The first breath he drew was not air, not really. It was iron, salt, thick, congealing smoke from a smoldering, crammed cigar in a frozen mouth. His fists clenched—large, scarred ones in black mitts. His throat vibrated on a grunt that was not his and forced his eyes open to find himself gazing up at a stone ceiling, inscribed with stern symbols of justice.
"What is this?" he rasped, his voice volcanic, his voice gravelly, odd, its sound evoking a wriggly pleasure along what was now Admiral of the Navy, Sakazuki.
Reports were scattered haphazardly on his enormous oak desk, ink-stained reports from subordinates whispering of minor pirate mischief at far seas—the East Blue, a puddle in his mind. The demon stirred in the flesh, indolent and inquisitive, probing the bounds of this host: a power like magma, resting in the muscle, hungry to be unleashed.
"Akainu," he said, relishing how it sounded, then doled out a cold, humorless smile. "So this is the name I've been dealt."
He rose, his scarlet coat sweeping over the legs of the huge chair, and paced to stand by the tall window. The sea unrolled like a torn reflection of dark clouds, its surface scarred by the ships of the Navy slicing through like a knife. The demon sniffed in the pungent smell of the sea, rot of kelp, death of drowned sailors in the sea.
There was a knock on the door.
"Come in," he rumbled, and shivering hinges swung open the door.
A young marine stepped in, his face a carefully restrained mask of professional demeanor, but his eyes revealing what he was truly feeling, fear.
"A-Admiral Sakazuki, sir! Your next meeting has been rescheduled. The Vice Admirals are awaiting your order concerning the rumors of the East Blue rebellion, sir!"
Akainu—not, of course, but what was inside of Akainu—tilted his head in idle thought. Power ran through his veins. The marine gulped at that gaze.
"Tell them to wait," he instructed, his words a stone in an avalanche. "I have... other matters to attend."
The boy saluted stiffly and left, as though being chased.
Reaching across his desk, the demon grasped a small, rumpled pouch from among a stack of papers. There was a pungent, earthy aroma that wafted from it. His human lips curled; his vessel's vices were open to him now, too. By rote movements, he rolled a slender joint, igniting it by touching it to the smoldering magma that pulsed along his hand. The smoke curled into still air, a ghostly serpent twining its way up to the rafters.
Lying there, a ring of smoke wrapped around his hard, stern face, somehow gentling its angles, a languid smile twisted his lips.
The door also creaked once more. No knocking, though.
A woman came in—a high-ranking officer by her badge, her uniform fitting her nearly to scandal, her brass buttons tight-stretched over ample curves. Black hair cascaded around her shoulders like blood-soaked silk, and her eyes gleamed with an unprofessional sparkle.
"Admiral Sakazuki," she said, her body positioned much too close to his desk, her perfume, salt, and something else sweet scent filling his nose. "I was told you may need a little... help."
The demon's smile increased almost imperceptibly. Here it was then, his first real fruit from his arrival on this precarious plane. A shudder of dark force vibrated through the air around him, unseen but strongly felt, like the creep of a putreying corpse in earth below.
He puffed a stream of smoke into the air, his eyes roving unencumbered by pretension over her body. She wriggled, an embarrassed spasm under his open-eyed consideration.
"You assume a lot of things," he said, his voice low, gritty as grave dirt. "But maybe not unreasonably."
She bit her lip, a gesture so blatant it was almost laughable, and leaned forward, her hands on the edge of the desk. The upper buttons of her jacket were pulled perilously taut.
"I'm excellent at taking orders, sir," she said, a husky edge to her tone that contrasted with her professional demeanor.
The demon smoothed joint ash on to a battered tray, his eyes half-closed in consideration. A notion came to mind: was this host so detested that close proximity sent these human beings into desire and fear in a single breath? He heard the beat of her heartbeat, irregular, the fine sweat droplets beginning at her brow.
"Then," slowly, syllable by syllable, like a sword from its scabbard, "you will help me file these reports."
He indolently waved towards mounds of paper. She was momentarily dismayed, but she caught herself in a breathless laugh behind a facade of duty.
"Of course, sir."
She dodged around the desk, getting too close. Her hand grazed his shoulder, a touch disguised as mishap. The demon in Akainu grappled with a snarl, and a low, rumbling laugh was what broke free, the floor looked like it might tremble from his laugh.
Hunched over her notes, a flash of smooth, pale flesh through a glimpse in her uniform was tantalizing. The demon considered, finger drumming the ashtray delicately upon his joint, the red tip of the glowing ember throbbed like a wicked eye.
Was he pleased by this? Irritated? Bafflement was pleasure in itself—this ship still had a soul below decks, still twisting like a thing crucified. Desire and contempt struggled together in his mind, and he enjoyed each scarlet stroke of their combat.
He bent forward, close enough that his breath stirred the hair at the nape of her neck.
"You are loyal, yes?" He whispered.
Her teeth were chattering, whether with fear or excitement he didn't care to find out.
"Yes, sir," she replied, her voice a worn ribbon.
The demon buried deep in the marrow of Sakazuki drew a deep, rich breath, filled with the pungent aroma of the plant. His mind, replete with the grasping fingers of drunkenness, was clear, a cutting edge unblurred by human weakness he allowed himself to savour. The high was wrapped around his back, like a coil of a serpent, but he remained upright, its keen-edged perceptions unobstructed by its presence.
Below, quietly as a squirming of worms beneath grave soil, his will remolded flesh he carried. Bitter furrows around the Admiral's lips eased by ghostly hands. The ravages of time, the gnawed, eaten-up crow's feet around his eyes, his jaw clenched, all rolled back like shed scales. His muscle yielded, his sinew flexed, his blood ran more readily, and when he moved, he was a predator in his prime, a predator to turn heads, to fill with more than fear; to arouse desire.
The woman next to him glanced sideways as she leaned over pages, her pen scrawled in jagged bursts. She breathed more rapidly; he heard her distinctly, each breath a beat of a fly against the dirty glass of a lantern. It was something she felt, too—the unnameable renewal, nascent attraction that no eye would ever truly be able to identify, but every bone would be able to sense.
They worked together through hours. The sun in high windows grew fat and orange, spilling light into the darkening woods of the room, but nothing bitter emerged from either of their lips. The woman added touches in the form of sliding papers—a brushing of fingers, a leaning upon a shoulder—but Sakazuki was a mountain unmoving, indifferent to the scratching of tiny claws.
He said a single word, breaking the silence, his voice low, measured, a slowly opening tomb door.
"Diligence..." he said slowly, his voice dripping with toxic slowness. "is its own reward,"
She smiled, a poor, stumbling thing, and set herself to work again.
Finally, the last piece of paper was signed, stamped, stacked in dismal piles of red tape. The woman stood up straight, her cheeks flushed, optimistic. Her lips opened, a question beginning to form on quivering lips—but he was already on his feet, the chair creaking at the sudden motion.
Never looking back, Sakazuki walked across the room, his red cloak, weighed down by the insignia of his rank, billowing behind him like a cloud of mourning darkening his steps. The enormous door was shut behind him, boots crashing on flagstones, and he disappeared, leaving her standing amidst the paper shreds of work, his scent of sweat and smoke lingering on her skin.
The corridors extended before him, empty save for a random marine, who stood motionless in frozen salutes as he approached, their eyes flicking in his direction, puzzled, questioning. They were familiar with the uniform, the posture—but not the ageless, harsh beauty that then covered the person into whom they gave respect by calling him Akainu.
A young officer, a lad, scarcely a first-bloomer, stepped forward, stuttering.
"Admiral Sakazuki, sir! The rescheduled meeting is currently taking place in the middle room!"
Sakazuki stood immobile, his eyes stabbing deep into the boy, who recoiled visibly as if he had been hit.
"Then it is well," he declared, his words tempered in steel.
He entered through double doors of the room ahead of announcement. The room, packed to capacity with Vice Admirals, rear admirals, and strategists of every sort, swung around en masse, a ruffle of unease disturbing their formal ranks.
They stared at him—the young face, black fire burning in his eyes, new configuration of his mouth, as if in promise, not of salvation, but of judgment.
Sengoku, seated at the far end, shoved his glasses up with a frown that he tried, but couldn't, hide.
Sakazuki stepped to the head of the table, his hands lightly resting on the dark, polished surface, and he said nothing, was still for a while, until the silence was filled, grew thick with fear.
"There is," he began, his voice a gravel of stones, "no evil more detestable than weakness."
The words were like stones falling into a stagnant pool.
He stood towering above them, his entire form looming over them like a dark, crashing wave.
"The East Blue," he continued, "has been left open, a festering sore, to infect others. Revolutionaries, filth, pirates. These who are a threat to authority have to be cut down mercilessly."
These were followed by subdued murmurs of assent, some over-eager, some too fearful.
Sakazuki shifted forward slightly, his handsome face a mask of controlled fury.
"But," his voice hanging in suspension like smoke in a room, "Justice isn't a crazed vengeance. Justice waits patiently. Justice strikes precisely."
The demon smiled inside of him, a silent but ever-present power, chuckling quietly against the bars of its cage.
"A boy," he said, his voice falling, carrying everyone's attention his way like moths are attracted to a flame, "a boy in a straw hat, has set sail from that sea. He is nothing—yet. But he has potential. He can ascend. And when he does."
He paused, letting his words settle in around everyone in the room.
"He shall be trampled by the hand of Absolute Justice."
A recitation of affirmations, pounding chests in respect. Sengoku scowled more openly, as if he saw something hidden behind the words, something dark wriggling among the light.
Sakazuki stepped back, allowing the meeting to slide into its unavoidable, bottomless buzz of motion and details, but he didn't notice. His mind was elsewhere, soaring ahead of him like vultures over a field of carnage.
He saw the boy clearly—a rakishly slanted straw hat against the sun, a grin too wide for the world's comfort—and a pang inside of him stirred, a hunger as old as human history but not born in the man upon whom he was lnhabiting.
He would allow this boy to become grown, become strong, think that he would shake heaven.
And then he would kill him by his own hand.
What other joy was there but to crush hope when it was brightest?
That, indeed, was Absolute Justice.
The last whispers of the session faded into the cold air, officers gathering notes, exchanging hollow politenesses as they left under Sakazuki's watchful eye. The vast room was empty save a few forms, and among them stood Sengoku, burdened by an aura that time was incapable of dispelling. His eyes, sharp behind rectangular edges of his glasses, pierced through Sakazuki like a moth on dark velour.
He moved toward him, slowly, purposefully, each stride weighed down by silence until it was thick as oil.
"Sakazuki," he finally said, his voice flat but low, his edges snapping back into place from tension. "You've... changed."
Sakazuki lifted his eyes indolently, his joint having gone cold a long time before, but its scent still surrounding him like a remembrance.
"Changed?" he echoed, a flicker of a smile on his lips.
Sengoku's eyes tightened, sweeping Admiral's face—smoother now, unlined by years, emanating unnatural energy no human training could show. His eyes probed deeper, beyond flesh, to haki—the voice of the soul—and what he found soured his lips into a firm line.
"Your haki" he muttered almost unwillingly, as if making it vocal added to its reality, "is monstrous. More wild than I have ever sensed from you. It's not the same.... not even close."
For a moment, the demon staggered in Sakazuki, his smile threatening to divide his handsome new face into something much more horrible, but he retracted it on a low grunt of distaste.
"Strength is what counts," he said, dusting imaginary dust from his thick coat sleeve, "You should be grateful, not afraid."
He stood looking at him a moment longer, the air between them thick with tension of suspicion, but finally nodded slowly, reluctantly.
"We'll speak again," he growled, his voice heavy with unsaid significance.
Sakazuki said nothing, but gave a scornful glance, and withdrew with the smooth pace of a young god clad in red robes.
Striking from the hallway, a throng of bodies automatically gave way before him, its pattern of talk exploding into the hallway. They stood watching him, eyes open, the women's eyes lingering in a mixture of shock and lustful interest. He felt it, all of them drinking in his new existence, their blood vibrating with low, animal want.
But it was not their faces, was what he wanted.
His gaze cut through people like a knife before coming to rest on her: Kujaku.
She was a living spark among embers, too conspicuous in a sea of white and blue to be ignored. Her strawberry-blonde locks gleamed like spun gold in a skilled maiden's hand in sunlight, flowing down her flesh upon her shoulders, where the Marine coat was hanging loosely, like a lover's palm. The floppy, pink cloche rested slouchwise atop her head, the seagull-flower sigil, the defiant "M" of our cause. The strapless dress, daubed red patterns like wildflowers, hugged her curvacious body shamelessly, more daring than any simile.
Laughing, she was, throwing her head back in that teasing, queenly fashion, scolding a young ensign in a honey-and-barbed-wire voice.
Sakazuki slowed his stride, his own eyes feasting greedily upon her without compunction, his mind a maelstrom of black humor. Dainty, undoubtedly, but commanding, a tart-tongued temptress among the acquiescent lambs.
He was a devil who hungered—not merely fleshly pleasures, but dominion over such a soul. But warning flickered in his mind like a warning fire: she was Tsuru's granddaughter. Tsuru, with eyes sharper than Sengoku's, who would pay attention, would kill him by rumor before by steel.
He thus curbed the fire, stifled the ravenous smile that was battling to break through on his lips, and retreated into a side passageway, his pace slow, his trail an echo behind to determine if she was brave enough to notice.
He had taken only a dozen paces when, in the stillness, he could detect the soft, purposeful fall of footsteps behind.
"Running away, Sakazuki?"
The voice was sneering, tainted by derision, velvety venom wrapped in silk. Slowly, he swung around, savoring the moment.
Kujaku stood by herself, hand on her hip, her other hand fussily adjusting her wide hat brim. The green of her eyes, as bright as malachite, fixed him in a look that was half challenge, half overture.
"I didn't think you were a cut-and-run kind of girl," she purred, her voice falling into pretend innocence, her expression tainted by wicked humor.
Sakazuki allowed himself a slow, deliberate smile, a corner of his mouth curving upwards in languid cruelty.
"And I didn't think you were a chaser," he said, his own voice falling to a low, menacing, taunting growl.
She laughed, a shattered-bell ring on a sour wind, and moved towards him.
"Perhaps I have a taste for shattering illusions," she replied, her finger sliding along his chest, caressing the gold buttons of his Admiral's uniform as if she were unfastening an undergarment.
His hand came, not ungentle, but with sudden, authoritative firmness, and closed around her wrist in a grip hard but not hard enough to crush it.
"Be cautious, Kujaku," he went on, his voice almost a whisper, promise and threat inextricably linked together.
She leaned in again, the brim of her hat pressed against his temple, her warm, wet breath a sticky insistent pressure in his ear.
"Careful is boring," she whispered.
His heart, or what replaced it, thudded once, a hollow, drumming beat. He slowly let her go, his hand lingering on the inner side of her wrist a fraction of a second more than necessary.
He felt it—the tension of her body, the shiver that she was unable to suppress.
For he was no fool, not here, not yet.
He slipped past her quietly, his presence enwrapping her momentarily before dissolving like smoke. He disappeared from her, leaving her standing in the corridor as she stood frozen, her green eyes burning with a dangerous gleam, her lips slightly ajar in a breath she couldn't catch.
The demon in him stirred with pleasure, savoring the knotted skein he was creating.