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the-bar-sinister · 6 months ago

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Deicide (58285 words) by VickytheSnake, thesavagesabretooth Chapters: 15/?

Summary: In the aftermath of the raid on Onigashima everything changes. The path to the One Piece is a course that can only be charted by those who agree to join together as friends and fight without taking the easy way out.

catch up here.

It could have gone worse.

O-Kiku had made her way to the palace with her new arm resting on the empty crimson scabbard by her side. She’d visited the throne room with her warm smile and bow to their new shogun, and asked to speak to the remaining scabbards and himself all together.

She owed it to them, her fellow blades of Wano, to give them a proper goodbye. Their surprise had been expected and just as difficult to handle as she feared. They’d appealed to her honor; to her duty as a scabbard, to the fact that Momo needed them all more than ever now that he was starting his rise to power. They’d appealed to her care for them as a friend.

But she reminded them. Careful words spoke of Oden’s adventures, and her own brother’s grand journey across the sea. They found themselves through their adventures, had they not? So what says she could not do the same.

Wano had great warriors within it— it had the scabbards and the shinobi, and all manner of strength within its high walls. It did not need O-Kiku of the Lingering Snow. When she’d shown them her brother's arm and declared her vow of honor upon it to live in a way that would bring joy to her lost sibling— they relented.

There were long goodbyes, there were tears, there was a private aside with Kin as he wished her luck on the sea. While she had asked, none had a sword for her to take, and none believed the masterwork blades of Wano should leave its shores for a good long while.

So O-Kiku would have to look elsewhere for one.

With a last bow, and a thanking for all they had done for her over the years…she stepped out of the chambers and started down the hall with her brother’s fingers lingering thoughtfully on her chin.

As she walked, another figure stepped out of a connecting corridor beside her, and fell into pace with her as she headed for the exit. Much smaller than O-Kiku, the woman wore a fox mask that covered her face, but she didn't need to see her face to recognize her.

“...It’s rather nice to see you.” O-Kiku said in a quiet voice, looking down sidelong at her with a smile. She continued towards the door, trusting the familiar face of ‘Komurasaki’...Hiyori…to follow her.

"I was hoping we'd run into one another before it was time to leave," she admitted softly as they stepped outside the palace. "No surprise that it would be here I suppose."

“I was hoping too,” O-Kiku nodded slowly. “This one was sure that you were planning on leaving too. It’s no surprise– we both had last minute business, didn’t we?”

"So we did." She nodded, carefully picking her way down the steps and into the street. "You were bolder than I."

“I had less threat of losing my chance if I faced them directly,” O-Kiku chuckled into her borrowed hand as she let the former princess lead the way. “They could say little to keep me there…I know it is not the same for you.”

"No." She shook her masked head. "There is much to keep me here. I'm truly throwing everything away. My family, my honor, my duty. They'd seek to save me from such total self-destruction."

O-Kiku chuckled musically as she looked up at the Wano sky.

“Sometimes you have to embrace a little destruction to find what jewel lies beneath. I’m not the same person I was when I met Oden, after all. And you aren’t the same woman who’s ‘died’.”

"No. Neither the woman nor the girl. I'd like to leave Hiyori buried here in Wano's soul. Some part of Komurasaki, I'll take with me."

“Some part of Komurasaki? Then that is what I’ll call you.” O-Kiku smiled at her warmly.

" I see you're taking something with you, too."

O-Kiku looked down at her gun belt and the hand that rested on it. “....I am. My brother’s dead, but I will carry his dreams with me as I go forward.”

"As it should be," Komurasaki nodded. "I think he would want to be carried away with you."

O-Kiku flexed her fingers against the empty scabbard with a fond smile.

“You understand, Komurasaki. I don’t think he’d ever want to be trapped here when he’s tasted the open sea. So I’ll be taking him with me…and you’ll be taking that name with you too.” She reached one hand out to delicately squeeze her shoulder. “...I’m glad for you…I really am.”

In return, Komurasaki put a hand on O-Kiku's back. "Perhaps the sea winds will cross our paths out there."

“I do hope they do, Komurasaki.” Her fingers rested delicately and fondly against the other woman.

"You're sailing with Kid, is that right?"

“I am sailing with Captain Kid…he so graciously took me in along with young Kurozumi Otama and her friend. Are you sailing with the Straw Hats or…?”

"With the Heart Pirates and Captain Law. We had an interesting conversation. The Straw Hats have taken on a different crew member."

“Captain Law… he should make a remarkable captain.” She nodded. Her other hand rested again on her empty scabbard. “The Straw Hats are taking along Yamato, are they not?”

"Yes. A little bird told me. And I thought, perhaps it would be better for all of us not to take too much Wano on any one ship. Lest we sacrifice what it means to leave at all."

O-Kiku laughed quietly.

“Much as I was hoping to reconnect,” she teased. “This one very much agrees with you. Too much of Wano, and it will feel like we’ve never left.”

"We'll meet again, perhaps," Komurasaki mused. She seemed hardly to look at the shops or people as they passed– perhaps hoping to keep herself from becoming entangled in nostalgia, or regret. "Is there anything you're taking with you?"

“My brother’s gun, my brother’s arm….” O-Kiku mused as she looked off into the distance. “Some tea from the tea shop…and a sword. I am a swordswoman who’s lost her beloved sword. Nothing else save for the kimono in my pack, and my dreams.”

Komurasaki's hand went to her hip, where she was wearing her own sword. A sword that O-Kiku recognized, and had long been gone from Wano.

"Lost your beloved sword. I am sorry for that. What will you do for replacement?"

“It was shattered , shortly before a friend stole my arm from me,” her fingers gently tightened against her shoulder.

“I’m not sure. I had asked the Scabbards if there were any I might be permitted to take. The swords of a fallen friend, perhaps…but I was denied. They think that swords such as yours have been out of Wano’s walls for too long and should not go.”

Komurasaki was quiet for a moment. "They think similarly of us, sister-of-my-journey."

It was true that they did, O-Kiku knew that well. The expressions on their faces when she’d formally resigned had spoken to that. The walls of Wano would close once more very soon, and there were many who wished that little of its people and culture would slip outside until it was ready to rejoin the world.

But O-Kiku felt that restless stir inside her. The desire she knew was mirrored in the ‘sister of her journey’ beside her. Wano was too small for them…Wano held too many memories and too many faces they knew too well.

No matter the scorn, the loss of honor, they had to leave now or lose their chance.

“Wano is a closed country after all.”

"So it is," Komurasaki agreed. "But perhaps you can find a sword that shares your restless longing, and mine."

O-Kiku walked a little closer to her with a soft hum.

“That's been my hope, Komurasaki.” Her voice dropped low, and quiet. “What better place to find spirits of restless longing than the graves of the heroes, perhaps? Perhaps one of them still dreams of something more than the shores of Wano…”

"I was thinking the same," she nodded. "Perhaps we should light a candle and pray and see what spirits speak to you."

With a firm nod, O-Kiku rested a hand atop her head instead of the shoulder.

“A plea for a companion, and a proper goodbye to Wano….this one would be overjoyed to have you with her for it.”

She put her hand on her arm in return. "And so you shall."

Surrounded by the graves of heroes, O-Kiku prayed. She’d donned her mask, the fearsome and demonic visage complimenting Komurasaki’s vulpine smile as the two knelt in the snow with the fragile flame from the candle flickering between them.

The pleasant conversation between them had died the moment they arrived, as O-Kiku bathed in the reverence of the final resting place of so many warriors. Swords, as many as they had salvaged from the failed initial raid on Onigashima…and those that had never been touched…lay against gravestones in a sea of memory.

O-Kiku had respected them her whole life..these warriors who gave even their lives for their people and their honor. She only hoped that they would respect her in this final moment on Wano and her wish to see beyond it.

She prayed to them, whispered words of her respect and her offer to the spirits of the deceased.

“I will take you to the ends of the sea and beyond, I will wield your sword honorably even in my profession…I will give you a grand adventure befitting your sacrifice.”

The candle flame flickered between them, and for a moment it felt as hopeless as O-kiku expected the endeavor to be. Nothing more than a sweet goodbye to the warriors of Wano, and her old life.

She’d looked up to Komurasaki with a smile to tell her it was time to leave when she saw it— a flickering green-blue flame that danced among the graves like the fire of some strange yokai.

Komurasaki's head turned toward the sight as well, and she gestured cautiously toward it, watching in curiosity and wonder. She remained silent– perhaps breathless.

O-Kiku stood, dusting the snow off her kimono before she wandered closer to the dancing flame in silence as it wove through the old graves towards a forgotten corner further from the central shrine. It came to rest above a sheathed sword standing tall over its master’s grave.

Its sheath was worn, but the painted design of snow drifting off bare branches was visible still. Its pale blue grip was capped in white iron, and a circular tsuba shaped like a snowflake’s branched fractals.

She bent down as the flame circled the sword and lifted it into both hands, her eyes lingering on the grave. ‘Ritsu the Frozen Demon’ it read, and O-Kiku remembered the legends of a deadly swordsman who’s blade was said to bite as cold as the heart of winter, leaving frostbite in its wake. He was a hero of early Wano who stood up for the poor in the northern districts before being driven to the mountains. A man with a sense of adventure, who’d earned his moniker both for the deadly skill with his sword— but for his often indifferent spirit against common norms and propriety.

She slowly unsheathed the blade , eyes trailing over the pristine edge– as sharp as the day it was driven into the dirt over its master’s body. There wasn’t a spot of rust or damage, the hamon standing out to her eyes in a strangely angular pattern that defied the usual wave.

Komurasaki had stood, and shadowed behind her watching in a breathless awe as the moment lingered. O-Kiku could tell that as far as Komurasaki was concerned, there could be no doubt. They'd found what they'd come for. A sword that asked to be taken.

O-Kiku sheathed the blade cleanly, and used its cord to tie it to her hip before clapping her hands in prayer and bowing to the grave with a murmured thanks.

“This one will carry your blade with the bearing of a samurai and the soul of a pirate.” She murmured to him. “Thank you.”

The spirit flame flickered before settling down into the gravestone and vanishing, the weight of the sword resting heavy…contentedly…against her hip as she placed the old red scabbard of her prior life upon the grave in its stead.

“Goodbye, Wano.” she whispered with her fingers curled against the grip of her new blade…’Yuki-onna’.

By the time the last fingers of the sunset faded away on Wano the night before the great celebration, Yamato found himself aboard the Thousand Sunny. Some of the crew were staying behind in the guesthouses until the morning, so that suspicion wasn't aroused, but Luffy at least had declared that he at least wouldn't spend another night on the island, and had been excitedly showing him around the ship.

Yamato didn’t have much to his name— most of it, the scraps he did own, had been tossed in the crew's quarters as he followed Luffy around with his hands behind his head and a big smile on his face.

It was an impressive ship. He’d never seen anything like it besides his old man’s ships, and even then he’d never been allowed on board.

Luffy pushed open another door in the belly of the ship and showed him to a large half-circle room, one side of which was dominated by beds and lockers. The other half was styled as a common area with a recessed sofa pit and a traditional fireplace.

"All the men sleep in the same room," Luffy said. "Is that going to be okay?"

Yamato rubbed the back of his neck with a lopsided grin.

“We all shared the same bath, didn’t we? Doesn’t bother me if it don’t bother you! Hell...” He peeked around the room with a curious grin, especially at the strange little sofa pit and the fireplace. “The rare moments I wasn't sleepin’ alone in the elements I was sleeping in cramped crew or prisoner’s quarters.”

Luffy clapped Yamato around the waist and grinned widely, his big, guileless smile.. "Great! I mean, not great about prisoners quaterst, but, you know. Anyway, we have a lot of fun!"

Yamato laughed, slipping his arm companionably over Luffy’s shoulders.

“I bet you do. I mean. Look at this place, it ain’t like anything the old man ever had around…” He crept towards the pit of sofas, “and with a crew like yours every day’s gotta be….it’s gotta be amazing. Lively, right? That’s the word?”

"I've heard Nami call it worse," Luffy laughed, following after him. The bouncy captain catapulted himself into the cushioned pit and motioned for Yamato to join him.

Yamato almost hesitated, but his excitement won out as he dropped himself down onto the plush cushions of the pit. “...so what’s this thing for? Gathering around and tellin’ stories?”

"Yeah, basically!" Luffy grinned, flopping his feet on the table. "And drinking, and hanging around, and making out and stuff."

“Huh!” Yamato grinned as he settled his way into the cushions.

“Yeah that all sounds like a lot of fu—” He blinked slowly, somewhere in his brain the last part of Luffy’s sentence finally clicked as he turned a slight pink and asked. “...makin’ out?”

Luffy's bright smile took on an only very slightly embarrassed air to it, and he rubbed the back of his neck. "I guess that hasn't really come up yet, huh?"

What exactly hadn't come up yet was far from completely clear, and admittedly Yamato wasn’t exactly sure what it meant. It was something he’d heard before, talked about among some of the outsider Beast Pirates and the ladies of the evening who assisted Maria in her pleasure house.

It absolutely had something to do with sex.

“I just ain’t sure exactly what it means,” Yamato chuckled embarrassedly. “I mean! Oden would know! And I am Oden so obviously I do, but I kinda…forgot what that phrase means, I guess?”

Luffy blinked at him slowly, and seemed to be taking stock. Yamato felt like he could see the gears in Luffy's head have difficulty turning the same way it felt like his own were.

"...making out?" he asked, hesitantly.

Yamato’s lips twitched into a wider smile as he shrugged his shoulders.

“Yeahhh…. not exactly a turn of phrase that Wano uses a lot, captain. But I heard some of the Beast Pirates saying it…” He trailed off before he leaned closer and asked “it’s a sex thing, right? I’m on the right track?”

"Yeah, like, it's… you know the stuff you do before sex, usually. Like, kissing, and touching and sitting in each other's laps, and stuff," Luffy said, wiggling his toes in his sandals. He looked Yamato over curiously, seeming rather embarrassed, or self-conscious. "Is that… have you done any of that before now?"

“Ahhhh…” Yamato nodded, tucking his long hair over his ear with a slight flush of his face “I mean…I’ve had sex before. Me and Ace, back when we met; we got real close real fast. I’ve done all of that, just didn’t know the name.”

He grinned at Luffy, still flushed red.

Luffy brightened considerably at that. "Oh! You and Ace! I thought you might have, which was why I was surprised," he nodded, seeming satisfied as his own flush faded and he relaxed into the cushions. "Yeah, it's called making out. All the stuff up to having sex. Well. I've heard Sanji call it 'heavy petting' before but that just makes me think of Carrot."

He babbled on, now with seemingly zero self-consciousness.

“Well sorry I surprised ya! No..I’ve had sex. Woulda had more but ah, things weren’t so great for me in that regard ‘cause of my training” he laughed brightly , leaning towards him with a big grin. Thankfully, with Luffy’s weirdly seriously stare dispersed into his usual cheerful babbling away Yamato was already feeling less flustered and put on edge

“heavy petting huh? Yeah, that just reminds me of the mink too honestly. ‘Garchu’, right?”

"Garchu!" Luffy grinned. "Exactly! So, um, my crew and I do that stuff a lot. You don't have to or anything."

Yamato shifted in the cushions as he turned that over in his head. He’d gotten a little of that sense when he met Ace, the way he talked about sex seemed like, or at least close to, the same kind of casual intimacy that Luffy claimed happened on his crew.

He still remembered that firelit night by the sea when he and Ace had allowed the walls between them to crumble for a night— he’d missed it. The feeling of being that close with someone. He missed Ace too, but…

He redirected his thoughts.

In Wano things were complicated. Too many people still saw him as the ‘Oni Princess’ no matter how many times even his bastard father tried beating it into them to remember. The others, the ones who did respect who he was in his heart all worked for his mother in the pleasure house, making trips there awkward to say the least. All of that was in the little time he actually had for things like that between his training and his imprisonments.

Here…maybe they weren’t quite so complicated for once.

He grinned with his hands under his chin. “But d’ya think I could…? If you guys do that a lot…can I be a part of it?”

"Of course!" Luffy declared blithely, leaning toward him with a wide grin. "If you want to, there's no way we'd leave you out. I sure wouldn't."

Luffy let his body fall, collapsing over Yamato's knees and looking up at him impishly.

Yamato looked down at him with a fang-filled smile, one of his sharp-nailed hands brushing through his hair as he tilted his head in a way he knew was a bit ‘doggish’.

“Is this how you welcome every new member of your crew?”

Luffy's normally guileless smile turned from subtly impish to outright sly. He reached up and wrapped his lengthened arms around Yamato's shoulders.

"Yeah, kinda, honestly."

Yamato felt his face flush again, but he reached down and scooped Luffy closer with a smirk of his own.

“Looks like I might have picked the right crew, then. There wasn’t anything about this in Oden’s journals, so I’m guessin’ it isn’t typical. But it does sound more fun.”

Luffy pulled himself closer, and knelt himself upward on Yamato's knees, putting them face to face, grinning widely.

"I donno, I don't think Nami puts this stuff in her journal either."

Yamato let his arms wrap around his new captain’s waist, settling him firmly against his lap as he met his eyes. “...you know that’s a good point. I put my experience with Ace in mine though…I’ll probably put anything else there too. Even this.”

Luffy's grin went sharp again. "That doesn't bother me at all."

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