The East Blue had always been a quiet place for Arthur. Before the Grand Line, before the screaming waves and the shrieks of dying men, he had thought of the Marines as something noble. A uniform of justice, a banner carried by those who stood tall against chaos. He wore his cap proudly, drilled his boots into the docks, and saluted with pride whenever the sun caught the gold in his buttons. He thought himself a soldier of light.
But the Grand Line is where light goes to die.
The first time he saw a pirate crew at sea, he thought the stories exaggerated. He was wrong. They didn't pillage like drunken thieves in taverns—they tore people apart. He remembered one village burning at dusk, flames licking at the sky while a mother's throat was slit in front of her child, her body shoved into the dirt as laughter rattled from their cracked teeth. He saw a man gutted like an animal, entrails hanging, his last words drowned beneath their merriment. A young girl, no older than ten, was dragged by her hair across the pier, her fingernails snapping off against the wood as she clawed at the ground. The pirates' laughter was not human—it was something primal, joyous in cruelty, as if blood was wine to be savored.
Arthur had thought himself hardened, but the smell of roasted flesh—villagers locked in their homes and set aflame—would haunt him for the rest of his life. He could still hear their fists against the doors, the way their screams weakened before vanishing into silence.
But the worst part was not the pirates. The worst part was the silence of his own men.
When the village was "liberated," his commander ordered the surviving children shackled and carried away. They were to be sold, the profits distributed among the higher ranks. Arthur remembered a boy clinging to his leg, begging with snot and tears on his face, his voice hoarse from smoke. He remembered prying those hands off because the order had been given, and he was a Marine. He told himself justice had many faces, but the word began to taste bitter in his mouth.
At first, Arthur rationalized. He told himself the world was a balance of necessary evils. The Marines had to make hard choices. Pirates killed for sport; Marines did their dirty work for order. That was the lie he wrapped around his conscience like a bandage. But as the months bled into years, the bandage began to rot. He watched officers drink themselves stupid with looted wine, watched them drag women into tents under the thin veil of "confiscation." He saw captains laugh while deserters were executed—not by blade, but by slow starvation, tied to the masts under the blazing sun, lips splitting, tongues swollen. All under the name of justice.
The truth tore at him like a disease. If the pirates were devils, then what were the Marines? Holy executioners or hypocrites in white coats? His hands, once clean, were now soaked in the crimson that never quite washed away. He would scrub until his knuckles bled, but still the stench of iron clung to him.
Sleep became unbearable. Each night his mind would conjure the eyes of the dead—pirates, villagers, even comrades who fell screaming into the sea. They accused him silently, their mouths moving in the darkness of his dreams. He would wake gagging, nails clawing at his own throat, certain he was choking on the smoke of burning villages.
There were days he caught himself laughing at things he shouldn't. When another marine fell to a pirate's bullet, he laughed—not out of cruelty, but because death had become absurd, inevitable, like watching the tide drag corpses back into the sea. That was when he knew something inside him had begun to crack.
The Grand Line was not the place of glory he had once imagined. It was a graveyard where monsters danced freely and men wore masks of righteousness. Arthur became quieter, his gaze hollow. He stopped writing letters home. He stopped looking at himself in mirrors. The boy who once dreamed of medals and honor had rotted into something else—something that barely recognized itself in uniform.
By 1522, his spirit was ash. He resigned—not through grand defiance, but by slipping into obscurity. The Marines did not chase him; they had no reason to. A mere foot soldier, broken and inconsequential, was worth less than the bullet it would take to silence him.
He returned to East Blue with his life intact but nothing else. The world around him was painted in ash, laughter sounded like screams, and even the calm seas felt treacherous. Justice, evil, morality—these words meant nothing to him now. All he knew was that the monsters had faces both tattooed with skulls and dressed in white coats.
Arthur had survived. But in the dark hours of the night, staring at his trembling hands, he often wondered if surviving was the cruelest fate of all.
The door rattled on its hinges as rough laughter drew near. Arthur's hand trembled around the hilt of his long-abandoned blade, its scabbard cracked with age and neglect. For years it had been nothing but an ornament of a life he wanted to forget, a relic that mocked him whenever his eyes strayed too long. Now it was heavy—too heavy—as though the steel carried the weight of every sin he had ever committed.
Franklin stood by the window, peering out into the moonlight. "They've docked at the bay. Fifteen, maybe twenty. Loud, sloppy, but armed. They'll bleed this village if no one stops them."
Arthur swallowed hard, his throat raw. His legs felt like sand, his chest constricted. He knew those pirates—no, not these men exactly, but men like them. Men who strutted with cruelty, whose joy was found in agony, whose songs were written in blood.
He could already hear it begin. Screams carried on the wind—the first villagers dragged from their homes, the first blows struck. A woman's wail broke across the night like glass.
Arthur staggered backward. His breathing was shallow, erratic. The walls twisted again, shadows lengthening. He was not in his shack anymore. He was back on the Grand Line, back on a ship where the deck was slick with blood, where the screams were endless, where officers watched and smiled.
"They're… already dead," Arthur muttered, clutching his head. "I can hear them. I can smell the burning. I can't… not again…"
Franklin turned sharply. His face, so often warm, now hardened with urgency. "Arthur! Look at me. They are not dead yet. Do you hear me? Not yet. But they will be if you don't move."
Arthur's knees buckled, his body trembling. He remembered everything: the boy torn from his mother's arms; the officer who crushed a man's skull with the butt of his rifle for disobedience; the villages razed under the banner of "justice." His hands burned with the ghosts of children he had shackled, of blood he had spilled.
"What good am I?" he whispered, almost pleading. "What good is a man who obeyed monsters? Who stood by? I'm no savior, Franklin. I'm a coward. A hypocrite."
Franklin strode to him, gripped his collar, and pulled him close, his voice low but fierce. "You're a man who knows the truth. That makes you more dangerous than any of them. The pirates will cut throats and drink to the sound. The Marines would do the same, but hide it under banners and ranks. You have seen both sides for what they are. That is why you can stand now. Because you are not blind."
Arthur's eyes brimmed with water, his breath ragged. His whole body screamed for retreat, for silence, for death even—anything but this. Yet Franklin's words rang like steel striking steel.
Another scream echoed outside, this time higher, shriller—a child's cry, silenced with a blow.
Arthur's body jolted. The sound ripped through him, tearing away the veil of memories and shoving him into the present. He remembered every child he could not save. Every pair of eyes that stared up at him, betrayed. Every hand he pried from his uniform, every mouth gagged, every sob cut short.
He could not let it repeat.
"Arthur," Franklin whispered, gripping his arm tight. "You can let the past choke you, or you can carve meaning into it. Stand. Now."
Arthur stood. Barely. His legs shook, his grip on the blade weak. But he stood.
The night outside was chaos. Lanterns burned as villagers fled into the trees, their cries piercing the darkness. Pirates stumbled through the square, armed with cutlasses and rifles, their laughter a grotesque harmony. One dragged a woman by her hair, kicking and screaming. Another slashed a man across the belly, cheering as he fell. The air reeked of smoke, sweat, and blood.
Arthur froze on the threshold, every nerve screaming. His heart pounded against his ribs like a prisoner trying to escape. The faces of the pirates blurred with the faces of those he had once fought—and those he had once served alongside. The laughter was the same. The cruelty was the same. It didn't matter if it was pirates or Marines. Monsters wore many uniforms.
His hands trembled violently. He wanted to turn, to retreat into the dark shack and let the village burn. Better that than to drown again in crimson.
Then Franklin's voice rang out behind him.
"You're not their executioner this time, Arthur. You're their shield. Remember that."
Arthur's jaw clenched. The words clawed at him, tore through the chains of his guilt. He stepped forward, blade in hand, his body shuddering with each motion.
The first pirate turned, a sneer curling his lip. "Well, well. Look what we've got here. An old dog with a rusty toy."
Arthur's mind fractured. He saw not a pirate, but a Marine lieutenant smirking as a village burned. He saw a drunken pirate captain toasting to slaughter. He saw every monster he had ever known, fused into one leering face.
Something inside him snapped.
The blade moved almost of its own accord. One strike—clumsy, desperate, but fueled by years of suppressed rage—and the pirate's throat split open. Blood sprayed across the dirt, hot and metallic, coating Arthur's hand. The man's laughter died in a gurgle.
Arthur staggered, staring at the crimson pouring down his arm. His stomach twisted, bile rising. Yet beneath the nausea was something else—an ember, a spark. Not triumph. Not joy. But the faint sense of purpose long buried.
The other pirates roared, weapons raised.
Arthur raised his blade again, his hands still trembling. He whispered to himself, almost prayer-like: "Not this time. Not again."
And as the horde closed in, Arthur stepped forward into the blood-soaked night.