[EotB] 047. Division of Labor (Patreon)

15 years before Romance Dawn (1524.05.06)

Hancock turned away from the eruption of flesh at the last moment, yet was still positively showered with blood. Her hair, her face, her clothes... It was like she’d been bathing in it.

...Disgusting.

That Marine officer had been a lot more annoying to fight than Hancock had expected, and she’d been worried even more tails would soon come out and throw the battle further out of her control. So, she’d elected to... take a shortcut and just win.

She hadn’t expected the reaction to eating a second Devil Fruit to be so explosive. Or ghastly. It was undoubtedly the single most gruesome event she had ever witnessed.

Nothing was left of the Marine. Nothing, that is, save for liters of blood painting the cobblestones and the walls of the surrounding buildings, as if some jokester had dropped a giant water balloon filled with red paint on the street.

Feeling someone else’s blood drip down her chin, Hancock kept her mouth firmly closed – she didn’t want to swallow any of it – and brushed slimy hair out of her face.

...Ugh. Red paint would have been preferable.

Her uniform was absolutely soaked through and stuck uncomfortably to her skin, but more frustrating than even that was that the blood had finally overcome the fabric of Hancock’s apron. The blackmail documents she had intended for Shakuyaku, as thanks for her help, had been rendered entirely illegible, nothing but smudges of colored ink left to dissolve across the surface of dripping-wet pages.

Well, she’d have to find another way to make it up to the former empress, then.

Hancock tossed the waterlogged – or, well, bloodlogged – papers aside, then tore the ruined uniform off her body. She turned it around to find one of the few relatively clean spots, then used it to wipe the blood off her face and sponge it off her hair.

By time time she was done... Well, she still felt utterly disgusting, but the remains of her opponent at least no longer clung to her face, and she could open her mouth without tasting blood on her lips.

Marie-Joie had plenty of fountains everywhere. Hancock would have to find one of them and take a quick plunge, as soon as possible.

Not just for her own comfort, either, but as a matter of potential survival. If her Devil Fruit was truly more effective against people who found her physically attractive, which every test so far appeared to prove, then it was vital she... keep up appearances, as it were.

It would take rather special tastes for someone to find even an otherwise beautiful woman appealing, when she was covered in blood from head to toe.

The fight, and the cleanup afterward, took long enough that by the time Hancock threw aside her uniform, Fisher Tiger was making his way out of the barracks, the bent doors scraping loudly against the floor as he pulled them open.

He had to fold himself almost in half to fit through the doorway. When he straightened up and finally got a good look of the street outside, he froze. And not because Hancock had used her power on him. His eyes flicked from the blood painting the surroundings, to the rubble of the nearby buildings the Marine officer had carelessly knocked down with errant sweeps of his many tails, to Hancock herself, standing naked amid the devastation.

He stared at her for a moment. “The slaves nearest the door told me there’d been a commotion outside, but... You all right, kid?”

Hancock sighed. “Yes.”

Disgusting blood shower aside, she wasn’t sure how true that was, though. Those couple of tail swipes she’d failed to evade had reopened the wound in her flank. And this time, though it wasn’t immediately obvious, what with all the blood already covering her, the bleeding didn’t seem to be stopping as quickly as before.

Unfortunate.

If worse came to worst, she’d see about cauterizing it or something. There was enough fire around for that. That sounded awfully painful, though, so she’d rather avoid that, if at all possible.

“Are you done freeing everyone inside?” she asked.

“Just about, yeah. There were a few more guards on the second floor, but once I dealt with them and freed the first few slaves, I sent them to search through the warden’s office for the keys. It went fast after that.”

“How many are there?”

“In here? Maybe six or seven hundred.”

Rather than echo the distaste in Fisher Tiger’s voice, Hancock was busy trying to figure out the logistics of getting so many people out of Marie-Joie. The more she thought about it, the less she liked her own predictions of how things would unfold.

That was the very reason she had mostly left the slaves she freed, or whose masters she killed, before meeting Fisher Tiger – much fewer than six hundred of them – to handle their own escapes. She just couldn’t...

“I also learned from a few of them where the city’s other public slave barracks can be found.” The fishman spat to the side in disgust. “This was the only one I knew about, but the wardens swap slaves between locations regularly, to prevent them from forming cliques and organizing themselves, so some of them can guide us to the others.”

This time, Hancock shook her head and cut in before Tiger could continue. “If you want to hit the other barracks, you’ll have to do so without me.”

The fishman glared down at her. “What are you saying, here? That we should leave so many victims behind? Are you going to just give up because it’s getting a bit risky?”

“Yes, I am. I’ve been fighting pretty much continuously for more than an hour. I’m injured. And although I came here prepared to die if it proved necessary, I would actually prefer to survive.”

Shit, but it did rankle to leave so many people to their fate.

And to have murdered so few World Nobles. Sure, Hancock had burned a good fraction of their city, but she must have actually killed, what, maybe six of them, all told? Seven, if that kid she used as a hostage burned to death?

It felt like failure, and Hancock’s gut churned with impotent fury. She wanted more.

But she had to be realistic.

She just wasn’t strong enough.

It was kind of funny, actually. Hancock remembered thinking, once, a few years ago, that living in this world wouldn’t be too hard, as long as she ignored the depredations of the murderous tyrants living at the top of the social pyramid. Well, she’d sure changed her tune quickly.

But what else could she do when these wretches had enslaved, maimed, brutalized, branded, raped her little sisters? For an entire year.

No. That demanded a response. There was simply no other option.

Hancock took a calming breath, trying to slow the pounding pulse of her heart in her temples before she could talk herself into letting out another burst of accidental Conqueror Haki.

If she drew all the Marines in the city toward her position – and more to the point, toward several hundred newly freed slaves – it would be a disaster.

Hancock was distracted enough that she almost missed Fisher Tiger’s retort.

“Maybe I was wrong,” he said, though to Hancock’s eyes, he didn’t seem too sympathetic with her self-admitted limits, which his next words confirmed. “Maybe you really are as bad as most humans.”

Hancock smirked. “I reckon I’m significantly worse than most humans. But either way, I’m not committing suicide just to earn your approval. And suicide is what it’ll be.” She gestured toward the first slaves warily starting to make their way out of the barracks. “We’re going to have enough trouble helping them escape. Or did you intend to lead them on a trek across the city toward the other barracks? The Marines will go through them like a scythe through wheat stalks.”

Hancock didn’t want to be mean, but it was the truth.

She didn’t blame all of these people for their weakness, but it remained that a crowd who, to a fault, would pale and shrink at the sight of the blood and corpses littering the street, could only fare badly in battle.

Well, almost to a fault. The sole exception seemed to be a little shaggy-haired girl, who couldn’t be older than six or seven. She was staring at the scene of gore and destruction with eyes as wide as her fellow liberated slaves... except a fixed, too-bright smile lit up her face. It was honestly kind of creepy.

Hancock returned her attention to Fisher Tiger, to find him also gazing toward the assembling slaves – all of them humans, which was interesting considering his apparent dislike of the species as a whole – with a troubled look.

Eventually, he let out a frustrated huff of breath and turned away to look over the burning city, his jaw flexing as he gritted his teeth. “I suppose I can come back later and finish the job,” he mused, and threw a disdainful glance down at the stolen weapons in his hands. “Better prepared and better armed than this.”

That... still sounded like suicide to Hancock – there was no way the World Government would allow their capital city to be assaulted twice – but it was a worthy cause, and it wasn’t her place to dissuade him.

Hell, she’d be cheering him on.

But for now, they should probably try and get these people out of her alive.

There were too many of them for a distraction alone, like Hancock had done to give her sisters an opportunity to make it out of Marie-Joie undetected, to pull all attention away from them. A distraction would probably still be helpful, but...

Two girls and snake, versus six hundred fleeing slaves.

No, the crowd would undoubtedly be noticed and accosted on their way out of the city.

How to deal with it, then?

Honestly, Hancock kind of wanted to just... leave. She was no hero, and this was a lot of responsibility to put on anyone’s shoulders. Let all of them, along with Fisher Tiger, work it out by themselves.

Freeing slaves and chasing some good karma was all fine and dandy, but Sandersonia and Marigold would never forgive her if she got herself killed like this.

Still... six hundred people...

“One of us should stay with the slaves,” Hancock said slowly. “Guide them out of the city and protect them. The other stays here and draws as many Marines away as possible.”

She wasn’t sure which task would be the most dangerous. As Hancock had proved in the past hour, playing the distraction was a risky job. One unlucky encounter, and she could find herself facing someone too powerful to handle.

But fighting a running battle while protecting so many helpless people...

Hancock had already thought it would be too reckless to do that with only her sisters for company. Even with Salome’s help, the girls had been injured and weakened enough they’d undoubtedly end up as collateral damage the moment a battle broke out near them.

It would be significantly worse with so many slaves getting in the way.

Hell, if any of them had stepped out of the barracks while Hancock fought that Marine officer with the tails, she wouldn’t have been able to shield them from his attacks. They would all be dead, now. And he hadn’t even been all that strong.

Fisher Tiger grunted. “I can escort them. I’ve spent the past few years planning my own escape, so I know where to go if we want to get off the Red Line and back down to the seas. It’ll take some doing, but it could work. No, it will work. I will make it work.”

Strangely enough, Hancock didn’t doubt him. She could feel the weight of his determination, like spectral heat warming her face.

Heh. With emotions like those, he’d be a beacon on anyone’s Observation Haki. He really wasn’t making Hancock’s job any easier, was he?

She’d really have to work at drawing attention away from him.

“All right. I’ll give you as much time as I can, then I’ll make my own escape.”

She had an appointment to keep back on Sabaody, after all.

She really hoped Rayleigh was still waiting at the bottom of the Red Line, though. With her new Devil Fruit, if he wasn’t there to fish her out, she wasn’t going to survive the landing.