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“Promise me you won’t go off script.”
“I told you already, I promise.”
Sabo fought with an ill-fitting workman’s cap, which despite his best efforts to pummel into submission did not want to sit nicely on his head. It was new and stiff, without any of the give of his usual tophat. He heard Koala give a nearly inaudible sigh. Standing on her tiptoes she swiped it out of his hands, giving him just enough time to bend down so she could force it on, pulling the bill so low it nearly covered his eyes.
And his scar.
“When did you get so damn tall?” she groused.
“I’m perfectly average, thank you very much,” Sabo said. “You’re just short.”
Koala punched his arm a little harder than was necessary, but he got her to smile. A real, honest-to-god smile, and not the strained bastardization she resorted to when she was nervous. “Seriously, Koala,” he said. “They gave us a cupcake of a mission.”
“We’re going in alone. There won’t be any backup this time around,” she pointed out.
Sabo scoffed, “Hack will be a snailphone call away, not that we’ll need him just to make a delivery. We’ll be fine.”
“I will be fine,” Koala corrected, jabbing her finger into his chest. “It’s you they don’t trust not to run off towards the nearest explodables.”
“That was one time! How was I supposed to know that ship was transporting gunpowder?”
“I rest my case.”
She took a step back and looked Sabo with a critical eye. He considered making a quip about how cute she looked dressed up like a little peasant girl out running errands, but decided he would rather start his first solo mission without any conspicuous bruising.
It was a simple enough job, all things considered. The Revolution had gotten wind of a few nasty rumors regarding some upstart nobleman on the Isle of Doulos and sent an agent to infiltrate the household, who was now in need of some extra reconnaissance equipment that Koala and Sabo were to smuggle in to the estate.
“I’m not going to screw this up,” Sabo promised for what felt like the dozenth time. “I don’t plan on having Hack babysit me forever so might as well show them we have what it takes, right?”
“Right.” Koala adjusted his collar before giving her final nod of approval. “Remember, we absolutely cannot blow Bunny Joe’s cover. So no hitting douchebags in the face.”
“I won’t,” Sabo promised for the thirteenth time. He paused. “I mean, unless they really deserve it.”
Sabo set sail to Doulos with a sore arm, but it was worth it to hear her laugh.
There had been some question on how the Revolution would smuggle supplies into the mansion of Lord Chandler, the newly-minted nobleman who had been promoted from the merchant class after performing some service to the crown. Preliminary scouting missions reported an exceptionally thorough snailphone system that covered every inch of the nobleman’s vast estate. Stealth was technically possible, but it would be difficult to sneak around without arousing suspicion.
Further surveillance uncovered a surprisingly simple solution: Supplies from the nearby port city were often delivered by children the same age as Sabo and Koala. All they had to do was get in, drop off a few snails of their own, and get out again.
It wasn’t exciting, or brimming with danger and glory. The Revolution was still treating Sabo and Koala like children even though they’d been around longer than most of the adults, training and studying for the day they could officially join Dragon’s army.
“This is almost embarrassingly easy,” Sabo complained as he carefully loaded a cart left by other agents in the area. Beside him, Koala was readying the donkey that would lead them to their glorious future.
“Would you rather get a free pass?” Koala asked. “There’s already talk about how you get preferential treatment. Boss doesn’t give out one on one lessons to everybody, you know.”
“Talk? From who?” Sabo asked.
Koala gestured vaguely. “You know, people. Is this really the best time to be talking about this?”
“No. And I don’t want any free passes, either,” Sabo said. He took the reigns from Koala and helped boost her into the cart.
“I know that, the boss knows that. Everyone who matters knows that.” Koala’s expression softened, and she placed a calming hand on his forearm. Sabo forced himself to relax, not wanting her to feel the tension that had him all wound up and irritable.
“Yeah, well, I’m going to prove it. Yee-freaking-haw.”
It was a pleasant trip, the air of the spring island crisp and cool while the sun danced its way through a cloudy sky. Sabo and Koala picked their way through town and out into the countryside where Lord Chandler’s estate was nestled between rolling green hills, away from the polluted pall of the city and the dirty peasants who lived there. It was about an hour of slow, deliberate plodding on a bumpy and unpaved road, but time with Koala always seemed to fly twice as fast. Their most arduous task was trying to lead the stubborn donkey pulling their cart.
“I think he takes after you,” Koala teased.
“I’d like to see you do better.”
And so she did.
Their first roadblock came at the estate itself. Koala knew better than to lead them through the main entrance, following down a well-worn servant’s path farther back. A burly security guard who seemed to have more muscles than brains manned the gate, and at the sight of them looked down at his clipboard and frowned.
“I don’t have any deliveries scheduled for today.”
“We were only called for this morning,” Sabo said. “We probably didn’t make it on your list.”
He flashed his most winsome smile while Koala gave a small nod in agreement. The guardsman’s frown deepened, and he squinted harder at his clipboard as if it would spontaneously give him the answer he was looking for.
“Who ordered the delivery?” he asked after a long moment of thought.
Sabo shrugged. “Some guy named Joe, I guess? We were only told to bring the stuff over to the kitchens.”
He climbed to the back of the cart and showed the guard their wares: A dozen bags of flour, sugar, and other staples, plus a few rarer items imported just that day from a faraway island they could pass off as the reason for the emergency delivery.
“I don’t know…” the guardsman said, stretching the know so long it nearly broke in two.
Sabo was not about ready to have his first mission waylaid by some no-name grunt. He took a deep breath, gearing himself to launch into another argument when he was interrupted.
“What seems to be a problem here?”
Sabo turned sharply toward the voice. All the color left the guard’s face as a newcomer slid out from the shadows of the gate, seeming to glide across the ground as if he were a glob of human-shaped oil instead of a real person. He wore an expression that could technically be described as a smile, provided whoever was doing the describing was blind, standing very far away, and had never known the pleasure of genuine human kindness.
It took a small measure of effort for Sabo not to recoil in disgust as the newcomer observed both Sabo and Koala through heavily lidded eyes. There was something eerie about his expression, magnified by a pair of the palest blue eyes Sabo had ever seen in his life, so clear as to be nearly devoid of color. His gaze flitted from Koala, to Sabo – lingering a moment his scars – before returning to Koala and staying there. His lips stretched to reveal a few more teeth, and it took every scrap of Sabo’s will not to break his promise and punch him in his big, leering face.
Koala, bless her, feigned a look of desperate pleading. “Please, sir, we just want to make our delivery and go home.”
Only Sabo heard the sarcastic edge in her servile tone. The newcomer took another gliding step, the guardsman instinctively shying away as he got too close for comfort. “Ah, yes. The extra supplies for our guests tonight. You’re early.” He made a motion like he were batting away an annoying fly. “Hurry up and let them in. You’re causing a scene.”
“Yes, sir!”
Koala and Sabo exchanged a look of surprise, but they didn’t have any time for anything else as the guardsman snapped at them, “You heard the man, get a move on! You’re causing a scene!”
The newcomer’s eyes never left them as they made their way toward the kitchens. Sabo could feel him boring a hole into his back even as they disappeared out of sight.
For as long as Sabo could remember, he had a cat’s instincts for people. He was able to decipher tells with uncanny accuracy, the little pushes and pulls of body language that said more than words ever did. It was something that came to Sabo naturally, but he didn’t think it was Haki. Dragon had taught him some of that, too, and while the ability to Observe had its roots in the same place deep in his subconsciousness they were not the same.
Sabo was one of the only people in the world who could tell when Koala was only pretending to smile. He could read the minute changes in Dragon’s expression to know if he was pleased or upset. He could look at two strangers and dissect the power dynamics between them after only a few minutes of observation, and he didn’t need a Devil Fruit or any supernatural willpower to do it.
It got him into trouble more often than not, his instinctual gut reactions making him act without thinking, but he never regretted plowing ahead when he knew in his heart of hearts he was right. The Revolutionary Army was in the middle of a war; they didn’t have time to wait around for opportunities that would never open up if someone didn’t force the issue.
“Don’t,” Koala hissed under her breath. “I know what you’re thinking. Do not go off-script.”
“Do you see Joe anywhere?” Sabo asked serenely, the picture of perfect innocence. “I don’t want to lay this stuff out where anyone can find it. Someone should go look for him.”
Before Sabo could move, Koala’s hand was around his bicep, her grip tighter than an iron vice. “I swear to whatever god cares to listen, I will murder you in the most painful way I can imagine. For once in your life, listen to me: There’s someone already here investigating. We know there’s some bad juju here and there are measures in place to take care of it.”
“Not fast enough, by the looks of it.”
He felt rather than saw Koala’s reaction, his gaze straight ahead to the men and women scurrying around Lord Chandler’s estate at the same frenzied pace as a colony of ants whose nest had just been overturned. The servants had their heads ducked low, hurrying from one place to another like they were scared to be caught loitering. No one had the time to make small talk with one another. No one seemed to be happy at all.
“Who do you think the guests are for tonight?” Sabo asked, his voice barely carrying the distance between himself and Koala. “There wasn’t anything about that in the report.”
“Maybe it was need-to-know, and we didn’t,” Koala said.
“Or maaaybe something’s going on. Joe really should have been here by now,” Sabo said. “If we stick around much longer someone’s going to kick us out.”
He kicked a pebble at his feet for emphasis. It dinged against the side of the great building Lord Chandler used as his kitchens, the heat of a dozen ovens making the air ripple and haze. He hated waiting out in the open like this. It was hard enough trying not to be conspicuous with his face half-fried. They might as well have flashing signs over their heads saying that they didn’t belong.
“Then I’ll go look for him,” Koala said. “You stay here and guard our stuff.”
“But…”
Koala silenced him with a raised finger. “Do you even know the right staff person to ask?” She allowed him a moment to answer, and when he couldn’t said, “Exactly. Of the two of us, I have the most experience with…with this kind of thing.”
Her mouth twisted in a way that meant she had unwittingly dredged to the surface the horrors of her childhood. Koala shook herself slightly, like a dog would to dry off, and immediately her more familiar smile was back.
Sabo hated when she looked like that, more than he hated the possibility of flubbing his first mission. “You’re right, you’re right. I’ll be a good boy and stay put.”
Koala’s soft, lilting laughter lifted the dour atmosphere of the estate, if only for a moment. “I doubt that.”
She bounded off towards the servant’s entrance, moving with a warrior’s poise and grace. She would have to work on that if they ever went deep undercover; a layman would never notice, but an experienced fighter would and might ask questions they dare not answer.
Sabo was tucking that tidbit in the back of his mind when he saw a blur of color at the edge of his vision. The scarring on his bad eye rendered him nearly blind on that side, and by the time he got turned around the weird man with the blue eyes was nearly at his cart.
“Sorry, sir, we’ll be out of your way as soon as we can,” Sabo chirped in his most simpering tone. “Just trying to find who we’re supposed to drop this off with. It’ll only be a moment more.”
The hairs on the back of Sabo’s neck prickled as he felt the Presence of three others walking up behind him. A quick glance showed that none of them were Bunny Joe, and Sabo didn’t trust the strange man’s smile any more than he had before.
He took a deep breath to calm his racing heart, remembering countless lessons with Hack and Koala and Dragon. He couldn’t lose control. Sabo felt his focus narrow as adrenaline hummed in his veins, sharpening every detail to its finest point.
The strange man stood directly in front of him, while three of the estate’s security detail formed a half-circle at Sabo’s back. Blue Eyes was empty handed, but the rest either held guns or wore them at their hips.
“Does there seem to be a problem, sir?” Sabo asked. Too late he remembered that he was supposed to be a normal city boy making a delivery, and the question came out more impertinent than fearful.
It seemed Koala wasn’t the only one who needed practice.
“Walk with me, boy,” Blue Eyes said. “I think I know where to find your friend.”
Sabo took a sharp breath. He had a split second to make his decision, and a not-so-small part of him wanted to fight. The mission was obviously compromised and Bunny Joe missing, and he’d foolishly allowed himself to be separated from his partner with no easy way to get into contact with her.
A voice that sounded suspiciously like Koala’s told him to wait. There was no turning back once he decided to turn things into a slug fest. There were still too many questions he didn’t have answers to; if there was a chance of salvaging anything out of the mission he should take it. For the Revolution’s sake and his own curiosity.
“Um, okay. Sure thing, boss.” Sabo jumped down from the cart, carefully palming the baby snailphone hidden under the bench as he did so. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he shuffled forward with his head ducked low and his shoulders rolled in defensively.
The Blue-Eyed man’s eyebrows crept up toward his hairline. “Hands where I can see them. I’ll not have any funny business now.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but have I done something wrong?” Sabo asked. “It’s just…you see, my sister’s the worrying type, and she’s going to wonder where I’ve gone.”
“I assure you, your sister is in the best of hands,” he said, before giggling at his own poor attempt at a joke.
Blood thundered in Sabo’s ears, and he couldn’t stop a smile of his own, feral and just as unnerving as the one worn by the man who stood before him. Sabo got the satisfaction of seeing something that was very close to fear flash across Blue Eyes’ face, quickly covered by an imperious mask of self-importance.
Sabo was shoved forward while guardsmen came on either side, boxing him in and marching him away from the kitchens, his cart, and Koala. All of a sudden they were alone; the servants had decided it was best to batten down and wait for the storm to pass.
“Who are you?” Sabo asked. “Lord Chandler won’t be happy to see you interfering with his business.”
The man laughed a cruel and terrible laugh, high-pitched and cold like iron scraping against ice. His guardsmen aped him like a trio of trained monkeys, their low guffaws a mocking harmony. Sabo’s stomach sank when he realized his mistake. He should have known an ass of such massive proportions had to be titled.
“The better question is who are you?” Lord Chandler hissed once he regained control of his facilities. He bent close enough to Sabo that he started seeing double. “Who sent you? Was it El Jefe, or that upstart LeBlanc? I’ll have my answers one way or another; if you’re smart you’ll save me the trouble of beating them out of you.”
“And I told you, sir, I’m just here making a delivery,” Sabo said.
He saw the blow coming in time to turn his head with the hit, but Lord Chandler’s fist still caught enough of his nose to bloody it. Sabo dutifully let his head snap back. He didn’t really know how much to fake it, but erred on the side of caution. The supercilious grin that spread across Lord Chandler’s face as Sabo pretended to writhe in pain told him all he needed to know. The bastard was the kind of man who liked hurting people, and Sabo wasn’t the least bit surprised when he followed it up with a blow to his solar plexus.
This time Sabo didn’t need to feign a wheeze as all the air was forcibly excavated from his lungs.
Lord Chandler rubbed his knuckles. “The first was for your cheek. The second was for making me touch you.” He gestured for his guards. “Come along. I’ve wasted too much time already.”
Sabo drug his feet, making them work for every inch. Somewhere along the way the ill-fitting hat fell off of his head and floated gently to the ground, accompanying the trail of blood that would lead Koala to wherever these idiots were taking him.
A curtain of hair fell over Sabo’s eyes and obscured his mad grin. This wasn’t over. Not by a longshot.
Sabo had to applaud Lord Chandler’s ingenuity. He kept his prisoners in a slaughterhouse.
He smelled it before he saw it, the metallic stink of warm blood that never went away no matter how often the floors were scrubbed clean. The building itself was unassuming and plain, windowless, made of concrete with a roof of corrugated tin. Sabo was grateful for the island’s mild climate, but once he was forced inside there was no circulation to help keep cool. The air was stale and suffocating, and while the deadly machinery had been removed the long, narrow corridors remained. A true death row.
Sabo could hear other prisoners through the thin walls. He expanded his senses and thought he felt the Presence of fifteen, maybe twenty people in total. Did Lord Chandler really have that many enemies, or was he snuffing out competition? His noble title was still sparkling new, after all. Maybe he was afraid of losing it.
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my years of business, it’s the importance of taking a hands-on approach,” Lord Chandler said in a conversational tone. He rolled up his sleeves past his elbows with deliberate slowness, savoring each moment. “That’s the problem with nobles these days, they’re afraid to get their hands dirty. But I’ve made an effort not to forget my roots.”
Sabo braced himself, not for any sort of blow, but the pain of the pretentious monologue he was certain was coming his way. He was considering saying something rude in hopes of making Lord Chandler shut up and hit him, but was saved the effort by the unexpected ring of the snailphone.
The snailphone that was currently in his pocket.
The snailphone that Lord Chandler did not know he was carrying.
Blue eyes narrowed into slits. “Search him!”
“Left pocket,” Sabo said with a longsuffering sigh.
One of the thugs growled in a way he probably thought was intimidating and forced one of his meaty paws into Sabo’s pants pocket. He looked at the baby snail as if he’d never seen a phone before in his life, causing Lord Chandler to bark, “Well, answer it, you buffoon!”
The guard did as he was told. He listened to the voice on the other end, thick eyebrows growing closer and closer together, and after a moment said, “Boss, it’s for you.”
Lord Chandler snatched the phone out of his hands and shouted into the receiver, “Who is this?!”
Sabo would have loved to hear what was said on the other end, but after a moment Lord Chandler’s face went ghost-white. He lowered the phone inch by inch, before suddenly thrusting it into one of his men’s hands. He rushed out of the slaughterhouse without saying a word, either of warning or instruction, and it was clear that without being told his guardsmen had no idea what to do.
“Uh, boss…?”
“See, that’s the problem with doing everything yourself,” Sabo said. “A leader has to trust their underlings to do their job when they’re not around. Unfortunately, you’re just not up to the task.”
Sabo was moving before they had time to even process what he said. He broke out of their hold effortlessly, not even bothering with covering his fist with haki before ramming it into the nearest face. He had a brief moment of yearning for his metal pipe before thrusting his palm beneath the jaw of another. The third tripped over his own feet trying to run away, and Sabo decided to help him down, palming the back of his head and smashing his face into the concrete floor.
He took a step back, surveying his handiwork. They were all alive and twitching, so he took advantage of the abattoir aesthetic, wrapping them in the chains hanging from the ceiling. The hooks once used when draining blood of freshly slaughtered animals long-since repurposed with iron shackles.
Iron shackles. The idiot didn’t even invest in proper sea stone cuffs.
“Amateur,” Sabo muttered to himself. He wiped the blood from his nose with the back of his hand and went in search of Bunny Joe.
He found him in the locker, standing over an uneasy group of prisoners. There weren’t enough rooms for individual cells or even chains to bind them all, so they were kept together in one huddled mass.
For a moment Sabo was irritated that Joe hadn’t freed himself of such a pathetic prison. The man himself was talking quietly to a young woman, wide-eyed and trembling like a frightened doe, and Sabo forced his annoyance down. There were some things that were more important.
“Hiya, Joe!” Sabo said cheerfully. “Lovely place you’ve got here.”
Joe whirled around. Confusion flashed across his face, before his eyes lit up with recognition. “Oh, hey. You’re the boss’s brat. What are you doing here?”
“Trying to find you,” Sabo said. “What’s going on? Chandler’s goons jumped me ‘n Koala before we had a chance to explain ourselves.”
Joe muttered a string of expletives and drew a hand over his forehead. “He got me early this morning. Must have seen me snooping someplace I shouldn’t and decided to tag you too. I’m so sorry, kid. I’ll get you out of this mess here in a bit.” A pause. “Wait, you said there was someone else with you? Where are they?”
“With a little bit of luck, out causing chaos and mayhem,” Sabo said.
“That’s no good. I need to get you guys out of here before the auction tonight.”
At the word auction the woman beside him burst into tears. Sabo saw her wobble like jelly, before the strength left her legs entirely and she collapsed into a sobbing mess on the ground. Bunny Joe knelt beside her and started rubbing her back in slow, steady circles.
“I’m going to get you all out of here, I promise. I need you to stay strong for me for just a little bit longer. Okay?”
She nodded, and Joe helped her stand with tears still streaming down her face. Taking her by the elbow, he led her back to the other prisoners. “I need to, uh, confer with my colleague for a moment. We’ll sort things out and get you home.”
“This was my home,” she whispered hoarsely.
Her expression crumpled into a look of wretched misery, and she buried her head in her hands. Joe handed her off to another one of the women, an older, matronly-type, his motions stiff and awkward. He returned to Sabo rubbing the back of his neck.
“I’m no good at this sort of thing,” he admitted. “But I couldn’t just leave them here.”
“Lord Chandler’s hosting an auction?” Sabo said. It took enormous effort not to start shouting, the spark of his previous indignation ignited into a roaring fire of fury and rage.
“An art auction, yeah. It’s his third in the last two months.”
“I don’t get it.”
Bunny Joe sighed, scratched temple and tried to explain. “Chandler was a smuggler, yeah? And a damn good one at that. He opened up all sorts of illegal trade on this part of the Grand Line under the name Mr. Mooneyes.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve heard in my entire life,” Sabo said.
“Yeah, well, the king turned a blind eye so long as he got his piece of the pie. That was how Chandler earned his title, and now that he’s got it he’s decided to expand his business.”
He looked back at the people behind him. “Auctions are the perfect way to get dirty money clean, and art is easy because the value of any given piece is so subjective. You know, the eye of the beholder, that sort of thing. I was digging through old records, and nearly every piece sold was going for about B500,000. I thought that was a little suspicious, so I tried to find out who was buying, but Chandler runs a tight ship. Everything’s anonymous, supposedly to protect the buyer and their new investment.”
“So you tried to find out who the buyers were.”
“And apparently got caught doing it,” Joe said wearily. “Sorry, I didn’t think he’d go as far as gathering up you guys. I’ll make sure you get home safe.”
“I don’t need your protection. What I need to know is what’s your plan to blow this out of the water, and what can I do to help. Lord Chandler isn’t going to stay away for long, and my guess is he’s going to bring reinforcements. We need to be ready when he does.”
Joe peered down at Sabo as if he were seeing him for the first time. “You’re serious about this, aren’t you?”
“Deadly.” Sabo said. “And here’s our backup now.”
Sabo felt Koala’s Presence before he saw her dance into the locker. She faltered for the briefest moment at the sight of the room before quickly finding Sabo and Joe. She didn’t appear seriously hurt, but it was impossible for Sabo not to see the blood on her knuckles. He wondered who it belonged to.
“I assume that was your work at the entrance? You were always good at tying people up.” Koala said.
“And I assume you were the one who called me?”
“I was surprised when you didn’t answer, but I think it worked out better this way,” Koala said, a look of pure wickedness on her face. “I wish I could have seen Chandler’s expression when I told him someone knocked out his surveillance system.”
“And Hack?”
“I convinced him to hold off just a little bit longer. He’s at the harbor now snooping around the ships coming into port. Hopefully he can identify a few of the people on Chandler’s guestlist for tonight.”
She brushed a stray hair out of her face and scanned the room, noting each detail with a methodicalness that Sabo was oftentimes jealous of. “But that’s enough about me. What’s all this?”
“A slave market,” Sabo said. “Seems like that’s how Lord Chandler is making money these days, with the approval of the crown.”
Her eyes hardened, the bright blue of her irises frosting over with an icy coldness. Her lips pursed together into a nearly invisible line, every muscle in her small body tensing. It was so rare to see her truly angry Sabo had almost forgotten how scary she could be when she was. Bunny Joe took an involuntary step back as fury radiated off her in waves.
“The auction is this afternoon, and I don’t think Chandler can afford to cancel. Not with so many VIPs coming in from all over the Grand Line,” Joe said. “But he’ll be ready. How bad did you mess up his snails?”
“It won’t be back up anytime soon,” Koala said tersely. “And I’ve brought you all a present.”
Without waiting for their response Koala turned sharply on one heel and walked back to the corridor near the entrance. Sitting next to the three guardsmen strung up from the ceiling was a man who’d been stripped down to his skivvies and hogtied, his clothes folded neatly beside him. Sabo almost laughed. “Who is he?”
“A visiting prince from the Moorlands,” Koala said. “I assume he came for the festivities later today.”
At the sight of them, the prince tried to yell into his gag. Sabo knelt down and picked up the man’s waistcoat with his thumb and forefinger, holding it away from his body as if it were diseased. “Is there a reason you decided to strip him?”
“He looked to be your size. Had this in his pocket.”
Koala handed him a card written on thick stock paper, the words TICKET OF INVITATION written in fancy script. Sabo took it from her skeptically. “His Lordship knows what I look like.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Joe said. “Everything is done anonymously. They wear masks.”
“It’s in there somewhere, just keep digging,” Koala said.
Sabo found a porcelain carnival mask, white a black domino pattern around the eyes, trimmed in gold. “Oh my god, it’s hideous.” He grinned up at her.
“I’ll take it.”
The clothes didn’t feel all that different from what he usually wore, albeit in black instead of his usual blue. Koala had even found him a silk cravat to tie around his neck. But Sabo felt stiff, like he was wearing someone else’s skin.
He had to remember to walk like he had a stick up his ass, to look down at everyone else like they were bits of mud to be scrapped off of his polished boots. He stood in the spacious halls of Lord Chandler’s mansion, taking in the marble columns and the shiny crystal chandeliers, the smell of sandalwood in the air.
Even with his invitation he was afraid of someone seeing his disheveled hair, or that a guard would somehow see through the mask to see the imposter that lay beneath. The scars on his face and shoulder itched every time someone so much as glanced at him.
Security had been tripled, both inside and out of the mansion, but was thickest around the ballroom where the auction would take place. After a moment of consideration Sabo bypassed it. As fun as it would be to disrupt the auction itself, the risk of getting caught was too great. Sabo was distinctly aware that they were running out of time, seconds ticking off the clock in the back of his mind. Following the directions left by Bunny Joe, he walked up a winding wrought-iron staircase to the second level of the mansion. A servant gave him a questioning look that Sabo dismissed with an aristocratic flick of the wrist. He ignored the stammared apology, stomach curling with guilt.
He hated acting like this. Hated more how good he was at it.
Sabo’s foul mood had nearly reached a boiling point by the time he reached the upper foyer. He tempered the burning fire of his rage into something useful, concentrating it till it was like a ball of molten iron beneath his breastbone. Two guards in white masks stood at attention by rich mahogany doors. At the sight of him they shifted their rifles, ready to raise them at a moment’s notice.
“No guests on the second floor,” one barked.
“But I have an invitation,” Sabo protested.
“No guests on the second floor.”
Sabo’s fraying temper snapped. “I don’t think you know who you’re dealing with.”
He was moving before they had time to exchange looks of confusion, twisting a hand into a dragon’s claw. Haki coating his arm black, he struck the middle of the rifle. Wood snapped into splinters under his hand, metal warping and bending with the force of the blow. The guardsman was thrown backward, head cracking against the doorpost. Pivoting sharply, Sabo grabbed a fistful of the second guardsman’s uniform. With a roar of fury he hurled him into the door with as much force as he could muster.
The door didn’t break, but the guard did. Shaking his head, Sabo stepped over him and jiggled the handle. Locked. Sabo cracked his knuckles as he surveyed the door, rolling the stiffness out of his shoulders.
One hit to break the lock. Another to blow the door off of its hinges. Mr. Mooneyes himself stood at a table at the center of the room in abject shock, the remnants clattering at his feet. His security was a little better, but Sabo hadn’t spent the past two years training with Dragon to be beaten by a handful of scrubs.
The last man fell before Lord Chandler could make his escape. Sabo grabbed him by the back of the waistcoat and whirled him around, pinning him up against the wall in the same fluid motion. Somewhere in the scrum the mask had fallen off of his face, and Lord Chandler’s eyes widened in recognition.
“Ha…You won’t get away with this,” Lord Chandler said, gasping for air. He looked down at Sabo with those clear, soulless eyes, a terrible grin twisting his face into something that was more monster than man.
“I think I will,” Sabo said.
“Marines are coming,” Lord Chandler said. “They’ll get you and the girl. No one will come to rescue you when you’re locked in Impel Down. I bet they have her already. I hope they make the little bitch suff–achgh!”
Somewhere along the line Sabo’s hand had found his neck and began squeezing. “I think you’ll find that girl doesn’t need rescuing. Now tell me, who are your buyers? Who’s letting the slave trade expand this far from Mariejois?!”
“Hypocrite” Lord Chandler sneered. “Hubris like yours stinks of the Revolution. Where do you think Dragon gets his weapons? His supplies? Men like me…like my benefactor…are the grease that turns the wheel of society. My father always said you need a little bit of shit to make the garden grow, so don’t pretend you’re innocent. What sort of monster sends children out to do his dirty work?”
“What sort of monster puts free men and women in chains for profit?” Sabo spat through gritted teeth. “I’m not going to ask again, who’s the one letting you get away with it?!”
Lord Chandler laughed a dry, wheezy laugh. “Someone bigger and scarier than you. I’ll not breathe a word, boy, to you or your Revolution, so you might as well end this charade and kill me now.”
Before Sabo could answer, the snailphone in his pocket started to ring. At the sound of it, Lord Chandler cackled like a madman. “You’re too late, little Revolutionary. You should have known better than to challenge me when the World Government is on my side.”
Sabo kept one hand wrapped around Lord Chandler’s neck as he answered the phone. “What is it? I’m a little busy here.”
“We need to get out of here now,” Koala said. “Hack and I have the ship ready and Joe’s just about got the last of the slaves on board, but there’s half a dozen marine ships coming in hard. We’ll hold them off as long as we can, but they outgun us by…a lot.”
“I’ll divert their attention here,” Sabo said.
Hack’s voice cut in past Koala’s protests. “Sabo, you’ve done enough. It’s time to cut our losses and–”
“I’m going to burn it to the ground.”
Sabo hung up the phone. He looked at Lord Chandler like he were a newly discovered insect he was about to pin onto a specimen board. “I’ll admit, you’re clever. Joe said you have a code during your auctions, a whole system for bidding so that an outsider looking in would have no idea what was really going on. What was it, oil paintings if they were women, acrylics for men, that sort of thing? I have to wonder why even bother with all the subterfuge if the World Government is really on your side.”
Lord Chandler opened his mouth to answer, but Sabo stopped him with a little bit of pressure against his windpipe. “I didn’t say you could talk. See, I’d say you were scared of the Revolution, but you didn’t even suspect us to start with. You’ve got enough goons here and the approval of your king, which makes me think it’s not the local competition you’re worried about. You’ve got too many resources for them to ever be a true threat.”
Sabo leaned closer. “The slave market’s pretty much a one man show these days. You were a smuggler once, right? I’m sure you’ve heard who’s in charge.”
A spasm passed over Lord Chandler, all-but-confirming Sabo’s gut instinct.
“I’m going to give you one last shot,” Sabo said, his voice as soft as velvet. “Either you come with me and tell us everything you know, or I leave you here for Joker to take care of. You have thirty seconds to decide.”
Sabo dropped Lord Chandler with an unceremonious thud. He kept half an eye on him while making a quick sweep of the room, gathering up any sort of documentation that looked to be important and stuffing it down the front of his shirt.
Everything else he gathered into a pile. Sabo found the nearest candle and carefully lowered the wicking flame. The paper caught, curling to black ash and smoke.
He would have to help it along if he wanted to make good on his promise to Koala, but Sabo figured he could spare the time to make it work. He turned back to where Lord Chandler sat whimpering in a corner.
“Time’s up, your Lordship. What do you decide?”
“Wanted for kidnapping, assault, and impersonating a noble.”
Koala slipped Sabo’s newly-minted bounty from between the pages for closer inspection before handing him the rest of the paper. “I thought you would be happy. Why are you not happy?”
“I don’t know,” Sabo admitted. He propped his head on his hand and scanned the news, trying to read between the lines of lies to find the truth that lay underneath. “It was all…vaguely unsatisfying.”
“You burned down a mansion.”
“I burn down things all the time. I wanted something…more. Something meaningful.”
Koala quirked an eyebrow. “Saving eighteen people from slavery isn’t meaningful?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I’m not sure I do.
Sabo set down the paper and looked at her helplessly. A bandage covered one cheek from an errant bullet, a result of her staving off the marines long enough for everyone to escape.
He felt himself getting angry all over again, but it was an impotent anger. They’d completed their mission, but it wasn’t enough.
It would never be enough.
“Lord Chandler’s one man. One. He’s not even that important in the grand scheme of things. How many others are out there just like him, trying to get their piece of the pie because the Government says it’s okay to sell people like chattel? He’s a symptom, not the disease.”
He tried to go back to his paper, but after a few seconds feeling Koala’s eyes piercing into his side gave up and tossed it aside. He leaned his chair back on two legs and groaned. “I want to do more. Go higher. Punch more dochebags in the face.”
“And you will.”
Both Koala and Sabo whirled around where Dragon’s massive body filled the doorway. How he managed to be so sneaky in a base full of Observation Haki users Sabo would never know.
“I’ve gone over Bunny Joe’s report. You commended yourselves well, both of you.”
Koala bowed her head. “Thank you, sir.”
“When’s our next mission?” Sabo asked at the same time.
Dragon’s lips quirked in one of his almost-smiles. “Now. It turns out Mr. Mooneyes made sure to get dirt on each of his clients as a means of protecting himself. With this information, we’ll be able to climb a little bit closer to our goals. Now go pack your bags, you leave tonight with the tide.”
Sabo let out a whoop of joy and jumped to his feet, but before he could make a mad dash to his room Dragon placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Patience. A lion may stalk for hours waiting for the perfect time to strike. Our work will not be in vain. The Celestial Dragons will fall.”
Sabo nodded once, sharply. “And I’ll make sure to be there when it happens