It's a wonder, the depths of human depravity when one is no longer bound by that which is known as "laws." I shouldn't have been surprised really, after all, there were a great many sayings back in my old world about such topics. "Absolute power corrupts absolutely" "Madness in great ones must not unwatched go" etc etc.

Truly, once we are "limitless" our very nature compels us to seek to the very extremes of all possibilities and in Mariejois, there was no greater manifestation of morbid curiosity.

How long can a person survive only on their own excrements? Does a cooked fish-men actually taste like fish or man? If one stretches a child dwarf would they grow any taller? If you left an infant to grow isolated from all human contact would it be able to speak to animals? 

For all its myriad of colorful characters and themes of adventure and friendship, One Piece was most certainly not a fun place to live. I don't know how I ended up here in this hell, just that one day I went for a nap and the next I was in a shitty shack. Mommy dearest sold me at an auction and I suppose being the only blonde there I caught some most unwanted attention from the Celestial Dragon attending.

Should I be proud that I was brought for the astounding amount of 6 roughly million dollars? It sure was more than I would've seen in a lifetime back on Earth. The irony that such a pricey item such as myself spending every day covered in feces and other unmentionables was the only thing that kept me going some days. That and the knowledge that Fisher Tiger would come and burn down all these fuckers someday.

I might've killed myself already otherwise...

The thoughts of awfully bloody fantasies for a 7-year-old was interrupted by a sudden blinding light. My eyes burned but I quickly choked down the scream that threatened to tear itself out of my throat. Weakness was equivalent to death here in the Pits as I and the other slaves called it. As my eyes adjusted to the brightness I took in my surroundings.

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It was a small stone room only 10x10 if I was to hazard a guess, and I could see everyone in similar disgusting and wretched states. Considering there were 42 of us, the term packed like sardines was quite accurate. 

"Oh, Johnny~! It's your turn to play today!"

Saint Michael. A walking ball of lard with a penchant for absurd games. He once put on a performance where the main acts were using someone as live bait for fishing. In the calm belt where Sea Kings, monstrous aquatic creature that could swallow a ship whole, roamed freely.

Needly to say the last feed everyone saw was of a dark abyss filled with thousands of white fangs larger than the average man. 

That was last month and the man liked to put on a new one bi-weekly. 

I kept my eyes to the floor and subtly hunched in on myself to make myself as small as possible without showing any overt fear and especially not any disrespect. The World Nobles had a tendency to pick out the easy targets and make an example out of the latter.

"I said. It's. Time. To. Play!"

None of us liked the dark tone in his voice, and not even the most stoic and burly of us could suppress the slight shiver thst went down our spines. The mad man could just as well send us all to the slaughter to vent out his frustration, hell he could do that even if he was in a good mood!

Someone must've lost their nerve because moments later a small body was sent flying near the entrance and landed with a loud thud. There was no movement from the body. It was small, and judging by the proportions was most definitely a child rather than a dwarf as far as I could see.

Little Johnny Greenglades. Golden curls, baby blue eyes, and barely old enough to be in kindergarten, just like me. The only difference was one of us was still alive. I cried that day for the first time in years counting both lives, but it wasn't out of sorrow, no, it was a sense of relief, of being thankful. That it wasn't me, that I was alive, that Michael didn't just toss all of us off the side of the Red Line.

I don't much remember what happened after that, the image of glassy blue orbs consuming all other thoughts. All I knew was that I didn't want to end up like that. A cruel, meaningless death. I later found out that he had been dead for days and nobody noticed, not even the smell when he started rotting.

We were all covered in our own filth, but the knowledge I was so indifferent as to not even be aware of a child's death, that I didn't even care as long as it wasn't me at that moment? I felt as if something in me was irrevocably tainted beyond the physical.