[EotB] 057. Next Steps (Patreon)

14 years, 11 months, 19 days before Romance Dawn (1524.05.17)

Hancock carefully unrolled the bandages wrapped around her face and stared at her reflection, accustomed now to avoiding her own gaze.

She was healing well.

Teaching Salome and her little sisters Life Return had also granted her plenty of time to see to her own treatment, over the past week-and-change. Already, the gashes that had marked her cheeks were closed, leaving only faint scarring behind – and even that should disappear entirely during the next few sessions. Her lost fingers too were quickly growing back, though the required biomass meant that Hancock was eating Shakuyaku out of house and home at every meal, to the woman’s continued amusement.

As expected, though, her eye was the sticking point.

She had no doubt she’d succeed eventually, of course. It was just a question of patience, study, and skill.

All of that practice with her sisters was at least doing wonders for the latter. Attaining the focus necessary for the second stage of Life Return was growing easier and more effortless every time Hancock did it. Already, she no longer needed to sit and cycle through breathing exercises. Soon, she’d be able to call it up at will, even in combat.

And Hancock wasn’t the only one to have made good progress.

The brand on Marigold’s back was slowly growing fainter, while Sandersonia’s burn scars were starting to thin and lighten.

Just like that, after a short couple of weeks.

Hancock really couldn’t understand why anyone wouldn’t want to learn Life Return. It was just... so simple, so elegant a solution to so many problems.

Salome too, despite looking for every chance to skive off and laze about, was gradually getting a handle on it.

Hancock’s companion didn’t have any scars or brands to erase, of course, and after a period of adaptation, she’d mostly gotten used to her new feathers, but Hancock still insisted she learn alongside everyone else.

She had a Devil Fruit now, after all. Everyone did.

That presented some very real risks. Drowning, chief among them.

So then, why not give themselves the ability to breathe underwater? It was a biological function all fishmen possessed, and Hancock couldn’t see any reason why Life Return couldn’t reproduce it on a human. They would still be incapable of swimming and would sink like stones, of course, but having gills – or whatever other mechanism did the trick – would allow them to survive until they were rescued.

Bam. Again, just like that, the greatest threat to the life of a Devil Fruit user, solved.

Really, could Hancock be blamed if she had a tendency to gush about it and proselytize a little? She was just spreading the good word.

Experimenting with Life Return wasn’t the only thing on her to-do list, though.

Shakuyaku had already assured her that she and her sisters were welcome to stay at the bar for as long as they wanted, but Hancock was already chafing at the idea of living on her benefactor’s charity.

No, eventually, once they got their feet under them, Sandersonia and Marigold would return to Maiden Island, and Hancock...

What would Hancock do?

She didn’t see herself slinking back to the Kuja, at the very least. Gloriosa had offered – even made some not-so-subtle suggestions that Hancock could aim for the position of empress – but... Not only was Hancock not interested in ruling her home island and leading raids on innocent merchant ships alongside a crew she had once betrayed, but becoming Boa Hancock, Pirate Empress would also feel too much like getting railroaded by canon.

How many was it, now? How many plot threads did she recognize? Her sisters’ enslavement. Meeting Rayleigh in Sabaody. Eating the Love-Love Fruit. Fisher Tiger...

No. Superstition or not, paranoia or not, if Hancock actually became Amazon Lily’s empress, she’d never be able to get the idea out of her head that none of her actions were her own.

In a deterministic universe, free will might be an illusion, but it wasn’t an illusion Hancock was keen to discard.

Not to mention that, superstition and philosophy aside, she had her own aspirations, entirely separate from the Kuja.

Specifically, she wanted to screw over the World Government, as hard as possible.

She had been wronged. Her sisters had been wronged. And all these deaths, all of that destruction in Marie-Joie – it simply wasn’t enough to redress the scales.

Hancock wasn’t sure anything would be enough, at this point.

Still, the fact remained that she was much too weak to openly oppose the World Government or the Marines. And with a 890,000,000 Berry bounty on her head, she would have to be circumspect and keep a low profile.

Which might be tough, with a face – and figure – like hers.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, there too, Life Return could be the solution. It wouldn’t be difficult at all for Hancock to alter her appearance, diminish some of her beauty, shift a few significant features here and there. It would be the practical thing to do, really.

Hancock didn’t want to, though.

Already, she was kind of offended – outraged, even – that that Knight of God had dared to put a dent, as temporary as it was, into her developing beauty.

It was pure ego and vanity, but Hancock didn’t care. She’d gotten used to the admiring and covetous gazes. She liked that people sometimes tripped over their own feet or walked into walls when they saw her in the street. She liked wearing revealing clothes – or no clothes at all, when she could afford to – and wheedling free stuff from merchants. She liked being absolutely gorgeous. And she liked that she would only get more so with time, until her beauty was without equal anywhere in the world.

She refused to let anyone take that from her.

But then, rather than reducing her beauty in any way, it might be enough to...

Hancock took a centering breath and focused. It took her a few minutes, but the now-familiar veil of calm soon fell over her thoughts.

Changing the pigmentation of her skin was far from the most difficult task she’d ever asked of Life Return. It wasn’t even the most difficult task she’d asked of it in the past few hours.

Slowly, Hancock watched, her one eye fixed unblinkingly on the mirror before her, as her skin gradually darkened, from a fair, faintly sun-tanned tone, to something closer to chocolate brown.

Good.

As for her hair... White, maybe? That would nicely contrast with the darker skin. Or how about...

With another few minutes of concentration, Hancock’s hair slowly shifted from its previous black to something like a dark purple-pink – the closest she could get to the color of her Devil Fruit-granted eyes. It would have been a wholly unnatural hue, back on Earth, but the people of this world accepted a much wider range of possibilities without so much as a blink.

Hancock leaned back from the mirror and looked herself over one last time. It was certainly different. She hadn’t altered any of her actual features, but the change in coloring was drastic enough on its own to have quite a significant impact on her appearance.

She’d have to ask the others what they thought, and maybe test it around Sabaody, carefully, to see if the ‘disguise’ held up to any scrutiny at all.

That did nothing for her eyes themselves, though. Those were quite distinctive – unique, dare she say – and appeared prominently on her bounty poster. And Hancock couldn’t exactly modify them as easily as her hair or skin colors.

She pursed her lips and considered the issue for a minute, but without any immediate flash of inspiration, she could only shrug and set it aside. If worse came to worst, she could always start wearing a blindfold and learn how to move around without her sight.

So.

That was a good thing done, but it didn’t help her figure out where to strike the World Government for the greatest impact. Where could she hit where it hurt most?

Apart from tracking her sisters down to Sabaody, Hancock’s foreknowledge hadn’t much come into play, in her life so far. This, though, seemed like exactly the sort of conundrum which could use some of it.

...Should she go to East Blue and teach Luffy – and Ace – some Haki ahead of schedule, perhaps? The Six Powers? Life Return?

On the long term, this was probably the one thing that would snowball into an outright nightmare for the World Government. The kind of damage the future Pirate King could do with a bit more training upfront was... hard to fathom.

It would be risky, though. Messing with Luffy meant messing with Garp. And though he may have shown her mercy once, poking at Garp through his family – and at Dragon, by extension – sounded like a quick way to commit suicide. If he caught her anywhere near his grandson, she was dead as a doornail.

And considering said grandson couldn’t keep a secret to save his life, that would be pretty much inevitable.

Speaking of Dragon, joining his revolution was another option. Not only would it allow Hancock to actively contribute to the fight against the World Government, it would also give her a support structure capable of shielding her from her enemies.

Was that the best option, though? The spot where she could make the most difference? The revolution would be just fine without her, after all, and it wasn’t going anywhere. Was there somewhere else where she could be more useful, more urgently?

Wasn’t there someone else the World Government very much wanted dead? Someone who’d otherwise have it tough? Someone who could really use a helping hand?

Ooooh, now there was an idea...

Hancock, a smile playing across her lips, quickly slipped back into her borrowed clothes, strapped a medical eyepatch to her face, then left the bathroom.

When she stepped into the bar’s kitchen, she ignored the gasps from her sisters sitting at the table – surprised at her new appearance, no doubt – and instead turned to her host.

“Shakuyaku, you’re an information broker, correct?”

The woman didn’t linger on Hancock’s changed look. She simply smirked. “I’m a bartender, actually. But I do moonlight as a broker, when the fancy strikes, yes. What do you need?”

“Would you happen to know where I could find Nico Robin?”

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If I ever split the story into books, this would mark the end of Book One.So, see you in a couple of days for the first chapter of Book Two: The Hunt for Red OctNico Robin, I guess.