C-

"Help them," the boy in the straw hat begs. "Please."

Doctorine slides her glasses down her pointy nose, giving him a hard stare. "You're in no position to be making demands, kid. Why should we do anything for you?"

Chopper looks at the boy with skin chilled gray by frostbite and bloody stumps for fingers, then at the blond guy with his spine bent the wrong way, and the orange-haired girl who's the color of a beet and reeks of sickness. He wants to help them, but if Doctorine says no—

A hand grabs onto his arm with startling strength. Fur bristling, he swerves to look at the Straw-hat.

"They're mine," he rasps, simply. The fogginess in his dull eyes shatters, leaving dark, burning coals. "I won't... let them go."

His grip tightens painfully over Chopper's skin, and for a fleeting moment, Chopper almost feels like he belongs to this man, too.

—

"Human," Chopper bites out as he dumps the soiled bandages into the wash basin. He turns to watch the wide-eyed boy stare at his blond companion, a shake in his shoulders that steadies when their gazes meet.

"Monster," The boy says back.

They watch each other until Chopper can smell the sour clash of pride and anxiety in the human's breath. "She's alive."

He nods once. When Chopper looks back from the doorway, there's a hand pressed into his eyes and a sort-of-smile, crooked and crumbling and weak, that he'll never see again.

—

How to close a wound. How to create vaccines. How to save human lives. These are all things that Hiluluk touched on, but Kureha perfected in him.

His favorite thing to learn about was poison, because it has a special place in his memory. One day, he read about the Amiudake—the rarest, largest mushroom in the world settled somewhere on the Grand Line, the size of two islands, which carries enough poisonous spores to cause a natural disaster if they were ever released.

Something Doctorine taught him is how to remove tumors. Cutting the bad tissue out and leaving the healthy tissue in. And if there are at least decent humans like Doctorine, like the Straw-hat and his friends, maybe all it means is that humanity is a poor victim infected by a disgusting cancer.

—

"My nakama are in there!" Straw-hat roars, gripping the sleeve of his tattered coat to keep it from falling off. "Chopper and the old hag are taking care of them! Go away or I'll kill you!"

Chopper watches him with a clinical eye. He's tired and still sapped of energy from the frostbite, but the blood trickling down his forehead mixes with the soot on his face, creating a thick tar that seems to sharpen his tired eyes like a blade.

Standing opposite of them, Dalton's knuckles turn white around the torch he's grasping. "This doesn't concern you. Doctor Kureha has shown no remorse for the atrocities she's inflicted on us all," he says evenly. His eyes trail to Chopper's, pinning him there. "She must face the consequences… along with that poor boy. There's no hope for him. She's twisted him into a monster."

Chopper's blood runs cold, but Straw-hat only snarls and tears the sleeve of the coat off himself. In his other hand he grips the flag he'd rescued, and he hauls it up and wraps it around his uncovered arm as though bandaging it for a fistfight.

"Shut up," he growls, tugging a strip of cloth with his teeth to tighten the knot. He spits it out, then raises his arm, loose fabric spilling down to his feet. "There's nothing wrong with him. He and the old lady are helping us."

Dalton's eyes catch the flickers of pink on the flag. He stiffens, wildfire burning in his eyes. "That symbol… don't you dare!"

"I said shut up!" Straw-hat shouts, jerking forward. He raises his fist higher until the flag catches in the wind, billowing out at his side like a cape. "This castle is under my protection now! You think you can hurt anyone inside it? I'm gonna kill you all… with this flag!"

—

People fall into sloshing red snow, their weapons clattering. The good people are safe, and a light shoots off in Chopper's head.

Cutting out the bad tissue is easy. He can cure the world.

—

"Human," Chopper chokes out, hoof gripping the fur on his chest so hard he thinks it might tear straight away. He can't meet Luffy's eyes.

"Monster," Luffy says back.

In a better world, that wouldn't be enough. But it is. And they move on.

V-

Waiting for the log pose to set while docked on the dusty shores of a desert island, Nami swindles a News Coo and reads the paper.

She calls everyone to the deck minutes later. Luffy seems to dislike the idea she puts forward, but he doesn't say why, and they need the money.

That evening, they mount a giant crab they'd planned to eat for dinner and ride it to the ruins of a kingdom freshly fallen from civil war.

It's easy, because nobody stops them. The kingdom's only hope had been in a princess who isn't coming back.

—

Three hours in a sandstorm hits, and with most of the buildings ravaged, they're forced to seek shelter in a stretching clock tower. They climb to the highest level, where they find find a black-haired woman reading a book, her gaze hardly flicking up to meet them as they enter. She politely ignores them. They do the same.

Nami begins counting their loot while Usopp gets to work de-assembling their favorite prize: a golden hook they'd pried from the wrist of a man in an oversized coat. The hook itself is interchangeable with a poisonous one hidden in a hollow chamber, so Chopper supervises. Sanji sorts through the salvageable food. Zoro hunkers down and falls asleep somewhere between the woman and his crew.

Nami finishes first, and spots Luffy standing at the face of the clock. She gets up to join him. The sandstorm has lightened and the whole kingdom spans before them, broken and crumbling, bodies strewn in the square that rises up like a funeral pyre.

It's all very vast, and suddenly Nami feels very powerful, and when she chances a glance at Luffy she can see a look that's hungry and disgusted and hollow in his eyes. She peers down at the fallen warriors, biting her lip. "They'll be completely buried by the time this lifts. What a mess. They deserved a better world than one ravaged by war."

The raven-haired woman closes her book. "Alabasta has always held reverence for its subjects." Zoro's awake and gripping his sword before the pages touch, but Luffy waves him down, watching her in silence as she walks up and puts a hand against the glass. "I imagine a burial for them is this kingdom's last wish."

"If you're asking me, this place has long been demoted from 'kingdom' to 'wasteland'," Usopp mutters from the back.

The woman pauses, contemplating this with apparent gravity. "The storm has indeed lightened. Perhaps you are correct."

"That's stupid!" They're the first words Luffy's spoken since they arrived, but his eyes are wild as they whip towards her. She holds his gaze with a note of mild interest. "You don't stop being something just because you die!"

Their captain abruptly steps forward and pulls a fist back, but nobody has time to protest before he slams it into the metal frame of the clock. Instead of shattering, there's a creak and a shower of dust from the ceiling and Nami realizes in a rush: it's hinged.

The sandstorm catches against the inner face of the clock, pulling it open with a groan that shudders through the entire tower. "Luffy! What are you—"

"Hear that, Alabasta?!" Luffy leans forward with hands cupped around his mouth, sand whipping against his clothes and his straw hat held by the string around his neck, and shouts. "Are you still a kingdom or not?! You'd better do more than some stupid sand and dead guys if you want to scare vikings off!"

Then he stops, abruptly snatching his hat back from the wind and pressing it against his skull as he stares out into the storm. His crew watches, attempting to protect their valuables with varying levels of effort, and the woman smiles.

A roar sounds in distance. The tower trembles. Then a gust of wind hurls itself against them, and a grin lights up Luffy's face. His hand whips forward to pull the clock shut, and just before the storm closes in, they hit the floor and Luffy laughs that they're not allowed to take anything else from the Kingdom of Alabasta.

—

Nico Robin has nowhere to go, and the captain of the Straw Hats is the most intriguing man she's met in many years.

She shows them her Devil Fruit power, so they let her come along. What's one more misfit, anyway?

U-

There is a moment, when Usopp is staring up at Luffy—his shirt torn, blood trailing down his face, and those cold, thunderous eyes—when he is sure that his former captain is going to kill him.

All it would take is a tenth of his strength. Knelt at his opponent's feet, fingers clutched around handfuls of dirt, Usopp makes it a point to meet the Straw Hat captain's eyes past the fingertip digging into his forehead. Neither fold, and both know: all Luffy has to do is press with a tenth of his strength and his index finger will be buried knuckle-deep in Usopp's skull.

He's been afraid of many things. Everything. Sensible things and silly things, real things and pretend things. He's categorized the look Luffy sometimes gets—that vibrant shine in his eye that smooths into a cold, biting granite—as somewhere between all of the above. But the pitch of Merry's wail rings in his ears even now, and he's never been as sure of anything in his life that it's the most terrifying thing in any world imaginable.

There is a moment, as the dust clears around them, when the gravelly look in Luffy's eye sharpens into granite and Usopp is sure that his former captain is going to kill him.

In that moment, Usopp dares him to.

K-

"Ah," says the pink-haired kid, his smile tilting at one end, "I'm surprised you remember me. Luffy-san."

The kukri is shoved up against his throat, and there's a spider-thread line of blood cutting out from where the blade meets flesh. This shouldn't be a problem—except where Luffy can feel the metal, just a little cooler than it should be, and the lead block pressing down on his lungs. He's pretty sure it all has something to do with the seastone coating on the Marine officer's weapon.

He drags in a breath to answer, but ends up choking on it when the kurki slides into his flesh as though it were soft butter. The kid's eyebrow raises, crinkling the ragged, x-shaped scar set across the right side of his forehead. Then his mouth drops down into a scowl. The knife rocks a bit against his skin, and now Luffy can feel something wet and decidedly warm trailing down to pool at his collarbone as the officer uncrosses one leg, leans forward, and sets his weight firmly on an elbow splayed across Luffy's chest. He's started to suffocate—but decides to focus on the pair of eyes staring his down, squinted just far enough so that the smile trying to meet them doesn't quite make it.

"Luffy-san, you should have made sure I was dead, you know? I told you I was going to join the Marines." His voice is pleasant enough, but there's an edge a bit too like himself that Luffy sees in that smile. He doesn't like that. "They told me I can kill you if I wanted to."

Luffy doesn't say anything. The marine frowns and leans back up, rolling a shoulder. "Really? You're not going to talk anymore? Jeez, this is really anti-climactic...I don't know if I want to kill you after all."

"You couldn't."

The officer's gaze shoots back down, his mouth setting into a hard line that twitches up at the side. "Eh? What was that, Luffy-san?"

"You couldn't kill me," Luffy wheezes, and then grins. "Are you stupid?"

The officer laughs, his fingers tangling through his bright pink hair, and then a hard edge slices into his eyes and he leans forward again with the kukri blade tilted up into Luffy's jawline. "So funny! When you die, I—"

A hand slams against his throat, and the officer's eyes narrow when Luffy's fingers begin digging into his windpipe. The arm stretching up towards him is shaking and the hand is slick with sweat, but it isn't letting go and he's going to need air very soon. He scowls down at the viking and presses the knife just a little deeper.

"You are pretty stupid," Straw Hat muses lazily, but his mouth is still pulled up into a smile. A thumb digs hard into the officer's adam's apple, and he chokes, gritting his teeth and he's a little too dizzy to find the kukri—he tries to cut down anyway, and is almost satisfied when he hears Luffy hiss but he won't let go—

"Oi, Koby, do you remember?" Luffy is wheezing now, too, but all Koby can see are the spots gathering at the edges of his vision—he drops the knife, hands jerking up to claw at the fist clamped around his throat. "I told you...if I died fighting for what I was gonna do, then that's fine..."

The grip on Koby's throat loosens just long enough for him to gasp a breath of air—then he's shoved backwards, head slamming against the pavement as he falls onto his back, and the hand is there and choking him again. "Hey, you listening, Koby? I told you that stuff, but I changed my mind."

Straw Hat Luffy is sitting on his stomach, leaning down with eyes narrowed into slits, and the way he's staring down—the way the corners of his mouth meet his eyes with ease and the way his teeth grind together—somehow makes the grin on his face look less real. "I'm not gonna die."

A/N: We're going all the way, folks. One or two more parts incoming.