(Sarquiss POV)
“At least Doflamingo wasn’t stingy, captain.” Sarquiss commented, staring at the small box. Or to be more precise, at the contents of said box. Sadly, Lily didn't agree with him.
“That’s not true, shithead. We paid him half a billion belli. Half a fucking billion!” Lily grumbled from the side. Perhaps it was to be expected of their quartermaster slash treasurer, but Lily had looked like she was about to get an aneurysm when they carted off a third of their remaining gold yesterday to act as a bribe. It was no wonder that she didn’t have a positive opinion of the feathered warlord.
“This is arguably more valuable than that.” Sarquiss argued, trying in vain to appease his irate girlfriend.
“The fuck its more valuable. The going rate for one of these is roughly a hundred million belli and that is if this is even the real thing. We got shafted by that cunt right and proper!”
“Not going to correct her language today, Muret?” Across the table, Laki glanced to her side, where Muret was making herself a cup of tea. Black tea this time with no sugar or milk, a decidedly odd choice for someone who usually tried to convince everyone else about the medicinal benefits of her herbal brews.
“Aisa is sleeping and Funkfreed isn’t here.” Muret answered, taking a small sip. “And if I stopped Lily completely, I fear that it will have a detrimental effect on her health, mental or otherwise.”
“I don’t know much about this Mani, but aren’t these things really rare?” Rivers asked, looking at their cooper for help. Not for the first time, Sarquiss silently bemoaned the reality, that his crew mates lacked basic education. Rivers was a prime example of this if he didn't know how rare it was to find a devil fruit. Never mind the four Blues, even on the Grand Line, there were more crews without one than crews with powered individuals.
“They are, which is why St. Poplar didn’t have any this time, despite being the biggest black market in the area.” Mani explained. "Organizations like those of the four emperors, the royal warlords or the marines are outliers in this particular area, but even they don’t have enough to hand one out to all of their members."
“That’s because that shitty Crack focused too much on his narcotics. You go anywhere else and you can get one of these if you pay enough." Lily retorted, before she elbowed Ross in his side. "You're the expert. Tell them I'm right.”
Ross didn't look that pleased, though whether it was from his now tender flank or Lily's tone was up for debate, but he sighed once before nodding. “Rivers, Lily is right. It’s not quite as simple as Lily just made it out to be, but it is a lot easier to procure similar items than one might believe. The real difficulty arises if one wants a specific one and some fruits can cost hundreds of millions if not billions.”
“Do we even know which one this is? It’s not in the catalogue.” Hewitt piped up, poking the strange fruit with his index finger.
“Didn’t you listen when the captain was explaining it? This is synthetic. Artificially made.” Ross answered him. "It's not in the catalogue."
“So, it doesn’t work?”
“That's the thing, Rivers. Doflamingo just didn’t tell us anything about it. At this point, we’re just assuming.” Eddy said in a cautious tone, his fingers holding a veritable percussion concert on the table with how much they were tapping.
“While it is suspicious, we probably shouldn't dismiss it right off the bat." Mani acquiesced, "According to rumours, someone, likely Kaido, is said to be buying a lot of these.”
“Kaido is one of the yonko. He has plenty of money and plenty more test subjects.” Muret pointed out, leaving the rest unsaid. She didn't have to for all of them to understand and even then, Eddy finished her argument in her stead soon enough.
“Unlike us.”
“Yes, unlike us.” Muret agreed.
“Blue Sea Dwellers can create paramythias?”
"No, Laki. We can’t create paramecias." And Sarquiss didn't expect that humanity would be able to any time soon. In fact, he desperately hoped that such a day would never come, because the very thought was terrifying. How were they supposed to survive never mind fight the marines, if all of them, all several hundred thousand of them, from the admirals to the lowest sailor, had a devil fruit power?
“That doesn’t necessarily have to mean it won’t work. On the contrary, the fact that one of the yonko is buying them in bulk could also be a guarantee for their effectiveness.” Hewitt suggested but in Sarquiss' opinion, that was just wishful thinking. And for a very simple reason at that.
“If that were the case, then why aren’t the other Emperors making a move? There's no way that they don’t know about them or don’t have the money to purchase them.”
“Bloody Doflamingo is trying to use us as fucking lab rats! Are you dickheads blind?” Lily cursed, giving voice to what probably most of them had been thinking. Personally, this had been a very uncomfortable realisation for him, because like Bellamy, Sarquiss had looked up to the warlord and greatly admired him. The man had been powerful, he had been charismatic and his entire demeanour had been full of the promise of excitement and adventure. The day they were given permission to fly Doflamingo's flag had been one of the proudest days of his life. Only now, that pride had been cracked by Dellinger and crushed by the man himself.
“Maybe it’s because of their personal theme? Shanks is known for mostly having unpowered members in his crew.” Rivers tried, but was quickly shut down by Ross.
“What about Big Mom? She ain’t buying any, is she?”
“Did Doflamingo even say what kind of fruit this is? If it’s a zoan it would fit the Beast pirates more than the candy obsessed weirdos.” Mani mused, but before anyone else could respond, Bellamy spoke up for the first time.
“Enough.”
It still surprised Sarquiss every time just how quickly the crew would quiet down at a single word from the captain. Just a few months ago this would have been unimaginable, but now it felt natural. It was not as if he was being loud or anything. In fact, Bellamy remained rather soft-spoken, another change since Jaya.
“…”
“You’ve all made good points, excellent points even if one considers that we know next to nothing about these SMILE-fruits.” Here, Bellamy sighed, leaning his chin upon his left hand and beginning to tap out a slow rhythm with his right index finger. “But just because Doflamingo didn’t outright say it, doesn’t mean that we can’t read between the lines. And you’ve all done a fairly good job already. Like you guys deduced, the SMILE-fruit is…limited to say the least.”
“Limited, captain?” Mani prompted, getting a small nod from the captain.
“Ross already alluded to this earlier but eating one is not without risk. When compared to how heavily Kaido has been recruiting all over Paradise and the New World, the number of sighted fruit users is less than one in five. If one believes these reports and I do, it’s likely that eating one does not guarantee powers at the very least.” This was true. According to the newest gossip from the pirate grapevine, the World Government seemed to be panicking about to the great stream of recruits flooding into Kaido's territory. Especially when it looked like there wasn't anything they could do about it, as in recent days their naval blockade seemed to have more holes in it than good cheese.
“You think it gets worse?”
“Eddy, Doflamingo didn’t feed a single SMILE to his own crew, not even his minions, despite being famed for caring more about his own crew than anybody else. He would not withhold a potential boon from them under any circumstances. If that doesn't show just how little faith he has in the efficacy if not safety of these SMILE-fruits, then I don't know what will.”
“…bloody hell.” His thoughts exactly, Eddy. Bloody hell.
“And discounting all that, it’s also unlikely that these SMILES grant powers on the same scale as a natural zoan. If that had been the case, the world would be in an uproar right now, not in the least because the other emperors would be ganging up on Kaido to preserve the balance of power.”
“Captain, if this…SMILE is so dangerous, what do we do with it?” Rivers nervously asked. And that was the question wasn't it? What to do about a questionably functional devil fruit dropped into their laps by a callous warlord as a supposed gift?
“I say we throw the fucking piece of shit overboard!” Lily suggested, pounding the table with her fist.
“We shouldn’t eat it, that’s for sure.” Mani agreed, leaning back and crossing her arms, trying to both symbolically and physically distance herself from the fruit.
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“But would Doflamingo accept that?” Silence greeted Eddy’s question. That was the crux of the matter. Doflamingo gave them this fruit as a ‘gift’, but nobody in this room believed that it didn’t carry expectations with it. Doflamingo wanted one of them to eat it. If they accepted, they were going to potentially endanger one of their own, something that the more optimistic minded amongst the Crew were trying and failing to deny. If they refused, they would be spitting on his generosity.
And insulting Doflamingo sounded like a singularly stupid idea, especially in light of how little his executives already seemed to value them as allies and comrades. If the attitude of his crew was like this, it didn’t take a genius to recognize that Doflamingo wouldn’t be much better. And hadn't the captain mentioned that the warlord only retracted his implied threat because Bellamy had been interesting? That was all they were for the bloody arsehole. Fun. Entertainment.
“It doesn’t matter." Bellamy stated, breaking the uncomfortable silence. "I’m not endangering my crew for his amusement. We’ll deal with the consequences as they come. Should the worst come to pass, we can always seek the protection of someone else or go to ground for a bit.”
"It wouldn’t work," Sarquiss reflected, "not with how many feelers Doflamingo had in the criminal underworld." He’d find them wherever they hid, sooner or later. And who would protect them against one of the seven royal warlords? One of the four emperors? Even if one of them were to be willing, Bellamy and co would have to reach them first.
“For now, we say one of us ate the darn thing and it did nothing. It’s an experimental product, who’s to say that we didn’t discover a new side effect?”
“Sounds good captain. I’ll just go throw it overboard then…Sarquiss?” The surprise was evident on Hewitt’s face, his wide eyes silently asking why Sarquiss had grabbed his wrist.
Sarquiss wasn't all that sure either. Responsibility had never been his thing and it was very unlike him to flirt with danger. In fact, for most of his life, Sarquiss done his damned best to stay away from danger and limit himself to fights he knew he could win.
That was, until Jaya.
Sure, he’d nearly pissed his pants when they rode the Knock Up Stream into the sky and he’d tried to stay away from the fighting against Satori. But he had survived and in the latter case, he had faced the danger because nobody else could. Even if the one who had gotten hurt had not been his precious Lily, he would have stepped in regardless, for he had always been the second strongest member on this crew, the first mate. Sarquiss was the one whom Bellamy trusted to protect the crew when he wasn’t available, which was something he’d recently been making abundantly obvious recently.
Of course, by the time he got his wits back together, his spot as the second strongest member on the crew, that spot had been taken by Laki and maybe Aisa.
However, that still didn't change the fact, that Sarquiss was the first mate and he would remain the first mate if he had anything to say about it. And sometimes, that meant actually acting as the first mate, even if most of his being was screaming at him not too.
“I’ll eat it, captain.”
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(Bellamy POV)
“I’ll eat it, captain.” Idiot first mate said what now?
“Absolutely not! Let go of that hand, Sarquiss!” I snapped, more aggressively than I meant to, but Sarquiss didn't flinch at all. In fact, he looked downright calm right now, like a monk who’d found his inner zen.
“We can’t hide the truth forever, Bellamy.” he replied, pulling me up short. He hadn’t called me by my name since we arrived on Jaya. Ever since I took over, Sarquiss had begun acting more professionally, more distantly than Bellamy's memories had suggested. And I had let it be, glad for the space which allowed me to get used to my new role. Now, he was calling me by my name, reminding everyone that he was my best friend and in a way telling me that he was letting go of any suspicions he may have had about me.
“We don’t need forever.” I argued. “Just two years. We just need two years and I’m sure I can fight Doflamingo.” Luffy managed to beat Kaido in two years, I should be able to handle Doffy. No, I would be able to handle Doffy. But Sarquiss was shaking his head before I could even finish.
“We won’t have two years. We won't have even one before Doflamingo comes to check in on us.”
“We don’t know that.”
“The annual report. We know he receives an annual report on every crew under his command by an independent information broker. Remember the Blackberry pirates who secretly withheld part of their tribute? They were dead not three weeks after.”
“We can run. He’s busy in Marineford right now. If we reach Sabaody, we can cross into the new world and seek shelter under Shanks or Whitebeard.”
“You know better than I that we wouldn’t make it.” Sarquiss said, letting out a self-deprecating laugh. It rang hollow. “I’ll be the first one to admit that we’ve gotten stronger, far stronger than I thought possible in such a short amount of time and we’ll likely get even stronger after a year. But it’s the New World.”
“…” I shut up, for such was the weight of that name. The New World. If Paradise, which was only the first half of the Grand Line, was known as the pirate graveyard, the second half was downright hell.
“We’ll die if we enter it as we are now.” Sarquiss' voice had a note of finality in it, as if he knew I couldn't deny this. And I couldn't. Maybe I would survive but my crew most definitely would not. Instead, it was far more likely that they would die before we even sighted the first island.
“…” An uncomfortable silence blanketed the whole room, creating an oppressive atmosphere. It was something all of us had been trying to push to the side, buoyed by our recent victories as we were. We were all making rapid progress, we were learning haki and we would hopefully be learning the rokushiki soon. We had a bloody logia on our crew.
And it wasn’t enough to fight Doflamingo. I knew this better than anybody else. I had watched the Dressrosa arc in the show and knew how strong Doffy was. Without haki, I simply didn’t stand a chance.
“You said that we’d need two years. Me doing this? This will buy us those two years and more.”
“We can get a pet and feed it the SMILE. We wouldn't even have to lie about it.” I suggested, but Sarquiss only shook his head in response.
“And Doflamingo would kill us for wasting his gift. I believe his exact words were that he hopes we would put it to good use. Feeding it to a new pet is most likely not what he had in mind when he talked about a good use.”
“…fuck!” Curses erupted from everybody, even Muret unable to hold back her anger and frustration. As expected, Lily was the most vocal.
“Fucking shitty piece of crap-faced limp noodle-dicked bloody fucking halfwit wanker! I’m gonna tear him a new one if I get my hands on the asshole!” But contrary to her angry words, she was almost crying, visibly holding back the floodgates as she looked at her boyfriend. “You’re not doing this, shithead!”
“Lily, darling. This is the only way.”
“NO! We feed it Shura and kill him. Accidents happen.”
“We need him to teach us mantra.” Sarquiss was my crewmate…and Shura was not, which should have been the end of the discussion. I felt a great amount of shame that I almost wanted to sacrifice Sarquiss to keep Shura.
“There are other teachers. We can go back to Skypiea and get one of the other priests if need be.” Lily argued.
“You know perfectly well that that isn’t a realistic idea, Lily.” Like Sarquiss just said, we wouldn't be returning to Jaya without at least an eternal pose, pointing to an earlier island in Paradise. And even then, going back up the Knock Up stream carried far too much of a risk for a mere priest to be worth it.
“Then I’m eating it. I need it more than you do anyway.” she decided, but not on my watch. She had clearly lost all sense of reason, having let her emotions overwhelm her. Something which was made blindingly obvious by how she got up to start reaching over the table.
“That fruit is unlikely to work and more like bloody poison! Nobody is eating it!” I shouted, stretching my hand out to grab her wrist before Lily could do something drastic. Fuck trying to hide my advanced knowledge. Fuck trying to avoid suspicion. I could think about that after I kept my crew safe. “It’s liable to kill you!”
But, with all my attention momentarily on Lily, I failed to see that Lily was not the only one on my crew with the self-preservation instincts of a particularly retarded lemming. It was a critical mistake.
Before I could properly react, Sarquiss had stuffed the SMILE into his mouth…
“You bloody fool!”
…and swallowed it whole.