The Polar Tang's docking bay hummed with the clatter of wrenches and the acrid tang of welding sparks. Marya's Consortium submarine hung suspended in its repair cradle, its once-pristine hull scarred by a collision that had been redefined as a "rescue." Ikkaku dangled from a harness, her overalls streaked with celestial brass grease, as she welded a salvaged thruster onto the sub's flank. Jean Bart steadied the cradle, his massive hands guiding a crane hoisting a reinforced porthole into place. The air smelled of salt, scorched metal, and the faintest trace of Tlaloc's Fire still clinging to the sub's vents.
Marya leaned against the bulkhead, arms crossed, watching silently. Her Void-scarred arm ached—a dull, insistent throb she'd learned to ignore. The Consortium submarine was a relic of her past, a symbol of the life she'd abandoned when she left the clandestine library to chase her mother's ghosts. But now, as Ikkaku's torch spat blue flame, Marya noticed something that made her breath catch.
The Consortium's sigil had been scraped away from the sub's hull. In its place, freshly painted in bold black and white, was the Heart Pirates' jolly roger: a smiley face with protrusions in six directions. The edges were uneven, the paint still glistening in the bay's fluorescent light. Someone (probably Shachi) had added a tiny cartoon bear in the corner.
Marya's throat tightened. She stepped forward, her boots echoing on the grated floor, and ran her fingers over the emblem. The paint was still tacky.
"Took you long enough to notice," Ikkaku grunted, flipping up her welding mask. Her face was smudged with soot, her grin sharp. "Law said you'd bitch about it. Told him you'd probably cry."
"Cry? Over your shoddy brushwork?" Marya snorted, but her voice lacked its usual bite. "It's… practical. Less likely to get shot at."
"Uh-huh. Tell that to the Navy," Jean Bart rumbled, wiping sweat from his brow. "Still needs parts from Sabaody. And a miracle."
Footsteps echoed behind them. Law stood in the doorway, his spotted hat shadowing his eyes. His nodachi was absent—a rarity—and his hands were stuffed into his coat pockets. "Ikkaku. Jean Bart. Give us the bay."
The mechanic and helmsman exchanged glances but obeyed, Ikkaku muttering, "Don't melt the sub. Again."
The bay fell quiet save for the creak of the cradle and the distant groan of the Tang's engines. Law approached slowly, his gaze lingering on Marya's scarred arm. "How's the pain?"
"Manageable," she lied. The Void veins pulsed faintly, tendrils of shadow wriggling beneath her skin like eels.
"You're a terrible liar." He stopped beside her, close enough that their shoulders nearly brushed. "That power—Void-Mist—it's volatile. You nearly erased half the galley yesterday."
"And saved everyone's asses in Tlalocan," she countered, though her defiance wavered. "What's your point, Surgeon?"
Law turned to face her, his amber eyes unflinching. "My point is you're not invincible. That power… it's eating you. I can see it."
Marya looked away. Through a porthole, moonlight spilled across the sub's new emblem —the smiley face —gleaming like a promise. "You think I don't know that?" Her voice softened. "Every time I use it, I feel… less. Like I'm fading into the mist. But what choice do I have? The Void's part of me now. Just like this sub's part of your crew."
Law hesitated—a rare crack in his armor—before reaching into his coat. He pulled out a cracked Den Den Mushi photo of the Poneglyph they'd glimpsed in Tlalocan. The glyphs swirled around a figure cloaked in Void, its arm outstretched, dissolving into shadow. "The glyphs mentioned a way to suppress it. A ritual. But it requires a sacrifice."
Marya stiffened. "Let me guess—my soul? My memories? A pint of Bepo's blood?"
"Your choice," Law said quietly. "But whatever it is, you won't face it alone."
The sub creaked, the cradle swaying gently. Marya studied the Heart Pirates' emblem again, her reflection fractured in the fresh paint. "Why do you care?"
Law's jaw tightened. "Because I've seen what happens when power consumes someone. I won't… I won't let it happen again."
The unspoken weight of his past—of Corazon—hung between them. Marya turned, her golden eyes meeting his. "You're not my keeper, Trafalgar."
"No," he admitted. "But I'm your captain. And your friend."
The word lingered, fragile and unfamiliar. Marya's smirk returned, but it lacked its usual edge. "Friends don't let friends turn into sentient fog. Got it."
Law rolled his eyes, but the corner of his mouth twitched. "We'll find answers in Sabaody. Until then… no more cheese-related incidents."
"No promises."
As he turned to leave, Marya grabbed his sleeve. "Law. Thanks. For the emblem. And… the talk."
He nodded, a ghost of a smile fading as he disappeared into the corridor.
Alone, Marya pressed her palm to the sub's hull, the Heart Pirates' jolly roger cool beneath her touch. The Void veins throbbed, but for now, they were quiet.
Somewhere above deck, Bepo's laughter echoed, and the Tang sailed on.
In the engine room, Ikkaku discovered Marya had "redecorated" her toolbox—replacing every screwdriver with a tiny Void-Mist cheese wedge. "DAMMIT, MARYA!"
But even her yell carried a hint of fondness.
*****
The Polar Tang hummed with uncharacteristic tranquility—or at least, the illusion of it. After weeks of relentless battles and navigating treacherous waters, the Heart Pirates had collectively decided (read: been strong-armed by an overenthusiastic Ikkaku) that they were long overdue for a spa day.
"Self-care is essential for peak performance," Ikkaku declared, slapping a seaweed face mask onto a very reluctant Law. "Even captains need to unwind!"
Law, who had been mid-surgery manual, now had a cucumber slice sliding off his forehead. "This is why we don't do 'self-care,'" he muttered, eyeing the chaos unfolding around him.
Marya, ever the enigma, had claimed the sauna for "meditative training." But when her Void-Mist powers—still unstable after her fusion with the primordial Void—reacted with the steam, the entire chamber transformed into a surreal bubble dimension. Glowing orbs of mist floated lazily through the air, popping with tiny bursts of cold flame. Shachi, mid-sentence, found himself suspended in a bubble, his voice muffled as he drifted toward the ceiling.
"This is fine," Marya said flatly, watching a bubble engulf Penguin's startled face.
Shachi, ever the trendsetter, had brought a "revolutionary" beard dye labeled Neon Kraken Pink! Guaranteed to last "at least three battles!" Unfortunately, the dye reacted violently with the residual Void energy in the air, turning his facial hair into a luminescent, pulsating shade of pink that glowed in the dark.
"I look like a radioactive flamingo," Shachi groaned, staring at his reflection.
Bepo, ever supportive, patted his shoulder. "It's… bold?"
Bepo, meanwhile, had opted for a "deep conditioning fur treatment," only to discover—too late—that the mask contained trace amounts of iron. As the Void-Mist swirled around him, his fur suddenly developed an irresistible attraction to metal. Spoons, wrenches, and even Law's surgical tools went flying toward him, clinging to his bewildered frame.
"I'm a fridge magnet," Bepo whimpered, a ladle stuck to his ear.
Ikkaku, in her zeal, had applied a generous amount of her homemade seaweed mask—only to realize it had the adhesive properties of ship glue. By the time Law noticed, she was fully cocooned, blinking helplessly from within a green, vaguely human-shaped husk.
"Help," she mumbled, her voice muffled.
Law sighed, summoning his Room with the resignation of a man who had specifically warned against this. "I'm a surgeon, not a spa attendant."
By evening, the Polar Tang was a disaster zone. The sauna still occasionally belched out rogue bubbles, Shachi's beard now had its own faint heartbeat, and Bepo had resigned himself to a life of cutlery adornment. Ikkaku, finally freed from her seaweed prison, was already planning the next "relaxation session."
Marya, observing the wreckage, sipped her tea. "Next time, I vote for silent meditation."
Law, nursing a headache, didn't even look up from his notes. "There won't be a next time."
*****
The Polar Tang groaned under the weight of the tempest, its steel hull shuddering as waves the size of sea kings battered the submerged vessel. Inside, the dim glow of lanterns swung wildly, casting jagged shadows that danced like specters across the walls. The storm had trapped the Heart Pirates in a cacophony of creaking metal and howling winds—a perfect backdrop for Ikkaku's latest decree.
"Ghost stories!" she announced, slamming a crate of stolen sake onto the mess hall table. "Nothing bonds a crew like shared trauma!"
Law, draped over a chair like a disgruntled panther, pinched the bridge of his nose. "We're in a submarine. In a storm. Surrounded by literal tons of seawater. This is bonding through stupidity."
Bepo, already clutching a teddy bear knitted from his own shed fur, whimpered. "C-captain's right. What if the stories… come alive?"
Shachi snorted, tossing a handful of moldy socks onto the table. "Relax, Bepo! I've got premium ghost repellent—aged six months in Penguin's bunk! Just 500 Beri a pair!"
"Those are my socks!" Penguin protested, recoiling.
"Haunted socks now!" Shachi winked. "Guaranteed to scare off any spook—or your money back!"
Ikkaku kicked things off with a legend about "The Spoon-Wraith of South Blue," a vengeful spirit condemned to eternally serve tea to ungrateful sailors. Marya, slouched in a corner with her cursed sword Eternal Eclipse propped against her shoulder, absently stirred the air with a tendril of Void-Mist. The fog—usually ashy and foreboding—rippled playfully in the lantern light, reacting to the crew's laughter.
Then Penguin recounted the "Laughing Shadow of Dressrosa," a silhouette that mimicked its victims until they went mad. As he pantomimed the shadow's eerie giggles, Marya's mist seeped into the room's corners, pooling into a pitch-black puddle that… giggled back.
"Did… did the floor just laugh?" Bepo squeaked, his fur puffing out like a dandelion.
Marya blinked, her golden eyes narrowing. "Hm. That's new."
By the time Shachi launched into a "true" tale about a skeleton bard who serenaded ships to their doom, the Void-Mist had taken on a life of its own. The fog coiled into a skeletal figure strumming a misty lute, its bony jaw clacking to an off-key rendition of Binks' Sake. A spoon levitated past Law's head, dribbling lukewarm tea onto his hat.
"Marya," Law growled, swatting the spoon away, "rein in your existential crisis."
She shrugged, sipping from a cup the spoon had just filled. "It's harmless. Mostly."
Harmless, perhaps, but chaos reigned. The giggling shadow clung to Shachi's back, mirroring his dramatic gestures as he peddled his sock-repellent. Bepo, now a trembling ball of fur, had latched onto Law's leg like a barnacle. "Captain, please tell me surgeons can perform exorcisms!"
"I can perform a lobotomy," Law muttered, eyeing Shachi's shadow-doppelgänger.
Unseen by the crew, the Void-Mist's antics carried echoes of Marya's fractured past. The skeleton's song? A distorted lullaby from her mother's notebook, its lyrics half-remembered from Poneglyph carvings. The giggling shadow? A warped reflection of Vaughn, her late ally. Even the spoon's persistence—a subconscious nod to Elisabeta's habit of brewing tea during late-night research.
But Marya said nothing. Some ghosts were better left unacknowledged.
As the storm raged, Shachi's sales pitch crescendoed. "These socks repelled a ghost king in Lvneel! Just 10,000 Beri!"
The giggling shadow chose that moment to yank the socks from his hands and fling them at Penguin, who screeched and vaulted over the table. In the chaos, the skeleton's lute morphed into a misty accordion, drowning out Shachi's protests with a polka version of Binks' Sake.
"I hate this crew," Law declared, dragging Bepo (still attached to his leg) toward the door.
By dawn, the storm had passed, and the Void-Mist retreated—mostly. The spoon now resided in the galley, compulsively stirring every pot it encountered. The shadow had taken a liking to Shachi, mimicking his mustache-twirling even as he slept. The skeleton? It vanished, though faint accordion music still echoed in the torpedo tubes.
"Next time," Law said, nursing a sake cup the spoon had thrust into his hand, "we stick to silent nights."
Marya smirked, her void-veined fingers toying with the Kogatana at her throat. "Where's the fun in that?"
Bepo, still clutching Law's leg, nodded fervently. "Silence is good. Silence is safe."
Deep in the Polar Tang's hold, the giggling shadow pried open Elisabeta's old notebook, its misty fingers tracing Poneglyph symbols. A single word glowed crimson: Tlaloc.
Some ghosts, it seemed, were just getting started.