be able to fly with them at all.
“S– S-Sorry! I’m just– so happy to see you again, Captain! I– We missed you SO MUCH! Heaven is a bunch’a meanies! They said only one of the crew’s allowed to go, and– everyone let me be the one to go since I cried the most about it!”
“I can see that…” Trafalgar sighed again, just a tad put on even as he continued soothing a hand down the bear’s back.
“How nice, Bepo can be with Law again. He’s always been the cutest of Law’s crew,” Robin explained to Alastor rather plainly, “He’s a Mink, so he was also a polar bear in life, you see. Though he’s gotten larger.”
“Is that so? How curious.” On the scale of things, meeting another unique race of the others’ world wasn’t too unusual.
Apparently having cleared his vision of enough tears, Bepo sniffled as his crying slowed down and he leaned back to get a proper look at Trafalgar. The man didn’t look happy in the slightest when the bear’s large paws moved out of their embrace to hold both of Trafalgar’s furry snow leopard cheeks. “But– Captain… You really look like a Mink now! I’m surprised! Though– Shachi looks like an orca and Penguin looks like a penguin, now, so I guess I shouldn’t be… But neither of them are Mink-like either. Since– Since Captain’s also furry now… can we Garchu? …Please?”
Robin once again explained for Alastor’s benefit, “ ‘Garchu’ refers to the way Minks greet one another. They feature a rather affectionate culture.”
Trafalgar did not look pleased to be asked to participate in the so-called ‘Garchu’. However, after staring at Bepo’s shining, still watery black eyes for a bit too long, he ended up caving. He averted his gaze with a low tsk, “Only because it’s been so long… And you did go out of your way to come down to Hell for me…”
“YAY!” after that excited exclamation, Bepo nuzzled his cheek and snout against Trafalgar’s, before nipping at his furred ear with a “Garchu <3!” Brows twitching, Trafalgar looked as though he already regretted his decision.
“Yah yah yah! I got to Garchu with Captain! I can die happy now!”
“We’re already dead you idiot! Now get up and get off me!”
“Sooo cuuute~ ” Charlie and Emily cooed in unison, eyes shining from the apparent ‘cuteness’. Before Emily seemed to snap herself out of the stupor, shaking her head back and forth to reset and get back on track.
“Alright, there’s one more Ambassador now! You see, there was one more winner who helped us out with putting an end to these Exterminations. So when he requested to be given the position, it was a no-brainer to let him have it…”
When the last person stepped out from the portal to Heaven, elated gasps rolled through various Straw Hats. Despite the reaction, he only had his gaze set on one person, happily greeting, “Luffy– ”
“AAAAAACE!!!!!”
Luffy practically threw aside his grandfather to bullet forward into his brother. Ace’s form was best described as a man made of fire, seemly formed of nothing but orange-red flames that even made up the shape of the wings on his back and the halo hovering over his head. And yet, the fire had no apparent effect on Luffy being in contact with him. Even the iconic straw hat was fine when Ace gently tipped it back and out of the way so Luffy could fully press his face into the other’s shoulder.
Embracing the boy with a tight grip, Ace smiled with fiery tears budding in the corner of his eyes. “It’s good to see you too, Luffy… I saw you became King of the Pirates. I knew you would do it!”
“Ace! I– I really missed you– !” Luffy cried into the fire-made shoulder, “You promised you wouldn’t die…”
“I know… I’m sorry…”
Despite having been promptly discarded in favor of another, Garp looked over the scene with clear tenderness as he righted himself, just standing back to let the two have their moment. Sir Pentious, meanwhile, tried to whisper in a hush to explain to the others, “You see, Portgasss D. Ace was the son of the first Pirate King, but was raisssed as a brother to Monkey D. Luffy under Vice Admiral Garp’s care… Or perhaps ‘care’ would be a better emphasssis, based on the ridiculousss things I’ve heard concerning the manner in which the Vice Admiral handles children…”
“Makes sense. I know I wouldn’t trust a guy who threatened to fistfight God with kids…” Vaggie snarked under her breath.
“Ace is the Second Division Commander of Whitebeard’s crew, a great pirate who used to be one of the Four Emperors before his death in the war at Marineford,” Jinbei was the one to further explain to Alastor, “The war was initiated due to the marines capturing and holding an execution for Ace, making an example of him to the world due to him being the son of Gol D. Roger. All the Seven Warlords were called to fight on the marine’s behalf, but I refused because Fishman Island used to be under the protection of their crew and I was a friend to Ace and Whitebeard, and I was stricken of my title and imprisoned myself. I actually first met Luffy when he broke into Impel Down in an attempt to free Ace prior to the execution, and thus was able to go with him to Marineford. Whitebeard’s crew and other allied crews also went to Marineford to rescue Ace. Despite our best efforts, Ace was struck down by Akainu, and Whitebeard perished as well. But rather than discourage the world from piracy, his confirmation of the One Piece’s existence spurred even more people to the sea, and with one of the Emperors that had previously maintained balance in the New World gone, the marines struggled to keep the peace during that chaotic time.”
As if this family tree wasn’t complicated enough already… Still, even thinking on the rather convoluted background involving Luffy and Ace, Alastor couldn’t deny that the pure elation Luffy had upon reuniting with his brother brought himself a good amount of satisfaction as well. It was like that for everyone, it seemed. Not only with the crew, but also amongst the Seraph, Charlie and friends. Glad to see these “families”, both makeshift and otherwise, be brought together once more, Emily, Garp, Charlie, and Vaggie left the lobby to go over the finer details of Heaven’s association with the hotel while leaving Pentious, Trafalgar’s polar bear, and Luffy’s brother to mingle.
Eventually, Luffy recovered to a point that he was no longer crying. Though he kept himself latched onto a fiery arm as he enthusiastically made sure, “You’re staying for real, right?! Like Emu said! Are ya sure ‘bout that? You’d be leavin’ Old Man Whitebeard.”
Smiling brightly down at his shorter brother, Ace waved off the issue, “Yeah. I can still go up and see Pops and my Mom when I want, ya know. But I’ve also had years with them at this point. I want to have some more time with you now. Though knowing you, you’ll be out and about around the place before long. I’ll leave you to your adventure, but make sure to come back and keep things lively here too!”
“Yeah! Course! Shishishi~ ”
“Great! Now, before we get caught up with catching up and all…” Turning towards the crew, Ace bowed his head in an incline, tipping his orange, cowboy style hat as he spoke to them, “Thank you all for taking such good care of my brother. It’s not an easy job in the slightest. I know I only got to meet with his crew that’s been around since Alabasta and would like to properly introduce myself to the rest of you. I’m ‘Fire Fist’ Ace, a Commander of Whitebeard’s crew. You likely know about the being Roger’s son thing, but that bastard was long dead before I was born. Whitebeard is the man I consider to be my real dad. To him, all of his crew are his sons and daughters, and I’m glad to be his son. That being said, I look forward to getting to know all of you more since I have the chance to hang around Luffy now.”
The difference in manners between the two brothers was like comparing a literal monkey to a civilized highborn. Franky was the first to reply, not doing much better than the ‘literal monkey’ comparison with his boorish speech, “Nice meetin’ ya! I’m Frrrrranky as ya probably know, a shipwright Luffy picked up at Water Seven! It’s good seein’ ya in person for the first time!”
“I’m not quite sure we encountered one another when I was in Alabasta with Crocodile, but as you know, I joined Luffy directly after their conflict. It’s very nice to meet a man so close to our captain,” Robin chimed in next.
Raising a boney hand in the arm like a child in a classroom, Brook spoke up, “It’s lovely meeting you as well! It’s such a beautiful sight to see brothers reunite once more in death… If only I had the eyes to see it. Yohohohoho~ ”
“Waha! I know you weren’t introducing yourself to me, but this is a good chance for me to properly reunite with you once more, Ace!” Jinbei cheerfully laughed before stepping up to give Ace a side hug on the side that wasn’t occupied by Luffy. Ace grinned back up at the larger fishman as he returned the gesture for a squeeze before the two parted.
“Good to see you too after so long, Jinbei! I owe you a ton for keeping Luffy safe during the war, as well as watching out for him after joining his crew. I know it wasn’t an easy process for you to leave your crew and break off from Big Mom like that, and it means a lot that you did.”
“Of course I would protect him in your stead after he’d proven himself. And as for joining him, I was only doing what was necessary to support a man worthy of following.”
As Ace looked away from Jinbei, he shifted his gaze straight towards Alastor to say, “And you’re Alastor, right? Pentious has talked about you before. I wanted to thank you in particular, since I saw that you especially helped my brother out when he first came down here, helping to take care of him and find his crew and everything. He’s a real crybaby when he gets lonely, but even when he hadn’t found the others, he was never alone because you were here. Thank you for that.”
Ace stuck out a hand towards him after his thanks. Alastor did not take him for the ignorant type, which meant that he likely knew the significance of the gesture concerning a dealmaker and was choosing to greet Alastor in such a manner regardless.
Accepting the handshake, he returned the man’s politeness, “My~ of course, dear brother of my captain! I will admit I was not pleased by the arrangement prior to Luffy convincing me otherwise, but joining this crew of his has turned out rather nicely for me. It is nice to finally put a face to the name as well, after having heard of you. Pleasure to be meeting you, quite the pleasure.”
“Ha! Yeah, I know a thing or two about being convinced into liking Luffy. Believe it or not, I was pretty mean to him when we first met as kids,” Ace replied with a hint of ironic amusement. After this, Ace then turned to Trafalgar and the other Hazbin residents that were still crowded around Pentious, consisting of Cherri, Angel, Husk, and Niffty to continue, “And thanks to you all too! I know you guys also helped out Luffy and have been looking out for him. Especially you, Trafalgar. I’ll have to make sure to thank Princess Charlie and Vaggie too when they aren’t busy. Since I’ll be working with the hotel, don’t hesitate to let me know if you need something. I’m happy to help!”
“I got a question, actually,” Angel unexpectedly rose two hands with a somewhat serious expression, only to undercut the moment significantly by asking, “Is there any chance that ya’d be enticed into a threesome with a spider ‘n’ cat demon? And if not, does Luffers got any more random hot bros hangin’ ‘round somewhere?”
“For fuck’s sake Angel…”
“What? Are ya seein’ this guy, Husky?! He’s so hot he’s literally made ‘a fire! I know ya’d go for it too– This was an obvious ask!” Angel emphasized while gesturing towards the aforementioned ‘hot bro’, meeting Husk’s exasperation with an incredulous eyebrow raise. “Also, the ‘gramps’ that just walked out? Damn. He can get it too– ”
Husk cut the spider off with extreme prejudice, “And THAT is where I draw my fuckin’ line! I am NOT about to let ya turn me into a GILF by proxy!”
“He doesn’t even look old anymore! So does it really count?!”
Despite being faced with a question that could be considered borderline workplace sexual harassment, Ace seemed to just brush it off along with the talk of his grandfather, casually replying, “Uh– not currently? We do actually have one more brother though, yeah, Sabo. He’s still alive, and I hope we don’t see him for a good while. But when he does kick the bucket that should be fun. When I died I actually thought he’d already died and was pissed to find out that he was still alive and just had amnesia that whole damn time…”
“A fuckin’ not dead hot bro with amnesia…? It’s like this family ‘a certified cuties ‘s also straight outta a soap opera, damn. But that also means we got a second shot when he dies though. Nice,” Angel once again ignored Husk’s judging glance at that last mention.
Meanwhile, Niffty had apparently used this distraction as an opportunity to scurry away and return with a bounty of marshmallows. She stuck one to the end of a long knife before standing beside the fire man to roast it using the flames of his leg. Once it was nicely crisped –which from Niffty’s perspective meant it was completely on fire– she blew it out before chomping down on the gooey snack. “Mhmm~ A walking marshmallow pit eheheh~ ! Monkey boy’s fire bro is GREAT!”
Slithering forward, Pentious lifted up the girl to carry her away while chastising, “Niffty, pleassse restrain yourself! That isss very rude! I do apologize, Mister Portagussss. Niffty here is somewhat, uh– intellectually challenged…”
“Oh, I didn’t mind!” Ace replied with what should have been false acceptance of being reduced to a marshmallow roaster, only to prove that he truly didn’t mind by saying, “I was just gonna ask that she make me one, actually. It’s kinda hard to get the temperature right when my hands are also fire too…”
“…I’ll make sure to make a big dinner tonight.”
Alastor instantly retorted for what must’ve been at least the twentieth time by now, “Sanji, you are not cooking. Your legs are still broken. I am the one making dinner until the darling deerling can fix you back up.” Chopper nodded in firm agreement with the statement.
“How many times do I have to say I don’t need my legs to cook so just let me– ”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s not happening. I will disassemble your wheelchair should you attempt to roll into the kitchen!”
“Shitty red ears you hypocrite your hands are still burnt– !”
“Come to think of it, this arguing reminded me of something…” Ace mused before twisting around to reach into the large bag he’d been carrying. He rummaged through it before pulling out a long object.
Zoro’s eyes went wide with shock when a white handled sword that remarkably resembled his broken one was tossed at him. He easily caught while Ace explained, “Kuina sent the Wado Ichimonji that reincarnated with her along with her letter for you. Said to not let you send it back no matter how much you argued about it.”
“Huh? Seriously?!” Unsheathing the sword slightly to confirm it was indeed a replica of the Heavenly sword he’d shattered, Zoro glared at the messenger to argue just as predicted, “This is hers?! Then she needs to keep it!”
“She said the only reason why it turned into angelic steel was because you worked hard in life to turn it into a black blade, and that it’s too calm in Heaven for her to put it to good use, so you should keep it anyway,” with a knowing, wry grin, Ace ended that particular discussion by saying, “If you got anythin’ to say about that, write it up in your letter back to her. But I’m not gonna to be the one to bring it back when she threatened to take my head off with it if I did.”
“Kuina… Tch,” Zoro tsked before finally averting his glare down at the letter that was attached to the scabbard of the sword. He set about pulling it off to open and read.
“I’ve got letters for all you guys, actually– ”
“I also bring with me tidingsss from above!” Pentious joined in, bringing out a number of letters and starting off by handing one off to a surprised Angel Dust, “Thisss one is from your much nicer sissster.”
The spider was slightly panicked in his accepting the letter, shouting, “Molls?! For real?! Shit– She better not ‘ve been fuckin’ watchin’ me this whole time– ”
“Uh, well, I do not believe she knew of the viewing areasss until I met her and thusss pointed it out to her.”
“Oh thank God…”
“ –let’s see here…” Ace hummed to himself while he sorted through substantially more letters than Pentious had withdrawn, “We got one for Nami from her mom– ”
“Bellemere!”
“ –one for Usopp from his mom. And one for Sanji from his mom.”
“M-Mom? Really…?” Usopp replied with slight disbelief as he accepted the letter, while Sanji silently accepted his own with a fond, though saddened smile.
“Then there’s one from Dr. Hiriluk– ”
“Doctor?!”
“ –and one from Tom for Franky.”
“ …Damn. So he did die in Impel Down…” Franky was much more somber as he took the letter.
“And one from Fisher Tiger for Jinbei, and another from the Rumbar Pirates for Brook– ”
“Many thanks.”
“Truly?! Oh my! I’m going to cry– ”
“ –and one for Robin, from Professor Clover and her mom. Oh, actually, I’ve got one from your mom too Luffy. I know you never met her but give it a read, will ya? She’s friends with my mom now.”
“I have a mom???” was perhaps the most idiotic response Luffy could have given upon receiving a letter from his deceased mother. Robin just accepted her letters with a beaming smile.
Alastor was just pondering on how this was a significant number of dead mothers amongst an eleven-person crew when a letter was held out to him, as well. He blinked at it and Ace’s smile, somehow caught off-guard, before taking it.
“And one from your mom too, Alastor.”
Staring down at the cursive penmanship, it was indeed addressed to himself, written out in his mother’s still familiar handwriting. His breath caught in his throat at the sight of it.
Rather than getting started on opening the letter, Alastor instead tucked it away safely. It felt like the paper was burning against the bandages on his hand as he stored it into an inner pocket of his coat.
Thankfully, the polar bear chose that moment to make himself noticed. Cutting in with excitement, Bepo pulled a letter out of his pocket to hand over to Trafalgar with both hands, “Oh oh oh! I got a letter from the rest of the crew, Captain! They said to tell you if you don’t write back, they’ll all be very sad and cry about it!”
“Of course they did…” Trafalgar sighed while accepting the letter, but even so, he couldn’t quite hide his anticipation in receiving it.
He gave the next letter Bepo pulled out a much longer stare, before accepting that one with more hesitation, with the bear explaining, “And, um… We met your parents and little sister, Captain. They’re very nice… Sorry… Please don’t be mad at me…”
This process then repeated for a second time when Bepo brought out another letter, voice reduced to a harsh whisper, “And we… also met Rosinante… He’s also nice… Sorry… Again…”
Seeing that everyone was sufficiently distracted and that there was no imminent threat, Alastor took this opportunity to slink away into the shadows.
If anyone noticed his absence, they would likely assume he’d left to read his letter in privacy. In actuality, he had not yet gathered the heart necessary to open his mother’s letter. So instead, he set about biting a different sort of bullet while the Sunny Go was vacated of any potential interferences.
Alastor rose up from the darkness on the balcony of his room on the ship, glancing off to the side to see that the VoxTek drone that had set itself up to stakeout the ship a distance away was still present. When it’d first reappeared, Alastor had had to stop Usopp from shooting the thing down, to which Usopp had reacted with very incredulous exasperation. While a slip of a demonic visage and piercing radio static was enough to dissuade the sniper from asking further, Alastor knew that such shallow threats will not hold up in the long run, especially concerning the crew at large. But regardless, he wished to have his talk with Vox before saying anything one way or another.
Rather than beckoning the drone normally, Alastor shot a long, thin tendril out to capture the device, dragging it with him into his den like a spider would a fly. Once it was inside his studio and the door was firmly shut, curtains drawn closed for an increased sense of privacy despite knowing the room was not quite visible from the outside, he dropped the now slightly broken device onto his table. He then gave it an expectant look.
“I do hope this isn’t too inconvenient of a time for you, Vox. But as it is, this is the best time for my schedule, so either make your appearance now or we’ll skip this farce entirely…”
There was a poignant lag, just long enough for Alastor to consider that perhaps Vox is too busy in the current moment, considering he was still in the midst of dealing with the fallout of the Vees. But thankfully, a familiar electric blue spark zapped out of the drone before too long.
Vox was partially hidden behind the stack of wrapped items he was carrying, though his sheepish expression was not concealed in the slightest. It seemed that he’d come into this discussion with a vastly different strategy than Alastor was employing, with Vox coughing in an awkward start, “H-Hey, Al, uh… I come with peace offerings…?”
Alastor gave the man a somewhat queer glance as he tilted his head questioningly. “Do you mean to bribe me?”
“No– I mean, kinda– They’re just apology gifts, alright? It’s a thing! This is probably the only chance you’re ever gonna give me to talk about this, and I’m making the most of it!” Vox insisted as his screen flushed in a smattering of pixels for his bashfulness. He purposefully looked away from Alastor to begin sorting through the pile. “Oh, this one’s actually for the reindeer. I still can’t believe he didn’t charge me– ”
“Vox. I swear, if there is a single word out of your mouth relating to Chopper being my progeny– ”
“No! It’s not that! I was convinced that he isn’t!” Vox still didn’t look at him as he placed the wrapped box of chocolates on the table and asserted, “It’s just a thanks for patching me up. Geeze!”
Alastor was still not convinced, squinting a suspicious look as he drawled, “And since when, exactly, did you begin to show legitimate gratitude towards people who aren’t me…?”
“ …Okay, so I may have gone too long thinking that he was your kid, and now there may be a permanent association between the two of you in my mind that makes me want to buy stuff for him. But I figured you’d like me thanking him anyway since you like him! So what’s the problem with that?”
“You are hopeless beyond repair…” while the retort came out with a groan of exasperation, Alastor didn’t move to throw out the chocolate. It’s not like it was poisoned. Chopper had already shown a preference for the sweet, and if the chef caught wind that Alastor had thrown out perfectly good food, he’d be getting himself into more trouble than was worth the hassle.
The next gift was placed on the table out in front of Alastor, much like a mortal leaving an offering for a demon to accept. The simile was especially apt, considering it was a pack of choice cuts from one of the butchers in Cannibal Town. Alastor recognized it as being from the shop he preferred, even. Vox explained, “And this one is, well… the I’m sorry for hyno-eying and kissing you seven years ago gift, I guess is what you’d call it. I figured your cook wouldn’t make you this kinda stuff…”
“Indeed. And quite a mouthful, that one. Literally,” Alastor thankfully managed to restrain himself from chuckling at his own joke, not wanting to lighten the mood too much. Seeing that he was giving the meat an appreciative examination, Vox was a tad more emboldened when he set out his last offering.
When Vox placed a bottle of whisky with a bow tied around its neck on the table, Alastor readily recognized it as the brand that he used to gift Vox with himself. “And this… is the I’m sorry for trying to kidnap you from your crew gift…”
“ …I didn’t think you would want to apologize for that one.”
“Well… during the time I wasn’t sorry that I did it, yeah. To me that was my best chance, you know,” before Alastor could make a quip about how short-lived that effort had been, Vox finally looked back at him with an earnest, but solemn, sincerity.
“But I am sorry that… I stopped caring about what you wanted. I… thought it would make things better, to hurt you, like how you hurt me. To have you with me even if you didn’t want it. But… that wasn’t what I actually wanted, even then. And I– the point was to force you into the Vees, yeah, but I hadn’t realized that would involve trapping your soul like that. I know how much you’d hate that. I know how much you’d hate being forced into anything, really. You said that you’ve been living your life under Soul Contract like that for all this time, and you must’ve hated it so much. And that… wasn’t what I wanted. I don’t want to pull you back into that sort of thing. So, I just wanted to tell you… that I won’t try again. And I won’t try… making you join me, anymore…”
Alastor could tell that Vox was being genuine with his promise, though he had not explicitly referred to it as such. And after having seen how far Vox had been willing to go during the games themselves, to the point that he had put his life on the line without hesitation at just the slim possibility of winning Alastor, it said much that he was willing to set aside that stalwart determination of his to respect what Alastor wanted, instead. Though perhaps that determination was intertwined with this decision as well. Seeing that all that will stemmed from Alastor himself, or rather, the strength of Vox’s feelings for Alastor, romantic and otherwise.
Still, it was a curious enough redirection that Alastor had to ask, “ …What brought on this change of heart, if I may ask? I would not have thought losing would be enough for you to ‘see the light’, so to speak.”
“Well… I wasn’t lying when I said that was my last chance, in the last game,” Vox averted his eyes down to where his hand was curling its claws against the table as he admitted, “Even if I hadn’t told the other two, my plan had always been… get you to be with me or die trying. I really hadn’t expected that you’d just… let me go, like that. If we lost. So– I don’t have a plan for what I should be doing now, after that point. But it doesn’t make sense to pretend like that wasn’t the end of it, when I already decided it would be…”
Luffy’s interpretation of Vox being willing to risk his life as a show of strength had some merit, but Alastor couldn’t deny that Velvette’s interpretation that Vox had “failed a suicide attempt” also had a considerable basis of truth, if Vox had gone into these games of his with this all-or-nothing mentality. And certainly, from Velvette and Valentino’s perspective, they would never understand why Vox would wager literally everything he was and had built for himself in such a manner. They both took too much pride in not only their lives, but in their work and the heights of power that they’d reached with it. But if “nothing mattered” to Vox, if he took no satisfaction or happiness in his life where he sat at the top, then why wouldn’t he just bet it all, if it could grant him a chance at what he truly valued?
As Alastor thought this over, Vox continued, his words trembling slightly along with the hand that he had clutched in the hold of his other hand, “And… when the gun fired, and– and a bullet actually went through your head like that– I– I couldn’t take it. I know you had it all set up in your favor already so there hadn’t been an actual chance of it killing you, but it still felt way… way too close to the real thing. If you’d actually died then, I would’ve regretted it forever. But you still would’ve preferred that to if I’d won, right? So I realized that I… really, really didn’t want to do something you’d hate that much. I’d rather be alone for the rest of eternity than make you wish you were dead. I… know how it feels, and I don’t want you to feel something so awful. So I guess… this is just the way things have to be.”
Vox ended with a sigh of resignment. Rather than respond directly to what had been said, Alastor instead picked up the bottle of rye the other had brought him. While acting as though he was particularly absorbed in examining it, he commented, “I had known that you enjoyed me gifting you this whiskey, but surely you must have realized a substantial part of the reason why I bothered was so that I can drink it myself? Considering you saw fit gift it to me now. Why would you consider such self-serving gifts to be the ‘best you’ve ever received’?”
Alastor was still staring at the bottle, even when he was paying attention to Vox’s answer. Vox sounded somewhat taken aback as he replied, he like thought his reasoning would’ve been obvious, “They were the best because you liked them. When I got a bottle from you, I knew you’d meet up with me again to drink it. That was the best present I could ever ask for.”
He felt himself minutely freeze in place, at that. Vox’s answer, so plainly stated, had struck such a chord in him that Alastor couldn’t quite hide it. His claws lightly scraped against the glass of the bottle as they tightened, and he willed his hand not to shake.
Even though Alastor still had yet to look back at Vox, the man took notice of the shift in his frame. “Alastor, I need to ask… Why did you want to talk, after all this time? Why… did you not want me to die? Why did you play the game, for me…”
“ …Since you’ve gone out of your way to bring the liquor with you …why don’t we share that drink?”
Surely if this worked for talking with Lucifer, it would work for talking with Vox as well. That was Alastor’s thought process as he brought out two whiskey glasses to pour out a drink for each of them. However, after the tension-filled silence of pouring the drinks, sliding one across the table over towards Vox for him to take, and then gesturing for Vox to take a seat on one end of his couch while he sat at the other end, there was no rapidly downing his glass to get wasted as quickly as possible. Instead, Alastor took a single sip of the rye, letting the taste linger on his tongue and interweave with memories of old, before lowering the glass to hover above the sidearm of the couch and lowering his gaze with it.
He doesn’t think Vox even took a sip of his own while he stared at Alastor. Waiting without saying anything. Vox had essentially said everything he needed to either just before or in the Davy Back, after all. It was obvious that this discussion was mainly intended for Alastor to respond to what had already been set out on the gameboard.
Alastor couldn’t help but wonder… if Vox would wait like that forever, if he made him. Forever waiting on what Alastor wanted to tell him. He rather suspects that he would…
It was with that thought in mind that Alastor was able to force himself to start, before the silence became fully unbearable, speaking in a soft cadence that only just rose above the background static of his radio, “You said, before… that you thought I didn’t care…”
Knowing these were words he must speak, that Vox is not like Luffy, most people are not like Luffy, and that he cannot know how Alastor feels if he does not speak of it, Alastor forced past his enduring hesitation.
“…But I do. You were my friend, Vox. I played that last game because I knew I could ensure that you wouldn’t die in it.”
Still not looking at Vox, Alastor could hear the quiet gasp of his breath. He endeavored to continue, “I did hold respect for you. Though… perhaps not as much as I should have. It’s true that, for much of that time, I did not consider you my equal. From that perspective, I can see why it is you became so determined to become an Overlord yourself to set us on the same playing field. However, the more time we spent together, the less true that was. I grew to value you and the time we shared. You did not need to become an Overlord to have earned my respect. You did not need any of that wealth, fame, or power. I… had just made my own assumptions, thinking that your reasoning for growing in power was based in you trying to make yourself a more worthy ‘suitor’ for my affections, and that trying to recruit me was your attempt to further develop our relationship in that direction. I disliked that, and I had purposefully imposed a certain amount of distance between us, because of that. However… you were right. If I wanted to act as a true friend to you, I should have listened to what you had said. Listened to what else you had to say and given you a chance to explain yourself. Instead, I ignored your attempts and purposefully escalated the argument. I had just been so certain in how I thought things were that… I didn’t want to give you that chance. I apologize for that. I… regret that that was how I chose to handle things. And then, when you acted on impulse and kissed me, I just became even more certain in my assumptions. Though now I do believe your explanation that it was a mistake made without ill intention, it had been understandable for me to believe you wouldn’t be content with mere friendship at that point, given the circumstances. However, I had not meant to react violently, and then when you tried fixing things and followed after me, pushing you into a fight to the death was also not an appropriate escalation…”
“But I’m also sorry that, even if you had fully explained everything to me back then… I’m not sure that I would’ve believed it, still. I’m not sure that I would’ve been honest with you and myself, and that I wouldn’t have left regardless. I had not approached our argument with as genuine intentions as you had…”
Vox spoke up, still very quiet even as he tried to wrap his head around what Alastor was saying, “ …Then… Why…? You– You even wanted to kill me…”
“…I was waiting on the day in which you may grow to be too much of a problem, as an Overlord with your Vees. While I already mentioned that I would’ve been unable to join you before, admittedly, I likely would have still denied you regardless. But in the position I had prior under the Queen’s service, she could have ordered me to go after you, and I would’ve had no choice in the matter. Therefore, I made my choice when I could. When it seemed like you weren’t going to let me go. I likely would not have escalated our fight to the point of aiming to kill if that had not been hanging over my head. It’s no better reason for killing a friend, but… I thought you deserved to know...” Alastor’s voice trailed off at the end.
He had to breathe in deeply, to force himself to move on to one of the most difficult aspects for him to speak aloud. He had never spoken of any of this to anyone, hardly even allowing the thoughts to linger in his mind in his reluctance. But it was important, and so he must speak of it…
“And… outside of our fight, I had truly thought that… you would eventually be happier, no longer being chained to such a fruitless love. A love for… such a heartless creature, that would never love you back the way in which you deserved. I believed that you would not… be happy with me…”
It felt like the words, even quietly uttered as they were, rang out between the two of them. He could feel the way Vox tensed in his seat with an almost erratic, halted motion.
Alastor wanted to conceal himself, to fall away into the shadows and never emerge. To speak such humiliating words, baring his soul in such a way– Surely it was just asking for someone to strike it down. To still the heavy beating of the heart that lied inside that he could feel from the tips of his fingers to the tips of his pinned ears. And wouldn’t that be such an appropriate karma, for Vox to do unto him as he had unto Vox? Surely, if he wanted to hurt Alastor, cutting him off and throwing his own words back in his face in the current moment would be the best way to do so.
But instead, Vox remained silent, waiting for Alastor keep going. So he did.
“However, that… was also an excuse, on my part. The truth was that I… was afraid, for when you would figure that out for yourself. For when you would leave, due to your dissatisfaction with me. It was easier to just leave first. It would hurt less… That’s why I had been purposefully callous to you, concerning your feelings. I had been aiming to hurt you, so that you would hate me, so that it would be easier for me to leave and for you to not love me. But instead… it’s as though you just doubled down even harder. And I couldn’t understand why. The only one who gained anything from how I handled things was myself…”
“Therefore I… can’t say as though I hadn’t been trying to make you think I didn’t care about you. That was essentially what it boiled down to. But… I did care, Vox. About you, and about our friendship. And… I still do. Even after all this time… I… am not in love with you. I do not love you in the same way in which you love me. But– even still…”
Alastor’s grip on his glass was too tight, his other arm curled over his weak stomach to claw into the fabric of his pants on his thigh under the internal strain. He couldn’t quite get up to the point that he was trying to reach, to say what he needed to.
Thus, he attempted to navigate to it through a more roundabout way, “ …When you… spoke of what you loved about me… I could hardly believe it. That you could… find so much to love… You saw the different parts of myself, and valued and loved them even more than I do myself, and I don’t understand how it could be that you can still carry emotion of such tremendous weight for me, even after everything. You would have rather killed yourself than leave me behind. In comparison, I had been perfectly prepared to leave you and the weight you brought onto me behind, to ensure that my heart would remain unmoved. I am not deserving of such candid affection, in consideration of that. But even more than that– I am intimidated by the strength of those feelings, of that love, because I know I cannot match it. It feels as though I will never be enough for it. That I… that the way I feel… will not be enough for it…”
“ …I never hated your love. I hated… that I could not love you back,” Alastor finally managed to breathe out, almost like a whispered sigh, as he closed his eyes. They burned behind his eyelids, dewing up against the pressure of the tears that wanted to form, but he forced them down with as much will as he could muster. He could not bear to humiliate himself any further than this by crying.
“Being unable to return your feelings– You thought so highly of me, and you were a good friend, I felt that I– would be okay with it, if I ended up loving you back. Despite never having been interested in the prospects of such relations before. But even when I tried, even when I wanted it, I couldn’t figure out how to make my heart work in such a way. And my failure to connect with you left me with a sense of– disquiet. Resentment. Discomfort. It felt as though trying to maintain our friendship would just lead to this internal discord extenuating more and more. It was better to just end it all, to cut everything off, before it would eventually become too painful for me to let you go when you inevitably left from your own misery. Because why would you stay when I can’t love you… But… that being said…”
After a considerable pause, it was only then that Alastor confessed, very quietly, to the point he was unsure if Vox would even be able to hear him, “…Not too long ago… someone on this crew told me… that I do love people… That my love… is not shallow. Even if it is not the same kind of love as what you and most others feel. I came to understand that I am no heartless creature, but… merely a person of weak heart. And hearing what you had to say, about the ways in which you love me… While the strength of those feelings is still intimidating, and they are certainly different than how I feel for you, it seemed as though… there was also some aspect of your love that was not too different from my own. That somehow… that nonsensical, flowery romance of ‘being in love with someone’ that I’ve never comprehended was not as foreign and divorced from a plain love for a friend as I had imagined it to be.”
“In fixating on how you loved me romantically, I had overlooked that you still loved me as a friend, too. And it seems to me that those two aspects of your love are not distinct or separate– it is all mixed into one singular love. It is not something either I or you yourself can pick and choose which part to keep or discard, because it all comes from the same place, from the same heart. But regardless, because of this, I can only either choose whether to accept or reject your love in its entirety… And… even back then… I had wanted to accept it, but I had constrained myself to believe that I couldn’t.”
“That’s why… Even though it’s possible that there may be no way to fix this, that even if we tried, it will all lead to a futile, bitter end anyway– I want to try. I want to figure it out. If it’s true that I don’t need to feel the same as you, if it’s true that this half-hearted love of mine can be enough… I realize you’ve just resolved yourself to stop trying to force things for my sake, and that was the appropriate decision to make. I still have no intention of teaming up in a joint business with you or leaving this crew. But with my willingness, would you consider approaching things from a better angle to try to be– friends, once more…” Alastor inadvertently trailed off as he finally looked over at Vox for the first time since he had begun.
Tears poured down Vox’s screen. He was crying more profusely than Alastor had ever seen of him previously. But even as he cried, he was smiling, so very softly. His eyes shined in a way that should be beyond the capability of his physical manifestation.
Thin cords snaked out of Vox’s back to carefully collect Alastor’s glass and his own to place them on the coffee table in front of the couch. He angled himself as much towards Alastor as he could in their side-by-side seating arrangement, so much so that the ends of his knees brushed against Alastor’s, as he found himself drawn into shifting towards the other as well, the gap between them closing. Vox didn’t even glance at where he set the glasses down, staring straight at Alastor as he took both of Alastor’s hands into his own, gently cradling them in between their warmth.
Vox’s voice trembled as he spoke, the tears in his throat breaking through in a soft pitch, “Y-You… I… I had no idea you felt that way, A-Alastor. About me, and… about yourself… Th-There’s nothing half-hearted about what you just said. You are not heartless. Your heart is not weak, there is nothing wrong with it. You… Your love… is so very precious.”
Alastor took in a deep, warm breath, unable to keep his eyes from widening even as slight as it was. Still smiling and crying, Vox’s hold on his hands tightened just a tad, with a weight that could not be denied, but was still so very gentle as he pressed on, “I– can’t even put it to words, how valuable it is. How breathtaking– It’s more than I ever thought I would have. More than I’ve ever deserved. That it’s not the same as ‘being in love’ doesn’t matter. To me, there’s nothing worth more than this love of yours in all of the worlds, whether it be Hell, Heaven, or Earth. It is the greatest treasure I could have ever received. You– have no idea how much it means to me. How much everything you said means to me. I’m so grateful that you– that you’re putting yourself out there to say all this. That you’re taking this chance on me. I know how hard it is for you. Thank you so much. Of course I want to be friends again. It’s just like I said before– I’ll always want to be friends with you. To hear that– that you want the same– makes me so, so happy…”
It was like everything that Vox said… was everything he never knew he wanted to hear. The more Vox spoke, the more his words filled up the void inside Alastor’s chest, settling deep inside with a breathless intake.
But it couldn’t be that simple, surely. Even as the warmth of Vox’s hands seemed to trail up his arms and into his chest, up his throat and into his face, Alastor tried to keep his wits about him. “I– understand why this would be your… reaction, but you should think this through a bit more. I truly meant what I said at the end of the Davy Back that I wouldn’t miss if you were to disregard my will in such a way again. And surely there must be some lingering resentment that would entice you to act out, still. You quite literally almost threw yourself over the brink of death for this. The feelings behind my intentions changes nothing about how much despair you’ve felt because of me– ”
“It changes everything,” Vox insisted so heavily, he couldn’t even wait to let Alastor finish the sentence before he spoke, “I– can’t say it hasn’t sucked, and that I wasn’t angry, yeah, but– none of that matters. The thing that matters the most is that– you do care. You do want to be friends. That we can figure out a way to be together, in a way that makes you as happy as it does me. I don’t need anything more than that. I’ve never wanted anything more than that. You could’ve killed me in our fight, resurrected my corpse, and told me the exact same things that you did just now, and I still would’ve forgiven you. I’d forgive you for anything, so long as I know that– that you do care that you hurt me. And– you’re forgiving me too, aren’t you? For being so much of an idiot before. I don’t want to do anything that will make you regret that. I– don’t want to hurt you. I don’t need us to make a new Vees or anything like that. Being friends with you is all I need. You… are all I need…”
“ …It occurs to me, for not the first time, that your dependency on me is not the picture of a healthy interpersonal connection,” Alastor tried to repress some of the warmth leeching into his face by deflecting, because that comment about Vox still forgiving him even if he had killed him is ludicrous, and he’s absolutely certain that it’s 100% true.
“That also doesn’t matter.” Because of course that would be his take on that... Even while his tears had begun to slow, Vox was still crying as his soft smile stretched a tad into a brash grin. “It’s not supposed to be perfect, or rational, or easy, or even make any sense at all– Haven’t you heard? Love is always a hurricane!”
“ …If you’re going to start quoting that woman, we cannot be friends.”
One can never accuse Vox of not being adaptable. He flipped on a dime as soon as the winds turned against him. “I will never speak of it again! ‘Love is a what now’? Never heard of it!”
Alastor didn’t quite manage to contain his sigh, closing his eyes under the pain of understanding what it is that he’s signing himself up for, “A good portion of the crew already has almost exclusively been referring to you as ‘my evil Boa Hancock’ for the past three days– If you make it worse, I’m going to kill you for real if only because my patience is going to die a horrid, irrecoverable death.”
“They call me ‘YOURS’?!” Because of course, not a single other word that Alastor had spoken in that statement was relevant to this man. What had possessed him, exactly, when he’d decided that this was the route he wanted to take?
Vox was still holding tightly onto Alastor’s hands, clutching them almost against his chest with how closely he held them to himself. He fidgeted slightly, not enough to jostle Alastor but enough that it was noticeable, as his wide eyes flickered down at their hands, back up to Alastor’s face, then back down again with a flush to his screen. A show of shyness setting in despite how unashamed Vox had been with his unconditional affirmations just prior. He visibly steeled himself as he gathered up the nerve to ask, looking back up at Alastor once more, “Can I… Can we hug? If you don’t want to, that’s okay, I just…”
Alastor had to force himself not to avert his own gaze as he took in the request. After a beat he responded plainly, purposefully obtuse, “…You do realize you took my hands without asking?”
“O-Oh! Right– I– I’m sorry– ”
Vox whipped his hands away as he released his hold, only for his stutter to cut short with a choke when Alastor used his newfound freedom to inch closer and wrap his arms around the other’s slight frame.
Vox’s hands hovered where they’d retreated for a few seconds, before they gingerly wrapped themselves around Alastor, returning the embrace. When Alastor pressed close enough to rest his chin on a blue-clad shoulder, Vox’s frame trembled as he audibly burst into tears once again. One hand resting on Alastor’s back, the other ghosted up to carefully cradle the back of his head, fingers curling through his hair lightly.
“I forgive you… my dear pal…” Alastor whispered against the side of the screen. With his face hidden at this angle, a couple of his own tears leaked through, budding on his lashes to leave a solitary trail down his cheek. Even as it caused his smile to waver at the ends, he didn’t allow them to muddle his voice. Vox’s shaking arms held him even tighter at the words, and he attempted to lighten the mood by quipping, “I don’t quite remember you being this much of a crier before, though. Have you truly gone so soft?”
“I– I can’t help it when it’s about YOU– y-you asshole! Just– ! Just shut up and let me have this!” Vox managed to sob out through his crying. Alastor was pleased to see that the man hadn’t entirely lost the spark of his attitude. He’d be much more boring without it. The mood instantly sobered once more, though, when Vox cried–
“And I– I’m just so happy to be alive, right now…! I really thought I was gonna die– in that last round…”
A thought arose in Alastor’s mind, at that. One which he’d usually keep jealously hidden away. But it was important, so he spoke it anyway, “ …I’m happy you are, too…”
They stayed like that for a while, enough time for Alastor to compose himself and for Vox to finish crying it out, before they parted. This time when they took their drinks back in hand, they drank from them readily.
They switched to more casual conversation, truly catching up for the first time in seven years. Alastor prodded at Vox’s injured shoulder at some point to watch the way he winced, then used it as an excuse to mention that the man should return sometime next week for Chopper to fully heal his angelic bullet wound. Vox beamed at him for the implicit invitation. The conversation went on longer than he’d originally intended. They ended up finishing that bottle of rye. By the time Alastor began to tire of the other’s company –because Vox certainly would never tire of Alastor, and would never willingly leave the premises unless he was escorted out– he parted his curtains to see that the pirates, or at least some of them, had returned to the ship.
Deciding that ripping off the bandage was a necessary evil, he didn’t send Vox straight back into his drone for a clandestine getaway. Instead, Alastor first took hold of the unwieldy picture-box head to drag the man half-way outside his balcony door. Vox only looked somewhat annoyed by the manhandling, not contesting otherwise as Alastor caught the attention of any of the crew within sight to announce, “Considering he may show his face from time to time, I thought I should inform the lot of you– I’ve made up with Vox! So no need to drive him off with violence or throw him overboard or any of the like if you see him. Unless he deserves it of course! Aha!”
“WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!?!?!?!?! HOW?!?!?!”
There was basically unanimous, loud confusion. Alastor didn’t care to elaborate. Though he did think to have a tendril throw down Chopper’s chocolate offering to him. It instantly rewrote the deerling’s outraged bewilderment into happy munching, much to the exasperation of Nami, Jinbei, and Usopp, who happened to be around him.
The only one around who hadn’t reacted with such vehemency was the captain, seated in his usual place on the figurehead of the Sunny. Leaning back while resting his weight onto one hand, Luffy grinned up brightly at him and shouted back, “That’s great! You wanted to be friends again for a while, right? It’s good ya figured it out!”
“…Well that’s enough of this– ” Alastor quickly retreated back into his studio, slamming the door closed in a nervous show of the budding embarrassment Luffy’s comment had brought to the surface. Seeing the way Vox’s eyes were practically sparkling now from the external validation of Alastor’s interest in him didn’t make it any better.
In a useless attempt to save face, he shoved the picture-box’s head against his own camera drone until Vox relented with one last “Well fuck you I guess! …I’ll clear my schedule, so tell me when you want to meet up again, ‘k?!” before he zapped himself away. Alastor sighed from the relief of his well-earned solitude. He then moved the drone from its place on the table out onto the table on the balcony before coming back inside.
It was only after this point, and after downing the last fourth of a glass he had left of his whiskey, that Alastor sat down at his table to pull out his mother’s letter.
With the context of having to go through that entire, utterly embarrassing discussion, it was no longer so intimidating to simply read a piece of paper when the writer was not around to see or cast judgement on him in person. Thus, taking in a fortifying breath of air, he cut the envelope open with a letter opener and unfolded the hand-written page that lied within…
To my dearest boy,
Alastor, how I have missed you so. The grief I felt upon your passing, and after passing into eternal life myself to see that you were not here– It was immeasurable. I cannot deny that I was taken by sadness at the state of things, for some time. But life– both in the before and the after apparently, moves on. I took solace in the knowledge that you have always been a smart boy. Sometimes too smart for your own good, even. Whatever Hell is like, you shall find a way to get by, and so long as you are still out there, somewhere, that is enough to soothe a mother’s weary heart.
However, I know my boy well. So I know that you yourself have likely been taken by guilt for some time at the thought of having left me under such suspicious circumstances, as well as having made choices that prevented you from being by my side here in paradise. Perhaps, you were even afraid to read what I had to say, afraid that I would write words of disappointment and rejection. That is why I must say that I write to tell you that this fear is unfounded.
True love is unconditional. You could have become the Devil Lucifer himself, and I would still love you just as whole-heartedly as I had when you were but a babe in my arms. I do wish you hadn’t fallen away from me, wish that you could be here with me now, but the thing that matters the most to me is that you are happy and safe. I still call you my boy, but you are your own man now. A man who has the freedom to make his own decisions. Whether I agree or disagree with those decisions, it will not change that you are still my boy. I love you, forever and always, and I am thankful I have the chance once more to tell you this.
Some others have told me about the hotel you have been helping Lucifer’s daughter with– a hotel that hopes to redeem sinners so that their souls may rise to Heaven. It seems like a wonderful public service. Though, I do not hold hope that you are planning to redeem yourself in a similar way. For I also have heard of the strange crew of pirates you have joined up with. I’ve met a great deal of their loved ones up here, even. And, the more I hear of them, the more my joy grows.
It soothes my heart more than anything else to know that you have found such wonderful friends for yourself, Alastor. That I can rest at night knowing that you have found yourself a happy home, that you have so many people who love and care for you so, there is nothing more a mother can ask for. It had been funny to hear that you joined a pirate crew, at first. I’m not sure how well you remember it, but as a small babbling boy, playing pirates was one of the games you most enjoyed. I had quite a laugh hearing you somehow managed to circle around back to it. Perhaps you have always just held a heart that was bound for freedom, one that rejects the constraints of society and those above you. It suits you, to have befriended a God who protects freedom, and to have wandered onto this expansive path.
Perhaps there may be one day when your adventures lead you up to paradise. But until that happens, I have no issue in waiting to see you again. And should that not be in the cards, if it not to be for us to reunite, my heart will still steady itself in the certainty that you are having a grand time wherever you may be. That being said, I do expect you to write me back. I did raise you to be a gentleman with proper manners, after all. You best not have let them slip just because you’re a “demon” now.
With Love,
Your Maman
Alastor had to slide the letter to the side of the table as he hung his head, his other hand coming up to press against his wet eyes. Tears dripped onto the wooden surface in a pitter-patter like rain. He was crying so much, sobs began to wrack through his chest. He’s probably never cried this much, before…
But even though he was crying, even though he was grieving for how dearly he still missed his Maman and how much he wished he could have done better for her… he was so very happy, too. To read the words of love she had written out for him. It felt as though her love– all the love he’d been granted, really, was overflowing from that once empty place inside of him. As though there was too much to hold and it could not help but spill up and over to make the tears that now streaked down his face.
After an extended moment to let the wave overcome and pass through him, Alastor took a shaking breath, followed by a shuttering exhale. His hands were steady, though, when he reached for his own pen and a fresh piece of paper to write back with.
Chapter 28: Romance Dawn
Notes:
It's been a great journey and we've finally arrived at Romance Dawn. I had always planned for that to be the title of the last chapter, but seeing it written out feels like wow... Thank you all for your wonderful comments and support up until now
(੭ु ›ω‹ )੭ु⁾⁾♡The song used this chapter is Home by Vanessa Carlton. I don't plan on having a continuation for this story, but for those who would like to read more from me, I recently started up an Alastor-centric applemedia fic Withered Flowers for the Heart for any that would be interested in more Hazbin content with that three-way ship. And if you’re also following Helluva Boss, I have a Stolitz one-shot I beg you that I wrote a while back ago
┻┳|・ω・)
Chapter Text
“Hoist the colors! Batten down the hatches! It’s time to set sail– for the Thousand Sunny Go and Going Merry’s very first flying voyage! This Bon Voyage party will take place in the skies above Pentagram City!”
Cheers broke out across both the decks as the blimp-like air ballons that had been deployed above the ships pulled them aloft, slowly lifting them out of the water of the docks and into the red sky.
Through Sir Pentious’s extensive experience with airship technology and Franky’s innovative mind, the two had quickly come up with various designs, tested them on a small scale, before working with the Franky Galley to reconfigure the Straw Hats’ two ships to be both land and air fairing. It had taken around two months to reach the stage where the ships were ready for departure, and thus, a large, swinging farewell party was coordinated to take place during the first liftoff. After the day was over when the next morn arrives, they were set to sail off to explore the outermost regions of the still relatively new Red Sea that occupied most of the Pride Ring, before they would move on to exploring the other Rings of Hell. As to how they would go to the other Rings had not been decided, but they would figure it out. They always did, after all.
The ships were packed with basically everyone they knew, hotel residents and Grand Fleet members alike, with the main stage being set up on the larger Sunny. Brook had managed to squirrel Adam a legitimate invite to the party this time under the guise of wanting the Bones of Man band made up of himself, the former First Man, and his former Lieutenant to play a couple songs. And so after Alastor’s announcement, it was to the upbeat rhythm of Brook’s New World song that the party ascended, until they were at a comfortable cruising altitude that provided a wide view of the entire city and all the ocean surrounding it. There was nothing for them to accidental run into at this height, but Jinbei was still diligently steering the Sunny, and Usopp the Merry, to ensure there was no collision with each other.
Once again, there had been the question of how people on the ships without their own means of doing so would traverse between the two vessels when they were in flight, and Franky had built a solution with Pentious’s help. There was now a helicopter that’d been disgustingly named “the Flying Franky” that could take small groups of people between the ships. But for free individual movement, a multitude of rocket-powered gliders had been rigged up such that, with careful maneuvering, a practiced person could glide over from one deck to the other. Alastor thankfully had no need to use either of these contraptions and had no desire to try them out. But much of the crew who’d tested them out previously seemed to have quite a bit of fun with them.
It seemed that the partygoers were also having fun in a variety of ways. Luffy was cheerfully eating with his brother. Or rather, beside his brother’s now passed out body. Narcolepsy made for a somewhat entertaining disorder, sometimes. Trafalgar and his bear were also eating with them. The rest of the Straw Hats were scattered in various areas across both ships since the point of the party was to mingle with the people they would be leaving behind once they’d set sail. Seeing that Brook’s band was set to play, Alastor made his way into the crowd on the Sunny after leaving the stage to find that a group consisting of Charlie, Vaggie, Angel, Husk, Cherri, Pentious, and for some reason Lucifer had collected to surround an empty bottle that’d been placed on the center of the table, with a conspicuous rubber duck wearing Lucifer’s hat also off to the side. Their plates of the chef’s food were set out in front of them for casual munching. Niffty was currently making a nuisance of herself with Franky which accounted for the absence. Lilith was also busy making pleasant conversation with Carmilla, Zestial, Rosie, and the Cross Guild trio, though Alastor wouldn’t expect her to get caught up in these sorts of shenanigans regardless.
Alastor rather suspected it was a case of Charlie putting together a small exercise of a game to try, a suspicion that was confirmed when the girl reached out to spin the bottle and explain, “Alright! I know this game has a, uh– contentious background, but I thought that playing Nothing but the Truth would make for a great party game and a way for everyone to really get to know each other! The person the bottle lands on will be the first to answer a question!”
“Ya know we’re totally gonna ask ‘bout each other’s sex lives, right?”
“You’re gonna ask ‘bout their sex lives. Most of us would consider that too much information to wanna know…” Husk retorted Angel’s casual assertion with a quiet huff.
Alastor finished slinking up from the shadows beside the table just in time for the bottle to land on Lucifer. Charlie immediately brightened upon his arrival, joyfully offering, “Al! You’re just in time to join in on the exercise! Would you like to be the one to ask Dad a question?”
Lucifer’s face fell drastically in time with Alastor’s smile lifting sharply into a satisfied smirk. Eyes flickering up to the corner with a couple taps of a finger against his chin, Alastor hummed in a false show of consideration before setting his gaze back on the now annoyed Lucifer to chime, “Well, dear Charlie~ Seeing that I’ll be gone for some time after this, it wouldn’t do to not participate in your little game now, would it? I’m happy to oblige!”
Bolstering his attitude, the King leaned back in his seat with his arms crossed to scoff, “Ha! Fine then! Do your worst, bellhop! I’m not scared of a game this simple.”
“Very well, since you did insist…” Alastor started with his grin curling mean at the ends, before narrowing his eyes to take advantage of the opportunity and ask, “I’m curious– What piece of information do you least want me to know?”
Lucifer reflexively scowled, before he cleared his face into an expression of feigned indifference. He took a sudden interest in swirling the wine in his glass and watching the motion as he replied, “Figures you’d ask something like that… I guess if there was something to admit, it’s that I don’t think you’re that bad of a guy.”
The duck on the table instantly hopped up with a blaring tone of an unhappy buzzer, apparently rejecting the answer as false. The King startled, before sending his rubbery likeness an evil eye as Alastor drawled in amusement, “I did specify as to what you least wanted me to know, you realize…?”
Lucifer stared up at him blankly for a short beat. Then, his eyes widened in a horrified realization, his already pale face somehow paling even further.
He jerked forward to rest his glass and hands on the table, tension racking his frame, his expression just as tense as he ominously warned, “ …You’re going to regret this.”
Oh, this must be good– Alastor grinned back with his serrated teeth on full display, goading, “Is that so? Try me.”
Everyone was quite interested in the King’s response now, waiting on the edges of their seats. Lucifer twitched into a grimace. “Well, if you say so… You see– it’s kinda funny, actually, but… the thing that I least want you to know is that… You’re on my and Lilith’s ‘Would Theoretically have a Threesome with List’.”
The duck flipped with a happy chime of approval in synch with the record scratch that sounded over Alastor’s radio. Pentious spit out the drink he’d been in the middle of sipping over the side of the table. Alastor droned, tone utterly flat, “I beg your pardon.”
“You heard me,” Lucifer confirmed with insistence, his attitude turning bullish once again in his defensiveness. He ignored both Angel and Cherri chittering in amusement and Charlie and Vaggie’s horrified stares to press on, “You’re on our List. You should be flattered, busboy, really.”
“Of all the insane– No! I am NOT flattered! Take me off the list!!!” Alastor demanded after regathering his wits.
To that, Lucifer barked a short laugh, before rolling his eyes with a grin, “Al, it’s not that serious, ya know? It’s called the ‘theoretical’ list for a reason. None one ever expects anything to of it, it’s just a bit of fun for couples to talk about! I just brought up with Lilith after that party you threw for the Straw Hat reunion cause, uh…” a semblance of shame finally setting in, Lucifer trailed off as he had to avert his gaze off of Alastor and to the side, his cheeks flushing as he hesitantly continued, “I was pretty drunk… and you started actin’ kinda cute at the end of it, so… I just thought, why not? Ya know…”
Alastor’s smile twitched with further distress. “YOU are the one who added me to the list?!”
“ …Would you rather it had been Lilith?” Lucifer asked in a genuine question.
“I’d rather it been NEITHER of you! TAKE ME OFF THE LIST!!!”
“Hey now Smiles, there’s no need’a get yer panties in a bunch,” Angel cut in while leaning against his elbow on the table. While his method was crass, he did seem like he was trying to come to Lucifer’s aid by further explaining, “Almost every couple I know’s got a ‘Would Theoretically have a Threesome with List’– It’s just shootin’ the shit! It don’t mean nothin’. Ya always put yer celebrity ‘n’ wildcard picks on there. Like for example, Husk ‘n’ I actually got the short King on our list, cause who wouldn’t take up a Threesome with the big man himself? …Other than you, that is.”
“Did ya really need’a bring that up?!” Husk snapped in agitation as Charlie’s face fell further into despair.
Unfettered, Angel continued, “Point is, random people get added ta those things all the time! I bet the King’s got a ton ‘a out there picks along with ya. ‘Bout how many people ‘re on yer list, Luci Goosey?”
Despite being thrown an apparent lifeline, Lucifer winced. Before very hesitantly admitting, “ …Two.”
“ …Wha– ? Wait– that’s includin’ Al???”
“ …Yes…”
“THE FUCK?! Who the fuck’s the one other person you ‘n’ the Queen would wanna bang then?!”
Somehow managing to wince even more, Lucifer conspicuously glanced over both his shoulders, apparently checking to make sure the other person in question wasn’t around. After confirming it was clear, Lucifer turned back around to face the group with a sheepish expression. “ …It’s Boa Hancock. Please don’t tell her…”
There was another bristle of radio static. Despite the unpleasant sound, Cherri nodded in sage agreement, and even Sir Pentious, who was currently hiding his face behind his plate at the scandalous conversation, nodded in addition agreement. Angel went through a roulette of different micro-expressions before landing on something close to confusion, drawling, “I mean… makes sense, but also– Those are two VERY DIFFERENT TYPES! Not only that, but ya literally chose two ‘a the only sinners in Hell who’d actually turn down sleepin’ with the King ‘n’ Queen! If ya add me ‘n’ Husk to yer List, we could have this foursome arranged by the end ‘a the day!”
Seemingly appearing solely to give her amused commentary, Robin stopped in the middle of her passing by the table get to the table Nami sat at with Prince Stolas and the IMP company to chime in, “Fufufu~ Is that what you think, Angel? In truth, I see quite a bit of similarities between Alastor and the Snake Princess. Mainly that they are both King Lucifer’s type in being tall, bewitching, and strong-willed individuals.”
Alastor’s radio sounded with an unpleasant burst of static interference again. Husk evidently gave up on reigning in his lover with a long sigh and an even longer swig of his drink, “I’m nowhere near drunk enough for this conversation…”
In an extremely unnecessary addition, Lucifer clarified, “Oh actually, Lilith was the one who added Hancock to the List. But I was in 100% agreement!”
Meanwhile, throughout the course of this travesty of a conversation, Vaggie had been trying to console Charlie. The girl seemed to be in the process of a mental breakdown of some sort with the way she was pulling at her hair. “It’s okay, Charlie, really. Just calm down, alright? It’s not that big of a deal– ”
“Not that big of a deal– She’s on my parents’ List, Vaggie!” the Princess cried with underlying panic, clutching her face in her hands, she cried, “She can’t be on OUR List if she’s on THEIRS! That’s too weird!”
“Psh! That’s not weird. Ya don’t need’a sweat it– Hancock’s on everyone’s List! She’s on my ‘n’ Pent’s List too!” Cherri confidently asserted. The still despairing Charlie did not return her friendly elbow bump.
Lucifer perked up at bit at Charlie. He opened his mouth, only for it to be forcibly shut by Husk slapping a hand over it. The bartender deadpanned with all his wisdom, “Just listen to a guy that has actual common sense for a sec, will ya? Don’t say that ‘we have so much in common’ line to your kid ‘bout somethin’ like this…”
He deeply regrets asking this question… In fact, he regrets ever coming over here in the first place!
And, as though to further compound Alastor’s poor decision making, he suddenly found himself carefully repositioned behind a new person.
Now needing to lean to the side to see around Vox’s wide TV head, Alastor didn’t bother withholding his sigh at seeing how Lucifer was now taken aback by being faced with the man’s fierce glare.
“YOU– will keep your grubby little hands OFF Alastor– ”
Waving his hands around, Lucifer tried in vain to defend himself from a man who was fundamentally incapable of being reasoned with on this topic, “Woah there! Heel, Al’s evil not-hot Hancock! I’m not tryin’ to put my hands anywhere near that guy! Chill out! I already said the List doesn’t mean anything– ”
“You think I’m stupid?!” Alastor had to restrain himself from commenting that it was very likely everyone at this table thought Vox was stupid as the man went off, slamming his palms down onto the table, “I’m fucking watching you, Lucifer! I don’t care if you’re the damned Morningstar King of Hell Devil himself– YOU, bastard, will go to the BACK OF THE LINE!!! Because I have been waiting in it for SEVENTY DAMN YEARS and I am NOT making room for you!”
With that point made, Vox about-faced to reach out and wrap an arm around Alastor’s lower back, lightly gripping him by his opposite waist as he guided them away from the scene with sparking irritation. In consideration of the fact that he himself had dearly wished to leave that ridiculous discussion, Alastor gave the picture-box a pass just this once for the ever-exasperating jealousy.
After releasing Alastor and grumbling to himself a bit more as they put together their own plates of food, Vox finally moved on to a more relevant topic, “I would’ve found you sooner, but I was distracted by the fact that fucking Velvette is at this party for some reason? I ran into her talking to Hancock and she went off at me for winning the legal battle to keep the Tower, which– fuck her! I designed the thing and had it built, I’m keeping it! But anyway, how the Hell did SHE get an invite?”
After snacking on a bite, Alastor plainly explained, “She didn’t. She was aware it was going to occur, crashed, and I’m ignoring her presence due to the fact that she is here to solicit the Snake Princess. She has been attempting to convince Boa that she and her faction are in need of social media accounts and therefore in need of a social media manager, attempting to appeal to her sympathy by expounding on what an awful time she has had working with two horrid, idiotic men for the prior years– ”
“Well fuck her too then!”
“ –And her attempts at least pose somewhat of a distraction for the Medusa. The more of her time that’s spent not hounding after my captain, the better.”
Vox was likely about to make some sort of snarky comment about that, only to be interrupted when a young voice excitedly called out to him, “Vox!”
They both looked over to see Chopper, his plate already full of sweets even while his eyes sparkled for more, trot towards them. Vox grinned wide at the deerling as he called back, “Hey buddy! I thought I’d mix things up and brought you sour gummy sharks this time.”
Chopper held out his plate expectantly, wiggling in place as Vox dropped what was assuredly an overpriced brand of sour gummies beside the collection of party desserts. The deerling cooed with feigned humility, “Aww~ Ya shouldn’t have, ya bastard~ This isn’t gonna make me like ya! Eheheh~ ”
The sugar-addled creature trotted away as quick as he’d arrived. Alastor’s squinting stare followed him for quite a while, deadpanning with full exasperation, “The speed at which you managed to condition a Pavlovian Response in that reindeer needs to be studied…”
“What can I say? If there’s one thing I learned in business, it’s that certain people are just really easy to bribe,” Vox replied with a shrug. His annoyingly satisfied smirk betrayed his attempt at remaining casual about having successfully bribed his way into the deerling’s favor, however.
As if they’d invoked the name of the Devil with their prior conversation –despite leaving the table where the actual Devil resided just previously– the ex-Vee Velvette was the next to approach Vox and Alastor as they left the food table. She was arguing loudly over her phone, “ –Val I’m seein’ it right now for myself! He wasn’t just shittin’ us or livin’ in a hallucination or whatever, he’s actually with the Radio Demon again! He’s here at the party! They’re chattin’ it up as I– How would I know?! F– Christ! Shut the fuck up already! I’m puttin’ ya on speaker, alright?!”
Now directly in front of them blocking their way, Velvette held the phone up to allow Valentino’s dulcet tones to screech through the atrocious piece of technology, “VOX!!! HOW THE FUCK DID YOU PULL ALASTOR?!?! I have never seen such a hopeless case and YOU ACTUALLY PULLED?! With what fucking rizz, Vox– ?!”
“FUCK YOU TOO VAL!!!” Vox shouted back over the phone, before unnecessarily adding on, “You think I know?! I was probably just sad and pathetic enough for him to finally take pity on! I don’t care! If it’s not broke, don’t fix it! Go back to annoying Hancock, Velvette! Don’t bother me while I’m with Alastor!”
This time, rather than trying to assimilate with the crowd again, Alastor instead caved into his oncoming headache and whisked himself and Vox down into the shadows. They reappeared inside his radio studio at the top of the mast.
Placing his plate down on the table, he gave into the impulse to rub at the side of his temple with a sigh, “This party has only just begun and I’m already exhausted– What a record those imbecile miscreants and two pests have set! What does that newfangled vernacular even mean?”
With a slightly awkward energy, Vox placed his own plate down on the table before moving to the side bar to pull out the whiskey and pour two glasses, stumbling through his response, “Uh… Yeah, sorry about them. I know they’re fucking annoying. As for their vernacular, who even uses that word– Well… pulling refers to how they think I ‘pulled’ you into a relationship, basically. Which– I know isn’t quite the right way to put it, or at least not by their standards of the word, so I should’ve corrected them. Sorry. I specifically told them before that we were friends again, but they didn’t even believe that at the time. They probably jumped to assuming that we’re together together after seeing us… ”
Alastor refrained from commenting on that as he accepted his glass of rye from Vox, instead moving on to ask, “And as for this concept of ‘rizz’ that was spoken of?”
“ …Fucking Christ. Please don’t ever say that word again. It’s downright weird hearing you talk like that…” Alastor made a mental note to find some way to bring the word up in the not too distant future. The look on Vox’s face as he made his plea was too priceless to give up entirely. Vox noticeably tried to hide his face behind his glass as he brought it up to drink, somehow becoming even more awkward than before. “I can’t believe I have to explain this shit to you now– Anyway. Just think of rizz as short for charisma. But specifically a charisma for charming people into, like, wanting to go out with you and becoming attracted to you. Liking wooing them. That kinda thing…”
“…And your current theory regarding our reconnection is that your sad and pathetic nature– what would it be called? Can you use it as a verb? Your provocation of sympathy rizzed me– ”
“Never, ever, say that again,” Vox cut him off with an expression of full seriousness. Before his eyes flitted away with a wince. “But… kinda, yeah? Listen, I know that when it comes to you… people, Val and Velv specifically, would probably say that my rizz was in the negatives whenever I was interacting with you before. Desperately clingy does not make for a promising amount of charming charisma…”
“Hm. Well, that’s certainly true. Aha!” Alastor permitted himself a laugh at the other’s expense, to which Vox just sighed with an eyeroll like he’d fully anticipated it. He then caught the picture-box off guard by leaning towards him to first clink their glasses together, and then tap against the middle of his screen with a single sharp claw, causing Vox to go cross-eyed watching the movement.
“However… I do believe you are discounting the inherent charm that comes from unconditional devotion and adoration, which you also unashamedly showcase. While I’d never give another who’d asked me such a question a legitimate response, privately, I would cite that as being the trait of yours that ‘wooed me so’.”
Vox immediately tone dialed into a blue screen error. Alastor had to catch the malfunctioning picture-box’s glass when it slipped from his hand. He leaned back with a laugh as he kicked back more of his own drink.
It took almost a full minute before Vox managed to get himself back online. With a bashful flush about his screen, he reset some dials on the back of his head as he stuttered, “S-Sorry ‘bout that… But you see, THAT right there was an example of ACTUAL rizz. You have a fuck ton of it for someone who doesn’t fuck.”
“Don’t be so crass now,” Alastor chided as he, instead of returning Vox’s glass that he’d set aside, moved to place his own drink down next to his. He kept his tone casual as he posed, “But on the note of our reconnecting… I hope you don’t need me confirming to you that I will, in fact, be leaving along with the crew tomorrow morning?”
While Vox noticeably dimmed, he still affirmed with a nod. “Yeah, I already figured that… I’ve been working on a system where the audio and visual feed should still work even when it’s moved into a different Ring, actually. Let me show it to you now!”
“Oh, how silly of me to not realize that you would be right on top of maintaining your status as my number one stalker…” he couldn’t help but snark in response to that information, watching as Vox opened the balcony door to poke his head out and whistle, like an owner calling for its dog.
Alastor only had a moment to ponder the action before Vox came back inside with a new addition held out on his forearm. He gave a long, long stare at the bright red robotic parrot, complete with a VoxTek symbol etched right in the center of its chest, that was now perched there.
With a grin that was much too satisfied for the creation he’d revealed, Vox excitedly introduced, “I’ve been calling it Polly, but you can rename it if you want! It’s hooked up with a camera, speakers, and a mic, so I can watch what’s going on and– we can even talk still, sometimes… If you don’t want it around, just shoo it away to hang out somewhere else on the ship, and when you do want it, it’ll come when you call for it!”
There was a long pause, before Alastor spoke, slowly enunciating his words, “Vox… have you seen a single solitary pirate around who actually has a pet parrot? I’d say that stereotype has proven very unfounded.”
“Well, no– But that Crocodile has an actual hook for a hand! There’s gotta be some pirates that do the parrot thing somewhere!”
“If there are, it still just so happens that none of them live on this ship…”
At the sight of Vox’s face falling into somber dejection, Alastor withheld an enduring sigh as he shooed the parrot off of Vox’s arm for it to perch on top of the backrest of a chair. He kept his tone light as he amended, “I do suppose that this is improvement to having those eyesore flying contraptions around. Though I don’t see a point in referring to it as anything other than ‘Vox’, seeing that if I’m calling for it, it will be because I am calling for you.”
Vox’s face brightened like a screen turning back on upon Alastor implicitly accepting his gift. His eyes then flashed wide in surprise when Alastor took one of Vox’s hands to pull him into the center of the studio, even as he allowed Alastor to reposition him as he pleased. But he was quick to catch on, settling into a starting pose for a dance with one hand holding up Alastor’s hand and the other resting on his side.
Alastor’s free hand lightly rested on Vox’s shoulder as he hummed with an uplift in his voice, “It wouldn’t do to part once more without a farewell dance. Why, we haven’t danced since seven years back now! Perhaps even longer than that.”
“I would love to dance with you, Alastor…” Vox replied, full of genuine, soft appreciation and affection, his gaze and smile going soft with his tone.
Only to ruin it by adding on, “And it’s been eight years, four months, nineteen days, and– ” A digital clock popped up in the corner of his screen as Vox checked the time. “ –about six and a half hours since we last danced with each other.”
“…”
After an extremely long pause, Alastor finally managed to reply, “…If you can’t be normal about this, it’s going to be at least another eight years on top of that…”
“S-Sorry! That was weird, yeah, sorry– But don’t worry! I’m completely normal about this! The most normal anyone has ever been, even! Honest! Trust me,” there was not a single part of that statement nor the desperate pleading look on Vox’s face that went along with it that Alastor found trustworthy.
He doesn’t quite think he’s ever seen a flag this red before, but well… he supposed he is partial to the color. Deciding to magnanimously ignore Vox’s concerning obsessiveness, Alastor abruptly moved on, “…Splendid! Though I rather suspected you would be agreeable. Haha! I have just the song in mind. It was one I made with Brook, with our captain and the others in mind.”
“…Oh,” was Vox’s much flatter response, though he didn’t completely lose his smile even with the peak in his irritation and the new pinch in his brow, “Well, I’ll dance to any song you made, of course. Even if picking out a song that you made for another person is an interesting choice…”
“I agree that would be a tad mean, even for me,” Alastor relented, even as he kept his tone and grin teasing. Vox visibly perked back up when he clarified, “But you see, while the song is about them… It can also be about you, too.”
His shadow materialized itself, sitting on the bench in front of the piano to give him a grinning nod. When Alastor returned the grin, it placed its hands on the keys to begin a simple melody, slow and soft. There were only a couple bars to preamble into the piece before Alastor, his voice entirely unconnected to his radio, began to sing…
“Some people live in a house on a hill… And wish they were someplace else… There's nobody there when the evening is still… Secrets with no one to tell…”
Vox’s gaze was fully focused on Alastor, seemingly entranced by the smooth sound of his pure, unfiltered voice. As the piano part transitioned out of plain chords to fill out more, taking on a slightly more rhythmic melody, only then did Alastor guide his partner into a proper dance.
“And some I have known, have a ship where they sleep… With sounds of rocks on the coast… They sail over oceans five fathoms deep! But can't find what they want the most…”
Pulling Vox into a short spin that left his eyes wide and shining, Alastor’s voice lifted high for the short chorus, “And even now, when I'm alone~ I've always known– with you, I am home…”
“Some live in towns, cardboard shack on concrete. All bluster and bustling life…”
He pulled Vox back in close as harp strings came into play, both their hands clasped together. Only to let one go to tap a teasing clink onto the center of that picture-box screen. This time when Vox went cross-eyed, he had a stupid grin on his face to go with it.
“They search for the color– you can never quite see. Cause it's all… white on white…”
With a string quartet now mixing into the piano melody, Alastor had them both spin on their heels as he swung his hand out and repeated, “And even now, when I'm alone~ I've always known! With you, I am home.”
This time, Vox was the one to reach out and take his hand back. Alastor allowed the action, and allowed his still grinning dance partner to be the one to pull him into a spin this time.
“And even now, when I'm alone~ I've always known… with you, I am home…”
The strings faded away while the piano ritardandoed, returning to that simple, soft starting tune once more. There was a brief, quiet interlude where the dancers slowed their own movements into nothing but a small, slight sway.
This time when Alastor sang, he looked directly at Vox’s wide-eyed gaze. They somehow managed to go even wider when his hand rose to ghost the tips of his fingers down the side of his screen.
“For me… it's a glance… and the smile on your face…” Vox’s face flushed with a pixelated red as Alastor drew the tip of a single finger across the expanse of the smile on his screen.
“The touch of your hands…” Alastor’s free hand lowered to hold the back of Vox’s, only to lower further to the small of the man’s back to guide him back into a dip that left Vox gasping, like it’d taken his breath away. “…An honest embrace!”
“For where I lay, it's you I keep! This changing world, I fall asleep. With you, all I know is~ I'm coming home! Coming home… ”
A drum set kicked in along with all the other instruments, bringing the music back into a peak while Alastor pulled Vox, the smile practically beaming on his face, out of the dip to have them glide around on the dance floor again. They circled a couple of times, before the music began to slow and quiet once more into a lingering, extended note.
His shadow restarted the piano before the piece could come to a true end. At first quiet and soft. Only for the drums to start up, both of them leading into a gradual crescendo as the piano notes grew stronger and stronger.
The two sped up their dance along with the music. High up above in the sky, above even the busyness of the party that was going on below them on the deck, it was as though the little, private world they had shared before had never been disturbed in the first place. Vox still danced just the same way Alastor had taught him, now becoming bolder as they went further into the song. The piano notes began spiraling in fast scales as he twirled Alastor in place, spinning him out, and spinning him right back into a close hold. Their dancing was even better than how it’d been previously, even. Completely in synch, without any amount of hesitation or imposed borders on either of their ends.
But even that peaking, monumental crescendo must come to an end. The piano melody repeated one last time, and with the feeling of one of Vox’s hands supporting his back while the other intertwined with Alastor’s, he allowed himself to be dipped with the falling action. Before the drums dropped off all at once, and the piano fell into a hush.
He hung there for a moment, feeling weightless and light with Vox leaning over him and holding him up. Vox smiled down at him, his expression so very gentle. His red eyes practically glittered like a starry night reflecting on the water’s surface, and he gazed down at Alastor as though he were the shining, full moon who had hung those stars in place. As if Alastor was the brightest light in the night sky who beamed down to illuminate the shimmering waves of the sea and effortlessly pull the tide along with its gravity. He gazed down at Alastor as if their positions were reversed, as though he was somehow still gazing up at him from down below, even now.
It occurs to him, then, that the intimate moment may have perhaps become too intimate. Tension coils in his chest. He wonders if Vox will try to push things. Wonders if the man might lean just a bit further down to cross the short distance necessary to bring their faces together. He wonders what he would do, if Vox should try to kiss him now. If he’d let it slide, or if he’d end everything all over again by clawing out that picture-box face.
But instead… Vox pulled him further up into his arms, simply bringing them together in an innocent embrace. With his screen pressed against Alastor’s shoulder, he softly whispered…
“I really missed this… I missed you, Alastor… I’ll miss you, when you’re gone…”
Alastor inhaled a quiet breath, and after a beat, exhaled the air from his lungs just as softly. The tension uncoiled itself. His arms wrapped around his friend to return the gesture as he closed his eyes with a small smile. “And I missed you, too… I won’t stay gone, this time. So there’s no need to fret.”
“Even if you say that... Can I still see you off, tomorrow? What time are you leaving?”
“At the crack of dawn, of course. It’s apparently the best time to start a new voyage,” he replied with a bit more levity while the two of them straightened back up. Though, Vox still didn’t quite let go of him even as they pulled apart, leaving his hands to linger on the sides of Alastor’s arms. “I’ll be expecting you, then.”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world…” Vox trailed off, distracted by Alastor holding the side of his oversized head, gripping it firmly by the bottom corner of its box shape. Alastor turned the screen sharply forward towards himself, to the point that Vox’s expression twitched into a reflexive glare at the strain.
Only for his eyes to grow large enough to take up the entirety of his screen when Alastor leaned in to brush a fleeting, featherlight kiss against the edge of the metal frame.
“…Don’t get used to that,” retreating as swiftly as he’d gone in, Alastor knew his words were pointless even as he tapped a finger in a tink against Vox’s head with his warning. The picture-box had already shorted out into bright blue with an error screen. Sparks flying from the antennae atop his head, there was even a light trail of smoke coming off of it now. He cackled in a pitch at the dramatics, knowing Vox will likely be stuck in this state for a good while.
The party went on throughout the day, concluding with a dark red night sky filled to the brim with fireworks taking the place of stars. And from then, all too soon, morning was upon them.
A group had gathered to see the pirates off. There were plenty of overly emotional farewells from Bartolomeo and the blushing maiden Hancock, to Luffy specifically in the woman’s case. Sanji was similarly over dramatic in his farewells to all the women who were seeing them off, even when it wasn’t warranted. Rosie demanded a large squeeze from Alastor before he could even think of stepping back aboard. Charlie and her father were already going misty-eyed, with Angel and Cherri giving grand goodbyes and forced promises for tales as soon as they returned. Husk slipped Zoro one last bottle to-go before giving a smile and nod to Luffy –he noticeably ignored saying goodbye to Alastor entirely, but that didn’t surprise him since his former Contracted was likely rather pleased by that particular departure– and even Vaggie softened to wish them all a safe journey. Sir Pentious straightened up with a somewhat ridiculous military salute, only for his form to be ruined by Franky bringing the snake into a crushing goodbye hug.
During all of this Niffty had been watching the proceedings with that large eye of hers tracking everyone’s actions. Until she stepped forward to stand in front of Alastor directly, looking up at him to innocently ask, “Sir… am I supposed to go with you? Or am I supposed to keep working at the hotel for you? I don’t understand… which it is that you want me to do.”
Alastor had already thought of whether he should bring Niffty with him or not. He knew that he need only say the word, and the captain would allow her to disembark with them. However, in the end, he realized that he shouldn’t be the one to make that decision…
Kneeling down on one knee to be closer to the smaller woman’s level, Alastor explained, “Niffty, my dear, the question here is what you want to do. Whether you work for me on the ship or continue your duties at the hotel is all up to you! No matter what you decide, I will not be displeased with you, so feel free to choose whichever path you desire.”
“ …I– I don’t know… It’s too hard to choose, can you just choose for me?”
“I believe, Niffty…” he tried speak what needed to be said as gently as possible even while still imparting what he needed to, “ …that it is precisely because the choice is hard that you must be the one to decide for yourself. So no, I cannot choose for you.”
The little bug went quiet, at that. She stared at Alastor, glanced back to her group of friends, who all smiled at her with kindness, then back to Alastor once more. Before her gaze lowered to her feet.
“ …If you need more time to decide, perhaps, I can wait one more day before I join up with the crew? I should’ve thought to have you think on this before the day of. It was short-sighted of me to spring it on you as such.”
“ …No, I don’t want you to miss out on going with your friends like that,” Niffty insisted. She then looked back up at him with a wide smile and a tearful eye to say, “Since you won’t be around to help Charlie as much, I want to stay and help her! But I– I’m really gonna miss you, Alastor…”
“I’ll miss you too, dearie. It won’t be the same without your deranged spark around to liven things up.” Alastor brought Niffty into a tight hug, allowing her to sniffle into his shirt and jacket. He already had a feeling that would be what she decided on.
Amongst the crowd, Charlie burst into sympathetic tears at their parting, with Lucifer being the one to rub at her back in consolation. Franky also burst into tears that Alastor readily ignored. A short distance behind Niffty, Vox tried to mouth and mime something to him in a much too exaggerated manner to make any sense of, only for the man to give up with an irritated grimace. Words then replaced his facial features, scrawling across his screen like a teleprompter to state ‘I’ll have her call you with the parrot’.
Alastor sent an approving smile back for that. While Vox had been in tangential association with Niffty previously back when they were friends, this association was somewhat strained due to Vox’s… wariness concerning Niffty’s peculiarities. Alastor suspected that the man never quite recovered after returning to his apartment that one time to see the mass crucifixion of cockroaches that Niffty had left in her wake after taking it upon herself to perform pest control for the place. However, he’d also never been outright hostile towards her, knowing of Alastor’s fondness for the little gremlin. That he would force himself to become accustomed to her presence so that she could remain in contact with Alastor meant a great deal.
While Alastor was still in the middle of letting Niffty go and righting himself, Trafalgar then stepped forward slightly, standing in front of Luffy to say in full seriousness, “Straw Hat-ya… I know I told you that time before when you first got your ships back that I’d go with you, but you know I’m staying now, right?”
“Right,” Luffy confirmed with a nod and simple smile, not put out in the slightest, “Traffy has to stay and take care of his crew now. You’re still your own captain!”
Standing a step behind and to the side of Trafalgar, Bepo gasped. Bringing his paws up to hold his furry cheeks, he questioned, horrified, “Don’t tell me… I’m getting in the way of Captain’s love life– ?!”
Without missing a beat, Trafalgar reached back to clamp the polar bear’s snout shut with his hand. He growled, “Quiet! Of course I’m not leaving you! What kind of captain do you take me for?!”
Even with his mouth forced shut, Bepo still somehow managed to muffle, “B-But– why don’t we both go– ?”
“Heaven’s only letting you stay here because you have a job to do! If you don’t do it, they’ll probably try to make you go back. It’s easier if you just do what you said you would. And I’ll still be able to take care of my clinic, this way.”
“It’s good you’re not leaving us high and dry like that, but…” Ace now stepped forward from the group, his flames burning brightly in the slightly dim red of the dawn as he smiled at both Bepo and Trafalgar. “I don’t see why Pentious and I can’t let you get away with heading out to sea with Luffy occasionally. If Bepo was constantly gone that’d be one thing, but I’m sure we can figure out a way for you to go on some trips with them!”
“That’sss right!” Sir Pentious stuck his head in to back the other up, asserting somewhat pompously, “There have been numerousss studies to demonssstrate that regular breaks off work is sssuperbly beneficial to productivity! For the betterment of Bepo’s work, we mussst take it upon ourselves to arrange proper ssscheduling for his vacation time! And of course, the sssame is to the said for Portgusss himself! The two of you should alternate taking leave with the Ssstraw Hats!”
“YEAH! Do that! Shishishi!” Luffy excitedly agreed to the promised future trips even before either Trafalgar or Ace had agreed to them. But of course, they could hardly turn the boy down. Trafalgar just glanced away in implied defeat, while Ace grinned brightly at his brother.
It was then that Ace fully stepped forward to bring Luffy into a warm hug, which Luffy eagerly accepted. He gave a linger pat on the back as he leaned away, saying, “I’m gonna miss you, Luffy. But I won’t say goodbye. Not when I know we’ll meet again. And it’ll be way sooner than how long it took last time, too! Have lots of fun for me until I head out myself.”
“Course! And I won’t say bye either!” while Luffy smiled back just as bright, there was a tear budding in the corner of his eye. Ace laughed with him, ruffling his hair before righting the straw hat back into its proper place. Luffy then turned back towards his crew to announce, “Everyone, it’s time to set sail!”
The anchors were hoisted, and the sails unfurled. The Sunny disembarked from the dock first, with the Merry following a short distance behind. Up in the crow’s nest of the Merry, Alastor watched Charlie running down the dock to give one last wave, shouting back at them, “Thanks again for everything, Luffy! Alastor! Come back soon! We’ll all be here to see you again!”
Alastor waved back with a smile as they sailed further from the dock. Until it was just a speck on the horizon, nothing but clear blue waters on all sides and the wide red sky that sat above it all.
“Alastor!” Luffy greeted him as he stretched a hand out to catch the rim of the lookout, shooting himself up to land across from Alastor. With the introduction of his captain, Alastor shooed away the robotic parrot that had been resting on the rim beside him, causing it to fly up and away. It glided all the way over to the Sunny to perch on one of the antlers on his studio in the meantime.
Redirecting his attention back to Luffy, he remarked, “Even without an actual Sun to shine on our departure, leaving at dawn does make for a fine atmosphere, doesn’t it? Did you need me for something, dear captain?”
“Nah. I was just thinkin’– ” Alastor was a hair’s breadth away from retorting how unusual that phenomena was, but Luffy’s conclusion to the statement caught him off guard, “Isn’t it about time ya took your soul back? You don’t need me to keep it for you anymore, right? I don’t need your soul for you to be on my crew.”
Alastor blinked at the boy as he thought that over. When he’d considered the matter previously, he’d been hesitant to take it back. He’d gone long enough without it, and there was no better person to safeguard it than the man that sat before him. But while that was still true… It was also true that he now felt more confident in keeping it for himself.
“ …I suppose you are correct. You did say before that you didn’t want to keep it indefinitely, didn’t you…”
As his words trailed off, Alastor summoned the Soul Contract to his hand. It was still rather unremarkable in appearance, just a plain sheet of paper other than the power he could feel from it beneath his fingertips. He could hand it over to Luffy for God of Freedom to rip apart, just as he had seen the other do previously with countless other Contracts. However… he felt that that wasn’t necessary, in this case.
Grasping the paper at either end, Alastor pulled his hands apart to rip the thing in two. A familiar white flame ignited at the tear, burning through the material until even the ash faded away from his hold. The ring on his finger briefly appeared to fade away along with it. And it was only then that he felt something, warm and light, settle inside himself.
“Oh…” he breathed out softly as his hand rose to lightly curl his fingers into his chest. When he breathed in once more, he was suddenly all too aware of the way his heart thudded heavily with the action. And obviously he’d felt such sensations before, but for whatever reason, he was much more aware of the feeling of them, now.
“It’s been so long, I hadn’t realized… that I had missed the feeling of it…”
Grinning wide at him, Luffy beamed with insistence, “Course ya did! Whether your soul feels free or not is the most important part of bein’ free, ya know!”
“ …That it is,” Alastor agreed, his tone and posture falling at ease. And looking out across the expanse of the sea, at the seemingly limitless horizon to which their ships now felt so small in, there was a comparison to be made to this sight and the feeling that now expanded in his chest.
Because, at the risk of coming off a tad more poetic than he typically preferred… the freedom of a heart unbound was a treasure like no other.
And what a nice dream it is, indeed. To be free.
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