The interior of the submarine thrummed with a low, mechanical groan, a constant reminder of the beating it had taken during their escape from Lagoonia. In the dim glow of the console lights, Marya Zaleska sat cross-legged on the floor, the leather of her Heart Pirates jacket creaking softly with her movements. The steady, rhythmic scrape of stone on metal filled the space. In her hands, Nisshoku shimmering with every stroke, its obsidian blade a slit of absolute darkness against the world. Each deliberate stroke of the whetstone along its cursed edge released a faint, whispering chime, like a distant bell tolling at the bottom of the sea.
Across the cramped hold, a ritual of a far sillier nature was unfolding.
"Aaaand… open wide for the victorious commander!" sang Sanza Kaplan Figarland, holding aloft a cracker smeared with nut butter. He stood on a crate, his mop of unruly red hair nearly brushing the pipes overhead, his Gallagher eyebrows waggling with theatrical glee.
Jelly "Giggles" Squish wobbled eagerly below, his massive, starry eyes wide, his translucent blue body jiggling in anticipation. "Bloop! Yummy time!"
"Victory is mine, you gelatinous simpleton!" Sanza proclaimed, and brought the cracker swooping down. Just as Jelly's mouth, a cheerful gash of white, stretched to engulf it, Sanza's hand snapped back with a flourish. The cracker vanished behind his back. "Psych! The supreme commander's treat, I think!"
Jelly's face collapsed into a wibbling pout, glittery tears welling at the corners of his eyes. "Awwww… salty!"
Sanza cackled, a surprisingly rich sound for an eight-year-old, and repeated the process. He was on his fourth feint, each one more elaborate than the last, each giggle from Jelly's subsequent disappointment more musical. Marya watched from the corner of her golden, hawk-like eye, a faint, almost imperceptible smirk touching her lips. The boy's arrogance was a given, a product of Celestial Dragon breeding, but this playfulness was new. It was annoying, childish, and yet… not entirely unpleasant. It was a distraction, but a harmless one.
Her focus returned to her sword. The act of sharpening was meditation, a practice in mindless mediative actions. She felt the minute imperfections in the blade's void-forged edge not through sight, but through the resonant vibration in her palms, a philosophy ingrained deeper than memory. The black void-veins on her arms, a permanent map of her curse, see pulsed in time with the whispers of the stone.
A new vibration intruded. Not from the blade, but from the corner where Vesta Lavana's drum, Mikasi, lay silent and inert. It began to hum, a low, discordant thrum that made the metal floor plates shiver.
Marya's hand stilled mid-stroke. She turned her head, her long raven hair shifting like a shadow.
The drum's form shimmered, its solidity wavering like a heat haze over desert stone. The wood seemed to melt and flow, leather batter head vanishing into the body, the bridge curling in on itself. In a silent, eye-baffling transition, the instrument was gone. In its place, sitting primly on the grating, was a small coyote pup. Its fur was the color of polished rosewood and dusk, and atop its head sat a tiny, intricate feathered headdress of vibrant blues and golds. A miniature tilmatli, a patterned cloak, was draped over its back.
Marya's gaze fixed on the creature. Her smirk returned, fuller this time, touched with genuine curiosity. "First time for everything," she murmured, her voice calm and low. "You missing your maestro, huh?"
The coyote—Mikasi—lifted its muzzle. Its eyes were not animalistic, but held a cunning, ancient spark. Its lip curled back, not in a snarl, but in what could only be described as a sardonic, toothy grimace.
"We'll get her back," Marya stated, the promise simple and direct. She returned to sharpening Nisshoku, but her attention remained split.
Sanza paused, cracker held in a suspended taunt. "What is it, big sis?" he asked, his tone shifting from play-acted royalty to something closer to real inquiry. In his distraction, Jelly saw his chance. With a sound like a jubilant pudding, a blue tendril shot out, wrapped around Sanza's wrist, and pulled the cracker into a waiting, grinning maw. Crunch.
"Ow! You wobbly scoundrel!" Sanza jerked his hand back, shaking it as if stung, though the touch had been more sticky than painful.
Jelly bounced in place, chewing with exaggerated bliss. "Bloop! Jelly wins!"
Marya let out a quiet chuckle, the sound warm but short-lived. "Inevitable."
Sanza, nursing his wounded pride, hopped off the crate and approached the coyote, his head tilted with aristocratic curiosity. "What is this… a pet? Did it stow away? Its attire is… quaintly barbaric."
"I wouldn't," Marya said, not looking up. "He only really gets along with—"
Mikasi moved. It was a blur of feathered brown. One moment he was sitting; the next, his jaws snapped shut with a sound like clacking wood, a hair's breadth from Sanza's retreating fingers.
Sanza stumbled back with a yelp, tumbling onto his rear. "Vile beast!"
Jelly, ever the pacifying presence, bounced over, his form wobbling between them. "Song Friend!" he chimed, his bioluminescent glow pulsing gently.
Mikasi's predatory focus broke. His head cocked, and he watched, fascinated, as Jelly compressed and rebounded, sending glittery motes drifting through the air. The coyote's tail gave a single, measured tap against the floor.
Scrambling to his feet and brushing non-existent dust from his tailored pants, Sanza demanded, "Big sis, what is that? It's clearly not a normal creature. Its eyes are… judgmental."
Marya held Nisshoku up, examining the edge against a light strip. It didn't gleam; it simply made the light around it weaker, a localized dimming. "He's an instrument that ate a Devil Fruit," she explained, as if discussing the weather. "Mythical Zoan type. That's the first time he's shown himself without Vesta. Probably the longest he's gone without her."
Sanza's eyes, already wide, went round. "A musical instrument ate a… but that's… horribly undignified for a Zoan!" He was about to launch into a pontification about the proper hierarchy of fruit consumption when a harsh, blaring alarm shattered the sub's atmosphere.
BRAAAAANK! BRAAAAANK!
Marya was on her feet in a fluid, uncoiling motion, Nisshoku sheathed to her back in the same movement. Sanza jumped, his bravado replaced by alert tension. Jelly let out a squeak and flattened into a puddle of nervous azure jelly.
Marya's boots were silent on the metal as she crossed to the console. Her fingers danced over the controls, silencing the alarm and bringing up a flickering scan. A slow, victorious smirk spread across her face. "Yeah," she said, a trace of relief coloring her stoicism. "That's them."
Sanza rushed to her side, peering at the screen. "Your companions? In something that sets off a proximity alarm that grating?"
"Let's go outside," Marya said, heading for the vertical hatch. "You'll like this."
Without waiting, she climbed the ladder. Sanza, after a moment's hesitation, followed, his small frame agile. Mikasi trotted after, a silent, feathered shadow. Jelly reconstituted himself and bounced up the ladder last, muttering, "Bouncy, bouncy, safe and bouncy…"
The cool, salt-kissed air of the open sea hit them as they emerged onto the small deck. They were adrift in a calm, twilight stretch of water, the sky painted in bruised purples and deep oranges. Sanza gripped the cold railing, leaning out, his eyes scanning the darkening horizon.
Then, the sea itself began to bulge.
A hundred meters off the port bow, the water swelled upwards, a great, glassy dome that reflected the dying sky. It didn't break so much as part, as something immense and graceful rose from the depths. Water cascaded in thunderous curtains from a hull of impossible black, a metal that looked less forged and more grown, sleek and organic. It was longer than three Marine battleships laid end to end. Along its spine, with a sound of hydraulics like a giant's sigh, a colossal fin-sail began to unfold, rising like the wing of some primordial deep-sea monarch. It locked into place, towering against the twilight, and upon its surface, a faded, intricate insignia—a tree with roots of ancient script—caught the last of the light.
Sanza's jaw went slack. All his pretensions, his vocabulary of condescension, evaporated. "By the Eternal Throne…" he breathed, his voice hushed with pure, unadulterated awe. He gripped the railing until his knuckles turned white. "Is… is this your vessel?"
Marya leaned beside him, the wind tugging at her hair. Her leather jacket, with its faded insignia, felt reassuringly familiar. "Yeah," she said, a note of pride cutting through her usual calm. "That's our ride."
A hatch hissed open on the flank of the behemoth submarine. A figure stumbled out onto its own expansive, retractable deck, waving arms frantically. Even at this distance, the voice carried, punctuated by the ocean's sigh.
"Like, hey! Over here! Come on already, we like, have to get going! The numbers are, like, super not good!"
Bianca Yvonne Clark. Her waist-length black hair was trying to escape a bun stabbed through with a pencil. She wore grease-stained overalls over what looked like a silk blouse, and her large goggles were pushed up on her forehead. She was a portrait of brilliant, chaotic urgency.
But Marya's golden eyes, sharp as her father's, scanned the deck behind her. She saw only Bianca. No stern, silver-haired swordsman. No pedantic archaeologist in a pith helmet. No disturbed girl with purple hair.
Her brow furrowed, the smirk vanishing. The relief curdled into something colder, more calculative.
Sanza, still mesmerized by the Dreadnought, sensed the shift. "What is it?"
Marya's eyes narrowed, the rings within her irises tightened. "They're a few hands short," she said quietly, the words flat. She pushed off the railing, the combat boots thudding decisively on the deck. "Sanza, get below. We're docking."
She didn't wait for a reply, disappearing back into the belly of their wounded sub, the ghost of her worry hanging in the salt air behind her, a silent counterpoint to the majestic, haunting silhouette of the ship that awaited them.
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