The North Blue. A blizzard-whipped sea.
The Polar Tang was like a wounded white whale, laboring through the freezing, inky water.
"Alert! Port ballast tank flooding!"
"Number two propeller revs dropping!"
"Captain, if we go any deeper, the hull won't hold!"
Red warning lights strobed across the control room. Trafalgar Law braced himself against the main console, his face pale, a fine cold sweat beading at his temples. His right hand was clamped around Kikoku, knuckles white from the pressure.
In the past hour he had thrown up ROOM more than a dozen times. Shifting the submarine's position, slicing away sea mines that drifted too close, swapping cannonballs, even carving a few enemies who had made it onto the deck into bloodless human cubes.
But the Ope Ope no Mi exacts a toll. Every time he expanded ROOM, it was like draining marrow from his own bones.
"Captain! You're bleeding!"
Bepo scrambled to steady him, frantic.
Law wiped the blood from under his nose with the back of one hand. His eyes were locked on the navigation chart.
"Set course northwest."
"But Captain, there's nothing out there except an uninhabited winter island!"
"I know."
Law bit the word out, his voice hoarse. "That's our backup repair site. If we can just reach it, we can patch the ballast tank."
Bepo was near tears. "But they're still chasing us!"
Law didn't answer. He knew. And the ones chasing them were no ordinary gangsters.
The Donquixote Family.
A month ago, the Eclipse Pirates had stormed Punk Hazard, stolen critical World Government equipment, made off with a government scientist, and escaped right under an admiral's nose. Once the news of the Fifth Emperor's coronation had thundered across the seas, the underworld of the North Blue had begun to boil.
Several of Doflamingo's hidden operations had gone into emergency mode, scrambling to move assets, funds, and "merchandise."
In one of those underground clinics, Law had found it. The Amber Lead Syndrome research material from Flevance.
And a batch of sick children being peddled as test subjects.
He shouldn't have moved. Not yet. Not at this moment.
But when he saw the familiar white patches on their skin, the snow of the White City, from thirteen years ago, fell on him all over again.
So he carved that clinic apart. Saved the children. Took the research.
He didn't leave many bodies. He left walls, guns, and operating tables split cleanly into segments, along with several officers who had been cut into pieces and were still alive.
That kind of handiwork reeked of the Ope Ope no Mi. And the Donquixote Family already knew that the Amber Lead kid from the White City had somehow survived after Corazon stole that same Devil Fruit.
The moment the field intel reached Dressrosa, Doflamingo would understand. Law was back in the North Blue. He was exposed.
"Captain!"
Shachi's voice cut through the alarms.
"High-speed target approaching from above! The flying fat one, again!"
On the projection, a bloated figure was spinning his body like a propeller, hurtling through the blizzard.
Buffalo.
Law's gaze went flat.
A heartbeat later, the freezing sea tore open, and black torpedoes carved foaming trails straight for the Polar Tang.
"ROOM."
A pale blue hemisphere erupted outward. Law raised a hand.
"Shambles."
BOOM BOOM BOOM.
The torpedoes vanished an instant before impact and reappeared far across the sea, blasting towering columns of water into the sky.
But in the split second that the spray blinded them, a slender torpedo slipped through from the flank without a sound and slammed into the port hull.
CRACK.
The whole vessel lurched violently. Bepo went down hard, his head smacking the deck, tears bursting from his eyes.
"Secondary breach on the port hull! We can't go deeper!"
Law clutched his chest. A copper tang flooded the back of his throat.
"Surface."
"But..."
"Surface!"
Minutes later.
Whoosh.
The Polar Tang broke the surface and crashed down onto the churning, icy swells. In the distance, three black warships had locked the zone. On their sails, the twisted flamingo emblem of the family flickered through the storm.
On the lead ship's deck stood a man in a red cloak, his face marked with two sharp stripes, like a banner flapping in the wind.
Diamante.
"Behehehe, Law."
He had a Transponder Snail in hand, his grin gaudy and cruel.
"The young master says you don't get to die yet. That heart of yours, and that Ope Ope no Mi, are still family property."
Law stood on the submarine's top hatch, his hat pulled low. "I'm not a member of the Donquixote Family anymore."
"You really have the nerve to say that." Diamante clapped a hand over his heart in mock pain. "Who taught you how to hold a blade? How to kill? Who gave you a place to live?"
His smile went cold, degree by degree.
"You ran off with that traitor Corazon and swallowed the fruit the young master wanted most. Law, you didn't actually think the family would forget you just because you hid in the North Blue for a few years, did you?"
That name, Corazon, drove into the deepest part of Law's chest like an old knife.
"So Doflamingo sent you."
"Naturally." Diamante spread his arms wide. "The young master was planning to let you run free a little longer. But the times have changed. The Fifth Emperor has appeared. A World Government research facility crushed, and even the Five Elders couldn't stop that black ship. The young master says the seas are about to erupt. Which means we can't leave a precious Ope Ope no Mi like you out grazing anymore."
Law raised his right hand. "ROOM."
The blue space began to expand again. But before the hemisphere fully formed, his body swayed.
Diamante grinned. "Looks like you're running on fumes."
"Baby 5. Buffalo. Don't kill him. But that submarine? Feel free to scrap it."
High above, Buffalo bared his teeth.
On another ship, a girl in a maid's outfit bit down on her cigarette. Her arm shifted into a heavy cannon.
"Not allowed to kill him? So annoying."
The muzzle leveled at the Polar Tang's engine block.
Bepo planted himself in front of Law, trembling from head to toe, but he didn't take a step back. "You stay away from our ship!"
"Bepo. Get back."
Law raised Kikoku, forcing his breathing steady. "Shambles!"
Several enormous chunks of ice displaced into the shells' trajectory.
BOOM.
Fire and spray erupted.
But in that haze of water, Diamante was already riding a rippling steel flag straight at him.
"Crescent Moon Funeral."
The pliable blade snapped rigid, a vicious arc of sword pressure carved toward Law's shoulder.
CLANG.
Law blocked with a horizontal guard. The impact drove him back several paces, his boots skidding sparks across the hatch.
"Your swordsmanship, Law. I taught you that." Diamante's voice was a snake slithering right next to him. "How much do you think you've really improved over the years?"
THUD.
A heavy kick smashed into Law's stomach. He slammed against the hatch, coughing up blood.
"Captain!"
Bepo lunged forward but was swatted away by Buffalo diving from above. The glow of Baby 5's cannon flared again.
Law ground his teeth and wrung out the last dregs of his stamina. "ROOM!"
Blue light washed over the sea once more. His intent was to transfer the Polar Tang, his crew and all, to the shore of that uninhabited island.
Diamante had been waiting for exactly that.
"Matador's Cape."
A sheet of steel, as pliant as cloth, whipped out and coiled around Law's arm like a serpent. "Got you."
ROOM stuttered violently and shattered into a scatter of blue motes. The Polar Tang had lost its final escape.
Baby 5's shell shrieked through the air.
And then the whole coastline fell silent.
Where the shell descended, the ground had become a deep brown swamp. The round that should have blown the engine block apart touched that mire and sank without a sound. No explosion. No flame. Like a bottomless mouth had swallowed it whole.
Diamante looked down.
The earth was melting.
No. Not melting. The entire shoreline of the barren island was turning into a living bog.
From deep within that sludge, a low voice rolled upward.
"Hey."
"You're interrupting my practice."
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