Archive of Our Own

Sanji’s dress shoes slide against the pavement. Onigashima is on fire, somewhat literally, as the Beast Pirates and the Ninja-Pirate-Mink-Samurai Alliance— goddammit, Luffy, that’s seriously a mouthful —meet in a climactic struggle that will change the course of history.

The two factions clash as if they’re trying to earn the Performance Floor its name with the scripts of war: the chamber echoes with a symphony of battle cries, both sides bellowing lyrics that cross the language barrier. A drumline of stomping feet comprises the backbeat — the tinny clang of blades meeting blades reverberates like cymbals, the thudding clap of blocked punches and parried kicks striking the snare. Bodies thudding against the cracked ground kick down the bass, a crescendo of piercing shrieks from cornered combatants rising the treble.

The mechanical whir of Queen’s numerous clawlike contraptions is the orchestra’s metronome, changing tempo as the course of the battle sways, skipping a beat with every life lost on either side. Sanji’s flames dance a pas-de-deux with King’s, their opposing blazes meeting in a central firestorm that swirls with rhythmic push-pull of a duet before dissipating like drawn theater curtains.

Above him, his captain clashes with the Kaidou of the Beasts, the world’s strongest creature. There isn’t a shred of doubt in Sanji’s mind that Luffy will win. 

Herds of Gifters and Headliners roar like a zoo let loose. The less-fortunate consumers of the SMILE fruits cackle an off-key cacophony of raucous laughter, grooving to the tune of a different song than everyone else. Sanji almost feels bad for them — almost. 

He’s got a certain other idiot to worry about. 

“C’mon, mosshead, get up!” Sanji barks as he soars above another Black Coffee Beam. Grime blotches his palms as he diverolls through the landing, coagulating irrigation tunnels of soot into his fate lines. “This is no time for a nap!”

Zoro’s heavily bandaged form lays flat behind him, his body still thoroughly wrecked after his brief clash with Big Mom and Kaidou; or at least, wrecked for now. The Mink doctors Miyagi and Tristan huddle around him, Chopper in his Baby-Geezer form after his prolonged usage of Monster Point. Miyagi brandishes an empty syringe in hand—hoof?—as the doctors watch with bated breath for their miracle drug to kick in.

“I’m not napping, love-cook!” Zoro protests, and behind him Sanji can hear the dull rattle-rustle of Zoro writhing against his gauze like a mummy trying to break free of its sarcophagus. “Just you wait! I’m gonna kick those All-Stars’ asses and then yours!”

Sanji shakes the mud off his fingers. “Then hurry up!” 

King hurls a churning fireball at Sanji’s allies. Sanji boots it towards the ceiling with the beacon blazing around his ankles, exploding the dynamo into a starshower of embers and sparks. 

“That’s quite the power you’ve got!” Queen comments, but it’s far from sounding like a genuine compliment. “You can light yourself on fire, huh? Is that one of Judge’s genius enhancements?”

Sanji grinds his teeth. “None of his enhancements worked on me! I’m just a normal person!” he insists, then, lifting his heel like a victory torch, “This fire is all passion!”

“I don’t believe ya!” Queen singsongs. “You can only ignite your own body if you’re a Lunarian!”

At the name, Sanji does a double-take. Now there’s a word he hasn’t heard in a long, long time: not since he was a child flipping through Judge’s research notes with morbid curiosity that never lasted long, every additional sentence harder to stomach than the last.

“A Lunarian?” Sanji repeats. What the hell? “No way. Aren’t they all—"

“Dead!” 

It’s King who finishes Sanji’s statement, cutting him off by bludgeoning Sanji’s shoulder with the flat side of his katana. Sanji braces himself against the impact, the metal colliding with his collarbone in an ear-splitting smack. 

“Sanji!” Chopper cries.

“I’m fine!” Sanji shouts, shaking it off. “It—"

It didn’t hurt. 

Sanji blinks. It didn’t hurt?

No, it had to have hurt. Sure, Sanji knows he’s strong, but a direct hit like that should at least leave a bruise — yet there’s no soreness, no residual ache. No stinging sensation or stabbing pangs. 

But for a while now, Sanji’s body has felt off: like he’s been taken apart and put back together just slightly wrong, and he can’t tell if he’s missing any pieces or if new ones have been added. His own limbs feel alien to him, and his rapid-fire fighting feels less like instinct and more like autopilot. It’s bizarre. 

Sanji stretches, confirms the evidence. He feels fine. Almost too fine, but he can’t afford to dwell on it. 

“It didn’t hurt,” Sanji says aloud, and it’s as much to himself as it is to Chopper. “My body feels weird.”

“Weird- bad?” Chopper wavers.

“No,” Sanji replies, “but not weird- good, either. Just... weird.”

But ‘just weird’ is an understatement so severe it’s almost funny. Residual snowmelt from the thawed ice oni clings to Sanji’s skin like condensation on a cold glass — strange, considering he’s running hot, hot, hot from the inside out. His lungs are whirring like a fan in the dead of summer, and he’s breathing harder than he has in years, maybe ever. Sanji can light his legs on fire but he’s never deluded himself into thinking he can breathe it; yet now he’s panting heat waves, exhaling sunflares, leaving behind a cold, dead void in the middle of his chest. Sanji’s no stranger to hyperventilating, yet this feels as if, as if—

As if his body is trying to regulate its own temperature. It’s as involuntary as the beating of his heart.

Facing King and Queen together is pushing whatever the fuck is happening to him to its absolute limit. They’re fighting shockingly out-of-sync for supposed partners, but that in itself is its own brand of overwhelming. It’s hard to brace for what’s coming when there’s no rhyme, reason, or rhythm to their attacks. 

As much as Sanji loathes to admit it, he needs the mosshead to help him take out one of these prehistoric pricks — he’s not cocky enough to think he can defeat the two of them together. Sanji has to hold his own against both All-Stars until Zoro’s ridiculously questionable miracle drug can kick in, and there’s no backup: Sanji refuses to use people who don’t stand a chance against King and Queen as fodder, and the only person here who might be able to hold them off temporarily—Marco—is still down.

So Sanji does the only thing left he can do:

Stall.

It was thanks to his raid suit that Sanji withstood King’s fierce barrage while saving Momonosuke. The idea of wearing it yet again a little bit sickens him, but he’s out of both time and options. People are relying on him.

Against his instincts, his common sense, and his better judgment, Sanji puts it on.

The canister hisses as it pops open. Ribbons of light coil around his limbs, slick black neoprene clinging to every contour like a second skin. Dark glasses shroud his eyesight, locking in beside the cybernetic headset guarding his ears. Ivory gloves and bootcovers are crowned with ladder-rung cuffs, embossed the same blinding gold as the hideous Germa 66 logo mounted on his belt buckle. A pillar of azure flames rockets from the exhaust pipe of his jet-propelled shoes, inflating the floatation discs mounted to their soles. His cape spills around him like a gutted underbelly, its interior rippling a glossy shade of violent red. 

As soon as his transformation completes, the strange feeling in his body increases a thousandfold.

It feels like wrapping himself in liquid electricity. His throat constricts, refusing to let air in or bile out — he can only claw at his neck helplessly, unsure if the asphyxia or nausea will take him out first. His vision goes back and forth between blacking out and flooding with an entirely new spectrum of colors, undetectable to the human eye. Sanji’s whole being is caught in limbo, halfway between immortality and instant death.

All in all, it feels as though he’s swallowed a dying sun. Something explodes inside his chest, coughing up space matter into the filter of his mask. 

“Ah, there it is!” Queen chants victoriously through Sanji’s haze, bouncing up and down in a dance so earthshaking that rubble rains from the ceiling like thrown confetti. “The power of Germa!”

Beside his fellow All-Star, King tenses. It would’ve been imperceptible if not for the fact that Sanji’s eyes feel like the lenses of a gun scope, pupils the crosshairs of a sniper rifle. It’s like his senses are trying to pinpoint all the places his opponent is most vulnerable: the coarseness of his breath, the tremble of his shoulders. King looms above him like a bad omen, a bomb with one second left on the countdown clock. 

“I knew I recognized that technology,” King spits. The fire on his back surges, wings statue-stiff and solid as stone. “So you really are a Vinsmoke!” 

He spits the name with vitriol only matched by Sanji's own.

That in itself sets off nearly every alarm bell inside him; yet Sanji presses on, ignores the warning signs. He’s always been too given to running towards danger instead of away. “I’m not a Vinsmoke! I’m Soba Mask!” Sanji insists after clearing his throat. “You recognize this technology? Did you work with Judge, too?”

Despite that the question wasn’t directed at him, it’s Queen who bellows a derisive laugh in response. 

“That’s one way to put it!” Queen declares, twirling on his heels in the world’s least graceful pirouette for dramatic effect — Sanji’s starting to think most things he does are for that. “It’s a shame I wasn’t there back then, but I heard all about it. You know how science works, right, kid? Every experiment worth doing needs a lab ra—"

Before Queen can finish his sentence, King drives a heeled boot into Queen’s jawline. Queen’s teeth snap together with a resounding clack so thunderous and hollow that Sanji’s own mouth aches in commiseration. 

“Damn you,” King seethes, and Sanji distantly wonders what face he’s making behind that mask. His voice sounds as if it’s scraping past his throat through gritted teeth, and his irises are framed by a tangle of bloodshot veins: if eyes really are the windows to the soul, his entire spirit must be scorching with rage. “Don’t you dare!”

Sanji balks. What had Queen been about to say?

Queen stumbles from the kickback, swaying like a drunkard just to stay on his feet. “Jeez, so touchy!” he whines with an exaggerated pout. “You’re not seriously still hung up on that, are you? You’ll never be cheerful like me if you can’t let go of the past!”

“Silence!” King commands, hurling an aerial slash at Queen with a transformed wing, black plumage replaced by taut cartilage. “You’re not allowed to dictate what I can and cannot forget!”

King’s chest heaves as the blaze between his shoulders crackles like a cremation furnace. He’s glaring at Queen with anger beyond description. This isn’t just petty squabbling between nakama: what King is radiating towards Queen is pure, genuine hatred. Despite that the entire island is riddled with opponents, it’s as if King believes his greatest foe is someone on his own crew.

Then King’s attention returns to Sanji, and Sanji is forced to downgrade Queen to second place.

“You,” King fumes, “your head is mine, Vinsmoke!”

Sanji squeezes his fists. “Don’t call me that!”

Ignoring his demand, King dives towards Sanji like a falcon. Sanji bends, his knees two bowstrings ready to shoot a bullseye — then the stirrings of motion behind him catch his eye. 

Zoro shoots up and sheds his cocoon of bandages, all three swords drawn in the space between his recovery site and the battlefield. He swings both katanas clutched in his palms to block King’s charge, holding fast and steady against the All-Star — but that’s just it. Strangely, the blades themselves have no measurable effect on King’s body: Sandai Kitetsu and Enma do little more than brace against the impact despite that the sharp edges are pressed against the dip of his chin. 

“Oi, oi,” Zoro rumbles, and Sanji knows that voice — he’s pissed. “What’s with that body of yours? You a machine like your buddy here?”

King bristles. “I am no machine,” he snarls, shaking off Zoro’s attack, “and that bastard is not my buddy!”

With a heavyweight wingbeat, King hovers, drawing every pair of eyes on the Performance Floor. Now airborne, he morphs into his full beast form: a colossal pterodactyl-like dinosaur, his hulking figure still studded with hardware and tight, tight black latex. 

Observing, Sanji pinches his brows. It’s odd: the more attention is called to King’s unique features, the more he hides them. 

Beneath King’s leviathan shadow, Queen groans. “So shy, like always!” he tsks. “That attitude’s not fitting for a guy who dresses like a BDSM freak!”

Sanji didn’t think it was possible for King to get any angrier, but here they are. “Shut up!” 

Despite the successful taunt, it’s not even Queen that King guns for when he plummets. Instead, King’s jaws close around Sanji’s midriff, clamping Sanji in his—muzzle? Beak? Sanji doesn’t get dinosaurs—and shakes him like a dog trying to rip apart a chew toy, growling low in his throat when his teeth can’t puncture the raid suit.  

“Curly-brow!” Zoro cries, and Sanji can’t decide if he’s endeared or insulted that his partner looks genuinely worried about him.

”I’m fine!” Sanji reassures. “I got this! You take care of Queen!”

“Don’t tell me what to do!” Zoro shoots back, but despite his harsh words, his grin is wild and wolfish. “Kick that bird’s ass!”

King makes an offended sound that reverberates through Sanji’s marrow. “Bird? Really?!” He huffs in irritation, smoke billowing through his nostrils like a dragon. “Tell your little boyfriend he’s a fucking idiot!”

“You’re a fucking idiot!” Sanji calls after Zoro, and it’s the one and only time he’s ever listened to an enemy.

With that, King takes off, whisking Sanji away into a corridor a good distance from the Performance Floor.

Diving beneath the archway, King hurls Sanji into the bamboo flooring with a machspeed pitch. The planks splinter beneath him — it’s only thanks to the steel-stiff cape of his raid suit that keeps his spine from snapping in half. 

“This hall will be your grave, Vinsmoke!” King thunders, and there’s the way he says that name again. Sanji can’t place what emotion it is; only that it’s far too familiar for comfort. “I’ve been waiting thirty years for this!”

Disoriented from the force of the throw, Sanji racks his brain through what he knows of Judge’s chronology. Thirty years ago — that was during his Punk Hazard days, right? He’d been working beside Caesar Clown and Vegapunk, just before Queen joined MADS. 

There’s no record of King being a part of that shitty organization, so how did he and Judge meet?

Staggering to his feet, Sanji sweeps his shaded gaze across the battlefield. The corridor is lined with traditional shoji partitions, sealed with gridlike squares of concerningly flammable paper paneling. The landscape is illuminated only by the muted glow of lanterns studding the crease between the palisades and the ceiling, seeping pinpricks of melted citrine light throughout the hall. 

Sanji dusts the chipped timber from his mantle. “Thirty years, huh? You a geezer like him?” he retorts. If Sanji’s presence alone is poking a beehive, this is beating it with a baseball bat. “Sorry, but I can’t tell how old you are from just your eyes.”

“My eyes will be the last thing you see,” King seethes, transforming back into human form to draw his weapon. The blade glints carnelian beneath the dim candlelight. “You have no right to see my face!”

If he always wears that mask like Queen implied, nobody does, but the way he spits it at Sanji seems weirdly personal — and Sanji can’t help the feeling that he’s missing something, something big.

Unable to pinpoint it, Sanji defaults to shitty manners. “Guess you really are shy like that brachiosaurus said!”

King grunts in frustration as he soars forwards. He swings a brutal arc of his blade at Sanji, and Sanji hikes up a leg to block it with a haki-coated calf: the raid suit compresses beneath the edge but doesn’t tear, the fibers holding sturdy despite the sharpness.

Pupils narrowing in disdain, King leverages his proximity to aim a roundhouse at Sanji’s obliques. Sanji leaps backwards onto his palms, parrying the kick against the flank of his knee. He launches into an aerial twist to right himself, his cloak fluttering around him like hummingbird wings.

Dropping into a ready stance, Sanji goes on the offensive. He sails towards his opponent, driving a full-force heel into the meat of King’s chest. 

“Poitrine Shot!”

Sanji’s boot collides spot-on with his target, but it doesn’t feel like a victory when King doesn’t even bother to dodge it. Instead, the hit almost seems to disappear from King’s chest. 

Confounded, Sanji’s brows dip beneath the rim of his glasses. Wait, what? That was a clean hit — Sanji knows from experience he can overturn a Marine rig with that attack. He’s still trying to figure out what went wrong when King shunts his katana towards Sanji’s throat again, and it’s only due to his reflexes bypassing his brain that he shoots up his foot to shield himself.

Then King twists his sword, and the thing bares its teeth.   

Sanji makes a rather undignified sound of surprise, and the way King’s eyes curve in response indicates he must be smirking beneath that damn helmet. King jostles his weapon, trying to jam Sanji’s toes between the serrated rungs to trap him. It’s not a bad strategy: maybe it’d even work if Sanji weren’t so fast, wriggling free in the space between seconds.

The flame on King’s back surges from his mounting irritation. Sanji hasn’t damaged King, but King hasn’t damaged Sanji, either. They’re deadlocked into a stalemate, and they’re barely five minutes into their one-on-one clash.

Time to turn up the heat. Sanji ignites the lower half of his right leg, spilling white-hot swells of heat in waves. The fire pops and hisses, eagerly flaring to life. Sanji tears towards his enemy, plowing his broiling boot into the tenderest part of King’s stomach.

“Diable Jambe!”

It’s Sanji’s most powerful attack, and it does literally nothing. It’s like snuffing a match against a hot stove.

King chuckles deep in his diaphragm. “Unfortunately for you, my constitution is unusual,” he says. “Your pitiful attacks will do nothing against me!”

“You sure about that?!” Sanji counters. He activates his raid suit’s signature ability, disappearing without a trace. 

Taken aback, King spins around wildly as he tries in vain to track Sanji’s movements. Sanji ricochets around his opponent, instincts mapping the most vulnerable places on King’s strange body. 

King tenses as he readies to attack. Sanji’s stealth mode hides his presence, but not the sound of it: the air whistles as Sanji blitzes through it, contrails of gusts rustling the feathers on King’s onyx wings.

Suddenly, King extinguishes the inferno crowning his back.

Sanji feels his eyes widen as King’s acceleration breaks the sound barrier, an echo ripping through the corridor in a Doppler effect. Sanji swivels about, his reflexes tracking King’s afterimages: how did he get so fast?

When the fire on his back goes out, his speed increases, Sanji realizes abruptly. Is it possible there’s a tradeoff?

Despite King’s exponential rise in velocity, Sanji still has the advantage. If he’s right, if King’s guard is really down, this may be his one and only chance to land a devastating attack. 

Sanji sails forth. He doesn’t stop until he’s directly before King: he uncoils his legs into full splits, winding up enough raw power to crater a planet — a single kick turned extinction-level event.

“Collier Shot!”

Sanji deactivates his stealth mode as he lands a direct hit to the underside of King’s jawline. The entire castle quakes from the force of the kick.

King’s head snaps towards the ceiling as Sanji bashes his mask. The tough hide tears like wet tissue paper, splitting the helmet in half and tearing the front of his suit wide-open, exposing the pleated hem of a low-cut white tunic. What’s left of the mask clatters behind him with a deceptively empty, tinny sound, the metal spikes tolling like church bells as it rolls aside. 

King topples to his back, wings splayed beneath him like a dead moth on a mounting board. Sanji thuds square atop his enemy's chest, pinning King beneath the superheated discs paving his boots. Sanji’s gaze shoots downwards, ready to see who he’s really been fighting.

Except he wasn’t ready. Not even a little bit. Not even at all. 

Lying beneath him is objectively the most beautiful person Sanji has ever witnessed. His deep brown skin seems to glow under the low light of the corridor, spilling over his high cheekbones in the crimsons and ambers of sunset over a distant mountain skyline. King’s face is flushed from exertion, staining his cheeks a dusty rose, panting through full lips as he gazes at Sanji with wide, startled eyes. Up close, his red irises glitter like a thousand crushes rubies, shaded by a calligraphy brush of dark, long lashes.  

A crescent laurel wreath is tattooed around his left eye, delicate leaves encircling his strong brows. A loose braid trails from his wavy tresses like moon jellyfish tendrils, his pearlescent hair tumbling behind his crown like a fallen halo: and for a brief, mildly hysterical moment, Sanji is certain he’s looking at an honest-to-god angel.

Then the realization of who—of what —he’s looking at hits him like a cannon point-blank.

Holy shit, it’s true, Sanji says to himself, heartrate quickening as adrenaline floods his veins, King really is a—

Before he can finish his thought, King’s entire body seizes up. 

King’s pupils shrink to protons, his panicked gaze urgently scanning Sanji’s coiffed blonde hair, his coiled eyebrows, his Germa-powered raid suit. His chest starts rising and falling more rapidly as he starts to hyperventilate, staring at Sanji like—like he's going to scream, or maybe vomit. His movement loses all its grace and coordination, primal instincts kicking in as he tries in vain to buck Sanji off of him.

He thrashes on the hardwood, wings flapping uselessly, as if he’s suddenly forgotten that he can’t take flight from flat on the ground. King makes a sound that’s helpless and desperate, like he's not half a god and four times Sanji's size, writhing like a swan in the clutches of a hunter the moment before a bullet is slugged into its skull. 

It is then Sanji realizes in abject horror exactly how King knows his not-father, bolstered by the nauseating dread that Sanji has clearly triggered some sort of post-traumatic stress response. And then, entirely against his will, Sanji completes Queen’s barbaric, disgusting sentence from earlier in his head:

‘Every experiment worth doing needs—

—a lab rat.’

King squeezes his eyes shut, smacking his hands over his face to pointlessly cover it. He draws in a deep breath, then shouts from the bottom of his soul:

“Stop hurting me, Judge!”

Sanji’s heart utterly stops.

Ripping off his mask, Sanji staggers back. His glasses slide off his face, scarf fluttering to the floor like a dying butterfly. The room capsizes, dizzy with vertigo, plunging him into a deep, dark world. His lungs flood with something he logically knows is probably stomach acid, but he feels, dumbly, like he's about to become the first person to drown while burning alive. 

He's been referred to in reference to his former family before –– Stealth Black, Germa, Vinsmoke –– but never that name, not directly. Judge. 

Sanji chokes. Judge. Judge. Judgejudgejudgejudgejudge. He’s back on Whole Cake Island again, staring into callous eyes that measure human life only in numbers — no, he’s in that dungeon, imprisoned with bars that clatter against his skull every time he turns his head. Sanji squeezes his fists, gaze frantically dropping to his precious hands –– and shit, fuck, why are his and Judge's gloves the exact same color? They weren't––made to do the same––

King shoots upright, jaw hanging open in surprise at his own involuntary outburst. His expression is caught somewhere between furious and embarrassed. Sanji makes a small, pathetic noise, and it's only now that he realizes he and King share the same gravelly, rough undertone to their voices that can only be developed from years and years and years of screaming for someone who will never ever listen. 

The fact that someone looked at Sanji and truly saw that man, that he resembles Judge enough in this moment to force one of his ex-father's victims to relive the trauma inflicted upon him, fills Sanji with a shame so visceral it borders on fatal. And it could kill him, Sanji thinks. It really could.

Sanji’s spiraling so hard he doesn't even notice King’s approach until it's too late.

“You should know better than to let your guard down before an enemy!” King shouts, like he’s not a massive hypocrite, like they’re both not trading off having complete emotional meltdowns over their fucked-up childhoods right in front of each other. “You have three seconds to choose your last words!"

King blasts forwards, slinging his sword at Sanji’s exposed throat. All Sanji can do is stand there silently like an idiot, still too shocked to dodge—and that’s without taking into account the part of him that doesn’t even want to, the part that’s insisting this is divine retribution—and the blade collides with Sanji’s neck like a chicken on a butcher’s block. Sanji’s final, insane thought is that at least he’s gonna be killed in the same way all the food he cooks is. 

Only—

he isn't. 

The katana tolls with the kind of steely clang that can only come from metal striking other metal. It cleaves at the point of impact, the dismembered fragment clattering to the ground beside them like a dropped coin.

At the sight, King releases a short, choppy exhale, giving away that whatever breakdown he's having is most definitely not over yet; only that he's sealed it tight within his chest. Sanji wonders how long he's been doing that. 'I've been waiting thirty years for this!' Oh. Right.

That's almost a decade longer than Sanji's entire life.

For a stupidly long moment, they both just stand there, eyes glued to the sword's corpse as if it'll come back to life if they stare hard enough at it. 

Eventually: “I thought you said,” King enunciates, glaring at the severed torso of his katana, “that Judge’s modifications didn’t work on you.”

His voice is dipped into the dark, betrayed tone of someone who’s realizing they’ve been lied to. Except Sanji didn’t lie to him, not really, or apparently he did — because beside him is a sword that’s been lopped in half from the cosmic misfortune of touching his body. 

There's a dent in his neck Sanji is too scared to smooth out, too scared to confirm what he knows in his bones is the truth. His soul's been shattered into more fragments than can be put back together, yet his body is––ironically, poetically, tragically ––still in one awful piece.

"They––" Sanji chokes, grasping for words, but it's like trying to stuff a flood back into a river with his bare hands, "they didn't––"

King drops his weapon, wraps a colossal hand around Sanji's throat; Sanji doesn't stop him, doesn't even want to. King jerks Sanji's broken neck back into place, and they both wince hard at the wet, rickety squelch his bones—his exoskeleton —makes as it resets. Then King frowns, as if he's pissed at having to prove a point neither of them even wanted him to make. 

Sanji gulps. Oh god, he really is exactly like—

Judge would be thrilled.

Sanji's still mourning that thought when King demands, "Explain!" like he already knows the answer. 

So Sanji croaks, helpless as the child who challenged a monster with nothing but a human heart and breakable bones, "I can't."

And that pathetic response snaps King out of it. He pins Sanji beneath his titanic palm, lighting it ablaze: Sanji sputters against the almighty pressure, each breath a fight against the hand of god. In a way, it is.

King presses harder. His white hair tumbles into his face, the river of milk and honey that all the hymns claim flows through paradise, black wings looming above him.

Death, they say, is an angel too. 

"Wait, wait, wait!" Sanji shouts, well aware that it's pointless, because seriously, who would listen to a request like that? "I—I need to think!"

"About what?!" King shoots back, equally rhetorical. "I don't owe you anything!"

Somehow, Sanji manages to wriggle free, flattening his legs in order to do so; and he's not relieved in the slightest when they rebuild themselves as he bolts. Fuck, Sanji has never wanted a smoke more in the middle of a fight –– but he needs to prove his body is still wreckable, that there are still ways he can hurt.

Sanji ducks beneath a blistering fireball, trying to figure out how the fuck this happened while he's running for his life he's not even sure is worth saving –– and for a horrible moment he understands why Reiju was willing to die to let this technology be extinguished, why she thought her mere existence was a crime deserving of capital punishment. Why she walked to her own execution with the only agency she had left, head held high with resignation and something like relief, relief that this would all finally be over. That Judge's cursed creations would finally end.

Apparently not.

Shit, he doesn't want this. He doesn't want to become a heartless killing machine like them, but maybe this has always been lurking under his skin: like a monster in the belly of a lake, lying in wait for the perfect moment to strike. 

Sanji's mother knocked back a bottle of poison that took her life, slowly, slowly, all so he wouldn't be heartless, wouldn't be incapable of love. Reiju told him Sora had smiled from the bottom of her heart that Sanji was born a normal person, overjoyed that her sacrifice was worth it, that she had a single child with a spark of humanity. Now that Sanji has awakened the same modifications as his former brothers, has that spark flickered out?

If Sanji becomes a monster too––

––what did she even die for?

The jets on his boots roar as he picks up speed. Shit, is this all because he put on the raid suit? If so, he needs to take it off, and fast, but King's onslaught isn't giving him any openings. He can feel himself teetering on the edge of a total nervous breakdown, his thoughts zigzagging between one crisis and the next.

Ultimately, Sanji elects to shelve his own impending collapse, because he's always been best at worrying about everyone but himself.

Lunarians are unknown to most, a myth to some –– and the fewest know they're less a legend and more a tragedy, a twisted fairytale-gone-wrong that a young Sanji watched unfold in the torture diary Judge titled 'Punk Hazard Research Notes.'

Sanji whips around to address his opponent. "Listen––" he chokes, gulping down the urge to do something ridiculous like apologize on behalf of his not-father, "What he did to you––"

For the second time today, King's body goes gargoyle-stiff. Even the flames on his back seem to petrify, frozen as stained glass. Then his face twists, crumpling the blackwork branches around his eye like leaves clinging to a tree in bitter winter.

And when King roars, “How much do you know, Vinsmoke?!” Sanji can only detect the shame in his tone because he recognizes it in his own, every time his inflection snags on the part of him that blames himself for what was done to him: for being breakable, for being weak. A monster's words in his own voice, trying to convince him his existence alone was reason enough to deserve this. 

"I don't––" Sanji starts, and the way King looks at him like he already knows Sanji's about to spout bullshit causes the lie to die in his throat. 

King immolates his palms. "Imperial Flame!"

King launches a meteor shower of molten fists, pelting the concourse with a celestial barrage. Sanji's cape drags behind him like a comet trail, narrowly evading each starfall as fragments of Judge's research entries flash through his consciousness.

'Even though the Lunarian is not taking damage from the durability tests, it seems to still feel pain. To this end, Vegapunk and I have installed sound-proof paneling to its cage to silence the screaming.'

The flank of King’s knuckles bashes Sanji’s temple with a concussive whump. Sanji’s eardrums reverberate with a sickening snap as his top three vertebrae disconnect, spinal cord straining like a snapped rubber band. 

Sanji hacks an acrid cough as the damage rewinds. The blistering welt cauterized into Sanji’s skin sizzles as the cellular matrix reconstructs.

Snarling with frustration, King slings up a knee and jams his thick thigh against his exposed chest. He jets his heeled boot towards Sanji as if stomping on an ant, merciless and unrepentant. Sanji veers aside, and he loathes that he can’t tell if it’s his own speed or the manufactured acceleration of his raid suit that allows him to dodge it. 

Just as Sanji thinks he’s successfully navigated through the asteroid belt, King unfurls a ravenlike wing and bludgeons him with the flat side of his primaries; and shit, Sanji keeps forgetting his opponent has two extra limbs to account for as they're––

'Today, we removed the Lunarian's wings to determine if they will grow back. Vegapunk and Caesar Clown assisted. We have so far observed several compulsive behaviors such as excessive shivering and clawing at the amputation site. It has not stopped crying since the operation. This significant distress is a clear sign of emotional weakness.'

Sanji tumbles into a crash-landing, joints clobbering noisily against the fissured floorboards. King hammers another carpet bombing of Imperial Flame, battering Sanji with artillery shells Sanji’s haki barely withstands. Two structured plumes of feathers swallow the procession of ceiling lanterns like blackout curtains, eclipsing the corridor in near-totality.

Oh, King’s wings grew back, alright. His wingspan is so fucking massive he can't even fully open them in the corridor, at least sixty damn feet, if not more. Sanji has to gulp down a cackle of delirious relief at the complete recovery of someone who's currently trying to brutally kill him — then King seems to think the way Sanji’s staring, staring, staring at his wings is like they’re something to take apart instead of pray to, and he instinctively retracts them. 

Maybe his recovery wasn’t so complete, after all.

It’s like that paradox of the Ship of Theseus, contemplating if it’s still the same vessel once all its original parts have been replaced. Maybe losing the wings he was born with robbed King of some fundamental part of himself; and Sanji wonders how many times he’ll be broken and put back together before he’s no longer himself. He’d rather die than find out.

Sanji's still scrambling to his feet when King bellows, "Do you think your Germa technology is so far above me that you won't even take me seriously?" The force of his words alone is enough to make the entire corridor go up in flames. "Did you think I wouldn't notice that you're not fighting back?!"

And yeah, Sanji would really like to, but every time he aims at King and realizes his former father did the same thing––that god fucking forbid, Judge might be proud of Sanji for going toe-to-toe with a Lunarian with his technology––it's like every day of training with Zeff and running from Iva goes out the damn window. If this is all he has left, these abilities that are slowly sucking his heart out through his soul, he won't know what to do with himself.

"That's not it––!" Sanji tries. "I just need to figure out how to––to turn this off––"

King's face screws up in irritation. “Your existence is the result of what was done to me," he bellows with every scrap of accumulated despair trapped within his wounded soul. Three decades of repressed trauma with nowhere to go finally has a target, and he's throwing it all at Sanji as if that'll make it go away, as if recovery even remotely works like that. "Whose durability do you think your father was trying to imitate?!"

Sanji doesn't even have the time to blink before King socks him in the face again.

'The Lunarian keeps declaring that it wants to go home, yet it has nowhere to go home to. Even I must admit I am getting tired of it crying out for the family whose extermination it witnessed. What kind of foolish child continues to beg for the help of a parent who will never respond?' 

Sanji's barely able to thrust a foot back quickly enough to keep himself upright. 'A foolish child.' A child, a child, he was just a child –– and the way King must have cried out for his murdered parents hits far too close to how Sanji used to plead for Judge's help when Judge was the one who threw him into the dungeon in the first place.

Aiming for King's jawline, Sanji reels a jumping axe kick that pitches him into a back layout. King clasps him by the ankle at the apex of his salto, dangling him the way a hawk holds a mouse it’s about to devour by the tail.

“What’s wrong?!” King fumes in his volcano of a voice, his hellfire breath fanning across Sanji’s chest like a lava flow. “I know you can go faster than this!”

Sanji grits his teeth. What’s wrong is that this whole fucking fight is a cosmic joke — that Sanji’s found the one person who can truly understand him, the one person who can truly relate, and they've been shoved on the opposite sides of a boxing bracket, the heavens placing bets on which one of them is the punchline. Sanji has long since stopped expecting fairness from life, but this is cruel fate on an astronomical scale. 

"You're just––" Sanji starts. "What happened to you was––"

“Go on!” King flings Sanji across the landscape. “Try to extinguish my flames like your father before you!”

Sanji swallows the urge to scream. "My father is a cook in the East Blue!" he cries, and it's the first time he's been able to finish a sentence since he found all of this out.

He doesn’t bother bracing himself when he slams cape-first into the shoji, bashing through the wall into the chamber behind him.

'I contend that the legends of its godliness were overstated: it is merely a pathetic monster to me. It seems gods are nothing before science, after all.'

Sanji curses under his breath as he shoves upright. Dammit, he needs to focus. Super-healing or not, King is going to kill him at this rate.

Would that really be so—

It is then he realizes he is not alone in here.

Beside him is a gathering of beautiful ladies draped in ornate ceremonial kimonos, constellations of petals blooming across the silk like wildflower fields. Delicate kanzashi sprout from their updos, blossoms climbing up a trellis in their ever-lasting quest for the sun.

"E-Excuse me!" says a woman with tresses the color of sakura blossoms, her dainty figure enrobed in a checkered yukata dyed of orange creamsicles in summer. "We're just geishas from the Flower Capital brought here for the Fire Festival! We've been hiding in here! Please help––"

Then King arrives before them, and a hush falls over the room.

It's almost funny to watch them all fall in love with him at first sight in real-time. Kind of ridiculous, really, but Sanji supposes that’s just a side effect of being so devastatingly gorgeous that it's actually stupid. It is.

The geishas huddle together, whispering amongst themselves like they're sharing the latest gossip. Like there isn't maybe ten feet between them. 

"So that's King-sama's true appearance!" "I've never seen someone so beautiful!" "He's like an angel!" "Who would hide such a perfect face?"

Visibly annoyed, King sets his jaw. 

"Wait! I-I think I heard about a legendary race called Lunarians," a brunette pipes up. "They have white hair, brown skin, black wings, and can light themselves on fire!" She presses a palm to her rouged lips in surprise. "It's said the government will tip a hundred million berries just for information on their whereabouts!"

At her statement, King's entire countenance changes. Sanji's always been fairly good at reading people, but now he picks it up with the instincts even a newborn killer apparently possesses: because this time he can smell it, wafting from the sweat congealing along King's hairline like seaspray in a storm, the scent of his fire changing like it's burning something rather than just burning.  

Sanji can place it, but he doesn't want to. It's, it's––

It's fear.

And for the first time, Sanji fully understands why King shrouds his body in that ridiculous getup, why he conceals his heritage despite the protection of the world's strongest creature. Like his entire being is his deepest, darkest secret.

Maybe gods hide in heaven because they're scared. 

King douses his fists in divine flame. "Imperial--"

"No!" Sanji roars, and that's enough to finally get his shit together. He rockets towards King like a heat-seeking missile, planting a hovercraft heel square into King's chest. With King's invincible flame still burning, all it does is knock him back: Sanji might be frustrated at the lack of damage if the blow didn't do what it needed to do. Sanji whips his head over his shoulder towards the geishas and shouts, "Ladies, run!"

The geishas nod and sprint away, disappearing into the labyrinth of the castle. 

King careens into the corridor, digging his high-heels into the floorboards on the backslide. The timber pulverizes beneath his titanic weight, dredging up piles of woodchips. King parachutes his wingspan to exploit the air resistance, decelerating his velocity.

"How dare you!" Sanji chides, halting before him. "I won’t forgive anyone who hurts a lady!" 

The look in King's eyes borders on manic. "Didn’t you hear them? They want to turn me over to the government!" And then, in the hoarse, strained tone of someone who’s had all their prayers ignored but still guts themselves on the altar anyway, “I can’t go back!”

Sanji feels the anger leave him all at once.

He knows firsthand there is no greater fear than going back. He recalls how he'd felt on the sterile ships of the Germa Kingdom after almost a decade and a half of running: face-to-face with the vapid grins of the ex-brothers whose only known emotion is vague amusement at his pain, empty laughs rattling like bells missing their clapper. How they'd jumped at the chance to physically remind him of the brutality of his childhood the first moment they could.

And Sanji had no choice but to let them, shocked he'd somehow forgotten that hell was a place on earth. 

So Sanji can't help but tell him: "I know exactly how you feel."

A flicker of hope traces across King's features: it's veiled by shock and wary caution, but it's there. Maybe thirty years of repressing has also been thirty years of wishing, praying there was someone out there who could share the burden of his pain.

Then the faith dissipates as he seems to remember who he's looking at. His crimson gaze lingers on the raid suit Sanji needs to fucking take off –– and everything dies on his face.

"What kind of fool do you take me for?" King seethes, and there's something in his voice that's almost like heartbreak. "I won't fall for the lies of a Vinsmoke twice!"

Sanji buries his fingertips into the roots of his scalp. "I swear, I wasn't lying to you!" He's this damn close to tearing out his own hair. "These abilities are new––!"

King doesn't let him finish. He dives low to the wrecked parquetry, seizing both vivisected halves of his sword by the blade –– and of fucking course it doesn't hurt him one bit. 

He bathes his weapon in liquid fire, snapping the two pieces together as if it's nothing more than a broken chopstick. Sanji's not sure what the melting point of steel is but King reaches it in seconds: he javelins the soldered weapon at Sanji, flames still clinging to its metallurgic skin.

Sanji ducks just in time to escape getting skewered by the katana itself, but he's thrown from the sheer wind force of it: the air snagging in his cape like a mainsail, dragging him outside amidst the destruction. He busts through the back of the corridor and straight through the castle wall, tumbling onto patches of sparse grass and milled rock outside the Left-Brain Tower of the Skull Dome.

The resulting brume is so dense it's like the flank of the palace has been leveled by a Buster Call. A choking miasma of wood dust and plaster asphyxiates the air. Sanji squints, barely able to see his hands in front of him –– his relief quickly morphs into disgust that his scant remaining vision is probably due to his enhancements. Still, this is his chance: he crawls through the murk, ducks behind a boulder. He has something he needs to do before the dust clears.

Sanji wrenches a hand into his shirt and shreds off his raid suit. Taking it off feels like skinning himself alive: his body aches, and his organs feel like they're dropping out of him one by one.

Then the too-muchness of it all finally gets to him. Sanji vomits, gunk retching from his corrupted lungs. His chest wracks violently, desperately trying to hack out the destruction trapped in his ribcage. All four chambers of his heart beat faster and faster like a song before a bass drop –– and it hurts, it hurts, as if the poison it's pumping from his ventricles is being pushed through every artery instead. His throat burns as if someone took a sanding block to it, turning the soft, spongy lining of his windpipe into pulpy slime. The muck coagulates on his tongue, swamping his tastebuds with the putrid tang of copper and tar.

Whatever celestial body he gulped down has gone supernova: he's a black hole squeezed around its event horizon, spitting up space junk, staining the fabric of the universe with swallowed solar systems and massacred worlds.

Maybe the raid suit is gone, but it took something else with it. Frantic, Sanji scans the former contents of his stomach––and ah, shit, it can't be good that it's mostly blood––searching for scattered pieces of his human soul.

Fingers trembling, Sanji reaches into his pockets for the tiny transponder snail tucked inside. He activates the call, flinching at the clank of the recipient picking it up.

"Hey, shitty mosshead." Fuck, his voice came out way shakier than he wanted it to. He can hear Zoro's heavy breathing layered beneath the whirring of cybernetic limbs and laserbeams, and––is that background music? No, Sanji doesn't want to know––and steels his resolve. "Listen up."

On the other end of the line, Zoro startles. "Hah?! Since when did I have a transponder snail?"

The corner of Sanji's mouth quirks upwards. A fondness stirs inside him at Zoro's familiar, dumb sound of surprise; then he remembers why he's doing this, and the warm feeling dissipates. "I snuck one into your stupid bellyband," Sanji tells him, "just in case you collapse in a ditch somewhere."

Zoro growls. "Why are you callin' at a time like this?" The screech of boots skidding against stone. "I'm a little busy!"

Right. "Listen," Sanji starts, "something is happening to me––"

"Yeah, well, something is happening to me!" Zoro barks. "Have you heard this guy's singing?! My eardrums are going to––"

Sanji smacks his forehead with his palm. "No, I mean––I'm losing my humanity," he forces out. And he does have to force it, or else it'll suffocate him. "I'm becoming like them."

Zoro's breath hitches. There's no need to ask for clarification. He wasn't there on Whole Cake Island, but he knows.

"If after this battle, my heart is blackened and I become even more of a monster," Sanji continues, and he knows he's being unreasonable but all he can see is the terror in King's eyes when he called Sanji that name. Not Vinsmoke. Not Germa. Judge. "I need you to––"

The outer wall crumbles to make room for the titan that slams through it. With a single beat of his plumage––and right, sixty-something foot wingspan, how could Sanji forget––the pall dissipates.

King slides to a halt. "How cowardly to run from your enemy in the middle of a fight, Vinsm––"

But before Sanji can stop himself, he finishes: "––kill me." 

King freezes.

The cosmos watch the scene unfold beneath the moonlit nighttime. Starglow spills over them like a thousand spotlights, each more damning than the last.

"What...are you even fucking saying––?" Zoro eventually chokes, like he knows he didn't hear Sanji wrong but can't compute it nonetheless. "What do you mean you're losing your humanity? There's no way you're a monster like them! Why are you calling yourself that?!"

King stares at Sanji. Sanji stares back. Neither of them so much as blink. 

Silence.

"Oi, shit-cook," Zoro says, and there's a kind of desperate panic to his voice that almost sends Sanji over the edge, right then and there. Sanji wants to cradle it –– wants to tuck it inside his chest so his own heartbeat can hold it steady. That kind of insecurity belongs in Sanji's voice, not his. "You still there?"

Sanji gulps. "I'm––" he tries, but it's hard to speak with the way King is looking at him: like a guardian angel who just watched the person they're supposed to be protecting fall dead in the dirt. "Uh––"

"Listen to me, dumbass," Zoro says, and it sounds like he's carving the words straight from his guts. You'd really think Zoro would be accustomed to knife wounds, but. "You think I could accept that? That Luffy could accept that? That any of us could accept that after everything––!" He's spitting fury, a lit stick of dynamite creeping closer and closer to the base of its fuse –– and then he explodes. "What the fuck, Sanji! Figure your shit out! How could I kill someone I lo––"

But King's apparently had enough, because he swipes the transponder snail from Sanji's laughably weak grasp and hangs up, chucking it into the bushes sprouting from the seam between the castle and the courtyard.

King glares at him, oblivious to the fact that Zoro just called Sanji by his given name for what might be the first time. His fiery gaze scans the scrapped raid suit, the crimson puddle of bile, the tears pricking the corners of Sanji's eyes that may or may not be already spilling over. 

"What is this pathetic display," King says without a question mark, the coarseness of his words belying that he hasn't taken a single breath since this insane interaction started. Being deprived of oxygen is supposed to snuff fires, but the utter confusion flaring beneath the anger is defying both physics and common sense. "What the hell was that!"

Sanji opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.

Irked––because he's always irked, because Sanji's done nothing but piss him off this whole fight––King moves on. "What have you done?" he asks like there's only one thing he could possibly be talking about. "Why did you take off your little outfit?"

And Sanji honestly might laugh that King reduced the raid suit to that if he weren't wrestling with a hundred other emotions above it, punching so far above his weight class that each battle feels like a rigged match. Sanji trudges through the violence, grappling with how honest to be, before settling on a truth so bare he hardly believes it himself.

"Because I would rather die than let Judge's technology and my brothers' abilities be an advantage against you."

King doesn't even try to stop his jaw from dropping. "So you think you need a handicap to fight me?!" he booms, spectacularly missing the point, "You already stood no chance against me! I'll spare your swordsman the trouble and kill you myself!"

Yet there is the faintest, slightest hint of hesitation in his voice: something has changed. Sanji might be imagining it, but he still clings tight to that splinter of doubt, holds fast to it with white knuckles. What's that fairytale about the runaway who pulled a thorn from the foot of a wounded lion, and the beast was so grateful it stood by his side when it was condemned to devour him?

Being on opposite sides has never stopped Sanji from wanting to help someone before.

Alright. If he's gonna get through to King, he needs to start fighting back with all his power. Whether it's his own personality or his near-extinct culture, King clearly responds to strength: he'll never listen if he thinks Sanji is weak, or thinks Sanji isn't taking him seriously. Besides –– it takes far more power to save your opponent instead of kill them.

With that, he staggers to his feet. Time to fight fire with fire. 

Sanji already has years of experience dealing with a stupidly stubborn swordsman. He's got this.

He blasts skywards, propelling his heels overhead to drive the blunt edge of his dress shoes into King's collarbone. King's breath hitches at the exponential increase in speed –– far faster than Sanji was before, even in the raid suit. Sanji strikes the air with his soles, leveraging the kickback to stay afloat: he arcs his leg like a pendulum, bashing King's jawline with the flat side of his ankle. 

King slings back an elbow to clutch Sanji's foot, but his knuckles close around nothing but air. His pupils dilate when they land on his unoccupied palm, almost as if he has to double-check that it's really empty –– then he opens his fist and thrashes a sweeping backhand, the same way you'd swat a particularly irritating gnat. Sanji releases the pressure and plummets in freefall, lets the pull of gravity tow him from the line of attack.

Righting himself, Sanji corkscrews back over his shoulders and slides into a three-point landing that nearly saws off his fingerprints. He blitzes back towards his opponent, legs ablaze, then pitches into a fullspeed front tuck that pounds both platforms into King's guts with a hide-searing Flanchet Strike.

King coughs, but it's more out of surprise than genuine pain. Sanji clicks his tongue –– none of his attacks will be effective as long as those flames are still burning. His only chance is to force King to snuff the inferno to match his speed and become vulnerable again.

So Sanji spikes up the acceleration, yet King is unwilling to drop his guard so easily. King whirls about, charting Sanji's afterimages despite the time-delay: a broken clock is still right twice per day. Once he's calculated the course of Sanji's trajectory, he supercharges his heel with a jetspeed turboblaze, clubbing his steel-toed boots into Sanji's spine. 

Sanji cringes at the sound of his vertebrae snapping. King heaves his arms overhead then sledgehammers his joined fists into Sanji's chest, whamming him into the ground with a rib-cracking punch. 

Winded, Sanji heaves a creaking inhale, exoskeleton overhauling his inner architecture back into place. Bending his spinal column past human limits, Sanji kips into a handspring to load his next attack. 

He surges towards King in a rising diagonal, baiting him with a last-minute feint that allows him to soar above King's head and achieve his goal: not to damage, but to provoke. Sanji levers back a knee, then drives a kick right into the epicenter of the blaze between King's shoulderblades.

Feral with fury, King swivels around, but there's a fire in his eyes that wasn't there before. He unfurls his wings, more than ready to rise to the challenge: King swipes his repaired sword from wreckage, torching it with invulnerable flames and coating it in armament haki. The freshly-forged black blade won't break so easily against Sanji's exoskeleton now.

King dips low, aiming a lateral chop at Sanji's torso. Sanji hoists a leg and the flat side of King's katana glances off his sole, veering it off-course.

"It seems you're formidable without Judge's fashion sense," King states, and though it barely counts as a compliment, Sanji takes it as high praise. "He should've never had the chance to create it. My greatest regret is not killing him on our way out!"

"Hah!" Sanji huffs a self-deprecating laugh. "Yeah, I wish you’d killed him too."

Grimacing, "What a ridiculous statement, coming from you," King sneers. He whips a breakneck slice Sanji barely dodges, lopping the ends off a wisp of flaxen hair. "Then you would’ve never been born."

Sanji swallows hard.

King’s face twitches. He lunges for Sanji, sword extended, wingspan fully outstretched. Cornered by the inkwell barricade, the only place to take cover is up: Sanji leaps above the lance, dilating his hangtime with another kickback against the atmosphere. Sanji snaps his soles again, launching himself forth. 

Sanji reels his toecap into King's throat. Sputtering, King darts his gaze upwards: he glares at Sanji with a bizarre kind of resigned defiance, like he knows this is hell but will face the devil with honor. 

And if Sanji hadn't just puked out his guts he's sure it'd make him throw up again. Racking his brain, Sanji's thoughts snag on King's earlier sentence: ' I should've killed him on our way out.'

"H-Hang on!" Sanji shouts pointlessly as King's plumage smothers the turf around them, trapping them in their own micro-universe. Sanji shunts back-first against the starless pocket in spacetime, yet still manages: "Our way out? Our? Who else was––"

What Sanji can still see of King's face screws in displeasure. He unfurls his wings at once, tumbling Sanji into an aimless orbit, and shouts, "Imperial Flaming Wings!"

He casts an arm upwards, immolating his sword in holy flame. The spire pierces the heavens, puncturing the night to make room for a new star, then King hurls the pyre at Sanji, the celestial being taking earthly form.

A massive dragon of pure fire swoops towards Sanji jaw-first. Magma drips like gore from its gaping maw, outline glowing like rushing blood, scales paved with a sierra of volcanoes cascading a chain eruption. Sanji vaults towards the clouds and the beast crash-lands into a boulder behind him, its subsequent heat death conjuring a draught that dessicates the air around them. It's so swelteringly hot that it withers Sanji's insides when he tries to breathe, choking his lungs with the scent of a forest fire and the taste of burning flesh.

Sanji gapes as the dragon's corpse dissolves into embers. It looked like––it looked exactly fucking like––

"Was it Kaidou?" Sanji exhales, heels clacking onto the molten gravel. "Was he at Punk Hazard? Did he also get captured and used as––" but Sanji can't even bring himself to finish his sentence. 

King tenses, cursing under his breath for subconsciously giving himself away. Maybe he did it on instinct: to feel shielded. To feel protected. To feel safe. 

"Kaidou-san was only there for two days!" King corrects. His grip tightens on his sword as he chokes, "Kaidou-san was no pathetic lab rat!"  like he knows every bit what that implies about himself but can't bear the thought of his captain sharing the shame. 

And it's enough to nearly bring Sanji up short, toes snagging on the divots of charred rock as he weaves through the flames. "He’s the one who got you out?" 

It's an answer in and of itself when King starts: "I used to pray that someone would––" then apparently King can't finish his sentence either: can't admit that he pleaded to be rescued, that help was something he needed desperately enough to beg. "Kaidou-san was the one who answered! I don't wish for anything anymore beyond his dreams!"

Another serpent explodes from King's blade. Sanji sidesteps the lava flow but King uses the cover of fire to get close again, bringing down the katana with the force of a guillotine. They exchange a rapidfire barrage of blows, razor-sharp metal clashing against blunt.

"You don't wish for anything anymore?" Sanji repeats amidst the onslaught. "So you had a dream before?"

King's shoulders stiffen. "My only dream is to make Kaidou-san King of the Pirates!”

That's it? "Your captain should—"

"Nothing else matters!" King shouts, like he can convince Sanji he's right through volume alone. 

"Yes it does!" Sanji shoots back, and all he can picture is gazing into a smile like the sun and 'Say, do you know the All-Blue?' leaning over the railing of a floating restaurant covered in bandages, two short years and a lifetime ago. "His dream matters, but yours does too!"

"No it doesn't!" King insists. Louder, "He owes me nothing! Do you realize what he's gone through because of me?!" and Sanji can't even tell whether or not the question's rhetorical. 

So he decides it isn't and shouts, "What?!" like it has more than a zero percent chance of working.

"You heard those geishas," King spits. Sanji drives a kick towards his shoulder and he disengages, swirling the tip of his blade around Sanji's leg just enough to strike back with a riposte. "Can you even imagine how many times the government has come for me? They'll never leave him alone as long as I'm here!" Another counterstrike, but Sanji's ready this time. "My existence is a war declaration! I have to make the trouble of my presence—"

"Worth it?" Sanji finishes, and though it's phrased like a guess, it isn't one. It's more a certainty, because they're the same –– because committing the cardinal sin of loving him started a war that almost killed half of Sanji's crew. Earned them the wrath of an Emperor and two entire countries, but Luffy kept charging in like nothing could stop him, and maybe nothing could. 

King just gapes at him, stunned that Sanji stole the words from his tongue. Then he clams up, doesn't press, like he doesn't even want to know how Sanji did it. Just bares the prongs on his blade, globs of hellfire plugging the gaps between its notches like a beast's jaws filthy with the mangled corpse of its prey.

He's clearly pissed for revealing more than he'd intended. Sanji's unraveling thirty years of loose threads, and it's like King thinks the only way to sew himself back up is to rip Sanji open at the seams; but if that's the quickest way for Sanji to get close to him, then so be it. 

"I get that––it's hard to see someone who saved you from hell as anything but a hero," Sanji begins. This is treading headlong through a field of land mines, purposefully stepping on every fucking spot he knows will explode. "But you're supposed to be at his side, not at his feet! Don't you realize that?!"

But King counters, "When he freed me, Kaidou-san said to stay behind him!" and deliriously, Sanji wonders if Kaidou even meant it like that. "How could I disobey him?!" 

Sanji leaps away from a vertical slice. "That's not––!"

Then an unholy inferno engulfs the terrain, immolating the structures in its path: Sanji cringes hard when the blaze clips his foot, scorching as a solar flare, hot enough to char something that's already on fire. He pinwheels a rear whip kick to shake it off, stamping a footprint amidst the foliage blooming across King's temple like stepping on fallen leaves on a sidewalk. 

Provoked, King beats Sanji's calf with the flat side of his blade, creating an opening in Sanji's stance. He rams the point into Sanji's hip, denting a sunken cleft in his exoskeleton that only his modifications prevent from becoming a stab; Sanji jerks his bones back into place, then laughs in despair at how easy it is. 

King growls when he tries the attack again to the same effect. "Kaidou-san is the one who made me King!" he declares. "He gave me this life, so it’s his to control!"

"No it's not!" Any more of this back-and-forth, back-and-forth of yes-no and Sanji just might explode. He really might. "You've gone from being a lab rat to being a dog! Don't you wanna be a person?!"

Sanji stills –– and oh, his heart really must have gotten colder, because since when could he say something like that so naturally? Maybe he's suddenly gained his sister's poison immunity, with the way it's spilling from his lips. He wonders if it's supposed to hurt like this. 

It must catch King off-guard too, judging from the split-second dumbfounded shock that fractures across his expression. Then it's gone, gone, gone, and King rips off a glove with his teeth and clutches Sanji in a half-transformed claw, almost as if to prove how animal he is. He's snarling, features wild and rabid, disturbingly perfect hair tumbling over his shoulders like wave whitecaps crashing onto charcoal sand; and Sanji knows that this is tragedy, too, what a beast turned an angel into. 

With the force of a thunderhead trapped in a glass bottle, King booms, "You’re the one who just asked to be euthanized! Which one of us is really the dog?!"

And Sanji knew this couldn't go any other way than tearing into each other, that this was always going to be some measure of disgusting. He knew it, and yet––here they are, muzzle-deep in each others' guts, pulling out their deepest fears and quietest thoughts and squelching and stomping around in the viscera, searching for a single scrap of themselves that might be worth something. It won't be long until whatever's left is hollowed out, the same way he slits open the belly of a fish: Sanji's fingers are for cooking, but it seems he can tug the innards out of anything.

A dog, huh? Maybe they both are. King is growling at him like a hellhound let loose, only programmed to obey one master and destroy everything else.

If Sanji really does lose his heart, really does lose whatever facsimile of free will humans possess, would it be so bad to tighten the collar and hand his captain the leash? He'd rather die than become a machine like his brothers, but maybe, maybe, if it's Luffy––

"Don’t change the fucking subject!" Sanji snaps instead, because he can't have that crisis, not now. "You've clipped your own wings! Wasn't the whole point of going with him to gain freedom?!"

"If this isn't freedom, I don't want to be free!" King insists, gaze squeezed shut, like he can't even look Sanji in the eyes as he says it. "Taking all that I am wouldn't be enough to make up for all that he's given me. My life belongs to him!"

Sanji can't pretend he doesn't know the feeling. 

It's the same feeling he got when he saw his starving captain slumped against a rock in that god-forsaken candyland, hand draped across the growling stomach it's Sanji's fucking job to fill, because he waited. He believed. It's the same feeling he gets when he looks at Luffy and sees a god sometimes, why he knows wouldn't hesitate to to throw himself onto the altar: if he had nothing left to feed his captain, he'd cut open his chest so Luffy could feast on his still-beating heart, draw his last breath with his captain's bloodsoaked face still buried in the wet cavity of his chest––and he'd die content. 

And because they're the same, Sanji knows King feels it too. Knows he'd rip off his wings and tack their bloody stumps to Kaidou's back, just so his captain could be a little bit closer to the heaven they both must know he'll never reach, knows he'd use the last of his fire to keep Kaidou warm even though he can breathe fire too, even though he doesn't need it. He'd do it anyway, and that's what counts.

Then Sanji glances up and King is looking at him again, staring like––like he's waiting. Like he wants a response, wants to be told he's full of shit so he can argue with it, until both of their voices are so hoarse from screaming at each other that their feet and fists are all they have left. Sanji can't even tell if it's progress. 

Still he says, "Your life belongs to you!" like it matters––please, god, let it matter, it has to. "The reason you're alive doesn't have to be the reason you live!"

King's features twist in––horror? Shock? Hope? Sanji can't tell, and at this point he's not even sure there's a difference––then King throws Sanji across the terrain, which is most definitely not the most optimal attack for an opponent literally in the palm of your hand. Tucking into a back pike, Sanji plows his heels into the soot to slow down. 

"You don't understand!" King bellows. "You don't know anything about Kaidou-san. About how much I've failed him—!"

It's almost strange, really –– how King talks about Kaidou like he's utterly invincible yet made of glass at the same time. It's no secret that Kaidou is a drunk: he was beyond plastered during his first fight with Luffy, wobbly flight path more befitting a butterfly in a breeze than a dragon the size of an island, chest wracking with loud sobbing the whole country probably heard. Sanji's heard the rumors, too, that he spends his spare time swan-diving off clouds, how searching for the perfect place to die has devolved into anywhere will do. 

It is then Sanji realizes King has been forced to watch the whole time as his savior deteriorates from the victor, conqueror, liberator who leveled a fortress and picked him up like a phoenix from its ashes into a stagnant tyrant, enslaved by his own vices. It's a different kind of helplessness, to be unable to save someone from themselves.

"I do understand, you bastard! Listen to me––" Sanji clenches his fists, prepares to say something he knows with absolute certainty King has never been told: "It’s not your fault!"

And that hits King harder than anything else has this fight, the wind knocked from his lungs despite that Sanji hasn't even touched him. He staggers back, wings fluttering like a bird that hasn't yet decided whether to leave the safety of its nest. 

"That’s not true," King chokes. "If I could just be stronger—"

"Shut the fuck up!" Sanji shouts, putting his foot down both figuratively and literally. Unstoppable force, immovable object, and all that. "I know what it’s like––to feel like you’re not strong enough to take away your captain’s pain!" There isn't a day he doesn't curse himself for his weakness in Sabaody –– where he doesn't wonder how different Impel Down and Marineford would've gone if he'd just been there. But even if he could go back, nothing would be different. There's nothing he could've done. "But you’ll drive yourself mad if you think like that! You did everything you could!"

Tightening his ungloved fist, King grinds out, "How can you be sure of that?" 

Sanji smacks a hand to his chest. "Because I did everything I could!"

King blinks, and Sanji watches it sink in; watches him reach the conclusion. Still he says, "What are you trying to say, Black-Leg?" and Sanji finds that he's not even pissed King is making him spell it out.

Because even though King still looks two seconds from ripping Sanji's heart out through his throat, there's progress. There's a glimmer of hope, and King's probably not even aware that he's done it, and yet, what he called Sanji––

Not Vinsmoke. Not Germa. Not Judge.

Black-Leg.

That's the only part of his name that Sanji chose.

Blasting forth, Sanji jams back his knees, plants both feet on King's shoulders. He bends closer until they're are only inches apart, his visible pupil boring past the spiderweb of bloodshot capillaries in the whites of King's eyes. He draws a deep breath, and says:

"You’re me."

Then Sanji shoves him back. 

King only stumbles for a moment. He grits his teeth, squeezing his katana so hard Sanji can hear the rattle of the miniscule gap between the tsuba and the blade itself. Then he takes aim, glaring at Sanji the way a soldier would look down the bayonet crowning the barrel of a rifle –– then commences the firing squad. 

"Imperial Flaming Wings!"

A resplendent neon sunrise erupts across the blanket of night, stray tongues of conflagration orbiting the churning vortex like dying planets. The blazing basilisk bathes the terrain in the colors of daybreak, engorging everything in its path. King unfurls his graceful wings, lets the topsails of his feathers catch the heat swell to take flight.

Evading the inferno, Sanji joins him in the heavens. Aerial battle it is.

He uses his skywalk to climb the atmospheric staircase, detecting King's brief spill of confusion that Sanji can fly without wings. It doesn't last: King shoots another flaming dragon straight at him and the thing roars, and Sanji understands for the first time why fire is described as alive.

Up above, where their two captains clash, the real Kaidou reverberates a sound almost identical to the beast King created to defend himself.

Sanji knows what it's like for your captain to be your strength.

Alright. If King is going to attack like his captain, so will Sanji.

Sanji inhales through his nostrils, exhales out his lips. He bends low, presses a fist to the mist, strikes the match on his toes. Fire climbs up his legs, into his veins –– he lets it swirl with his haki, sees his skin redden, watches steam vent from his pores. He speeds up his blood flow, just like Luffy does in––

Gear 2.

Sanji rockets forwards, faster, faster, faster than he's ever gone before. He's before King in the space between two fractions of a second, driving a shoe into King's sternum with one of Luffy's signature attacks:

"Hawk Stamp!"

King careens backwards. Sanji can tell the exact moment King realizes there's no way in hell he can hit Sanji at this new pace without dropping his flames: he finally, finally extinguishes the fire kindled between his shoulderblades, accelerating like a streaking comet.

King reels his scalding sword towards Sanji's transverse axis. Sanji's more than quick enough to meet him halfway –– he aligns the inline of his soles with the blade ridge, one asteroid colliding with another. They're both thrown off-course, yet Sanji uses the momentum to rocket his leg into full splits: then he whorls it down, bashing his heel against the top of King's skull.

"Battle Axe!"

With a nauseating clack, King's teeth snap together. He falters, dizzy from the concussive force, wincing when he tries to look at Sanji as if he's pulled something in his neck. Then King beats his wings against the sky as if punishing it, drawn upwards by the gravitational pull of the moon. 

King climbs higher, higher, until the air is thin and oxygen is a scarce, precious thing; Sanji follows, launching off clouds separating the layers of the troposphere like icing on a cake. Sanji somehow manages to soar ahead of him, positioning his opponent beneath his molten soles.

Hovering, Sanji winds up an attack he heard that Luffy used during his first Gear 4 against Doflamingo: he digs his thighs into his chest, scrunches his knees like a spring coiled to the base of its tension –– then he lets it loose, and doesn't even care how fucking ridiculous he sounds when he shouts,

"Rhino Schneider!"

His feet wham square into King's unguarded chest with a bone-crunching stomp. King hacks up gore from his lungs, blood spattering his flawless features. The sheer force knocks him back, spiraling into a tailspin, plummeting in freefall until he slams into the ground at terminal velocity. The impact ruptures a crater beneath him, rattling the courtyard with a tectonic shift.

King staggers upright, fingers dipping into divots of his ribcage like he’s trying to figure out how many are broken. A field of mottled bruises blooms across the visible slice of King’s chest. Sanji clacks down before him, watching as King catalogs the staggering amount of damage Sanji dealt him with just three hits.

“You’re me?” King eventually repeats, tone polluted with disgust. “You dare say that as one of Judge's prized children?”

Sanji barks a laugh as he slingshots forwards. “Do you honestly still think that?!” 

King grinds his teeth as Sanji’s searing sole collides with his weapon. King is still clinging to the denial, his whole being rejecting everything Sanji’s said as if his body’s been transfused with the wrong type of blood; but even a stream can cut lines into a mountain if given enough time.

Sanji hurdles off the katana’s platform, launching into an acrobatic vault with his elbows tight to his chest. Propelled by his superheated veins, the centripetal force coils him into a gymnastics routine’s twisting helix — he sticks the landing on the mat of King’s collarbone, a perfect ten, and the subsequent fracture reverberates through Sanji’s cartilage like an aftershock.

King cringes. Whisking his blade back to his side, he bashes his free knuckles into Sanji’s obliques until his exoskeleton dents as if it’s tinfoil instead of steel. 

“I used to ask him every day what I did to deserve this,” King thunders. “Do you know what he finally told me?!”

Sanji’s chest wracks with something dangerously close to a sob. “He said it’s because you were born!”

And despite all his grace, King stumbles –– like an angel cast out of heaven, taking his first wobbly steps on mortal ground. It’s clear he thought the question was rhetorical from the way he wavers, “How did you know that?” like he hadn’t even expected an answer, let alone the right one.

Sanji tries to respond, but he looks at King and sees a twisted science experiment, and sees––god, fuck, himself. Sees a man who spent his childhood strapped to a surgical table, and it was the closest thing he had to being held.  

This is it. He has nothing left to hide. Sanji reaches a precious hand into the Pandora’s box inside his soul and rips it open, lets the ruins fly.

“Because he said the same thing to me!”

King’s eyes go comically wide. “What?” he exhales, shockingly soft. Barely more than a candle in a snowstorm, one well-placed gust of wind from flickering out. “Why?”

Sanji gulps. There are too many ways to do this, and he can’t tell which one is right — so he spins the roulette wheel and it lands on, “The nightmares suck, don't they?” 

King's eyebrows shoot to his hairline; the twigs encircling his temple go up like kindling. "What?"

Sanji can't tell if that means he's missed the mark but keeps going anyway. “You hate waking in cold sweats, feeling like your bedsheets are that cage you spent too many years in!” he shouts. “Your skin crawls with the ghosts of stethoscopes and scalpels, being poked and prodded like you’re a piece of meat instead of a person, covered in bruises that will never fucking fade because they keep getting wires plugged into them!”

A shuddering breath. “What––” King stutters again, feigning cluelessness despite that he’s been alluding to his trauma for a solid eighty percent of the fight, “are you even fucking talking about––”

Alright, so he's deflecting––but at least hitting a wall is still hitting something. “Isn’t it the worst to almost lose your shit over a simple medical exam?” Sanji continues. He trusts Chopper with his life, but fighting not to flinch is a Sisyphean feat. “To feel like you’d rather die of the common cold because you’d need a shot to prevent it? They’re just tiny needles, yet you feel so ridiculous for needing to swallow your screams!”

For once, King has no comeback –– not even an incoherent snarl of anger Sanji is frankly incredible at provoking from him. Just retracts his hand like he’s grabbed a fistful of hot coals, despite that his heat tolerance might not even have an upper limit. 

“It's so exhausting hiding what you are all the time,” Sanji goes on, well aware that he’s rambling now, but this dumbstruck silence might be the closest he ever gets to King hearing him out. “You spend every moment afraid of how the world would look at you if they knew! You’re afraid of the judgment, the whispers, the pitying stares! Of what the wrong people would do if they got their hands on you!"

Sanji recalls apologizing to his real family on Zou after that fucking letter showed up, telling them I never meant to hide anything — which wasn’t true, not really. If a lie of omission is still a lie, Sanji's never told the truth a day in his life. 

Until now.

So beneath a barrage of stabs and punches Sanji says, "You actually hate the mask, right?" halfway between a statement and a question, and he knows he's projecting his old iron helmet onto King's onyx one but it's not much of a reach. "It’s like wearing a prison that follows you everywhere! And even though you can breathe, you feel like you're always suffocating!”

And Sanji might feel more accomplished that this is clearly working if not for the look on King's face––like Sanji's plunged a knife into his chest and gouged it open, showing him his ripped-out heart as if its absence is not supposed to kill him––and the longer he doesn't drop dead the longer he waits for Sanji to cram it back between his ribs, like moving on as if nothing happened is enough to fix this. 

Reeling back his weapon, King cauterizes a scalding slash into the air itself — but there’s no technique to it, just raw power and desperation. Still in his makeshift Gear 2, Sanji doesn’t let it get anywhere close to him: King’s katana cleaves a canyon into the courtyard that sizzles as the gravel melts. 

Sheathing his sword, King morphs into a biblically-accurate angel version of his hybrid form: transforming his arms into prehistoric wings but leaving his own. He lock all four wings steady, swerving towards Sanji like a rotary blade. Sanji rockets skyward, planting another Hawk Stamp at the gyration’s vertex that knocks King off-balance, torching the upper collar of his tunic. 

Still airborne, King lunges at Sanji with a clawed foot. With his own fire snuffed, he’s able to match Sanji’s speed just enough to snag him: and Sanji’s new abilities must be burning through his energy because the wound stays this time, gouging a trio of gashes along his bicep. 

Sanji curses, a rush of hot liquid dyeing his red suit redder. King’s gaze drops to his gore-drenched talons, gaping at Sanji’s blood as if he’s suddenly horrified by the sight of it.

It only slows King for a moment. He swoops low, returning to human form as he draws his sword. He pummels Sanji with a hailstorm of lacerations, each strike more desperate than the last. There’s something almost deranged about the way he’s whack, whack, whacking at Sanji, like trying to swat a mosquito he’s certain is carrying a fatal disease. 

Sanji springs an aerial roundhouse to soar above the flurry. “Being affected by what he did to you doesn't make you weak. It just makes you human!" he continues, equally relentless. It feels so cosmically unfair, how they're both tormented by a ghost that has the audacity to haunt them despite not even being dead; yet here they are, suffering phantom pains of their souls being ripped from their bodies and swabbed on a petri dish, like their metaphorical hearts were something he could also dissect. "No matter what, he can't take that away from you! You're a person, and that's okay!"

A swing and a miss. Then another one, and another one. They're all half-hearted at best.

“Why—” King chokes, as if he's waiting for the other shoe to drop, for his secrets to be used against him. There's almost no anger left in his expression: just confusion, like a lost child, all alone without knowing how it happened. “––are you telling me this?”

And that in itself is its own tragedy, that King thinks there needs to be a reason for him to be shown compassion. It's like peering through a mirror that looks back in time: Sanji's eight years old again, asking an old, cranky chef why he bothered to save him. He couldn't possibly be worth it. Another child, maybe. But not him.

So Sanji tells King, "Because humans aren't supposed to suffer alone!" like it's a fundamental law of the universe –– and maybe it is. "You’ve been shouldering this burden all by yourself for thirty years. You've never had anyone who could understand you!" Sanji jabs at himself with his thumb. "I'm telling you that I do!"

King furrows his brows. "So you—" he starts, finally, finally, finally getting it. Sanji's so relieved he could cry. It's almost sad that a single point feels like a championship victory, even though it's a pyrrhic one. "Judge also tortured you?"

And it's bizarre, how this might be first time what Judge did to him has actually been referred to as that; and it feels, hysterically, like a revelation. Oh, I got tortured. So that's what that was.  

"I'm––his failure," Sanji admits. "Or, I––I was, but then I was weak enough to need the raid suit, and these modifications kicked in, and, and ––he took my heart and my body and my humanity and turned me into one of his disgusting creations, into a cold-hearted monster––"

And oh fuck, oh fuck, he is having this crisis now—but he can’t, he can’t, he can’t he can’t he can’t and so he keeps going going going.

“I know what it's like to beg and cry when you know no one will listen!” and wait, wait, are these the last emotions he'll ever feel? Of fucking course they're shitty ones –– the universe wouldn't have it any other way. But Sanji finds he doesn't even want it to stop, because what if it stops forever? What if that's it? “You know it’s pointless, but you can’t help it! You just want it to stop!”

Joints rigid, King's face screws up, and it's like he only remembers at the last second that he's armed, that he can't dig both hands into the roots of his arctic hair and tug hard enough to ground himself. "Stop–– talking about it!"

“You don't have to be ashamed of what he did to you!” Sanji tells him. “You were just a child!”  

Then King grinds to a halt, looks at Sanji, tilts his head. Sanji watches as something dawns on him, clicks into place –– and he gets the distinct feeling that this might be the beginning of the end.

With the force of a gunshot, King sheathes his sword. Then, he booms from the bottom of his diaphragm:

“So were you!”

And that fully, completely brings Sanji up short. He trips pathetically over his own feet, but he never hits the ground because King surges forwards, clasping Sanji's entire body in a colossal hand, breaking a solid half of Sanji's bones in the process. He squeezes, pins Sanji's wrecked frame against the crumbling castle wall like a ragdoll.

Logically, it should hurt. Logically, he should be scared, because there's at least a fifty percent chance that King is about to rip him to shreds; logically, logically, logically. Instead his thoughts spiral only around King's words, clawing at the walls of his consciousness like a pit of quicksand it's too late not to go down.

"Wh––" he exhales, but it's like he's forgotten where to put his tongue in his mouth to form words. "What?"

"What do you mean, what?" King spits, and oh, the anger is back. Sanji really thought he was getting somewhere. He shouldn't be surprised he failed again ––and yet. "Have you been listening to yourself?" 

"Uh," Sanji says, and doesn't even bother finishing his sentence.

King growls at him. "If I'm you," he begins, and shockingly, there's no disgust in his voice. It's careful, almost, like he knows what happens when a twenty-foot-tall dinosaur who's constantly on fire walks on thin ice. "Why are you being kind to me but not yourself?"

And that's––that's not the question Sanji was expecting. If he had any guard left, he'd be caught off of it. All he can manage, stupidly, is: "Huh?"

King clicks his tongue. "You're going to do something so shameful as make me admit I was wrong about you?" He rolls his eyes, but it feels––forced. Like a default; god forbid he show an emotion other than annoyance or rage. "How disgusting."

Alright, Sanji officially has no idea what the fuck is happening. Maybe he hasn't for a while, now. If at all. "You were wrong," Sanji repeats, working it slow through his molars, "about me?"

A scowl. "You claimed that what Judge did to me doesn't make me less human," King grinds out. "How am I supposed to believe that when you don't even believe it yourself?"

Oh, so Sanji's being called out right now. He starts, "Well––" and that's all he has to say in his own defense.

King is unfazed. "Do you realize how ridiculous you sound, claiming he's taken your humanity?" he sneers. "There's nothing more human than being ruled by your heart instead of your head! And how could you say he took that heart when you've been doing something so absurd as showing compassion to your enemy?!" King presses harder, until Sanji can feel the snap of the wall's beam splices reverberating through the cracks in his bones. "If what we've been through is the same, why am I deserving of mercy and you're not?"

Sanji wriggles in his grasp. They both know it's pointless. What chance does a pincushion have against the one who keeps sticking needles in it? "Because––" Sanji stutters, squirming uselessly, "because you––"

"Say it," King demands, alight with challenge. The fire on his back is burning again, like he's daring Sanji to try and douse it with gasoline. "Fucking say it!"

"Because you didn't deserve it!" Sanji explodes, dunking him in accelerant, fanning the flames. Maybe a part of him has always known he'd burn himself at the stake –– that he'd kick the bucket as a martyr, a willing self-sacrifice. But if this is it, if this is really it, then he's gonna die for something instead of just die. "You're not the monster. There's nothing wrong with you! Nothing at all!”

Yet instead of combusting, King's blaze calms from a forest fire to a hearth: warm, almost comforting. He heaves a soul-deep sigh that rings of acceptance, loosening his grip on Sanji enough for him to breathe again.

"I've always regretted not killing Judge," King murmurs, and he said that already, so Sanji doesn't get why King is reiterating the point until he adds, "I really thought that would never change."

Sanji's not stupid ––okay, maybe he is, but he doesn't miss the implication. Not this time. "And––and it did change?" Sanji pries. "Why?"

"If I'd killed him, I'd never have met you," King says, like it's obvious. Which it is, but–– "You wouldn't exist."

Sanji makes a sound that's too desperate to be called a laugh. He's always thought him being born was a mistake: he's spent his whole fucking life making up for the fact that he dared to exist. If he wants to keep living, he has to earn it. And yet––

"But because you didn't kill him, so many people suffered just like we did," Sanji exhales, and he's almost surprised he has any wind left to be knocked from his lungs. "People––people died! How could my existence possibly be worth it?! I'm not––"

"Don't fucking argue with me!" King shouts, which is almost funny, considering the only time they haven't been arguing since they fucking met was when King wasn't even talking. "Your existence is not a sin! If there's nothing wrong with me, then there's nothing wrong with you, either!" He clutches Sanji tighter again, like he can prove his point through pressure alone. "I'm not the monster? Neither are you!"

Sanji's jaw drops.

"So your modifications have awakened," King continues. Maybe he knows Sanji well enough by now to realize he wasn't going to be able to formulate a response to that. And isn't that something? "So what? Because of that, you're going to just give up?" 

A vein bulges in King's temple. "Is your will that weak? You're going to just let him win?" He grinds his teeth. "He's not even fucking here! You're fighting me! And if you're fighting this hard to prove he didn't take my soul, why wouldn't you fight to keep yours?"

Then King squeezes his eyes shut––it's too raw. It seems for all the horrors he's witnessed at Punk Hazard then as Kaidou's right hand, this is the first thing he can't even watch. "Don't waste the only good thing to come from my suffering!"

Sanji's head is spinning. "Good," he parrots dumbly, because even if he logically can tell where King is going with this––he can't believe it. There's no way. "Good thing?"

Slowly, King cracks his eyes open. They're deep-set with pain and red like blood –– like he's bleeding out. Maybe they both are. Maybe they have been for a long, long time. "If imitating my abilities led to the creation of someone," he begins, then after a hard swallow, "I can live with it if that person is you."

Then suddenly it's all too much. Sanji feels a sob leave his body, and it's a weak, helpless thing. "What?"

"If someone made in my image has a heart like yours," King strains, and there's something in his voice that's almost like hope, "then maybe it proves there is goodness in m-–"

Unable to say it, King tilts back his head with gritted teeth. He squeezes Sanji like a stress toy, so full of emotion that he's literally shaking, a pot of boiling water fighting against a tight lid –– and then it spills over.

"Even back then, you withstood everything he did to you and didn't let it break your spirit. Modifications or not, you are no failure!" King declares. "You foolish boy! Don't you realize it?! You've been stronger than him the whole time!"

Distantly, Sanji knows that he's crying––and that it's ugly, sticky, and wet, choking through his throat in hitched, gasping hiccups––which is a little bit pathetic to do in the middle of a fight. But this might genuinely be the third-kindest thing anyone has ever done for him, his whole being flooded with gratitude so all-consuming he can't even speak.

"If my life is mine, then your heart is yours!" King thunders with all the strength of a force of nature –– Sanji can't help but chase the storm. "Judge's technology? Your brothers' abilities? If you defeat me, will it be their victory?"

Then King leans closer, closer, and in the voice of a prophet delivering a commandment from high above:

"Listen to me, Black-Leg! It's your body! These aren't the wings I was born with, but that didn't stop me from learning to fly!"

Sanji goes limp in his grasp. He can't even fathom how ridiculous they must look: King just standing here, panting and utterly out of breath, letting Sanji sob his eyes out and get snot all over his hand when he's clearly on the verge of tears himself. 

And for a while, that's all they do –– stay there catching their breath, King slowly collecting himself, Sanji's weeping calming to sniffles. Eventually, enough energy returns to Sanji to restore speaking; he clears his throat, looks King in the eyes even though he knows his own must be red and puffy.

"For being a hypocrite," Sanji starts, "I'm sorr––"

King drops him unceremoniously. "Don't apologize to your enemy." There's something that could almost be called a smile on his face. "It's unbecoming."

Sanji crumples, limbs folding in on themselves like a ball-jointed doll with its hinges cut. His newfound instincts sweep over his body, detecting the worst breaks as if suggesting what to fix first. Shakily, he lifts his hands, smacking his skeleton back into place like smoothing out dents in concrete before it dries: he's mostly successful, but he doubts this triage-by-whacking will last.

Finally, he rises to his feet. He wipes the gooey cocktail of bodily fluids oozing down his face with the back of his sleeve –– god, it's so fucking disgusting that it's almost hilarious. He steadies his balance, wavering on the flagstone.

What makes someone human? Is it emotions? Is it agency? Is it the ability to forge connections, to make bonds with others? Is it to seek happiness, to search for meaning in life?

Maybe to be human is to be vulnerable: to be fallible, to have the capacity to fuck up, cause problems, and make mistakes. To be human is to be confused, to be lost, to someday find your way. To be human is to laugh so hard you can't even breathe, to stay up talking to your precious people far past your bedtime. To be human is to strive for something, to go on adventures and seek out your dreams.

Both Sanji and King are so much more than their constituent parts, than what those warmongerers once tried to rip away from them. Yet despite being on opposite sides, they've forged a true connection: and is there anything more human than that? 

Like it or not, these modifications are a part of him now. But it's not about escaping his body –– it's about making it his own.

It’s a matter of what you are versus who you are.

You can't run away from what you were born as, but you can choose who to be.

Is Sanji a fighter who can cook, or a cook who can fight? Is there a difference? Which one is he?

He may not know now –– but he will, eventually. Soon, his crew will find out there's something different about him: but it won't change anything, not really. They know who he is, deep down, and that will never change.

Sanji stomps hard on the ground. He switches all his weight and then some to his right leg, twists his toes against the gravel to grind up friction. His passion swirls with his haki, swirls with his convictions, pours into his being, hotter, hotter, and hotter still. Clouds part, swells of mist vanishing into vapor from the flashpoint firestorm that sweeps through the heavens, surging hellfire past the holy gates. 

It burns like the sky at high meridian, the brilliant azure atmosphere beneath the brightest daylight, electric neon blue swirling with crystalline pale cerulean. The flames undulate like molten glass, rippling in the warped gridlines of latitudes and longitudes on an ocean-drenched map. It engulfs his calf as if swallowed by the sea, crackling the way high tide crashes to shore, spitting up seafoam and teeming with life.

Liquefied constellations melt across his exoskeleton like the infinite expanse of the cosmos, painting an ever-shifting starscape: a zodiac of his own making, rewriting fate with every step. The cleansing blaze cremates his doubts, torches his hesitation, guides his inhibitions to the afterlife.

It climbs up his extremities and permeates his limbs, so unbelievably hot it feels cold. Tendrils of white-hot conflagration curl around him like dry ice. The inferno condenses into the shortest wavelength of the visible spectrum, core burning ultraviolet, sparks flying and ready to combust.

"Want me to practice what I preach?" Sanji booms. "I'll prove it all to you!"

King's face splits into a grin that soars past unhinged. "It's about time!"

"Prepare yourself! This is where the real fight begins!" Sanji coils his knee to his chest, bathing his features in blue, blue, blue. "Ifrit Jambe!"

Blasting upwards, Sanji beckons King to follow him to the freedom of the skies. King takes off in hot pursuit, his phosphorescent plumage beating so hard his primaries slash the ground. 

King unsheathes his sword in the process, drenching the steel in glowing lava. Yet the pyre on King's back remains dormant –– he must know it's necessary to have any hope of hitting Sanji at his top speed, now even faster thanks to his power-up. 

Sanji reels his feet overhead, windmilling into a triple salto that unwinds into a Collier to skim King's neck. Still inverted, Sanji delivers a lightspeed series of upside-down snapkicks that King barely blocks, clutching his katana in a two-handed crush grip to strain against the crushing pressure. 

With a single flap of his colossal wings, King rockets higher. He plunges when he's directly above Sanji, sword held firm and vertical towards Sanji's chest.

Sanji darts aside as King whistles past him. Igniting both of his legs in cobalt flame, Sanji clubs a Basse Côte and Paleron to King's left and right shoulders in rapid succession, boomeranging around his vertical axis to span the distance between targets. King counters with a streaking lunge, and Sanji backbends into a twisting layout that carefully orbits his blade.

Just when Sanji thinks he's evaded the attack, King boots a ridiculously high heel into Sanji's guts and he coughs, gagging on the saliva that coagulates in his esophagus. 

King drenches his free hand in Imperial Flame, steamrolling his iron fist towards Sanji's temple. Sanji punts a leg to block it and the meteor ricochets off Sanji's ankle, spewing molten sparks.

King whirls his katana at Sanji with a lash from above: the first strike clefts Sanji's exoskeleton, and the second breaks through it. King carves a glowing slice into Sanji's shoulderblade, flame-broiling his skin.

It's a critical mistake to waver. With another pitching slice, King mutilates Sanji's chest along the diagonal. Steam hisses against the atmosphere as it collides with the thin spray of blood, arteries pumping so fast in Sanji's version of Gear 2 that he watches the plasma change from blue to red as it's exposed to outside oxygen.

Flinching h ard, Sanji dives askew, planting his feet against the crown of the Skull Dome. He shoves off a horn so hard it completely breaks off, tumbling past the edge of Onigashima like a treebranch shorn in a storm. Sanji surges into a revolving Concasser that sledgehammers the top of King's skull.

Something snaps near King's temple––Sanji's not sure what, and he doesn't think King knows either, judging from the confused flash of pain that streaks across his features––then King retaliates with a serpentine blast of Imperial Flaming Wings. 

Sanji surfs atop the river of fire, launching off the crest of a tsunami-like wave: he straightens to land upon the rigid cords of muscle on King's elbow, sprinting up his massive bicep towards his neck. Diving into a front whip, Sanji catapults himself into a double pike that culminates in a Joue Shot, leaving a nasty welt against King's high cheekbone. 

When King winces, Sanji torpedoes a lateral roundhouse square into his chest and hears more of King's ribs crack like matchsticks. Sanji wonders if any of them remain unbroken; he pummels King over and over, pulverizing the ladder to splintered rungs. 

Despite his injuries, King takes advantage of the close quarters to skewer his sword clean through Sanji's forearm.

Sanji yelps, shaking him off with a switchkick so violent Sanji can watch King's consciousness flicker in his eyes. Cinders decimate the clouds, drenching the heavens in an endless sea of fire, ultramarine and vermillion blazes clashing as if water itself can catch flame. 

This is more than just fighting on another level: this is clashing on a higher existential plane. They exchange blows faster than the eye can see, each collision resonating like a thunderstorm torrential enough to flood nations. Sanji and King overwhelm one another with a ceaseless cannonade, two one-man armies waging war.

Yet even through the blinding pain –– Sanji finds himself smiling. When he glances at King, he discovers they both are.

King hurls a shot of magma straight into Sanji's face. Sanji hacks against the boiler-room pressure, cringes as he feels his features toast, tendrils of hair curtaining his face like a broom used to beat out fires. He coughs, reaches up a hand to sweep his disheveled locks from his forehead –– then a fingertip brushes beside his temple, and he discovers the very tip of his left eyebrow has been singed.

Startled, Sanji traces its swirling path––and wait, shit, when did they even change direction? Is this due to the modifications kicking in? Because oh, fuck, now they match the brows of his former father and ex-siblings, the trademark feature of the Vinsmoke family Sanji has nothing to do with ––

And it's––it's torched off. Mostly. Half-heartedly wiped clean, like dark pencil lines rubbed with a cheap eraser. The irony is clearly not lost on King, who pauses for a brief moment, watching, waiting, for how Sanji will react.

The turmoil of a thousand warring emotions swirl in Sanji's guts. He tries to suppress the urge to vomit––how many fucking times is that today?––but something still climbs up his chest, threatening to burst free, and then it does in the form of––

a laugh.

It starts as a chuckle, then builds into a full-body cackle that's so loud and heavy it echoes off the atmosphere. Sanji cracks up, well aware that he sounds utterly manic, but he can't stop himself.

King is staring at Sanji like he's totally crazy, which he of all people has no right to do. Then, all of a sudden and all at once –– King starts laughing too.

It's a deep, hefty sound that climbs higher in pitch the harder he cackles. King doubles over, shoulders wracking amidst a fit of giggles that's more than a little hysterical, clutching his sides like this is the strongest blow Sanji's dealt him all day.

And all of a sudden they're not an angel and a monster at all: just two people beating the shit out of each other for reasons Sanji can no longer explain, laughing so hard there are tears streaming down Sanji's face and he swears King's cheeks are soaking too. Everything around them is on fucking fire, and Sanji's cackling so much his lungs burn because his insides apparently aren't as heatproof as his outsides are, but he can't bring himself to care.

Sanji cackles until his cheeks ache, until they're both beaming and breathless from stupid, pure joy, laughing like the children they never got the chance to be.

This is no longer about Kaidou, about Luffy, about the Raid on Onigashima, about Wano itself. This is just about the two of them, offering a requiem for every lab rat that came before them: the ones who spent their whole lives suffering and the ones who were lucky enough to die, who could only peer at freedom through iron bars.

This is a prayer for every test subject who never had the chance to heal, who took their last breath wishing someone had saved them. This is an apology for being too late, for leaving them behind, but most of all: this is a promise. A promise to someday, build a better world. 

Sanji and King continue their clash. The sparks from their impacts flicker like memorial candles, embers climbing towards the stars like the ceremonial lanterns floating above the distant capitol city. 

Through his laughter, King lifts his sword high above his head. Concentric rings of fire orbit him like the circles of hell, accompanied by the whooshing sound of hurricane winds, King poised before a glowing crucifix at the eye of the storm. The holy pyre on his back eclipses the ether, full moon haloing his crown like a solar corona, so grand it’s a cosmic event.

Vines of fire burgeon from the nucleus, taking form in a slew of interconnected dragons like a hydra. Technicolor cinders in the colors of a prism held up to the light decorate their descent, a resplendent display of why ancient civilizations worshipped fire. The sacred blaze immolates what's left of the clouds, the mist given life in a final deathly blaze of glory.

Sanji swerves through the currents, resists the pull of the undertow. It's the most difficult thing he's ever done in a fight, maxing out his speed even with his version of Gear 2 and his new Ifrit Jambe. He rockets off a leviathan's neck, torching one of his soles in the process, vaulting into an overhead Tendron that plows straight into King's sternum.

At the force, King hacks a retching cough. He plummets from the heavens, wings splayed wide, then bashes back-first into a jagged boulder near the border of the island with a sickening crack. King cries out, gaze frantically darting to his right wing –– and oh shit, is it broken? Soon, the crag can't withstand the pressure, bursting into fragments. 

Too exhausted to transform, King tumbles over the edge of Onigashima. 

Sanji watches the scene unfold in slow motion: watches King attempt a useless flap of his wings, watches his katana clatter to the precipice, watches the shock King is too injured to veil. 

Sanji gulps. If King falls from this height––he could die. At the very least, he'd be grievously injured, and what if that means he could never fly again? What if that means he ends up with the rest of the defeated Beast Pirates, dragged off to Impel Down or worse, another lab?

If you're me, Sanji tells King internally, that means we both deserve to be free.

With a deep breath, Sanji steels his resolve.

He decides to lay his hands on an opponent for the very first time.

Sanji dives forwards, digging his heels into the crumbling cliff. He clasps one of King's hands with both of his own, stopping his freefall. King is so unbelievably fucking heavy, at least a ton, if not more: the backlash instantly dislocates Sanji's shoulders, and that's without taking into account that one of his arms was literally impaled.  

But none of it compares to the surprise on King's face: like after everything, he still can't possibly understand why Sanji is doing this. And then, it dissipates, because––of course Sanji would.

With great effort, Sanji pulls him up. King scrambles atop the bluff and Sanji flops back, devoid of energy. He has nothing left.

King releases a choppy breath. He fumbles for his katana, crawls forward to straddle Sanji, then holds the blade directly over Sanji's heart.

Sanji blinks. Oh, is this it? He can accept that, he thinks. It would've been nice to show Zeff the All-Blue, to watch Luffy become King of the Pirates, to see his crew together one last time, to tell Zoro 'I love you' at least once because they're both stubborn fools, but––

But.

Just this much will have to be enough. He is satisfied with just this. He's dying with a few regrets, but this isn't one of them. He saved King at his own expense, so at least that means he'll die the way he lived.

With a hard swallow, King brings down the katana, and plunges it––

––into the gravel next to Sanji's chest.

Releasing his sword, King exhales a sigh of resignation. "Sparing your enemy? You're soft," he murmurs, but Sanji knows better than to think it’s him that King is truly talking to. "Far too soft."

King teeters, then he flops beside Sanji.

For a while, all they do is lie there, the ruined landscape echoing with the soft sounds of them catching their breath.

Ash falls like snow from a fire-colored sky. Constellations are inked across the stratosphere in broad, sweeping brushstrokes: wine reds and indigoes divide the heavens into the sections of a map, stars spilling past the outlines and mingling with their sisters and brothers.

Eventually, King says towards the sky: "We're a little pathetic, aren't we?"

"That's alright," Sanji tells him. "We're only human."

King hums in acknowledgment.

And that's the heart of the matter, isn't it? They're human. They were supposed to kill each other here today, and yet––here they are, side by side, breaking both of their personal codes because they've reached each other. Because they care. It could be a good joke, maybe. Earlier, Sanji wondered which one of them was the punchline, but it looks like they both are.

"Hey, King." To hell with overthinking. Sanji's done enough of that. "What's your given name?"

The soft rustle of King shifting atop his wings. He must've landed on them funny. "Does it matter?" he responds. "That name is not mine any more than Vinsmoke is yours."

"Ah." Sanji tucks his hands behind his head. "I understand."

King shuffles again. "You really do, don't you?"

Sanji nods.

More silence. It's calm, though. Comfortable. It shouldn't be, because Sanji's got about two thousand tiny chips of gravel digging into his back, most of his bones are in the wrong place, and the cave cleaved into his arm is really starting to fucking hurt, and yet––

These things are all about the company.

It's King who finally breaks the silence. "You know, when I burned the curled tip of your eyebrow," he starts. His words wade, slow and meandering, like strolling through the gentle rise-fall of tides on a shore. "That was the first time I ever laughed so hard I cried."

Sanji's lips quirk into a lopsided grin. "Oh yeah?" he says. "I'm honored."

"That wasn't a compliment," King deadpans, but Sanji can hear the smile in his voice.

"Mm." Sanji nestles into the god-awful groundcover. "Sure sounded like one."

In the distance, Sanji can still make out the sounds of war. Metallic clangs, muffled shouts. A hungry blaze pops and hisses, engorging the clerestories of the palace; it's almost ironic when both of their fires have long since flickered out, but––not in the way that counts.

"Hey, King," Sanji says again. Softer this time. The moment is delicate, like the wings of a butterfly. One wrong move and it'll crumple; but maybe that's okay. "What was your dream?"

A sharp intake of breath. "I just..." His voice trails off, but Sanji can detect the moment King decides to tell him. "...wanted someone to change the world we live in."

Hah. What a coincidence. "Someday, my crew will do just that," Sanji promises. And it is a promise, and he knows King can tell. For two people who have done little else but argue and brawl for the grand total of an hour they've known each other, they really understand one another far too well. "We'll create a world where you won't have to hide yourself."

King releases the breath he'd been holding. "That would be nice."

Yeah, it would. "Do me a favor," Sanji begins. "When that time comes––just be yourself, okay?"

A soft laugh. "Of all the requests," King exhales. 

Sanji knows that's a yes.

And so: "Hey, King," Sanji says, for the third time. He knows he's getting repetitive, but the world is starting to swim at the edges, like a watercolor painting hung before it had the chance to dry. "If I was born thirty years earlier, or you were born thirty years later, do you think we could've saved each other?"

King snorts. "How much blood have you lost," he chuckles. That's the third time he's laughed. "It's unproductive to dwell on such fantasies." He turns to look at Sanji –– really look at him. "Besides, what do you mean could've saved me?" His gaze softens. "You already have."

Sanji's chest tightens. He fights a losing battle against a sniffle, turning away so King can't see his tearducts watering. 

But the silence doesn't last. "Black-Leg." It's flat, but it sounds like the start of a question. Sanji braces himself. "If you could tell yourself from back then anything, what would it be?"

Sanji manages a wet laugh. "Now who's dwelling on fantasies?"

"Just answer the question."

Sanji ponders for a moment before responding. "I'd tell myself...it gets better," he answers. "That you'll find a real family someday. One who truly loves you." He folds his arms across his chest. "What would you tell yourself?"

King draws a deep breath.

"Wait thirty years," King tells him. Tells both of them. "Then you won't be alone."

Sanji is thankful, then, that King's not resting on the side that can see his uncovered eye. It's kind of impressive that there are still tears left in his body, escaping his dehydrated features in choked, little hiccups. And if King can hear him––which he almost certainly can––he doesn't comment. Really, it's the little things.

Once Sanji has calmed again, King says, "Black-Leg. I have a request," almost like he's nervous. Sanji wonders when was the last time King made a request to someone –– when he thought he was worth enough for someone to go out of their way. "Will you cook for me someday?"

Sanji's heart squeezes behind his ribs. "Yeah," he croaks. There would be no higher honor. "Yeah, of course."

"Good," King murmurs. "Thanks."

Then, more quiet. Sanji lets the request sit with him, tucks it deep inside his chest for safe-keeping. Come to think of it––he should figure out what's on the menu. It'll be a big day.

"Hey, King." Fourth time's the charm. "What are your favorite...?"

But when Sanji looks over, King has finally passed out, a soft grin still slipped across his face. 

Ah. It'll have to be a surprise, then.

Eventually, Sanji drags himself upright, props against his calloused hands. Soon, he'll return to his crew but––not yet. He can stay at King's side, for just a little longer. It'll probably be a while before they see each other again.

Maybe it'll be at the dawn of a new world, when all the old evils and eight-hundred year-old shackles have been overturned, making way for an era of peace. Maybe Sanji will take him to the All-Blue, show him around a world where they're both free. Eventually––it'll come. It has to.

And as Sanji watches the sun break over the horizon to the tune of Doom-dut-da-da, doom-dut-da-da, he's certain that it'll happen someday.