blaed

“No,” Ikkaku protested again.  “Polar Tang, you can’t.”

The Polar Tang smiled at her, all teeth.  Law’s grin, worn when things were going wrong but he wouldn’t let it stay that way, because her Captain was a D and that meant something.

“None of us are dying today,” she promised, because they weren’t.  Not Ikkaku, not Hakugan at her helm, or Penguin and Shachi in the water.  Not Bepo, not Law, not anyone.

Not the Polar Tang.

“Go,” she repeated, a strain of her hull echoing the sound behind her.  “This will not kill me, and I will not let it kill you.”

It was a good thing that her boys weren’t on board.  They would never have gone, no matter how much the Tang pushed them, and it would have killed them all.

Ikkaku gave her engines one last caress, and straightened her back.  “Promise,” she said, addressing the physical body of the Tang and not the spirit standing behind her.  “Promise this won’t kill you.”

It was an easy promise to make.  “I swear,” the Polar Tang said.  “On the flag we fly, by the Seas we’ve sailed and have yet to sail, that this won’t kill me.”

Hakugan was the last one, one of her newest nakama but one of the oldest and wisest, for all they kept it locked down beyond the lure of causing havoc wherever he went.  The Polar Tang put her hands on her own helm – not the first time, but the first time her nakama could see her do it – and nudged them to step aside.

They moved easily, their mask hiding their thoughts but his motions natural.  “Nice hat,” he said, and she grinned, because her hat was nice, fluffy and soft and splodged, just like their captain’s, but where his was white, hers was black, and where his was black, hers was the colour of blood.  “The captain told me to take care of you,” they continued after a moment.

“My job is to take care of you,” the Tang countered, and gave them a nudge on his shoulder.  They were corporeal enough that Hakugan was pushed back a touch, away from the controls.  “This will not kill me,” she assured them, the same way she had assured everyone else currently waiting by the airlock.  “And I won’t let it kill you.”

“It will hurt you,” Hakugan pointed out, and she shrugged.

“Not as much as the death of my nakama,” because Hakugan was right; her hull was straining and while it wasn’t yet as painful as the time Mugiwara tore her apart from the inside out yet, it was clear that the monster at the heart of the quakes had his heart set on nothing less than annihilation, and that would hurt.  “Go.”

“I’ll see you later,” Hakugan replied, and left.  It was the least fuss any of the nakama she had spoken to had made, but Hakugan had always been a little different.  The Polar Tang didn’t know all of his secrets, not yet, but she looked forwards to learning them.

That was one reason why they had to live.

She opened the airlock the moment she felt them reach it, ejecting her crew out to the mercy of the Sea.  Law was the only one that couldn’t swim, and he was on land; the others were all as home in the water as they were out.  They would be fine.

And the Polar Tang could break.

She could hear their despair, her nakama crying out as she surrendered to the forces ripping her to shreds.  Even those she’d been able to speak to, sworn oaths of survival for, shrieked, their pain far sharper than the feeling of her hull tearing apart, the feeling of being in more pieces than any ship had any right to be.

She let herself fade back into her body, shattered and broken and sinking, but not without one last, defiant grin crossing her face.

It would take time, and her crew would have to be strong without her for a while, but the monster with his stolen powers had underestimated her, as she’d known he would.  He might have torn her apart and left her to sink, but she was a submarine.  Sinking was what she did, and as she’d been certain would happen, the moment her hull fractured he stopped, naïve in the way of ships even after all his years at sea.

The Polar Tang was broken, but she was not destroyed.  Thirteen years of nakama that called her home and poured love into her constantly were more than a match for something like this.

She would be whole again, and populated by her crew once more.