[EotB] 055. Debriefing (Patreon)

14 years, 11 months, 28 days before Romance Dawn (1524.05.08)

Hancock stared at the number for a few seconds, trying to remember examples of bounties from the manga. Unfortunately, details like those were long since lost to her unreliable memory.

She had lived in this world for a nearly a decade and a half, though, so she wasn’t entirely ignorant of how bounties worked.

“That’s... a lot,” she said.

It was nothing compared to the greats, of course, but on this side of the Grand Line, an amount that high was pretty much unheard of. It was the sort of money that could set somebody up for life. For a very comfortable life, at that. Put that in the bank, and you and your children – and their children – could forever live off the interest.

Clearly, it reflected the extent of the damage Hancock had caused, rather than her strength proper.

Rayleigh chuckled. “For a starting bounty, it’s enormous. One of the highest in history, I reckon. You must have really ruffled some feathers.” He took a swig from his flask and smacked his lips. “But then, you must also have gotten some powerful leverage over someone, because they specifically want you alive.”

“Yes, what’s that about? Isn’t it usually ‘dead or alive’?”

He hummed. “Usually. Which means you must have something they want.”

Something the World Government wanted?

Not her Devil Fruit. Hancock didn’t think there was a reliable way to extract a Fruit from its user – Blackbeard notwithstanding – and the only thing making hers truly special was her own beauty, anyway. For anyone else, the Love-Love Fruit wouldn’t necessarily amount to much. Hell, the thing had been gathering dust in some idiot’s safe until Hancock stumbled upon it, by chance or by fate.

Then... her beauty, maybe? If some influential World Noble had caught sight of her in the chaos and decided they simply had to own her, they might have leaned on the Marines to ensure she wouldn’t be killed on sight. Would that really be enough to forgive the half-dozen self-proclaimed gods she’d killed, though?

Or, come to think of it, it might not be her Devil Fruit itself, but the people she’d petrified with it, whom they wanted her to turn back. Again, however, were Commodore Calderon and that Knight of God psycho valuable enough people to quash – or even just delay – a death sentence?

Gloriosa put a stop to Hancock’s doubts. “How about you tell us what happened up there? Might help us figure it out.”

Right. And Hancock still owed her sisters the end of her story.

So, as they all sat down to eat, Hancock picked up where she’d left off.

Meeting Garp at Hoboken’s party and being offered a place in the navy – to much eye-rolling from the adult half of the table. Salome finding the girls’ trail. Hancock heading off the track them down, though not before killing Hoboken.

“Sorry about that, Shakuyaku, but considering this,” Hancock said, pointing at her bounty poster still lying on the table, “I think cutting off that loose end was prudent.”

Shakuyaku nodded. “Yes, I agree. And don’t worry, no one here’s going to miss him.”

“Hear, hear,” Gloriosa grumbled into her food.

Then, Hancock moved on to her infiltration of Saint Marlin’s manor, where she found the three Devil Fruits in his office safe.

Gloriosa nodded. “I see. That was quite the find. One for you, one for Salome, I imagine? What did you do with the third? Did you leave it in the safe?”

“No, I took it with me and fed it to a Marine who already had a Fruit.”

Rayleigh chuckled again, though the two women winced.

“Ugh. I’ve seen that happen before,” Gloriosa said, visibly cringing. “Not a good end.”

Hancock shrugged and continued her story.

The arena. Her burst of Conqueror Haki. Staying behind to cause a distraction and give her sisters a better chance to make it out of the city without having to fight off pursuers. Slaughtering every noble in the arena, leaving only the slaves behind to see to their own escape.

“Conqueror Haki, huh?” Gloriosa mused, her eyes fixed on Hancock yet unseeing, lost too deep in her thoughts.

Rayleigh nodded next to her. “I’m not surprised. You did strike me as the type. And it would mark you as a significant threat to the World Government and the Marines. With these World Nobles you killed, it might just be enough to explain your high bounty.”

“What’s Conqueror Haki?” Marigold asked between mouthfuls.

“A rare flavor of Haki,” Shakuyaku explained, “distinct from Observation and Armament. In its most basic form, it allows its wielder to... crush the spirits of those weaker than them, I suppose, and cause them to lose consciousness.” She pursed her lips. “It’s said that only one in a million people are born with the ability to use it, but I have my doubts about that. Either way, it’s usually seen as a mark of...excellence? Notability? Preeminence? Something like that.”

Hancock didn’t let herself preen under her sisters’ impressed eyes.

Contrary to Shakuyaku, she did subscribe to the idea that Conqueror Haki was inborn. After all, she had it, and the only thing about her worthy of the word ‘preeminent’ was her vessel, not the unremarkable soul inhabiting it. Her ability to use Conqueror had to have come packaged with the former.

She blithely went on. Setting the city on fire. Fighting Marines. Killing nobles and freeing handfuls of slaves here and there as she stumbled upon opportunities.

And then, meeting Fisher Tiger, and letting herself be convinced to free many more slaves than she ever would have on her own.

“We decided to split up, at this point. Like with Sandersonia and Marigold, I would provide a distraction, while he escorted the slaves out of the city.” Hancock frowned faintly. “He apparently had an idea of how to get them all down the Red Line, but I didn’t bother asking for details. I don’t know if he made it out.”

“He did,” Shakuyaku said.

Hancock paused for a moment, then her gaze fell back to the newspaper lying open at the center of the table, between them all. “Do they mention him, too?”

“They do rather more than that,” Gloriosa said dryly. She reached out and flipped Hancock’s bounty poster aside to reveal the second sheet hiding beneath it.

“Oh.”

Looked like she wasn’t the only one to have received a bounty for her actions.

Fisher Tiger was wanted, dead or alive, for 170,000,000 Berry.

“Nothing like the obscene amount on yours, but still, another high starting bounty,” Shakuyaku commented. “Unsurprising, considering he led hundreds of slaves in a daring escape from Marie-Joie, disappearing at sea with all of them, by riding atop the backs of a school of massive fish he could summon and command at will – somehow.”

“’Somehow’?Can’t all fishmen do that?”

“No, speaking with fish is an ability normally reserved to merfolk, not fishmen.” Shakuyaku glanced at the man’s picture. “I’m not sure how Fisher Tiger was able to defy that conventional wisdom, but he certainly made good use of it.”

That he did. Stumbling into him had been a stroke of good fortune. Hancock’s rampage across Marie-Joie certainly wouldn’t have ended so well, otherwise – not for her or her sisters, necessarily, but for all these other slaves.

Fisher Tiger wasn’t the only one to have been instrumental, in fact.

If Rayleigh hadn’t found her, that day she burned Disco’s slave auction house, Hancock wasn’t sure how she would have proceeded. She’d have found a way, she was certain, but it would have taken a lot more time to prepare and execute her recuse mission. More time for her sisters to suffer.

It did beg the question of how the original Boa sisters had escaped Marie-Joie, without all of these third parties helping them along the... way...

Hancock’s thoughts stuttered to a halt as she stared at the picture on the bounty poster before her, dusty old memories suddenly tumbling loose from a dark corner of her brain and crashing to the forefront of her consciousness.

Fisher Tiger...

Hancock had no idea why she remembered him now, instead of when she’d been standing face-to-face with him, but... He wasn’t just some famous author and adventurer. Wasn’t he also the guy who attacked Marie-Joie in the original story? He’d even said as much, right to Hancock’s face, that he planned to return and assault the city again to free the rest of the slaves.

How had she not twigged on to this earlier?

She wasn’t quite amazed at the coincidence, however. Rather, she was... concerned, that another bit of evidence arrived to support her crackpot theory that fate was nudging things around to reflect the canon course of events.

“Hancock?”

Hancock blinked and looked up at her audience. “Sorry. Just... lost in thought. I almost hadn’t expected him and the slaves he took with him to survive. I’m glad they did.” She shook her head and pushed her suspicions aside, for now. “But anyway, afterward, I tried to reproduce for them what I did for the girls and Salome. I attacked the next Marine patrol I met and pushed them to call for reinforcements. But then, a woman the Marines called a Knight of God interrupted the battle.”

Hancock didn’t miss Shakuyaku and Gloriosa tensing at the mention of her, which suggested that she was exactly as bad news as Hancock had expected.

Rayleigh just smiled wider.

Hancock gestured toward her face. “She’s the one who caused all of this damage. Unfortunately for her,” she continued, her lips threatening to pull into a smile of her own, “she killed the Marine who tried to warn her about my Devil Fruit before the guy could finish his sentence. It didn’t end well for her.”

“You turned her to stone?” Rayleigh asked, his shoulders faintly shaking, his smile hidden behind his flask.

Hancock nodded.

“And she didn’t heal from it automatically?”

Hancock quirked a dubious eyebrow. “No? By the time I was... forced to leave, she was still a statue. Is that something they can do?” Good thing she’d had her Devil Fruit, then. An enemy that strong with a healing factor would have been a nightmare.

Rayleigh was too busy bursting into uproarious laughter to answer her question, so it fell to Gloriosa to do so in his stead.

“The Knights of God are essentially unkillable. They heal from all injuries pretty much instantly. That the one who attacked you didn’t...”

“Petrification isn’t – hahaha! – isn’t an injury,” Rayleigh managed to push past his laughter. There were actual tears gathering at the corners of his eyes. “It’s just a slight change in composition, from flesh to stone. Nothing to heal! Hahahaha! Oh, that’s beautiful! No wonder your bounty’s so high! Ruffled some feathers indeed! More like plucked one right out of his hide! Hahahaha!”

...What? ‘His' hide? Whose hide?

Was he talking about Garp?

No one else around the table seemed too clear on what Rayleigh meant, either, but the old man was laughing too hard to explain anything. It actually took a while for him to calm down enough to let Hancock finish her story.

And then, he just cracked up again when Hancock relayed Garp’s message to him.