Impel Down was a prison with men like the ones buried beneath the sea in this place belonged in chains, and the Rear Admiral had long ago accepted that there were monsters in the world that could not be reasoned with. Pirates, murderers were simply men who laughed while cities burned. The place smelled of saltwater, rust, old blood and mildew as it clung to every inch of the great underwater fortress. The prison sweated from the walls and even the guards carried the scent home with them after their shifts, and Leigh could always tell when one of his subordinates had spent too long down in the lower levels. His zoan fruit made him extra sensitive to sound and smell sometimes, but tonight was worse as he was going deeper into the levels. The moment the elevator cage reached the fourth level, the copper stink of fresh blood hit him hard enough to stop him in his tracks.
The guards around him stiffened as one started to speak, “Rear Admiral Ashworth,” but the man lifted a hand, silencing him. The corridor ahead was too quiet and Impel Down was never silent. Somewhere there was always screaming, laughter, metal clanging against metal, the distant groan of the sea pressing against the walls, but this stretch of corridor had gone dead. The only sound was the slow drip and his crimson eyes noticed the blood pattering from the ceiling to the stone floor below. Leigh stepped forward as his boots left wet prints, but the first body lay only a few yards down the corridor. A young guard easily in his early twenties and the man had been thrown so hard into the wall that his body had folded around the cracked stone. One arm bent at an angle no arm should and his hat had fallen halfway down the hall, soaked in blood. Another guard sat slumped beside the bars farther down, staring blankly upward with glassy eyes. There was a deep slash across his chest, wide enough that Leigh could see the blood staining through the black uniform. The third was still alive for now as they were on their knees in the center of the corridor, both hands pressed desperately against their throat. Blood spilled through the guard’s fingers in thick, pulsing streams as each breath came out as a bubbling choke.
The other guards recoiled when they saw the one with his throat ripped out as somebody gagged. Leigh crossed the distance in a few quick strides and crouched in front of the wounded man. The guard’s eyes snapped to his face, “R-Rear…” the man tried to speak, but his voice dissolved into blood. The Rear Admiral placed one hand against the side of the guard’s face as his gloved palm was large enough to nearly cover it entirely.m “You fought, you did your duty. Now rest easy as I will take care of the rest.” Leigh said quietly. The guard trembled as the panic left the man’s eyes before finally the light went out of them.
The tall man remained still beside the body for a few seconds as the corridor behind him had gone utterly silent and even the guards who had accompanied him no longer spoke. Standing up Leigh rolled his shoulders once as the muscles in his back tightened. The admiral’s body expanded with a sickening crack of bone and the guards behind him staggered backward as his spine lengthened and his shoulders broadened, muscles tearing through the sleeves of his coat. Black fur spread over his arms and upper chest in dark patches and his fingers stretched into long, hooked talons sharp enough to split stone. A pair of vast wings erupted from his arms as the membrane scraped against the walls and ceiling, leaving deep gouges in the stone as they unfurled. His face lengthened slightly, fangs pushing down past his lower lip. Pointed ears rose through his dark hair, the red streak falling across one narrowed eye. The younger guards stared at him in mute horror as a couple of them had fallen to the ground in terror, shaking as the hybrid creature suddenly took off down the corridor.
Leigh was chasing down the former warlord, known as Crocodile as it was reported that he started slaughtering the guards and they needed backup quickly. Rear Admiral Ashworth crossed the distance in an instant and the floor of the corridor exploded beneath his feet. Using his heightened senses it did not take long for him to be able to locate the fugitive and the marine’s clawed hand closed around his throat. He slammed the pirate into the ground and the impact shattered the stone. Cracks spiderwebbed across the corridor as the pirate was driven halfway into the wall itself while dust and chunks of rock rained down around them. The marine was towering over him in his hybrid zoan form while Crocodile was pinned by the throat.
Talons buried themselves in prison uniform as Leigh lifted the other male from the ground and his face remained expressionless. “You ripped a man’s throat out,” he said. The admiral slammed the prisoner face-first into the floor as the stone exploded beneath the impact leaving behind a crater opened in the center of the corridor. The marine crouched slowly, his wings folding around him as in the dim light, with the shadows cast over his face and the blood drying across his claws, he looked less like a man and more like a beast. “You are alive, because killing you here would make too much paperwork,” Leigh said quietly.
