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Pirates were not known to be particularly moral people. They were known to be almost the exact opposite of such a thing, in all honesty.
Smoker knew this very well, and now here he was. He, the first mate of the Strawhat pirates, and some random kid had all been swept up in a trap. It was an embarrassing course of events. He had just been chasing the man (who had a kid following behind him asking many questions about his swords) when all three had been caught in a sea-stone net trap.
Smoker had been wedged in such a way that he completely blocked the swordsman from accessing what were likely the only tools that could be used to have them escape while the kid screamed bloody murder at being stuck.
It had been a few minutes later when a woman wearing a large fur coat had found them and although they weren't what she was looking for exactly, she decided it would be nice to get something from them while she could. And where else to sell a group of people she had captured then to bandits?
So now, Smoker, Roronoa Zoro, and some brat named Adex were stuck. Smoker himself was wrapped heavily in sea stone chains and was finding it hard to gather the strength to keep his head up. In the cell opposite him, he could see the kid tied with rope and Roronoa wrapped in chains, not unlike his own.
Water dripped in the background, a steady noise that he could focus on.
“This is your fault,” He eventually said.
“Hah? My fault? You’re losing it old man,” Roronoa opened one of his shut eyes to glare at him. He had looked like he was sleeping moments before.
“If you had just surrendered you wouldn’t have gotten us into this mess!” Smoker accused.
“Why the hell would I do that?”
“Because you're a pirate!”
“Shut up! Shut up, shut up, shut up! I shouldn’t even be here!” The kid cried.
“You were the one following me around! I told you to scram!” Roronoa turned his ire to the brunette boy.
“Don’t yell at him! He’s just a kid!” Smoker scowled. Of course, a pirate would be so willing to turn anger on to a child.
“I just wanted to see your swords!” Adex strained against the ropes he was tied up with, rolling around on the ground as much as he could in his current state.
“Swords shouldn’t be around little kids like you, my blades are not toys to be gawked at!” The swordsman hissed. The boy burst into tears at the aggression and flopped his way to the opposite wall.
“Cut it out!” A new voice broke in.
A woman walked down the steps that lead into the area. Her belt was filled with an assortment of blades and guns, all dangerous and deadly in appearance. She was stocky and muscular, holding herself with an air of confidence and malice. Her black hair was pulled up tight in a black bun.
She stopped outside of Smoker’s cell, glaring at him.
“Look what we got here, a government dog. What a fine penny you would garner. I wonder how high up you are…?”
She didn’t know who he was? That could either be a good or bad thing. Good, because it meant she might think he knew nothing. Bad, because she might think he knew more than he actually did. It was never good when a marine was captured. They were always either tortured for information or just tortured for fun.
“Well, it doesn’t matter. You have to know something about the Marine base on this island,”.
Fuck , so it was the former? Well, Smoker wouldn’t talk. No matter what.
“Psh. That guy wouldn’t know anything even if it was tied to a brick and hit him in the face,” none other than the swordsman in the cell across from him butted in.
The woman turned around to look at him. Smoker narrowed his eyes. What the fuck was this guy doing?
“Oh? And why’s that?” She wondered out loud. The woman walked across to the other cell and crossed her arms. Smoker could see a key on her belt now.
“He’s just some fucking new guy. Newbie saw me chasing the kid and thought he’d be able to take me. He just got lucky that we were caught before I could pull my blades,”.
Smoker knew for a fact that he was lying. The marine looked over at the kid, who was rapidly looking between the woman and the pirate. He caught the kid's eyes. The kid looked utterly terrified, and he looked like he wanted to say something, but he couldn't. He was struck silent out of fear. Smoker shook his head. No. Don’t say anything.
The woman tsked.
“Well then, if you know that, you must know other things, don’t you?”
“You won’t get anything out of me if that’s what you’re implying,”.
She wouldn’t get anything out of him because he didn’t know anything, what the hell was Roronoa doing?
The woman seemed to take this as a challenge and opened the cell door, strutting forward with determination and grabbing a group of chains, pulling them. The chains around the swordsman’s neck tightened considerably and Smoker saw his teeth grit in concentration.
When she pulled him from the cell, the man made a show of twisting and fighting against his restraints, the metal chains rocking and clanking against the ground noisily. The kid wrapped in ropes began crying again.
“Shut it!” The woman turned to face the child with a sneer.
Roronoa twisted once more and his face smashes against her side. Her weapons banged together noisily. She roughly tugged on him again, the chains once again smashing against the ground with fervor.
It was then that something moving caught Smoker’s eyes.
Clanking but blending in with the noise of the chains binding the green-headed man- a key slid up next to him. The one that had been on the woman's waist.
Smoker’s head shot up with wide eyes, and he met Roronoa’s sharp silver ones in turn. Sharp and set with conviction. The woman shut the door behind herself with a bang.
He had a plan- he had devised a plan likely within seconds of seeing the woman’s back. Because then, he could see the keys.
He was freeing Smoker. He was freeing the kid.
Smoker leaned down, grabbing the key with his teeth and doing his best to maneuver it to the lock at his side. It took a while. Much longer than Smoker would have liked, but he was weak and the lock was in an unconventional spot. Perhaps ten? Fifteen? Minutes later, the chains fell from around him with a ka-chang.
He stood with shaky legs before walking to the bars in front of himself. He touched them and breathed a sigh of relief, they weren’t seastone. He took the key and broke the back of it away, bending the cheaper metal and using it to pick the lock to his cell door. He did the same with the other cell moments later, untying the panicking boy seconds later.
“You’re going to save him, right?” The boy whimpered while gingerly touching his rope burns.
Fuck.
Fuck he was going to have to save him, wasn’t he?
The swordsman had practically thrown himself straight into the line of danger to let them be free- but why would he even free Smoker?
To have Smoker free the kid, he realized. Despite the clear amount of anger and hostility Roronoa held for the boy, he didn’t want the kid to be sold off somewhere.
A pirate with morals. That was a new one.
He grit his teeth and wished for a cigar.
“Yes,” He ground out.
He had morals too, and abandoning someone who helped him was not one of them.
Adex smiled up at him with watery eyes and a wobbling lip, “That’s…That’s good…” He sniffled.
Smoker just frowned.
He would escape the room with the boy behind him moments later, sneaking through the stone halls of some sort of underground layer. The first door he built the courage up to open was thankfully empty, but it was lucky. It looked to be an armory.
He equipped himself with a few guns before looking down at the boy. He grabbed a sheathed knife and passed it to him.
“Don’t use that unless necessary,” He commanded. The kid nodded, pulling his shoulders in an attempt to appear brave.
They left the room quickly, quietly walking through the halls while listening to any sounds produced that weren’t their own footsteps.
Smoker turned a corner and quickly retreated, pulling himself and Adex against the wall. He covered the boy’s mouth when he heard the beginning of a gasp.
The woman had been standing outside of the room, wiping blood from her hands while talking to someone.
“Ma’am?”
“I’ll be back in a moment. I need to grab something from my room, he’s still not talking,” The woman sighed.
“Of course. Shall I stand guard?”
“No, I need you to help me carry my things here. I’d rather not make two trips,” Smoker released a small breath of relief.
“Yes, ma’am,”.
Smoker waited until their footsteps disappeared before rounding the corner. He knelt in front of the boy before opening the door.
“I need you to stand here and guard the door, okay? Only come in if you see someone, alright?”
“But-”
“No, don’t argue with me. Stay out here,”.
He didn’t want the kid to be any more traumatized by this situation than he already was.
Adex looked like he wanted to fight about it again, but shut his mouth and glared at the ground instead. He nodded.
“Good,” Smoker hummed. After a moment of thought, he ruffled a hand into the boy’s hair. Adex leaned into the touch, it seemed just what he needed.
So with that, Smoker turned and opened the door.
On the wall across from him was Roronoa Zoro, hung by his hands with thick metal cuffs. His feet didn’t touch the floor. His shirt had been removed at some point because Smoker could clearly see the cuts and burns littering his body. A slow stream of blood leaked from the scar across his chest. He also noted the blood covering his hands, getting particularly darker at the fingertips. She had torn out his fingernails.
He was beaten, bloody, and bruised all over. He definitely had broken ribs. And yet, he was still lucid.
“What the hell…are you doing here?” The man- no, the teen wheezed out. He knew that Roronoa was nineteen, barely an adult. But here he was, glaring with alertness at Smoker after being tortured.
“Think I was just going to leave you? I still have to turn you in,” He huffed. Smoker approached, examining the cuffs.
Roronoa coughed, blood passing across his lips.
“Key…key’s in there,” He made a vague motion with his head. Smoker looked over to see the desk covered in torture tools (all coated in some amount of blood). He walked over, opening one of the drawers to see a brass key sitting in it. He arrived back seconds later, working on the cuffs with morbid determination.
“Why did you do that?” He asked after a second.
A weak chuckle, “Don’t tell me you didn’t figure it out…”
Smoker hummed.
“The kid,” he said after a moment.
“Yeah. Had to get him out…You were the only one who could…” After a few moments of breathing, “Do that,”.
Smoker said nothing. When he finally got the cuffs to release, he backed up. Roronoa stood on his feet for a still moment before Smoker saw his eyes roll into the back of his head and he fell forward. Smoker lunged, grabbing the teen before he could fully reach the ground. It was then that he noted the scars on his ankles, small metal pins had been pushed into the flesh from the back. How Roronoa hadn’t been screaming was beyond him.
He took a couple of seconds to pull the pins from the scars before hoisting the pirate into his arms. He stepped out of the room and- the kid was gone.
Smoker was about to say fuck it and start yelling before the kid rounded the corner, holding three swords. The swords of the swordsman.
“I- I’m sorry! I didn’t want to leave them! I saw them in that room- and- and-”
“Don’t worry about it, kid. We need to focus on getting out of here,”.
Adex seemed to notice the unconscious swordsman then, and the blood dripping onto the floor.
“Is- is he-”
“He’ll be fine,” The marine huffed. The boy bit his lip but nodded. His hold on the swords tightened.
“Let’s go,”.
Escaping was easier done than said. Not easier said than done, Easier done than said. Smoker fully expected more people roaming the halls, what with all the weapons in that room, but they were either understaffed, or Smoker was lucky because they had run into no one as they escaped.
The three emerged into the cool night air and the boy started to cry again, grinning at the stars and then at Smoker.
While they were walking through the forest, Smoker felt a slight shift in weight in his arms. He looked down to see the swordsman, awake, looking at the silently walking boy. The teen seemed to sag in his arms at the visual confirmation of Adex’s safety. Smoker was once again reminded that this was a teenager. He was hunting teenagers- pirates- but teenagers. Sometimes his job was painful.
Later, after dropping Zoro and the boy outside of some doctor’s place and shifting to smoke to fly away, he would change his moral view on pirates.
Maybe there could be…some moral pirates. Pirates that wouldn’t let little kids get hurt.