[EotB] 058. Love Sickness (Patreon)

14 years, 6 months, 8 days before Romance Dawn (1524.10.28)

“Table 8,” Shakuyaku said, dropping a couple of glasses, along with a half-filled bottle, down atop the tray Hancock carried.

Hancock couldn’t see the bartender’s smile, but she could hear it in her voice, and feel it radiating from her soul.

She nodded and turned away, tray in hand, then headed unerringly across the bar, her gait sure and confident despite the blindfold covering the upper half of her face. She circled around one of the tables in her way, and when one of the men seated there reached out to pinch her butt as she passed, his lust flaring at the hypnotic sway of her hips, she gracefully danced out of the way.

She heard a disappointed “aww...” behind her as she reached her destination and started unloading Table 8’s order.

“I have to say,” Customer #67 – he was a regular, and Hancock recognized his Haki signature, but she didn’t know his name – commented as she set the bottle down onto the table between him and his companion, “the service has really improved since you started working here, Miss Azalea, but how do you do it? Even dodging drunkards who forget themselves! That’s incredible!”

Hancock wasn’t at all surprised that her presence would improve service at Shakky’s Rip-off Bar. She didn’t have any particular gift at waitressing; it was just that Shakuyaku was actually a terrible bartender. She was blunt to the point of rudeness with her customers, she didn’t hesitate to shake them down when they refused to pay her extortionist prices, and she sure as hell didn’t bother going around bringing people their orders – it was up to them to get off their asses and retrieve them from the counter behind which she worked.

Anything would be an improvement over that.

But as for her ability to dodge grabby customers without looking, that was simple with a mere touch of Haki.

It was stepping around tables and chairs and unloading the contents of her tray which actually presented the most difficulty. Those didn’t have souls and intentions her Observation could read and predict.

“Practice makes perfect,” she said, which had the benefit of being true but didn’t actually explain anything.

If he paid close attention, however, Customer #67 wouldn’t have to wonder how she was doing it. With sharp enough eyes, he would be able to see the individual hair filaments stretching away from Hancock, almost invisible as they gently brushed against her surroundings, like tentacles floating around a jellyfish – with considerably less venom and considerably more purpose.

This obviously required not only the ability to control one’s hair at will, but also hair that was stupidly, impractically long.

Hancock had always kept her hair fairly long already, but she’d made sure to tie it in a functional braid whenever she was about to engage in any serious combat. It still granted her opponents one major dangling weakness onto which they could grab, but that was a tradeoff she’d been willing to make for the benefit of vanity.

To map out her surroundings as she did now, however, her hair had to stay loose, and it had to be loooong – long enough that Hancock now sported an entire curtain of purple falling down to her ankles.

The only reason this was anything but an unmanageable nightmare of tangles and knots was that Hancock hadn’t spent the past six or so months just lazing about Shakuyaku’s place.

Finally, finally, after literal years of practice, she had attained enough familiarity with Life Return to constantly maintain some measure of control over her anatomy, during her day-to-day life. She’d have to see how this control held up under the stress of combat, but for now, it was sufficient to not spend twenty minutes with a brush in hand every morning, working through tangles, or sit on her hair every time she lowered herself into a chair, or dip her bangs into her plate when she ate, or drag her mane across the floor when she crouched.

And Hancock had some interesting ideas for applications building on top of all of that. Hair reinforced with Armament Haki, after all, was essentially indistinguishable from garotte wire.

But that was for later. For now, it served as a way to map out her surroundings while she kept her distinctive eyes hidden behind a blindfold.

Even ankle-length hair wouldn’t be enough for that purpose, of course – she needed double or even triple that to have enough reach to keep decent coverage of her vicinity. Even with Life Return, growing individual strands of hair that long wasn’t instantaneous, but getting there was faster from ankle-length than it would be from shoulder-length or even from the small of her back.

It didn’t hurt that the change in hairstyle furthered the distance between her current appearance and that depicted on her bounty poster.

Walking around Sabaody Archipelago and working in Shakuyaku’s bar had proved that she looked different enough from Hancock the Dastardly Terrorist not to be recognized as such, but there was no harm in nudging the odds further in her favor wherever she could.

♦♦♦

Soon, the bar closed and Hancock stacked chairs onto tables while Shakuyaku mopped the floor.

“You know you don’t need to help at the bar, Azalea,” she said not for the first time.

Hancock ignored the teasing emphasis on her chosen pseudonym and refused to show any self-consciousness. Flower names were common for Kuja. There was nothing weird about it.

“It’s the least I can do after everything you’ve done for us. And it makes for good practice, too.” She gestured toward her blindfold.

Shakuyaku chuckled. “If you say so, but I’m the one who’s going to have to deal with a devastated clientele after you leave.”

“I’ve no doubt they’ll recover.”

With the two of them working together, it didn’t take long to clean up the bar, at which point Hancock followed Shakuyaku into the back.

“Have you packed your suitcase, yet?”

“No. There’s no rush. I’ll do that tomorrow.”

Shakuyaku hummed. “I think Gloriosa wanted to speak to you and the girls, as well.”

“Oh? What about?”

“If I had to guess: love sickness. If you’re going to spend any extended time outside Maiden Island, it’s best you know what to watch out for.”

Oh, right. That was a thing. Hancock had honestly forgotten about that, first in the scramble of her assault on Marie-Joie, and then in the calm of the months that followed.

Once again, she found Gloriosa at her favorite spot, lounging in the back garden. She had a book with her, as usual, but she had set it aside on the table before her while she chatted with Sandersonia and Marigold.

It wasn’t strange to find the three of them together. With Gloriosa’s greater facility with... people stuff... than Hancock, the old empress had been invaluable in helping the girls cope with what had happened to them, and she’d become, if Hancock wasn’t reading the situation wrong, something of a mother figure for her sisters.

The first couple of months after their rescue had been pretty rough, but they were much better now. At least, they could sleep without nightmares again.

While Hancock’s own affection didn’t run quite that deep, she was certainly grateful, and if Gloriosa could provide the girls the sort of emotional support Hancock herself had never managed, then all to the good.

“Ah, Hancock!” the woman said upon catching sight of her. “Finished waiting tables? Then come over here. We need to talk for a little bit.”

“So Shakuyaku informed me,” Hancock said as she settled into the seat at Sandersonia’s other side, absently keeping the tips of her hair off the ground with a twist of concentration. She tugged her blindfold off her face but kept her left eye shut – she’d messed up some of the nerve connections in her latest attempt at regeneration, and her vision was dizzyingly blurry on this side. “Something about love sickness?”

Gloriosa nodded. “Correct. There’s every chance that none of you will ever contract it, but just in case, you should know the symptoms, and how to mitigate them. It can be a question of life or death.”

“Hmm. I think you said that Empress Tritoma suffers from it?”

“I suspect so, yes, but we’ll have to see once we’re back on Maiden Island.”

That ‘we’ obviously didn’t include Hancock.

“’Love sickness’ makes it sound like Kuja get sick when they fall in love,” Marigold mused, “but I remember some of the girls from the previous training cohort getting together, and they were fine.”

“Quite. It’s a bit more complicated than that. In fact, it doesn’t even have to do anything with love, necessarily. Love is just the most common vector through which the disease manifests.” Gloriosa reached for her cup of tea, steaming gently next to her forgotten book, and took a sip to wet her throat. “Essentially, Kuja warriors can sometimes fall under the sway of some... unexpected obsession. The shift in priorities, the... the mental realignment... can occur quite suddenly, without any warning, and the object of that obsession can vary significantly from one person to the next. Like I said, it’s love, most of the time, but it can also be revenge or hatred, or even something completely unrelated to a particular person: an urge to wander the seas and visit new places, never settling down in one place, or to learn and master a trade or an art – painting, blacksmithing, farming, swordsmanship...”

“I’ve never heard of any of that,” Sandersonia muttered, frowning thoughtfully. “You’d think we would have noticed if someone suddenly swapped personalities like that.”

But Gloriosa shook her head. “You wouldn’t have, no. It’s actually quite rare, and it only affects warriors who leave the island. Don’t ask me why that is; I have no clue.”

“And resisting the obsession causes some sort of mental deterioration, I take it?” Hancock asked.

She remembered the questions Shakuyaku and Gloriosa had asked about Tritoma, so it was an easy guess to make.

Additionally, she well remembered the ridiculous development wherein canon Boa Hancock suddenly fell in love with Monkey D. Luffy out of nowhere, taking what might have been an enemy way out of his league and turning her into a loyal and devoted ally – and just the right person to get him into Impel Down to save Ace.

In a series that took itself more seriously, it would have been a blatant deus ex machina. In One Piece, it was just one more piece of absurdist humor that fit right in with the rest of the madness.

It didn’t feel as funny when Hancock was staring down the barrel of her own possible future.

She really hoped she wouldn’t end up like her original counterpart. Nothing against Luffy, but... He didn’t exactly match her tastes, and the notion of being reduced to a lovesick schoolgirl pining after someone – anyone – was personally offensive to her.

“Correct. The longer a Kuja afflicted with love sickness resists her obsession, the more unstable – the more emotionally volatile she becomes. Eventually, it starts to affect her health. Generalized weakness. Dizziness. Chest pain. Fainting spells. Death.”

Marigold’s eyes widened. “Wait, it’s actually lethal?”

“If the obsession is fought, then... yes, eventually. Without exception.” There was a moment of heavy silence while Gloriosa took another sip of tea, before she continued. “That’s not to say it’s an automatic death sentence, of course. The disease can’t exactly be cured, as such, but treating the symptoms is easy enough: simply obey the urges, whatever they may be.”

“What if they are repugnant?” Hancock asked.

Gloriosa simply shrugged. “Well, that’s just the thing. You won’t find them repugnant, regardless of what they are. You’ll want to obey them. It actually takes a considerable amount of willpower to resist them.”

“So, the empress...” Sandersonia said, trailing off hesitantly.

“I’m just guessing here, but I suspect Tritoma couldn’t find a proper successor, and decided to put her responsibilities to the Kuja Pirates and the empire before her own desires.” She shook her head. “Foolish, but the kid always was too dutiful for her own good.”

Rather than worry about Tritoma, Hancock was again thinking of the character whose place in this world she’d stolen.

Boa Hancock’s obsession with Luffy was basically doomed to failure from the start, considering the sheer weapons-grade obliviousness of the guy. Luffy would never be able to return her love.

Did that mean she – as in the manga character; not Hancock herself – was fated to die?

If so, that was fucking grim.

“What if the obsession cannot be fulfilled?” she asked. “Love can be unrequited.”

Gloriosa nodded seriously. “Good point. I was getting to that. The simple fact is that surviving love sickness is not about actually getting what you want. Hell, I didn’t. It’s about trying, regardless of the result.”

Marigold blinked at her. “You?”

Gloriosa smiled, but there wasn’t much joy in it. “Sure. Me. I fell in love with a man and decided to relinquish my seat as empress to pursue him. It didn’t work out, but as you can see, I’m just fine, these days.”

There was a moment of silent commiseration at those heavy words, but then Sandersonia suddenly gasped and leaned over the table. “What about Shakky?” she asked, voice hushed as if against eavesdropping. “Is that how she met Rayleigh?”

Gloriosa snorted and rolled her eyes. “Sure is. You should have seen the two of them back then, dancing around each other. What a mess it all was.”

The girls looked interested in the scandalous love story, but Hancock was still chewing through the implications.

“That’s why you’re confident you’ll be welcomed back in the empire, even after all these years, isn’t it?” she cut in, eyes narrowed in thought. “Because you never actually deserted. You – and Shakuyaku – left with the crew’s blessing. And your successor’s. Whereas my desertion is the real thing.”

“Indeed.”

“And yet, you are technically registered as deserters in the public histories of the empire. And none of the civilian population knows anything about love sickness. Why the deception?”

Gloriosa gave her a flat look. “How willing do you think warriors would be to join the crew, if they knew that, by doing so, they risked contracting a disease likely to compel them to leave their home for the rest of their lives? I do still remember how Kuja are, when it comes to their loyalty – their love – for the empire.”

“...I see.”

If Hancock had stayed with the Kuja Pirates long enough to truly confirm her position among them, she would have likely been sat down for a similar sort of talk, eventually.

The question, then, was: were any of her own desires influenced by love sickness?

She was vulnerable to it, after all. She’d left Maiden Island more than a year ago. It wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility that she would have already fallen victim to this love sickness, by now.

Her quest to save her sisters had been something of an obsession, but it had taken root before she ever left Maiden Island, so it probably didn’t qualify.

Did her wish to stick it to the World Government?

Hancock didn’t feel like it did. Her thirst for revenge felt perfectly natural to her, and she was attacking it with what she felt was a healthy degree of prudence and patience.

Ultimately, though, would she even be able to tell the difference, if the sickness’s influence was as insidious as Gloriosa had described?

And did it even matter?

Either way, she could only go one step at a time, and consider each with the care and reason they were due.