The grinding echo of the sealing stone slab still vibrated in the damp air of the cavern command post when Sabo found Charlie. The scholar was a whirlwind of focused chaos, hunched over a section of wall illuminated by a Revolutionary's lantern. Dust motes danced in the beam, catching on the frantic movements of Charlie's chalk-stained fingers. Glyphs, painstakingly copied onto crumbling parchment, were spread around him like fallen leaves, weighted down by ink bottles and his ever-present loupe. The air smelled of wet stone, mildew, and the sharp tang of volcanic glass dust from Charlie's slate.
Sabo approached quietly, the orange glow of his lantern briefly illuminating Charlie's furrowed brow and the smudged lenses of his spectacles. "Charlie," Sabo began, his voice low but carrying easily in the sudden quiet after the distant clamor of Ember's surface escapade. "Any progress? Time feels thinner than paper up here."
Charlie didn't look up immediately. His hand flew across a fresh sheet of parchment, sketching a complex, interconnected series of spirals and angular symbols. "Ahem!" he suddenly barked, the sound making a nearby Revolutionary jump. He finally snapped his head towards Sabo, eyes wide behind his glasses, not with recognition, but with the dawning horror of revelation. "Chief of Staff! Progress? Progress implies a linear journey! What we have here, sir, is a catastrophic misunderstanding wrapped in a geological time bomb!"
He scrambled to his feet, sending a small avalanche of papers fluttering. His pith helmet, miraculously still in place, tilted precariously. "They weren't merely chronicling their misery! These glyphs... they're a warning system! A schematic! Look!" He thrust the parchment he'd been working on towards Sabo. The drawing depicted the colossal bridge not as a structure, but as a complex, layered cage. At its heart, deep beneath the rock, pulsed a stylized, monstrous shape – part crustacean, part serpent, rendered in jagged, fearful strokes.
"The Tequila Wolf Bridge isn't just a project of tyranny," Charlie's voice rose, losing its usual measured cadence in his excitement. He paced, his boots scuffing the dusty floor. "It's a containment vessel! An Abyssal-class restraint! The labor, the specific rock types quarried, the alignment with deep-sea thermal vents... it all points to a creature of the Void Century! A being they couldn't destroy, only imprison! And this bridge, this monstrous edifice, is its shackle!"
He pointed a trembling, chalk-dusted finger at a series of interconnected symbols running through the bridge's depiction on his sketch. "The forced labor... it wasn't just cruelty for cruelty's sake! The despair, the specific suffering... it feeds the mechanism! It generates a resonant field that suppresses the entity! Think of it! A bio-psychic dampener powered by perpetual agony! The World Government isn't just building a bridge; they're reactivating an ancient trap, and using human suffering as the battery!"
Sabo stared at the sketch, the implications settling like cold lead in his gut. The distant hammering from above took on a new, sinister rhythm. He saw it now – not just a symbol of oppression, but a weapon of unimaginable scale. His jaw tightened. "Then it can't be allowed to stand," he stated, the words flat and final as a judge's gavel. "Not like this. Not ever."
Charlie's head snapped up so fast his pith helmet wobbled. "Destroy the bridge?!" he squawked, his voice cracking. "Interrupt the resonant circuit? Ahem! Chief of Staff, while the theoretical underpinnings of disrupting such a field are fascinating... destroy the bridge?!" He pushed his glasses up his nose, a familiar gesture of flustered academia. "Consider the logistics! The World Government possesses resources that beggar belief! If they built this once, on this scale, with such... elegant malevolence, what prevents them from simply... rebuilding it? Mending the circuit elsewhere? Destroying this bridge buys time, yes, perhaps a generation's worth, but it is merely a spectacularly loud deterrent! Like swatting a wasp only to anger the hive!"
He gestured wildly at the glyph-covered wall. "The true solution lies in understanding the creature, the technology! Disabling the suffering-powered mechanism permanently! Rendering the containment inert without collapsing the entire structure onto... onto..." He trailed off, the frantic energy momentarily draining as the immediate, brutal reality surfaced.
Sabo's gaze was steady, holding a weight Charlie rarely acknowledged. "Onto the twelve hundred souls currently chained in Sector Seven above us," Sabo finished quietly. The pipe smoke curled around his face like a thoughtful ghost. "Yes, Charlie. That's the cost. Right now." He looked not at the scholar, but upwards, towards the unseen surface where the hammering continued. "Destroying it now might save the world tomorrow. Leaving it intact guarantees their suffering continues... and risks unleashing whatever nightmare sleeps below upon everyone, everywhere." He sighed, the sound heavy with the burden of impossible choices. "But collapsing Sector Seven... it's not a decision to be made lightly, or in haste. It requires... certainty. And alternatives we might not have time to find." He rubbed his temples. "It's not something we can do immediately. We need every scrap of intel you can pull from these stones, Charlie. Every weakness in their design."
Charlie blinked, the academic fervor momentarily replaced by dawning realization. He looked around the cavern chamber properly for the first time since Sabo arrived. The Revolutionary fighters were tense, watching their Chief of Staff. Aurélie's silver hair was notably absent. Bianca's cheerful chaos was missing. Even Kuro's brooding presence was gone. "Ahem! Where... where are the others? Aurélie? Bianca?"
Sabo's expression tightened slightly. "They went after your companion. Ember. Seems she... wandered towards the surface. Found a way up."
Charlie's face paled beneath the dust. "Ember? On the surface? Near the slaves and the Marines?" He swallowed, the implications hitting him with the force of a collapsing ruin. "Oh, dear. That... that could indeed be problematic. Highly unpredictable. Volatile, even..."
As if summoned by his words, a deep, shuddering THOOM echoed through the cavern. Dust and fine grit rained down from the ceiling like grey snow, peppering Charlie's helmet and shoulders. The lantern light flickered wildly.
Sabo didn't flinch. He just looked upwards again, a grim understanding settling on his features. He lifted the lantern he was carrying, glowing fiercely in the suddenly gloomier chamber. "Problematic," he agreed, his voice dry as the falling dust. "Sounds like they might have found her."
The silence that followed was thick, broken only by the relentless thud-thud-thud from above – the sound of hammers on rock, the rhythm of suffering that powered an ancient terror, and the distant, muffled echoes of Ember's explosive brand of chaos. The borrowed time was bleeding away, drop by dusty drop. Sabo's choice – salvation bought with mass sacrifice, or a gamble on finding another way while the world teetered on the brink – hung in the air, heavier than the stone above them.
*****
The air in the security hub curdled with the sharp tang of fear and decay as Galit's warning hung heavy. Below their feet, the stairwell thundered with the wet, skittering advance of the horde.
Vice Admiral Venus Harlow's knuckles whitened around Leviathan's Claws. Her prosthetic leg struck the buckled floor plating with a sharp clank-thump. "Damn it all," she hissed, the words clipped like bullets. Her scar stood stark against her pallor. The rescued scientists whimpered, clutching the tiny grey kitten closer.
Rayleigh chuckled, the sound warm gravel in the oppressive gloom. "Why not shepherd these fine minds to safety, Vice Admiral? We'll handle the welcoming committee." His weathered hand rested casually on the simple sword at his hip.
Marya opened her mouth, a dry retort about Navy babysitting duties forming on her lips. A single, piercing glance from Rayleigh silenced her. Instead, a faint, knowing smirk touched her lips as she adjusted the obsidian hilt of Eternal Eclipse, the Heart Pirates' jolly roger stark on her leather jacket.
"Please," the woman scientist sobbed, bandaged arm trembling. "Our research... Lab Sigma-Null... Dr. Lysandra..."
Galit's long neck uncoiled slightly, his emerald eyes sharp behind his glasses. "Research? Elaborate. What were you tampering with down here?" His voice was calm, analytical, cutting through the rising panic.
The scientists looked desperately to Harlow. She exhaled a plume of cigar smoke she hadn't even lit, the phantom habit betraying her tension. "Tell them," she snapped. "World Government secrets won't matter if we're all monster chow."
The lead scientist, a man with singed eyebrows, stammered, "Th-The resin! The Eve Tree's resin! We... we theorized a link. Between its properties and Devil Fruit energies. We were attempting to isolate, replicate... understand the source of the powers."
Marya's golden eyes, usually distant and observant, narrowed. She tilted her head, a flicker of intense curiosity breaking her stoic mask. "A link...?" she murmured, almost to herself.
Rayleigh raised an eyebrow. "Something occur to you, girl?"
Marya shook her head, the raven strands of her hair brushing the collar of her denim jacket. "Nothing concrete. Just... a bizarre coincidence, if true." She dismissed it with a wave, but the thoughtful crease remained between her brows.
"Spit it out, pirate!" Harlow demanded, her voice tight with impatience.
Marya opened her mouth, ready to deliver a cutting remark about Navy curiosity, when the sound hit them.
Not just the thunderous scrabbling from below anymore. This was closer. A wet, multi-throated snarling, punctuated by the sickening crack-squelch of too many limbs scrambling over metal and sludge. It echoed down the corridor outside the security hub, a wave of bestial hunger rolling towards them.
Rayleigh's gaze snapped to the heavy door. "Time's up, Vice Admiral. Escort or escortee? Choose."
Harlow's head swiveled between the terrified scientists clutching the mewling kitten and the corridor resonating with approaching horror. Her jaw clenched. "Damn you, Rayleigh!" With a violent motion, she slammed a heavy, scarred transponder snail into his hand. "Stay. On. Channel!" she barked, the command as much for Sentomaru as for the pirates.
She turned to the scientists, her posture snapping back to rigid command. "Move! Now! Stay behind me!" Her prosthetic struck the floor with grim finality as she herded them towards the opposite corridor.
Rayleigh pocketed the snail with a smirk. "You heard the lady! Let's greet our hosts!" He pushed open the heavy security hub door.
Sentomaru's voice boomed from hidden speakers, distorted by static but thick with urgency: "INCOMING! STARBOARD CORRIDOR! MULTIPLE CONTACTS, CLOSING FAST!"
Harlow glanced back one last time, her expression a storm of frustration and disbelief. "Relying on pirates..." she muttered, the words swallowed by the rising snarls as she vanished around a corner with her charges.
The emergency strips cast a jaundiced, dying light on the nightmare unfolding. The corridor was a gullet choked with destruction. Jagged wires hung like eviscerated nerves, spitting angry yellow sparks that reflected in viscous purple-black streams weeping down the walls. The air tasted like burnt caramel left to rot in a chemical spill.
And filling this claustrophobic space, surging towards them, was the herd.
Dozens of them. A writhing, shambling mass of flesh warped by science gone monstrously wrong. Some were vaguely humanoid, their limbs stretched and jointed in impossible ways, skin sloughing off to reveal grey, corded muscle beneath weeping sores. Others skittered on too many chitinous legs, mandibles snapping, dripping black saliva that hissed where it struck the sludge-covered floor. One lumbered on thick, trunk-like legs ending in stumps, its torso a pulsating sac of translucent membrane revealing shadowy organs within. Another had multiple heads fused along a serpentine spine, each mouth gnashing mismatched teeth – some needle-sharp metal, others flat and grinding.
Their sounds were a horrifying chorus: wet, guttural growls, high-pitched insectile chitters, the brittle click-tap of claws on metal, and the constant, awful squelch of their passage through the muck. The stench hit like a physical blow – rancid sugar, chemical poison, and the thick, cloying sweetness of decaying meat.
"Right then," Rayleigh said, his voice deceptively calm. He didn't draw his sword yet. He simply stepped forward, an immovable anchor in the chaos.
Atlas Acuta moved first. A blur of rust-red fur and crackling blue fury. "Took you ugly mugs long enough!" he roared, a feral grin splitting his face. He didn't wait for them to close. He charged. Stormclaw blurred, not in a wide swing, but a brutal, upward thrust. The seastone-core mace slammed into the underbelly of a towering, simian horror. The impact was sickening – a wet crunch-squelch followed by the sharp crackle-hiss of blue lightning. The creature spasmed violently, its charge halted mid-lunge, black ichor spraying. Before it could fall, Atlas pivoted, whipping Thunderfang around in a backhanded smash that pulverized its skull against the corridor wall in an explosion of bone, chitin, and gore. It slid down, a twitching ruin. "Heh. Slow," Atlas snorted, blue sparks dancing in his fur.
Galit Varuna was already in motion. His long neck coiled and uncoiled like a striking eel, emerald eyes darting, calculating. "Windage negligible... trajectory optimal... now." His twin Vipera Whips hissed from their sheaths, not lashing out to kill, but to entangle. They snaked through the air with impossible speed, wrapping around the spindly forelimbs of a skittering insectoid horror. With a sharp, fluid tug, Galit used the creature's own momentum, yanking it off balance and sending it crashing into a cluster of its brethren. "Tangling currents," he murmured, already scanning for the next target, his slate momentarily forgotten. "Cluster disruption achieved."
Marya flowed into the space Atlas had cleared. Eternal Eclipse slid from its sheath with a whisper like shadows deepening. The obsidian blade seemed to drink the sickly light. A creature, a twisted mockery of a boar with exposed spinal ridges and tusks dripping sludge, charged her. Marya didn't flinch. A single, fluid step sideways, her combat boots making a sticky sound on the tainted floor. Eclipse flashed – not a grand slash, but a precise, almost casual flick of her wrist. The blade passed through the beast's thick neck like smoke. There was no spray, no roar. The creature simply... unraveled. Its form dissolved into wisps of darkness that dissipated before they hit the floor, leaving only the faint scent of ozone and void. Marya didn't pause, already turning, her golden eyes scanning the next threat, a flicker of detached assessment in their depths. "Predictable," she stated flatly.
Jelly wobbled violently behind Marya, letting out a terrified, high-pitched "BLOOOOOOOP?!" A smaller, rat-like creature with too many eyes scuttled from the shadows, lunging for his gelatinous leg. "Bad touch! Bad touch!" Jelly squealed, his body instinctively morphing. His leg ballooned into a giant, translucent blue fist and swung wildly. It connected with a wet splat, sending the rat-creature flying backwards into a sparking console, where it convulsed amidst the electrical discharge. "Oopsie!" Jelly wobbled, trying to shrink further behind Marya. "Squishy defense!"
Rayleigh remained at the forefront, a calm center. He hadn't drawn his sword. A multi-limbed horror, dripping corrosive slime, lunged at him, mandibles wide. Rayleigh simply sidestepped, his movement economical and effortless. His weathered hand shot out, not to strike, but to lightly tap the creature's central mass as it passed. There was no flash, no visible force, but the creature imploded. Its limbs crumpled inward, its carapace cracked like an eggshell, and it collapsed into a twitching, broken heap. He moved again, a subtle shift, placing himself between a lunging beast and Galit, who was momentarily focused on fending off two skittering horrors with whip-fast parries. The creature targeting Galit simply froze mid-lunge, eyes wide with primal terror, before collapsing unconscious. Conqueror's Haki, a mere whisper, yet devastating.
The corridor became a charnel house symphony. The CRACK-THUD of Atlas's chui pulverizing bone and chitin. The HISS-SNAP of Galit's whips entangling limbs and shattering joints. The eerie silence of Marya's Eclipse severing existence. The wet SPLAT and terrified "BLOOP!" of Jelly's morphing defense. The choked gurgles and wet crunches of the dying horrors. The air thickened with the stench of scorched fur, ruptured organs, spilled chemicals, and void-tainted decay. Sparks rained from severed cables, casting strobing, monstrous shadows that danced with the slaughter.
They pushed forward, step by grueling step, a wedge of destruction carving through the tide of failed science. Rayleigh, the immovable force, directing the flow with subtle shifts and terrifyingly effortless power. Atlas, the crimson comet of brute force and crackling lightning. Galit, the analytical tide manipulating the chaos. Marya, the silent, efficient reaper with her hungry blade. And Jelly, the wobbling, terrified, yet strangely effective wildcard.
Behind them, the corridor was littered with twitching, broken forms and spreading pools of viscous, unnatural fluids. Ahead, the snarls grew louder, the shadows deeper. The descent into Lab Sigma-Null's heart had only just begun, and the nightmare within the nightmare was far from over. Sentomaru's voice crackled from the transponder in Rayleigh's pocket, strained but steady: "Keep pushing! Next junction, hard left! They're thickest there... like they're guarding something."
*****
The air inside Shakky's Rip-Off Bar hung thick and cloying, a far cry from its usual blend of polished wood and good rum. Now, it tasted like desperation and sickness – the sharp, medicinal tang of the infection fighting a losing battle against the underlying sweetness of corrupted tree sap. Golden afternoon light, fractured by the grimy bubble-coating on the windows, slanted across the floor, illuminating dust motes dancing above overturned chairs. The only sounds were the ragged breathing of the infected and the low, insistent thump-thump-thump coming from outside.
Henrick sat heavily on the floor, his massive hammerhead frame propped against the bar. His normally powerful grey skin was slick with a feverish sweat, and ugly, dark veins pulsed beneath the surface, tracing jagged paths up his thick forearms. Each breath rattled in his broad chest. Beside him, Fia leaned against his side, her coral-pink hair plastered to her damp forehead. The cloying scent of infected resin clung to them, a sickly perfume of decay.
Lulee, the twelve-year-old mermaid-fishman hybrid, was curled into a tight ball near the jukebox, her iridescent skin looking waxy. She hugged her fin, her deep ocean-blue eyes wide with a fear that cut deeper than the physical discomfort. Her silver-streaked hair hid her face as she shivered. Geo, the youngest at nine, was pressed against her. His silver-blue hair stuck up in spikes of fright, his knuckles white around her forearm.
"Is… is that what's gonna happen to us?" Geo whispered, his voice thin and cracking. He flinched as another heavy THUMP vibrated through the wooden floorboards of the porch. "Like those people outside?"
Henrick turned his head slowly, the movement clearly costing him effort. He reached out a large, veined hand – a blacksmith's hand, calloused and strong, now trembling slightly – and placed it gently on Geo's shoulder. The sheer size of it nearly engulfed the boy's frame. "No, son," he rumbled, his voice deeper and rougher than usual, strained by the infection. "Not gonna happen. We fight this. We wait for help." He managed a weak, reassuring squeeze. "Strong family, remember?"
At the window, Shakky stood silhouetted against the fractured light. Gone was the languid, amused proprietress. Her posture was coiled tension, a predator assessing prey. A long, well-oiled rifle rested steadily against her shoulder, its polished wood stock gleaming dully. Her sharp eyes scanned the chaotic scene unfolding on the grove street below through a narrow gap in the blinds. Her usual cigarette was clamped, unlit, between her lips.
"Damn fools," she muttered, her voice low and tight. Below, figures shambled or lurched – former residents, shopkeepers, maybe even pirates – their bodies grotesquely transformed. Skin bulged unnaturally, slick with the same dark, viscous resin oozing from cracks in the pavement. Eyes were milky or glowing with a sickly yellow-green light. They moved with jerky, unnatural coordination, drawn by unseen signals or perhaps just the scent of the uninfected inside the bar. One, a woman whose floral dress was now fused to her resin-swollen torso, was clumsily ascending the wooden steps to the bar's porch, her movements a horrifying parody of climbing. Her mouth opened in a silent, gummy scream, thick black drool stringing down her chin.
Shakky didn't hesitate. She took a slow, deep breath, her cheek resting against the rifle stock. The world narrowed to the sights, the shambling figure on the third step. The crack of the rifle was shockingly loud in the confined space. The woman's head snapped back violently, a spray of dark fluid and fragmented resin erupting where the bullet struck. The body crumpled, sliding bonelessly back down the steps with a wet thud.
Geo buried his face against Lulee, a small whimper escaping him.
Shakky worked the rifle bolt with practiced ease, the spent casing clinking onto the floorboards. "They're getting bolder," she stated flatly, her eyes already scanning for the next target. Another figure, this one larger, possibly a dockworker, was lumbering towards the base of the steps, one arm swollen into a club-like mass of hardened resin. "Like ants to spilled sugar."
A low groan came from Henrick. Shakky glanced back, seeing him struggle, bracing his massive hands on the floor. He pushed himself up, swaying slightly as the fever gripped him. His breathing was harsh, labored.
"Henrick?" Fia's voice was weak with concern. "Stay down… conserve your strength."
Ignoring her, Henrick stumbled towards the far wall of the bar. Not the door. Not the window. Towards a shadowed corner partially hidden behind a stack of empty rum casks. With surprising purpose for someone so ill, he shoved a cask aside, revealing a sturdy, unassuming wooden rack bolted to the wall. It wasn't decorative. It held tools of a different trade: a heavy cutlass with a notched blade, a pair of flintlock pistols with worn grips, and two more long rifles, their barrels dark and well-maintained.
Shakky's eyes flicked from the window to Henrick, a flicker of surprise momentarily breaking her concentration. "Comfortable with one of those?" she asked, her voice sharp, nodding towards the rifles as she tracked the approaching dockworker below. She didn't take her eye off the sights.
Henrick grunted, a sound like grinding stones. He pulled one of the rifles free. It looked almost comically small in his huge hands, yet he handled it with a certain, unexpected familiarity. He checked the breech, his thick fingers surprisingly deft despite the tremor, then scooped a handful of paper-wrapped cartridges from a tin box beside the rack. His movements weren't fluid, but they weren't clumsy either. There was a grim purpose to them.
He didn't answer Shakky directly. Instead, he shuffled towards the bar's heavy wooden door, the rifle held loosely but purposefully at his side. The infection made him move like a man wading through deep water. He peered through the reinforced peephole Shakky had installed years ago, his broad back blocking the view for a moment.
Outside, the resin-swollen dockworker reached the bottom step, letting out a guttural, bubbling roar.
Henrick's voice, when it came, was low, rough, and carried the weight of unspoken years. "I wasn't always a blacksmith." He didn't elaborate. He simply shouldered the rifle, the stock fitting awkwardly against his massive frame, yet his stance shifted subtly – feet planted wider, shoulders squaring with an ingrained instinct that had nothing to do with forging metal.
A slow, knowing smirk touched Shakky's lips, visible only in profile as she kept her own rifle trained. The unlit cigarette twitched. "Guess not," she murmured, the words dry as dust. She adjusted her aim fractionally. "Right. Door's yours. Try not to let 'em scratch the paint. Just refinished it."
Henrick didn't smile. His emerald-green eyes, usually warm with fatherly patience, were narrowed, focused solely on the distorted shape moving beyond the thick wood. He braced himself, the veins in his neck standing out like dark ropes against his sickly skin, the corrupted resin pulsing beneath the surface in time with his labored heartbeat. The only sounds were Geo's stifled sobs, Lulee's shaky breathing, Fia's soft murmur of worry, and the hungry, wet scrabbling sounds growing louder on the porch outside the door. The bar, their fragile sanctuary, braced for the next assault.