[EotB] 051. Irreconcilable Differences (Patreon)

15 years before Romance Dawn (1524.05.06)

Garp may have given Hancock a bit of a head start by tossing her out of Marie-Joie like that, but the spot where she was supposed to jump off the Red Line – and where Salome and the girls had hopefully already jumped off – was still some kilometers away.

It was just far enough to not be too difficult to reach on foot, all the while ensuring that, when she hit the bottom, she wouldn’t be in sight of the Red Port and its complement of Marines warships.

Those few kilometers hadn’t seemed like much, on Gloriosa’s maps, but Hancock was now finding them quite a challenge to cross, in her current state.

It was taking considerable effort not to stagger drunkenly along, and she couldn’t quite seem to catch her breath, no matter how hard her lungs toiled. Several times, she had no choice but to pause and lean against the nearest tree trunk to gather some strength back into her legs, when they refused to move any further.

It was a bit strange for her body to disobey her like this, after thirteen years of working like a well-oiled machine no matter how much she asked of it. Hancock was no stranger to pain and exhaustion, of course, but usually, it would still move and operate smoothly despite the strain. This time, though...

Well, this was a fair bit worse than she’d ever suffered, she supposed.

Heh. Hancock had almost forgotten what it was like to have human limitations.

She didn’t appreciate the reminder.

Finally, though, she made it – or at least, she was pretty sure she did. It wasn’t like she’d seen the place before, and her head swam a bit, but she had made sure to obsessively memorize every detail of the plan before she executed it.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t alone here.

Without enough Haki to have threads of Observation scouting the way in front of her like she’d gotten used to, Garp’s appearance, sitting on a fallen trunk at the edge of the Red Line, right where the cliff met the forest’s tree line, caught her entirely by surprise.

The boisterous, louder-than-life personality Hancock had seen before at Hoboken’s party was nowhere to be seen now as the vice admiral looked at her, his massive arms crossed over his chest. His face was grim, a heavy frown shadowing his eyes, as his eyes swept over her, cataloging her injuries.

Her Devil Fruit couldn’t find the slightest shred of lust in him to leverage, and when he met her one-eyed gaze, absolutely nothing happened. No petrification, not even a brief instant of immobility.

Rather, it was Hancock who froze, and blinked dumbly at him.

How the fuck had he gotten there before her? He had the speed for it, of course, but how had he known her destination before she reached it? Did he secretly have a Devil Fruit that let him see into the future or something?

But then, Hancock just... stopped caring. None of these questions mattered.

This was it.

She couldn’t have escaped Garp at her best. Now, when she could hardly walk in a straight line... Her Devil Fruit didn’t work on him, and she couldn’t even dive off the edge of the cliff. He undoubtedly knew Moon Step; he’d just jump after her, catch her, then air-jump back to the top of the Red Line.

Hancock let out a tired sigh and staggered over to sit heavily next to him.

If she was going to get caught anyway, she may as well rest her legs while she was at it.

“You’ve certainly made a mess,” he said after a few moments of silence.

Even quiet, his voice was so deep and powerful that Hancock, sitting as close to him as she was, felt it rumble in her bones.

“Good. I doubt the scum will actually learn their lesson, but at least, they’ll remember it.” Or was that too optimistic? The Knight of God had been pretty dismissive of all the fire and destruction, before the fight started. Maybe it had all meant nothing. But then, Hancock recalled Fisher Tiger’s words, about coming for the rest of the slaves, and her lips twitched into a smile. “Perhaps, some day, they’ll get another refresher.”

“From you?”

Hancock snorted. She might have a bit of trouble with that, with her head removed from her neck. Or were they going to toss her into Impel Down and forget about her? “Probably not. But do you think I’m the only with grievances?”

“Grievances enough to set an entire city on fire? Grievances enough to kill so many people? So many Marines?”

There was a faint warning note in Garp’s tone, but more than that, the man sounded... tired. Still, it was all Hancock could do not to sneer. “This again? What next, ‘they were just doing their jobs’? ‘They were just following orders’? Or maybe, ‘it’s nothing personal’?”

She cut herself off when her head started to spin, her anger stealing the breath from her lungs even while the rest of her body was still in desperate need of it.

Even smothered by exhaustion, the fury was still here, boiling in her gut. At this point, Hancock doubted it’d ever leave. It had put down some deep, deep roots.

She breathed in and try to infuse some measure of forced calm into her voice. “Do you have any family, Vice Admiral?”

She knew the answer, of course, but a random girl from the Grand Line had no reason to know anything about the absolute disaster that was the Monkey bloodline.

Garp gave her a heavy look. “I do.”

“I am curious, then: what would you do, if your... child? Grandchild? – was enslaved by World Nobles? Would the Hero of the Marines rebel? Or would he just wring his hands, close his eyes and plug his ears, pretend there’s nothing he can do, and continue as he has?”

Garp’s expression somehow got even darker upon hearing his most famous title. “I wouldn’t need to rebel. It’s my job as a Marine to fight injustice. It doesn’t matter where that injustice comes from.”

“...Funny,” Hancock said, her voice growing cold and flat. “That’s not what the Marines I killed today seemed to think. But hey, who cares if they have to spend the night guarding slave barracks, as long as the paycheck comes on time?”

It was probably unwise to throw her crimes into his face like that, but Hancock couldn’t help it. She was fuming.

Everything her little sisters had suffered this past year. Losing Oro, Sandersonia’s companion snake. Being raped and scarred and maimed and branded. Being fed Devil Fruits against their wills. Fighting and killing for their master’s entertainment. And undoubtedly more that Hancock had yet to see or hear about...

And then, everything Hancock herself had done trying to rescue them. Abandoning the home she’d come to love. Staining her hands with innocent blood with the Kuja Pirates. Selling her body to Hoboken. Setting Marie-Joie on fire, burning who knew how many slaves to death as collateral damage. Losing half of her left hand. Losing her left eye.

None of it would have been necessary if, at any point in the last 800 years since the World Government was founded, someone like Garp had gotten off their ass and done something about this whole fucking travesty.

Hancock wasn’t blind to the irony, the hypocrisy of it, of course. She herself had planned to do her very best to remain on Maiden Island, safely sheltered from the cruelties of this world in spite of the strength she would undoubtedly attain in the future, by dint of her supremely talented vessel.

Because, well, no matter what Uncle Ben told Peter Parker, Hancock didn’t actually subscribe to the theory that with great power necessarily came great responsibility.

Responsibility was a choice.

But Hancock wasn’t walking around with “Justice” written on her back! Garp did! He had made the choice of responsibility!

There was so much a man of his power could do, if he just fucking tried.

How would the people of the world react if the Hero of the Marines plastered the crimes of the World Nobles all over the newspapers and publicly condemned them? Maybe these newspapers would resist, for fear of the World Government’s retaliation, but Garp was strong enough to force them.

Hancock might not have the strength to free every slave in Marie-Joie, but Garp did. He could do it, whenever he fucking pleased. But for whatever reason, he simply didn’t, content with this horrible, monstrous status-quo.

What did Monkey D. Garp, contender for the title of strongest man in the world, actually do with all that strength? Keep the pirates of the New World in check? Fantastic! Great job! These efforts no doubt saved many, many lives, every single day. But was that truly the best he could do, the most optimal use of his immense power?

What about the 800-year-long streak of wide-scale, systematic, unopposed cruelty occurring right out in the open at the top of the world? 800 years was a long fucking time for evil to accumulate and fester.

Rather than worry about testing the patience of the monster sitting next to her, Hancock bit her lip, hard enough to draw blood, and chewed over the words that bubbled up from the recesses of her memory, distant and faded but still remembered.

It happened, every now and then, without much rhyme or reason, that some tidbit from her old life would resurface. It would have been convenient if those tidbits included some fragments of One Piece lore she could leverage to better traverse this dangerous world, but no, most of the time, it was something useless: a quote from a movie, a funny internet meme, something someone had said to her, once, decades and decades ago.

To this very day, Hancock somehow remembered the whole speech Dr. House gave at his father’s funeral in one episode of the eponymous TV series, word for word, including every intonation and tone and meaningful pause. She had no idea why that had stuck with her across two lifetimes.

She usually refrained from giving voice to those old memories, since no one around her had the context to understand why they would be wise or funny or at all relevant.

This one, though, would fit the situation, with only a bit of adaptation.

“‘If some power player tries to harm you or those you care about,’” she said, her voice faintly shaking with the force of her rage, “‘creaming your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and execution, with the ultimate insult that it’s the way of the world, it’s a tough life, it’s nothing personal... Well, fuck them. Take it personally. Get angry. The machinery of Justice will not serve you here – it is slow, and cold, and it is theirs. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide from under it with a wink and a grin. If you want Justice, you have to claw it from them. Make it personal. Do as much damage as you can. Get your message across.’”

For a few minutes, the only sounds to break the silence were the whisper of the wind rustling the leaves of the nearby trees and Hancock’s angry panting.

Eventually, Garp let out a sigh and, his hands pushing off his knees, he stood up from the tree trunk and took a few steps away.

“You remind me of my son,” he said, without turning around. “He would love you, that’s for sure. I hear he’s good with his speeches, too.” He shook his head. “I’ll tell you what I told him: next time I see you, I’ll be taking you in.”

Hancock blinked up at his broad back.

What...?

Before she could really process the words, Garp raised his foot, then stomped, once.

With a rumble, the ground behind him cracked and splintered, all the way to the edge of the Red Line. Hancock only had a moment to realize what was about to happen before the tree trunk on which she was sitting dropped out from under her, along with several layers of topsoil and part of the cliff itself.

She yelped, and her arms windmilled as she fell among the debris, reflexively looking for a handhold.

Gravity grabbed hold of her and pulled her down, faster and faster, giving Garp just enough time for one last parting comment before the top of the Red Line disappeared from Hancock’s sight.

“And tell Rayleigh to stay retired, or he won’t like the consequences.”

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Hancock’s quote comes from the book Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan.

Everything Quellcrist Falconer says in there is good quote fodder, and the series in general is very good. I recommend it. There’s a TV adaptation, too, but though I haven’t seen it, I doubt it does the books justice.