Tick. Tock. Feed The Croc.

The spit never made it past Crocodile’s lips as Leigh caught him by the jaw mid-motion, talons locking in with brutal precision before the blood could ever land. The prisoner's teeth should have snapped together hard enough to click, the impact reverberating through bone as the blood instead smeared uselessly across Leigh’s knuckles and the front of his coat. For a moment, the entire corridor forgot how to breathe as the admiral just stood there with the other make suspended in his grip, like something vast being held behind a wall that was already starting to crack. What lived in the marine’s chest wasn’t rage but something colder and more deliberate that sharpened itself with every heartbeat, cutting inward instead of outward. Leigh slammed him into the iron bars so hard the metal screamed. The sound echoed down the corridor like a warning bell no one dared answer. Inside, prisoners scattered in panic, stumbling over each other as the bars bent inward under the force of the impact. Somewhere behind them, someone shouted while someone else prayed, but no one helped.

The rear admiral dragged the prisoner back like he weighed nothing and hit the bars again repeatedly. By the fifth strike, iron gave up its claim to being solid as one bar snapped loose with a sharp metallic cry and clattered into the cell interior, leaving a jagged gap where resistance used to be. A massive hand seized the ruined front of Crocodile’s outfit and hauled him back up before he could even decide whether falling would have been mercy. Leigh’s voice came low and measured, “You think that I consider myself a hero?” The tone of his voice gave away the quiet restraint and the effort it took not to do something irreversible as he wanted to, but that meant he stooped to their level. 

Around them, the corridor had gone deathly still, so that even the guards who had survived didn’t move. The prisoners beyond the bars pressed themselves back into shadow, and somewhere deeper in the prison, water dripped steadily, indifferent. Leigh shoved the former warlord back into the bars again, forearm pressed across his throat just enough to hold him there, not enough to end it. “You think I care what men you like call me? However, you don’t get to speak about them.” The marine’s gaze wasn’t on him anymore as it drifted past the bodies in the corridor.

“The man you gutted had a son, eight years old. He draws ships because he wants to be a sailor someday.” Leigh said quietly before pausing, and his voice cracked. “The one whose throat you tore out was engaged, and three months from now he was supposed to marry her in Shells Town.” The rear admiral exhaled slowly through his nose, as if he was holding something back by force alone. “All you see are uniforms. I see people, even scum like you, are beings too.” His talons pressed harder through what was left of Crocodile’s shirt, pinning him there, and then he struck him. The impact rang through the corridor like a hammer against stone. A third blow started to form as Leigh drew the pirate in again, shoulders tightening, the quiet violence of inevitability building behind it until the voice cut through the corridor like a blade. “Rear Admiral Ashworth, stand down!”

It came from further down the hall, a controlled authority wrapped in command, the kind of voice that didn’t need to repeat itself. Leigh froze mid-motion as the hand holding the prisoner loosened not in mercy, but in interruption. Slowly, reluctantly, the marine lowered Crocodile instead of striking him again. His grip remained firm, but the violence behind it receded like a tide forced back. For a moment, he didn’t look at anyone, the guards, the prisoners, or even Crocodile, before finally releasing the former warlord. Leigh straightened as his voice, when it came again, was steady. “Get the dead moved. Infirmary for the wounded,” he said. His feet' claws came down on the chain binding Crocodile’s wrists before he could even try to rise, pinning him effortlessly. “As for him, double the seastone, triple the watch, and put him into solitary confinement."

At the mention of the lives of those Crocodile had ripped apart, all the beast did was flash his lips away from his teeth so that Leigh could see the bloodstains. His blood mixed with that of the throats he had ripped out.

This man was going to die. Somehow. Someway. Crocodile was going to find a way to dig his hook into him and tear off those wings. He was going to ground this damned bat. Their brief eye contact was quickly severed by Crocodile being dragged back by the accompaning backup, but the look was more than apparent.

Dead man walking. You're a DEAD MAN WALKING. You hear me, Government Dog? DEAD MAN.

Then he hit the bars, and again, and again. Repeatedly, each blow breaking something further into his face, but Crocodile didn't so much as wheeze out a condition of his rage. He only let it boil deeper and deeper, until he was knocked to near unconsciousness and laid flat out on the floor. Only spared by the commanding tone of a higher-ranked voice.

His mouth was held shut, but those slit eyes were constricted to mere dots that radiated an unsung fury in his gaze. They did not leave Leigh's face until the man was brought to heel, chained up in extra seastone and knocked clean out by the guards who had managed to drag him away.

"just because you are a pirate it doesn't mean you can tell me what to do." she huffed as she folded her arms in response. of course, she was offended. being compared to a rather small and weak animal.

"And just because you're a government lapdog doesn't mean you get the gall to snap up at me." He tutted his reply, twisting the hook left and right in a corkscrew motion. A tad too close to her stomach, though if it was a threat or him simply not giving a care about their proximity wasn't apparent. "Down, girl."

The mention of the curtsy drew an amused chuckle from Crocodile, the man's rumble of a laugh reverberating so low it might be felt in both their chests.

When Crocodile lurches away from her after the remnants of her Healing fade, she does not try to follow him. Even when he struggles to hold himself up, she stays put and busies herself wiping the blood off her hands. There is the familiar weight of fatigue of having expended her own energy to restore someone else but it wasn't too detrimental.

It wasn't as if he'd been anywhere close to death or had lost a limb. Those sorts of injuries always took the worst out of her.

Thea watches him sedately, her expression otherwise inscrutable. Helping others like this was not uncommon for her, with her reputation often seesawing between extremes: either she was ruthless or she was gentle as a spring breeze. "Give yourself a few minutes," the mythical zoan advises coolly, "you also might want to eat soon. Accelerating healing tends to leave one hungry."

Though the bleeding had stopped, the pain still webbed inside of him. He could feel it pulsating around the place where the wound had been, tiny tendrils of white-hot throbbing slowly ebbing out of feeling. As it knitted itself together, he could feel what she was saying. He felt exhausted, far more than when he normally might after overexerting himself with his Devil Fruit. The dull throb of hunger pangs could be felt festering in his stomach, and the Warlord hissed.