Notes: Pre-Canon, the journey from Mariejois to Amazon Lily.

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TRISKELION

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When Marigold is fourteen, there is a heaviness around her neck.

The giant red fishman bends down and snaps the steel collar from her throat as easily as plucking a grape from a stem, then does the same to her sisters.

"Tell them Fisher Tiger keeps his promises," he says. "Tell them who freed this world."

The red fishman strides into the flaming destruction of Mariejois, and then Hancock is screaming to run.

Everywhere she turns, there is a slaver burning in the fire. A fishwoman drives a spear through a guard's back. A group of slave girls choke a man with their bare hands. Hancock turns to stone as many soldiers as she can, and Sandersonia breaks their heads with one snap of her anaconda-jaws.

Marigold grabs her sister's arm. "The ship is leaving!"

"One more," Hancock breathes, her eyes bright in the fire, her face streaked with ash. "I want to find—I want to kill a dragon."

"Sister, please!"

Marigold holds onto Sandersonia, who is shaking and has blood running all over her face, and Hancock spits on one of the screaming guards before running after them.

They escape Mariejois on an overflowing battleship with a thousand other freed slaves. There are bodies and hands and breaking chains everywhere, crying and firelight and terror. In the chaos, Marigold steals a sailboat. Sandersonia steals food and water. Hancock discovers a few soldiers who've tried to hide under the ship, and bashes their heads in.

When they land in the ocean, Marigold shoves the boat into the sea and lowers the sail. Hancock steers toward the eastern stars, the crane and the firebird, and then there is nothing but water and silence around them.

Marigold has not been to Amazon Lily since she was ten.

Hancock talks of everything they will do when they get back home. They shall bathe in the clear streams, and eat coconuts and papayas and all the rambutans Marigold wants. Hancock always talked of home whenever she found the chance, whispering in the dead of night. She is the oldest; she remembers the most. Marigold thinks that she does it because she's worried her younger sisters will forget. But she can still see it when she closes her eyes: the red lacquer incense pots, the smoothly polished wooden bows, the dappled sunlight.

"Will we make it back?" Marigold, uncertain, stroking Sandersonia's sweaty trembling forehead.

"We are Kuja," Hancock whispers hoarsely. "We are feared, far and wide. We are the nine-headed Hydra."

"But we've been trodden on by the dragon's hoof." She's dreamed of burning the flesh off her back more often than she's dreamed of blue skies, or candy, or the hot sand of her homeland. "Our tribe knows the brand. They will say we should have died rather than become man's slave."

A raspy inhale, then: "We are Kuja. We are feared, far and wide. We are the nine-headed Hydra."

Marigold's lip trembles as she tries to laugh. "But, sister, there are only three of us."

After a long silence, her big sister grips her hand and starts crying in that awful stilted dying-cat-sound way as she tries to hold it back between clamped teeth, which makes Marigold laugh for real, because she's filled with genuine, utter terror. And after a startled pause Hancock starts laughing, too, and then they're both sobbing on Sandersonia's shoulders.

It is decided, then, that they cannot go home anymore. The ocean is darker than the curl of Hancock's long tangled hair and emptier than Sandersonia's big eyes, reflecting the wheel of the stars overhead.

On the third day, they've finished the stale bread and half-rotten apples, and begin picking out maggots from the biscuits. Hancock catches a fish and is about to bash its head in when Sandersonia starts screaming. It takes Marigold fifteen minutes to calm her down, holding her and rocking slowly as Hancock rips apart the raw meat and tells them to eat it in their snake forms, they can probably digest it better. She takes the maggots and biscuits for herself.

On the sixth night, Hancock thinks she sees a slaver ship in the fog, and says to get ready to jump into the ocean if they get captured again. Their Devil Fruits will sink them down, down, down; at least they'll drown together. It never comes to that, and they sail on without changing course. The fog makes it too hard to navigate, but then, it doesn't really matter anyway. She doesn't know where they're sailing; she's sure her sisters don't, either.

Perhaps they are waiting to die. They will sink to the bottom of the ocean like lost treasure, stolen before their time. They'll clasp hands and land softly on the ocean bottom, calcified into blue stone and seagrass growing all over them. It almost sounds nice. Goodnight, Boa Sisters, maybe you finally know peace.

On day nine, bubbles appear over the horizon.

"An island," Marigold whispers, voice cracking and lips parched. "An island!"

She looks back at her sisters. Sandersonia is delirious with dehydration. Hancock falls in and out of consciousness.

When the sailboat bumps into the island's tree roots, Marigold hoists her two sisters over her back and carries them to shore. She cannot let them stay in the boat as she gets help; they could be taken again.

Her legs ache with every step. Her knees creak, her breath burns in her throat. There is a heavy collar on her neck that she will carry for the rest of her life. It will sink her to the bottom of the sea. I am a Kuja, she thinks, all of fourteen. A Kuja. A Kuja. A Kuja.

Her feet sink into the warm mud. The sun is bright and hard, and the long dewy grass feels like home.

Her teeth grind. Her bones pop and snap, and it hurts. It hurts, and Hancock's chin digs into her collarbone and here's Sandersonia's days-old breath against her ear. Her sisters have been with her, more than the eastern stars, more than memories.

Marigold takes another step forward. She imagines her arms growing larger—her hands as big as mountains, her chest wide and barrel-shaped, her legs sturdier than Adam Wood. She carries her sisters, one on each shoulder. Her stomach is fat and joyful, and her mangled dirty hair is thick and ripples like glistening ocean waves.

The collar is not a steel anchor, sinking her into the ocean depths. She can carry it with her, as she carries her sisters, and takes one step after the other, huffing and puffing like a pair of bellows. Her cheeks are red as strawberries, lacquer incense pots, Fisher Tiger's crimson scales and the ring of freedom! freedom! freedom! shaking down the pitiless stars. She feels it all the way down her spine, and Marigold carries them to the edge of the known world on this strange foreign island of soap bubbles and tree roots.

It is on the doorstep of a bar that she collapses on, and the last thing she hears is the door creaking open.

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When Sandersonia is fifteen, she curls up and does not speak.

The woman's name is Shakky, and she's got sleek black hair and sleek black nails and a grin that could scare away the devil.

Shakky doesn't ask many questions. She gives them a room and lets them hide when customers show up. She has a sharp eye and a sharper wit, so it's not like she doesn't have any ideas, or at least Hancock thinks so. The only time she really says anything is when after a particularly bad nightmare, Sandersonia wakes up in a disorientating panic and explodes into a massive green snake, destroying the back of Shakky's bar, and that's just to say she'll start brewing chamomile tea before bedtime. Otherwise, she's been wanting to renovate.

Marigold helps Shakky clean the bar before opening and after closing, every day. Hancock is the least scared to go outside; she chops up wood, helps her fix anything that needs fixing, and goes up on the rooftop of the bar with Marigold to look at the iridescent soap bubbles in the sunset. They're like stars, Marigold tells her, only weirder. Sandersonia stays in the corner of their room and makes herself as small as possible.

It is a while before any of them can get used to Shakky's partner, a old grizzled man with a penchant for alcohol and gambling. Even after Hancock smashes a table in half over his head (with surprisingly little effect), he brings food most days, new clothes and shoes, flowers, books, and leaves them on Shakky's counter where the sisters could see them and sneak over to investigate when no one is looking.

Marigold compares him to a stray cat; Shakky merely chuckles and agrees.

One morning, someone comes knocking during breakfast and Shakky glances out the window and tells them to get down and hide, quickly. The old man opens the door.

Rayleigh. Have you gotten any strange visitors?

They huddle behind the counter. Sandersonia covers her ears.

You heard about the slaves escaping Mariejois, yeah? Bounties on all of them. Hensel's havin' a field day. Just burnin' fake dragon brands on all his slaves, and he's gonna sell them 'back' to Mariejois pretendin' they escaped, slimy bastard—Shakky-san! Heard you're taking care of some new girls. Let me in. Just a little peek, and I'll scat.

Sandersonia bites down on her hand so hard she draws blood. Marigold wraps her arms around her shoulders, slowly rocking along with her.

Let me in, Rayleigh. They're just slaves.

"Girls," Shakky says, muffled, "close your eyes."

When it is over, Shakky and the old man dust their hands off. He rounds the bar counter and stops a suitable distance away from the sisters huddled on the ground. Sandersonia looks down, her hand mangled and bloody. I am a Kuja, she wants to say. I am a warrior. I am better than this.

"Never be ashamed of surviving," the old man rumbles. "'Tis a feat few can pull off."

From then on, he stays in the bar. When the sisters stumble out of their room in the morning, he's pouring gin into a cup of coffee. When they head to sleep, he's dozing off in the corner. Shakky calls him a bodega cat, and he always laughs. But the old man stays and keeps a mindful distance, and never fails to brighten Marigold with a joke and returns Hancock's stony looks with a cheerful wave.

One day, he vanishes and returns later carrying a wriggling bundle of white hair and pink flowers. She bangs on the floorboards with her snake-staff and yells at Shakky that her man can't go around kidnapping old ladies, it's just not right. Something jumps in the back of Sandersonia's neck, and she knows her sisters can feel it, too. The old woman turns, and sees them, and quiets down at once. A Kuja knows her own.

After closing time, Marigold locks the door to their room and lights a single candle. Hancock refuses to let her little sisters uncover their shame; in the dim candlelight, she lifts her shirt and shows the former Empress Gloriosa her thin back, from the top of her neck down to the end of her spine, and the terrible middle.

Gloriosa sits down, and tells Hancock to put her shirt back on, and does not say anything for a long, long time.

Then: "I can take you girls back home."

Hancock's face turns ashen; she drags Gloriosa out into the hallway. Their whispers are fierce and almost audible. Sandersonia and Marigold huddle on the bed. When she closes her eyes, all she can see is the white-pebbled path to her old village, so she doesn't. She stays awake all through the night, holding her little sister.

She hears Hancock hissing how can we go back? After what they've done to us? She hears her feet slamming against the ground, and then silence. Then, a small, terrified sob.

She traces shapes in the ceiling, listening to Marigold whisper about her favorite kinds of noodles and how tonight's moon looks like a poached egg.

The afternoon light through the windows are best for reading, fading sunlight hitting wood and leather so the bar feels like the inside of a warm chocolate cake. The old man sits on one end of the booth drinking himself into a stupor, and Sandersonia's on the other end with a book, her knees drawn up to her chest. Hancock and Gloriosa are in the throes of another argument, their Kuja-hisses muffled through the walls, Look at Sandersonia! She can't speak! She can barely stand up, and she can't even step outside the bar! How can she sail back to Amazon Lily?

"Good read?" the old man asks suddenly.

She nods, not looking up.

"The man in that story, he was my friend."

She traces the cover. Adventures of the Pirate King, Gold Roger and his Jolly Crew.

"Not a lick o' truth in there. Just tall tales spun from folks who never met him. They don't know the half of his peculiarities. He'd have one foot in the grave, but still kick like a stubborn ass." He laughs real low and fond-like, and maybe Sandersonia can see why Shakky keeps him under her roof and feeds him with semi-regularity. "Never was a man for goodbyes. They should've written about that. Wasn't punctual either, but always kept a habit of leaving before his time."

She touches a picture in the book—the execution stand, the Pirate King, and two crossed spears.

The old man blinks slowly, aged and wrinkled and not at all like the Silvers Rayleigh in the stories. "Like I said," he tells her, "nothing harder than surviving."

Then his head lolls back and he begins to snore.

The taped-on bell jingles. The door opens. Someone asks for a pint—she knows the voice. It's the slaver from before.

"Find another bar," Shakky tells him.

"How are those girls of yours doing?" He glances over his shoulder. Sandersonia freezes. "That one. What's the price on her head?"

Shakky exhales cigarette smoke into his face. "You know what I do to boys who don't listen."

He snarls and his hand touches Shakuyaku.

Sandersonia doesn't remember screaming, but that's what Shakky later says she did. She is across the bar and hurling him out the swinging door and onto the grass outside.

Her feet move faster than she can think—she leaps down the steps and lands on the grass. Her fangs glisten. Scales ripple across her body. He stumbles to his feet and pulls out a gun, and Shakky is shouting now, and the old man is banging through the door with Hancock and Marigold right behind, but Sandersonia moves like the wind.

She lunges. With a crack that rings like a whip, her tail smacks him into a soap tree.

Sandersonia steps back into her human form. She walks forward, looking the slaver in the eye. He is begging for his life, hands raised over his face. Had men like him always been so small?

"Run," she tells him. He does.

Hancock grabs her shoulders in a frenzy, trying to pull her back into the bar, until Sandersonia takes her hand. They stop in the middle of the sunset field, soap bubbles shining iridescent. Marigold was right; they do like stars, only stranger. The setting sun hurts Sandersonia's eyes. Her whole body aches, having done nothing but sit in a room for weeks. But the first steps are always the most painful, and that's how it should be because that means she's still alive, and for the first time in a very long time she thinks that being alive could mean something.

"Sister, I…" Sandersonia blinks a little and clears her throat. "I think we shouldn't be afraid anymore."

Old man Rayleigh sticks the sword back on his belt with a great laugh and starts clapping.

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When Hancock is sixteen, she doesn't eat.

Not much, anyway. She hates the texture of anything between her teeth; a bite of Shakky's heavenly-smelling banana bread makes her dry-heave into a toilet. Shakky's cooking has been good to her sisters. Sandersonia no longer needs to belt her pants and Marigold's cheeks are rosier than she's ever seen them, but her hands remain so bony she can see the veins jump. She can count all her ribs, fingers going down one over another like skeletal piano keys.

With the traitor empress' help, Sandersonia and Marigold come up with a new story. They'll say they've been cursed. Lost adventurers, girls who've gone on a magnificent journey, girls who've returned as heroes. They'll rewrite history and call it theirs.

Hancock says fine, then goes outside into the groves. Something ugly and vicious follows her until she can't swallow it down anymore, and she slams her fists against a tree. It hurts. She looks down at her brittle, bruised hands and thinks, I used to be able to crush a tree between my fingers. I used to be lovely, once.

But then, she also used to think it would be better to die as a free warrior than live as a freed slave.

After a tearful goodbye to Shakky, they set sail with Gloriosa and Rayleigh, charting a course for Amazon Lily. Rayleigh sees them off at the shore, as is the law of the land. Hancock thanks him, and his surprise is as gentle as his smile.

"Are you ready?" Gloriosa asks.

"No," Marigold answers for her sisters, "but that doesn't matter, does it?"

The mountain's nine-headed snakes welcome their daughters home.

As they walk through the village, Gloriosa bangs her staff on the ground and proclaims, "Rejoice! The Boa Sisters have returned!"

They come out in droves, whispering, disbelieving.

"We have fought and defeated the fearsome Gorgon," Hancock says. "We have spent years adrift at sea, adventuring to the farthest oceans beyond the horizon."

"But the Gorgon tainted these sisters with a vile curse," Gloriosa utters menacingly. "All those who look upon their back shall be turned to stone."

"On our travels back, we found this disgraced former Empress and took pity on her. We let her sail back with us." Gloriosa shoots her a dirty look. Hancock barely glances at her. "It's taken many years, but we're finally—finally home."

"We thought you dead!"

"We thought you captured by slavers!"

"Captured," Hancock repeats, searching the crowd with frigid eyes. "Yet not a single one of you came after us."

"It matters not," Marigold says firmly. "What's done is done. We're back now."

She transforms into a large cobra, and Sandersonia follows suit. Hancock turns half the crowd from flesh to stone and back again, just to show that she can. Their names ring all throughout Amazon Lily until not a soul exists that doesn't know the Boa Sisters are back, freshly cursed with a hell of a kill streak.

No glory like hometown glory.

They are given a new home, shared with a few other warriors. They adjust to walking in crowded streets, and standing guard while one of them is in the bath. Talking to others in the market. Accidental touches. In truth, they have to adjust to many, many things.

Sandersonia and Marigold quickly rise through the pirate ranks. They begin practicing Haki again, relearning archery, hand-to-hand combat, spear training. Marigold grows larger, her massive round arms capable of lifting boulders. Sandersonia fights in the arena and dazzles the crowd with her strength. Hancock combs her hair and scrubs herself until she can't feel her own skin and sits inside, watching the village from her window, skinnier and frailer than her younger sisters.

It goes on for days, and then weeks. She knows her sisters worry, but she smiles like everything's okay and tells them she still needs rest. And then one day Gloriosa comes by and demands Hancock to eat something. She shakes her head, and the old woman throws down a basket of fruit.

"Talk to me, Boa Hancock."

"Go away. I never asked for your help."

"You never ask anyone," Gloriosa snaps, and whacks her shin with her cane. "Be selfish. You think you do not deserve it?"

Another whack. "Ow!"

"Have you forgotten that you are free? Have you forgotten what you and your sisters overcame?"

"You don't know anything," she hisses. They call the sisters beauty made flesh, but what's flesh when you can only ever feel shame crawling down your spine? "You have no idea what they did to us. Look at me. Look at my body. Look at what they made me into!"

Hancock's snarl is a fiend-screech with white knuckles helplessly punching her knees, she is sixteen and already feels too old for this world.

Gloriosa doesn't deny any of that. All she says is, "Boa Hancock, I wish only one thing for you: live to the fullest. Drink the sun. Eat the moon. And damn the world for doing this to you. Damn them all."

When Gloriosa leaves, she stares out the window until she can bear it no longer.

Hancock leaves the village and goes into the deep forest. She reaches inward, toward the Haki she had once been so adept at handling. It's quiet now, tiny and feeble, fluttering unsteadily like a dying bird. She used to be the strongest among her peers. She used to have a stare that could tame the fiercest jaguar. She used to be beautiful.

It hurts. For the first few months, it hurts more than she ever expected. She is a child lost in her own backyard, wandering blindly in the thicket.

She eats more, slowly but surely. A Kuja must be strong. A Kuja is broad shoulders and thick hands, stretch marks and violent scars, with pride fit to burst. She'd forgotten that, somewhere along the way. She builds herself up, brick by brick, tendons and muscle and fat, layers of firm unyielding callouses. She learns and relearns. How to kick down a tree. How to punch through solid stone. She plants her roots again in the green grass of her homeland and they drink greedily.

A year passes.

Hancock sits on the balcony with her sisters, under the stars and palm trees.

"I know what I want to do," she tells them. "I want to begin an era of the fiercest Kuja Pirates in history. Any Government ship that sails into our territory must burn. So great will our wrath be, that no slaver will dare touch a Kuja again."

Hancock is facing the highest temple on the island: the Empress' abode. The current Empress is old. Old enough to be unseated.

"It must be you, sister," Marigold says. "We'll help you carry the burden."

Hancock rests her head on Sandersonia's shoulder. Sandersonia hugs her sister closer. Marigold pulls a blanket over the three of them and leans on Hancock's other shoulder. The night air on Amazon Lily is warm, and smells of hibiscus and coconuts. Fireflies dance over the palm trees.

She closes her eyes, and she is back in her cage. Her cot is a straw mat. Chains tremble on her wrists, her ankles, her neck. You like kisses, girl? How about a kiss of fire? Her back is sweltering, flaking with burned flesh, the hoof of the soaring dragon forever blackened into her skin. She is twelve-years-old; her name is Slave. Slave would rather die than come back to Amazon Lily with the dragon's mark.

Sandersonia kisses the top of her head and whispers, "Nothing harder than surviving."

"Yep," Marigold agrees with a quiet laugh.

Hancock's fingers wind around her sisters' and holds them tight. "Yes."

The next day, she steps into the arena and beats all those who dare challenge her. First, it's only Sandersonia and Marigold in the stadium. After she finishes with the younger warriors, the Kujas watching slap their thighs and laugh and walk into the arena to test their strength against hers, or hers against theirs. One after another fall before her shadow. The stadium grows as more and more Kuja come to see the unstoppable Boa sister, until the sun goes down over the palm trees and bleeds into the sky. On the sidelines, Gloriosa cackles like a mad witch.

When there are no challengers left, Hancock calls down the Kuja Empress.

She wins in a knockout match.

The crowd rises, the sound of a thousand feet against stone. The new Empress, Boa Hancock! Gloriosa roars. Hancock breathes deeply, her hands bruised and raw, bandages stiff, feet bare, strands of hair sticking to her sweaty temple, listening to their cheers from a dark solitary cage in Mariejois. Her shirt is wrapped tight around her chest, triple-knotted at the back. She touches it once to check. She touches it again, her fingers leaving blood prints. She thinks, it will never end, this.

She walks up the stairs as every Kuja warrior kneels. The fisherwomen and craftswomen and blacksmiths bow their heads, and the little girls point up at her as though she is the sun itself.

Hancock sits upon the throne. Her hands tremble as she touches the cold stone. The ground is so far beneath her feet, it's almost dizzying. You are nothing, Slave, her masters told her. You are dirt, to be trodden on by the dragon's hoof.

In the crowd, her little sisters are cheering for her.

For the first time, Hancock feels it. She is changed; beautiful not like a pristine lotus, but like a hedge of coral, or a limestone forest. Breathing hard and with blood still drying on her face, she lifts her hand and in doing so, spits in the face of all the world's dragons.

"Wine," she commands.

A silver goblet finds its way into her hand, and plum liquor is poured until her cup overflows.

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From then on, they are called Gorgons.

They each keep a wild beast. Marigold tames a feral hawk that she saw claw a lion's eyes out. Sandersonia befriends the giant panther Bacura, executioner of the Kuja warriors. Salome is possibly the largest snake ever found on Amazon Lily, and extremely poisonous. Hancock deems it hers.

They live in the palace and keep watch over the city. Marigold sets up new training for the Kuja Pirates and oversees the mentoring of all promising warriors. Sandersonia is quick at learning the island's economic affairs and helps Hancock with anything that requires long reading. They have their own private bath, and every day they eat their fill together; coconut and roasted taro, suckling pig and baked crab. Gloriosa lives at the edge of Amazon Lily, but she visits from time to time, which Hancock will turn her nose at but lets her stay without much more than a sneer.

When they learn of the death of Fisher Tiger, they burn incense and seagrass for the fishman they never had a chance to thank.

"Fisher Tiger kept his promise," says Marigold.

"Fisher Tiger freed this world," Sandersonia murmurs.

"May he be at peace." Hancock scatters white sea hibiscus over the incense, and they watch the smoke trail up into the sky.

A year into her reign, the slave-trading World Government once again comes into their territory. One of her pirates runs in, announcing that an entire Marine fleet has been sighted trespassing in their waters. She calls for her sisters, and only them. The rest of the Kuja will watch on the shoreline, to see what the Gorgons are truly capable of.

When Hancock is eighteen, she and her sisters go out to meet the armada on a lone battleship.

When the marine commander sees them, he laughs. "That's it? The only warriors the Kuja Tribe has to offer?" His eyes slide to Hancock. "Though, there is one of you worth keeping alive."

"You stand in the presence of the captain of the Kuja Pirates." There was never a sight as lovely as Marigold, ten-foot-tall and cracking her knuckles over and over again. "Show respect or die."

They start laughing.

"He chooses death, sister," Sandersonia observes, her snake tongue flickering in and out.

"You are only three women, who have but one ship."

"One ship?" Hancock considers the Marine fleet treading on Kuja waters. "I see half a hundred that belong to us."

And then she smiles.

This will go down in history as the first campaign of the future Shichibukai, Pirate Empress Boa Hancock.

A green anaconda smashes through an entire battleship. An orange cobra tangles her tail around a mast and rips it apart, hurtling it at another ship with the force of a meteor. Gunpowder barrels explode. Like fireworks, like red lilies, like Fisher Tiger's back as he walked fearlessly into the blaze of Mariejois, roaring flames bloom over the water.

Hancock screams, and a hundred marines collapse, foaming at the mouth. Another hundred follow. Her Disposition of the Conqueror awakens. She is light-headed, ecstatic, furious. One kick shatters a metal cannon. Another cuts a whole ship in half. She is a sword and a sledgehammer; a dagger and a pistol; an untouchable being. She is stronger than even she knows.

"Tell me," Hancock says, gripping the commander's hand after she finishes breaking it. "Am I still worth keeping alive?"

A gasp, and she turns him to stone.

Baptized by fire, three shadows rise up. Cinders fall around them like red snow. Flames lick their feet, but cannot touch them. They are Kuja. They will be feared, far and wide. They are the three-headed Boa Sisters.

Marigold feels weightless.

Sandersonia laughs.

Hancock bares her teeth and sinks her fangs upon the world.

fin