Post by Tokoz on Jun 18, 2022 16:06:05 GMT -5
Log I: Alchemical Nightmares
She was quiet when she opened the door to the offices. A few people raised their hands to greet her, but said greetings died in throats as the members of Blackpage got a look at the leaden look on Lassa’s face. When you worked in Cipher Pol, you got to know the look of someone who had just had a mission go bad. This wasn’t quite the same thing, but she was happy to let them assume that. Nodding to the others, she headed inwards, shoulders hunched, and knocked twice, sharply, on Director Codex’s door.
“Come in.” After a moment, the silver-haired former field agent looked up, then blinked at the expression on Lassa’s face. “What is it?”
“Sir… I would like to request clearance on my background.”
His face tightened and lips pressed firmly together, Codex swiveled to face Lassa directly. He examined her tense demeanor for a moment, then sighed. “You were told at 10 that you were the child of a Cipher Pol asset who died in the field, much like many of the others at the orphanage.”
“Yessir. Asset, not agent. I note there’s a difference there. If it was an agent, you would have said ``agent.” Lassa responded, body still tight. Codex’s face softened. Getting up, he walked past and locked the door, then put a hand on Lassa’s shoulder.
“You’re not asking for no reason. You remembered something?” The woman nodded mutely, sitting down in one of the armchairs in the room, and staring into the fireplace. Codex sighed. “I suppose it’s about time then. Wait here, have something to drink. Do some breathing exercises, being tense won’t help here.” Walking over to one of the bookshelves, he pulled three volumes out, then pushed two in. A panel slid back, revealing a bank of Den-Den Mushis.
Lassa stood and walked over to a cabinet. Her fingers flicked the combination lock, as her other hand unconsciously rubbed across the slight dent in the wood. She remembered the panic when she nicked it there, trying to break into the cabinet almost 10 years ago. She had been so convinced that it would contain something important, some test, that she was stunned by the fact it was just a drinks cabinet. Codex did keep a few important documents hidden in bottles at times, but he had only started doing that recently, possibly just to mock her.
Pouring a measure of port, Lassa took a long sip and then moved back to the chair as Codex finished a hushed conversation. He paused, looking at Lassa, then moved to the drinks cabinet himself. They sat together in amicable silence, taking sips from their drinks and staring into the fire. It was almost 20 minutes later that a knock came from the door. Standing up, Codex tapped a panel, revealing a series of mirrors that reflected the outside of the office door. After a second of study, he nodded and then unlocked the door and disarmed the rifle, before letting an older woman in a suit in.
“Lassa, this is Agent Selina Larkin. You’ve met 5 times before.”
Lassa frowned for a moment. “I don’t recall that.” After a beat, she lifted an eyebrow. “Hypnotist or Devil Fruit?” Codex smirked, and nodded.
“Agent Mesmyr here is a hypnotist, yes. Specializes in suppressing memories, although as you’ve experienced, that’s a tricky prospect. It can be disrupted by extreme stress, similar circumstances, or other issues. It’s also difficult to suppress long or emotionally intense situations, unless you make use of existing amnesiac causes like drugs.” Eyes narrowing, Lassa looked between the two. Existing causes….
“Or childhood amnesia. You intensified the usual loss of memory from before age four. Why?” Mesmyr glanced over at Codex, who simply shrugged.
“I didn’t make her my second out of nepotism. She’s good. Being a doctor doesn’t hurt either.”
Looking back at Lassa, Mesmyr nodded. “Well then, to be blunt: We suppressed the memories because at the time, you were heavily traumatized. If you feel you’re ready to confront them, we can unlock them, but it will not be pleasant. Are you prepared for that?”
Lassa didn’t speak for a moment. The flashes she had felt while using that technique… the one she was calling Red Rebis for reasons even she wasn’t entirely sure of. Popping her lips for a moment, she actually considered just saying no. But… if she got blindsided by something like that again… No. There was no real choice here. “Hit me. I’m ready to find out where I come from.”
Codex sat down in a chair next to her, and Mesmyr leaned over the back of her chair, hanging a pocket watch over to dangle in front of her face. The older agent began to hum softly, a low drone that rose and fell. Feeling her breathing begin to match in tune with it, she heard Codex begin to speak softly.
“I can only tell you what I remember. Parts of this were pieced together afterwards, pieces are from my own memory. You were born 24 years ago, in the Grand Line. A scant few months before the day that would change the world….”
She remembered crashing waves, echoing oddly. Laughter, echoing through every timber of the ship that rode the stormy waves. It was faint, hazy, but it was there. A man, laughing maniacally.
“You know this part. Everyone does. Gol D. Roger, King of the Pirates, spoke the words in front of the whole world that sent countless souls to the seas. All across the world, people set sail. Some with dreams… and some with a hunger for power. Your father was one of the latter.” Codex took a deep breath, and then reached into his desk, opening a drawer and removing a piece of paper, placing it on the table in front of them.
A wanted poster. Lassa felt her breath stop as she looked at the face on the paper, a face that suddenly seemed very, very familiar. A strong jaw, wild brown hair, and an elegant if prominent nose. He leered back at her, as the name on the paper seemed to burn in the flickering firelight.
Nellas “Black Cauldron” Marburg, Captain of the Alchemist Pirates.
“Nellas Marburg was exiled a year and a half before the death of the Pirate King, for crimes against nature. His pursuit of the arts of alchemy led him to murder and steal for ingredients, and the concoctions he’s come up with have been fearsome enough to keep him at large ever since. His wife, Faylis Marburg, was a member of his crew, and one of his cult of alchemical apprentices.”
She could feel an odd tenseness over her body. Memories were returning, in a fuzzy, half-awake sort of way. Memories that all had an odd dualistic quality to them. Like echoes, repeating over one another. She could almost feel a strange bile rise as she considered them, but Codex was still talking.
“We received a message from Faylis 2 years after Gol D. Roger’s death, when you were approaching three years of age. In the chaos of those early days, she offered to spill everything she had learned about the emerging culture of the Great Pirate Era, to help us catch Nellas, anything she could do, as long as we got her and her children away from him. She said she feared for their lives.”
Their. Her Children. Was this the secret? She had a sibling who didn’t escape? Who maybe was still out there, perhaps working with her father? No, that… didn’t seem right. Why wouldn’t Codex have said anything about the other child yet, then?
The man looked uncomfortable, as he fiddled with his cufflink for a moment. “I was… assigned to the task. I was suspicious of this. It felt like a trap, intended to lure in an agent, possibly for Nellas’s purposes. We had intelligence on him, and he seemed to like bragging about his heirs, claiming they would be his legacy. The idea that he would kill them or harm them seemed ludicrous, and so I delayed, gathering information and setting up a team to prepare for the meeting place. She was supposed to meet us with her children, but….
Your father was a fearsome opponent. He had gotten his hands on a Devil Fruit, one that let him meld things together. He used it to push his alchemy to new heights, but unbeknownst to me, he had discovered a way to do more than simply mix ingredients and items. While I delayed… he discovered what your mother planned to do. Enraged at her betrayal, he pushed his plans up. If I hadn’t…. If I hadn’t waited, they would still be alive.”
Codex was crying now, tears pouring down his face as he relived the mistakes of 20 years prior. The echoing was worse now, as Lassa closed her eyes, head pounding as the humming reached a pitch. And then she
The memories
came back
came back
"STOW YOUR WHIMPERING!" yelled Nellas, glowering over one shoulder. A pair of pirates held the arms of their mother, staring in distress at the two infants in the man's hands. He stood over a bubbling cauldron of disinfectant and chemicals, a sneer on his face at the woman who’d betrayed him.
"PLEASE! DON'T KILL EITHER OF THEM!"
"I didn't say I was gonna kill them, Faylis." Snorted the man, dipping his hands into the liquid and submerging the twins in their alchemical baptism. "I said you'd only have one kid to look after now."
With a mad chuckle, his hands began to glow, and he pressed, as flesh twisted and melded with the chemicals, two bodies reduced to one. Muscle increased in density, and flesh toughened as the might and potential of both babes were brought together. "Roger started a race, and if I'm to have an heir to win it... they must be more than a mere human." Beneath the water, the gurgling cry of two children merged into a single sob.
"Welcome to the world... my little Rebis..." chuckled Nellas, as he looked down at Lassa. Behind him, Faylis fell to the ground, sobbing wretchedly, as she stared at the crimson-skinned child wailing in it’s fathers arms. A drumbeat seemed to fill the room, as the alchemical enhancile’s heart went pounding away like the drums of hell itself.
Back in the present, the arms of the chair snapped as Lassa’s knuckles went white. Looking at the crying agent, she shook her head slowly. “No. He… he didn’t.”
He simply nodded, tears still running down his face. “Because of my actions, both of the children of Faylis Marburg died… and a new child was born. That child was you, Lassa. You are the result of Nellas Marburg using his powers to combine his twin children. I arrived on a nearby island later that same evening.”
And she could see it, too. She could see the rain lashing down as Faylis screamed at the man in a suit, the man who looked so much like the agent who she had come to see as a foster parent. She could hear the words of recrimination, half-stolen by the wind, and the look of fear and grief on the face of a woman she was not sure she could call her mother. After all, she was the horrible little changeling who had eaten the two children she had before, wasn’t she? That was how someone grieving would see it, wasn’t it? But she had said…. Even after all that…
At some point, she had put a hand against her lips, and she could taste the acrid bile rising as she shuddered, eyes tracing down her flesh for a moment as she processed what exactly had happened to her. Taking a deep breath, Codex continued. “We were discovered by Nellas, and in the fight, Faylis shoved you into my arms, and said…”
“Take them. Whatever they are, they’re my child, my flesh and blood. I want them to have a life away from that bastard.”
Lassa’s voice was dull, but she spoke clearly. Codex snapped his head up, looking surprised, then after a moment, he nodded. “You remember.”
She inclined her head just a bit, and spoke quietly. “I remember seeing her fade into the background as you ran. I remember seeing the agents scatter as Nellas realized what she had done. I can still see the calm look on her face as… as he slammed her downwards into the ground, melding her with the rock. I remember the look in her eyes as she died.”
Her whole body was shaking violently, and her eyes had gone misty as she processed this. Processed what she had come from, before those early days in the orphanage.
Codex spoke up again. “We wanted to try and let you come to terms with it, but you were… half-feral, trying to deal with the two sets of similar memories. You kept waking up at night screaming, and you were strong. You broke a nurse’s arm trying to push him off you. So we got Mesmyr to suppress your memories, and you were… you were happier.”
Breathing heavily, Lassa swallowed for a moment before looking at Codex questioningly. “Me becoming an agent. All that time you spent visiting me. Was it just guilt, or…”
The older man shook his head. “No. Maybe at first, but you genuinely impressed me. I insisted you be given a chance to choose, but… you sought out the secrets. You found the tests that we would normally have to nudge the other kids towards, and you were more than fit enough to learn the Six Powers. I could have forbidden you from it, but… I think we both know that one day, your past was going to come nipping at your heels one way or another. I wanted you to be ready to decide what to do when that day came.”
She nodded, tapping her fingers against her lips for a moment, then looked up.
“Okay. I understand.”
Codex looked cautiously at Mesmyr, then stood up, reaching out a hand for a moment. “If you blame me for what happened, I understand…”
“No.” Shaking her head, she lunged forwards and wrapped her arms around his neck. “You gave me the tools to choose what I wanted to do with my life. To take revenge on the man who made me what I am, and everyone like him if I wanted to. I won’t… obsess over this.” She leaned back, her eyes firm. She was still shaking, but the initial horror had faded, and all that was left was a firm, resolute will.
“I am an Agent of Cipher Pol. I will walk the dark streets and I will fight the monsters just as I have always done, ever since I was recruited. I will not let this, or anything else sway me from the cause of Justice. If anything, it means that the Blackpages have one more name. If I take a little extra joy in crossing it out one day… that’s all.” Straightening up, she gave a sharp salute.
“Thank you for telling me about this. I’m going to take a walk, get my head in order, then get back to work, Director.” As he sat in his chair, looking slightly stunned, Lassa stopped at the door, and then turned back,giving him a watery smile. “And… thank you for everything you’ve done for me… Dad.”
Codex gave a watery, hiccupping laugh. “100 pushups for insubordination. And thank you… daughter.” Smiling back, he collapsed back in his chair. “If anyone asks for me for the next 30 minutes, tell them to fuck off.” He took a long draught of his drink as the door opened and closed, and Agent Mesmyr’s hand settled on his shoulder. The older man was still shaking with emotion. He had always been impressed with how well Lassa held her feelings in. Still, you didn’t know someone for their entire life without picking up some tells, and for just a moment, she had broken.
But then, she kept moving. She had never let anyone stop her or slow her down, even as a child. He remembered stopping outside the orphanage gates, watching a small figure kick a tree repeatedly in the dark of the night. Seeing the shadow move past a window in the offices, and snickering internally as she dropped a man twice her size during testing.
He still had a picture in his desk, hidden under a false bottom and behind another photo in a frame set to light itself on fire if forced open. It showed Lassa, wearing a brand new suit and standing next to him, a twinkle in both their eyes as they stood straight and still, staring dead into the camera.
Outside, Lassa stared upwards into the clear blue sky, and tried not to scream. She was an… an experiment. Two people, fused into one. She didn’t even know what the names of the two children she was made from had been. It probably wasn’t Lassa and Iskario. That would be a bit morbid, and she liked to think Codex was more creative than that.
It didn’t matter. She clenched her fist, and raised it, eyes narrowed. She wouldn’t LET it matter. She was Lassa Iskario. She was a man, a woman, an agent, a Devil Fruit User, a doctor, an assassin, a loved one, a killer, a savior, and so much more. But she was not that man’s child. She was not the heir of a pirate. She was not whatever weapon Nellas Marburg had made her to be, and she was not going to let it define her beyond this.
Taking a breath, she snapped a handkerchief out of one hand and wiped her eyes, before setting her shoulders and looking out at the sea. “Thank you, mother. One day, I’ll lay his ashes on your grave. But you’ll have to wait a little longer.”
She turned, heading back inside.
“There’s a lot of others who need to die first, after all.”
She was quiet when she opened the door to the offices. A few people raised their hands to greet her, but said greetings died in throats as the members of Blackpage got a look at the leaden look on Lassa’s face. When you worked in Cipher Pol, you got to know the look of someone who had just had a mission go bad. This wasn’t quite the same thing, but she was happy to let them assume that. Nodding to the others, she headed inwards, shoulders hunched, and knocked twice, sharply, on Director Codex’s door.
“Come in.” After a moment, the silver-haired former field agent looked up, then blinked at the expression on Lassa’s face. “What is it?”
“Sir… I would like to request clearance on my background.”
His face tightened and lips pressed firmly together, Codex swiveled to face Lassa directly. He examined her tense demeanor for a moment, then sighed. “You were told at 10 that you were the child of a Cipher Pol asset who died in the field, much like many of the others at the orphanage.”
“Yessir. Asset, not agent. I note there’s a difference there. If it was an agent, you would have said ``agent.” Lassa responded, body still tight. Codex’s face softened. Getting up, he walked past and locked the door, then put a hand on Lassa’s shoulder.
“You’re not asking for no reason. You remembered something?” The woman nodded mutely, sitting down in one of the armchairs in the room, and staring into the fireplace. Codex sighed. “I suppose it’s about time then. Wait here, have something to drink. Do some breathing exercises, being tense won’t help here.” Walking over to one of the bookshelves, he pulled three volumes out, then pushed two in. A panel slid back, revealing a bank of Den-Den Mushis.
Lassa stood and walked over to a cabinet. Her fingers flicked the combination lock, as her other hand unconsciously rubbed across the slight dent in the wood. She remembered the panic when she nicked it there, trying to break into the cabinet almost 10 years ago. She had been so convinced that it would contain something important, some test, that she was stunned by the fact it was just a drinks cabinet. Codex did keep a few important documents hidden in bottles at times, but he had only started doing that recently, possibly just to mock her.
Pouring a measure of port, Lassa took a long sip and then moved back to the chair as Codex finished a hushed conversation. He paused, looking at Lassa, then moved to the drinks cabinet himself. They sat together in amicable silence, taking sips from their drinks and staring into the fire. It was almost 20 minutes later that a knock came from the door. Standing up, Codex tapped a panel, revealing a series of mirrors that reflected the outside of the office door. After a second of study, he nodded and then unlocked the door and disarmed the rifle, before letting an older woman in a suit in.
“Lassa, this is Agent Selina Larkin. You’ve met 5 times before.”
Lassa frowned for a moment. “I don’t recall that.” After a beat, she lifted an eyebrow. “Hypnotist or Devil Fruit?” Codex smirked, and nodded.
“Agent Mesmyr here is a hypnotist, yes. Specializes in suppressing memories, although as you’ve experienced, that’s a tricky prospect. It can be disrupted by extreme stress, similar circumstances, or other issues. It’s also difficult to suppress long or emotionally intense situations, unless you make use of existing amnesiac causes like drugs.” Eyes narrowing, Lassa looked between the two. Existing causes….
“Or childhood amnesia. You intensified the usual loss of memory from before age four. Why?” Mesmyr glanced over at Codex, who simply shrugged.
“I didn’t make her my second out of nepotism. She’s good. Being a doctor doesn’t hurt either.”
Looking back at Lassa, Mesmyr nodded. “Well then, to be blunt: We suppressed the memories because at the time, you were heavily traumatized. If you feel you’re ready to confront them, we can unlock them, but it will not be pleasant. Are you prepared for that?”
Lassa didn’t speak for a moment. The flashes she had felt while using that technique… the one she was calling Red Rebis for reasons even she wasn’t entirely sure of. Popping her lips for a moment, she actually considered just saying no. But… if she got blindsided by something like that again… No. There was no real choice here. “Hit me. I’m ready to find out where I come from.”
Codex sat down in a chair next to her, and Mesmyr leaned over the back of her chair, hanging a pocket watch over to dangle in front of her face. The older agent began to hum softly, a low drone that rose and fell. Feeling her breathing begin to match in tune with it, she heard Codex begin to speak softly.
“I can only tell you what I remember. Parts of this were pieced together afterwards, pieces are from my own memory. You were born 24 years ago, in the Grand Line. A scant few months before the day that would change the world….”
She remembered crashing waves, echoing oddly. Laughter, echoing through every timber of the ship that rode the stormy waves. It was faint, hazy, but it was there. A man, laughing maniacally.
“You know this part. Everyone does. Gol D. Roger, King of the Pirates, spoke the words in front of the whole world that sent countless souls to the seas. All across the world, people set sail. Some with dreams… and some with a hunger for power. Your father was one of the latter.” Codex took a deep breath, and then reached into his desk, opening a drawer and removing a piece of paper, placing it on the table in front of them.
A wanted poster. Lassa felt her breath stop as she looked at the face on the paper, a face that suddenly seemed very, very familiar. A strong jaw, wild brown hair, and an elegant if prominent nose. He leered back at her, as the name on the paper seemed to burn in the flickering firelight.
Nellas “Black Cauldron” Marburg, Captain of the Alchemist Pirates.
“Nellas Marburg was exiled a year and a half before the death of the Pirate King, for crimes against nature. His pursuit of the arts of alchemy led him to murder and steal for ingredients, and the concoctions he’s come up with have been fearsome enough to keep him at large ever since. His wife, Faylis Marburg, was a member of his crew, and one of his cult of alchemical apprentices.”
She could feel an odd tenseness over her body. Memories were returning, in a fuzzy, half-awake sort of way. Memories that all had an odd dualistic quality to them. Like echoes, repeating over one another. She could almost feel a strange bile rise as she considered them, but Codex was still talking.
“We received a message from Faylis 2 years after Gol D. Roger’s death, when you were approaching three years of age. In the chaos of those early days, she offered to spill everything she had learned about the emerging culture of the Great Pirate Era, to help us catch Nellas, anything she could do, as long as we got her and her children away from him. She said she feared for their lives.”
Their. Her Children. Was this the secret? She had a sibling who didn’t escape? Who maybe was still out there, perhaps working with her father? No, that… didn’t seem right. Why wouldn’t Codex have said anything about the other child yet, then?
The man looked uncomfortable, as he fiddled with his cufflink for a moment. “I was… assigned to the task. I was suspicious of this. It felt like a trap, intended to lure in an agent, possibly for Nellas’s purposes. We had intelligence on him, and he seemed to like bragging about his heirs, claiming they would be his legacy. The idea that he would kill them or harm them seemed ludicrous, and so I delayed, gathering information and setting up a team to prepare for the meeting place. She was supposed to meet us with her children, but….
Your father was a fearsome opponent. He had gotten his hands on a Devil Fruit, one that let him meld things together. He used it to push his alchemy to new heights, but unbeknownst to me, he had discovered a way to do more than simply mix ingredients and items. While I delayed… he discovered what your mother planned to do. Enraged at her betrayal, he pushed his plans up. If I hadn’t…. If I hadn’t waited, they would still be alive.”
Codex was crying now, tears pouring down his face as he relived the mistakes of 20 years prior. The echoing was worse now, as Lassa closed her eyes, head pounding as the humming reached a pitch. And then she
The memories
came back
came back
"STOW YOUR WHIMPERING!" yelled Nellas, glowering over one shoulder. A pair of pirates held the arms of their mother, staring in distress at the two infants in the man's hands. He stood over a bubbling cauldron of disinfectant and chemicals, a sneer on his face at the woman who’d betrayed him.
"PLEASE! DON'T KILL EITHER OF THEM!"
"I didn't say I was gonna kill them, Faylis." Snorted the man, dipping his hands into the liquid and submerging the twins in their alchemical baptism. "I said you'd only have one kid to look after now."
With a mad chuckle, his hands began to glow, and he pressed, as flesh twisted and melded with the chemicals, two bodies reduced to one. Muscle increased in density, and flesh toughened as the might and potential of both babes were brought together. "Roger started a race, and if I'm to have an heir to win it... they must be more than a mere human." Beneath the water, the gurgling cry of two children merged into a single sob.
"Welcome to the world... my little Rebis..." chuckled Nellas, as he looked down at Lassa. Behind him, Faylis fell to the ground, sobbing wretchedly, as she stared at the crimson-skinned child wailing in it’s fathers arms. A drumbeat seemed to fill the room, as the alchemical enhancile’s heart went pounding away like the drums of hell itself.
Back in the present, the arms of the chair snapped as Lassa’s knuckles went white. Looking at the crying agent, she shook her head slowly. “No. He… he didn’t.”
He simply nodded, tears still running down his face. “Because of my actions, both of the children of Faylis Marburg died… and a new child was born. That child was you, Lassa. You are the result of Nellas Marburg using his powers to combine his twin children. I arrived on a nearby island later that same evening.”
And she could see it, too. She could see the rain lashing down as Faylis screamed at the man in a suit, the man who looked so much like the agent who she had come to see as a foster parent. She could hear the words of recrimination, half-stolen by the wind, and the look of fear and grief on the face of a woman she was not sure she could call her mother. After all, she was the horrible little changeling who had eaten the two children she had before, wasn’t she? That was how someone grieving would see it, wasn’t it? But she had said…. Even after all that…
At some point, she had put a hand against her lips, and she could taste the acrid bile rising as she shuddered, eyes tracing down her flesh for a moment as she processed what exactly had happened to her. Taking a deep breath, Codex continued. “We were discovered by Nellas, and in the fight, Faylis shoved you into my arms, and said…”
“Take them. Whatever they are, they’re my child, my flesh and blood. I want them to have a life away from that bastard.”
Lassa’s voice was dull, but she spoke clearly. Codex snapped his head up, looking surprised, then after a moment, he nodded. “You remember.”
She inclined her head just a bit, and spoke quietly. “I remember seeing her fade into the background as you ran. I remember seeing the agents scatter as Nellas realized what she had done. I can still see the calm look on her face as… as he slammed her downwards into the ground, melding her with the rock. I remember the look in her eyes as she died.”
Her whole body was shaking violently, and her eyes had gone misty as she processed this. Processed what she had come from, before those early days in the orphanage.
Codex spoke up again. “We wanted to try and let you come to terms with it, but you were… half-feral, trying to deal with the two sets of similar memories. You kept waking up at night screaming, and you were strong. You broke a nurse’s arm trying to push him off you. So we got Mesmyr to suppress your memories, and you were… you were happier.”
Breathing heavily, Lassa swallowed for a moment before looking at Codex questioningly. “Me becoming an agent. All that time you spent visiting me. Was it just guilt, or…”
The older man shook his head. “No. Maybe at first, but you genuinely impressed me. I insisted you be given a chance to choose, but… you sought out the secrets. You found the tests that we would normally have to nudge the other kids towards, and you were more than fit enough to learn the Six Powers. I could have forbidden you from it, but… I think we both know that one day, your past was going to come nipping at your heels one way or another. I wanted you to be ready to decide what to do when that day came.”
She nodded, tapping her fingers against her lips for a moment, then looked up.
“Okay. I understand.”
Codex looked cautiously at Mesmyr, then stood up, reaching out a hand for a moment. “If you blame me for what happened, I understand…”
“No.” Shaking her head, she lunged forwards and wrapped her arms around his neck. “You gave me the tools to choose what I wanted to do with my life. To take revenge on the man who made me what I am, and everyone like him if I wanted to. I won’t… obsess over this.” She leaned back, her eyes firm. She was still shaking, but the initial horror had faded, and all that was left was a firm, resolute will.
“I am an Agent of Cipher Pol. I will walk the dark streets and I will fight the monsters just as I have always done, ever since I was recruited. I will not let this, or anything else sway me from the cause of Justice. If anything, it means that the Blackpages have one more name. If I take a little extra joy in crossing it out one day… that’s all.” Straightening up, she gave a sharp salute.
“Thank you for telling me about this. I’m going to take a walk, get my head in order, then get back to work, Director.” As he sat in his chair, looking slightly stunned, Lassa stopped at the door, and then turned back,giving him a watery smile. “And… thank you for everything you’ve done for me… Dad.”
Codex gave a watery, hiccupping laugh. “100 pushups for insubordination. And thank you… daughter.” Smiling back, he collapsed back in his chair. “If anyone asks for me for the next 30 minutes, tell them to fuck off.” He took a long draught of his drink as the door opened and closed, and Agent Mesmyr’s hand settled on his shoulder. The older man was still shaking with emotion. He had always been impressed with how well Lassa held her feelings in. Still, you didn’t know someone for their entire life without picking up some tells, and for just a moment, she had broken.
But then, she kept moving. She had never let anyone stop her or slow her down, even as a child. He remembered stopping outside the orphanage gates, watching a small figure kick a tree repeatedly in the dark of the night. Seeing the shadow move past a window in the offices, and snickering internally as she dropped a man twice her size during testing.
He still had a picture in his desk, hidden under a false bottom and behind another photo in a frame set to light itself on fire if forced open. It showed Lassa, wearing a brand new suit and standing next to him, a twinkle in both their eyes as they stood straight and still, staring dead into the camera.
Outside, Lassa stared upwards into the clear blue sky, and tried not to scream. She was an… an experiment. Two people, fused into one. She didn’t even know what the names of the two children she was made from had been. It probably wasn’t Lassa and Iskario. That would be a bit morbid, and she liked to think Codex was more creative than that.
It didn’t matter. She clenched her fist, and raised it, eyes narrowed. She wouldn’t LET it matter. She was Lassa Iskario. She was a man, a woman, an agent, a Devil Fruit User, a doctor, an assassin, a loved one, a killer, a savior, and so much more. But she was not that man’s child. She was not the heir of a pirate. She was not whatever weapon Nellas Marburg had made her to be, and she was not going to let it define her beyond this.
Taking a breath, she snapped a handkerchief out of one hand and wiped her eyes, before setting her shoulders and looking out at the sea. “Thank you, mother. One day, I’ll lay his ashes on your grave. But you’ll have to wait a little longer.”
She turned, heading back inside.
“There’s a lot of others who need to die first, after all.”