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X Drake sat down and ordered some lunch. Sabaody was the only real choke point before the New World. It was his only chance to meet up with some people he would really like to. Like to meet and have some concerning information about. He needed to meet up with the Trafalgars, who are kind of his brother and nephew, adoptive through Sengoku.
He was already partially aware of Trafalgar Cora, or Donquixote Rosinante as he was called back then. He couldn’t really hide from the constant comparisons to the man when he was growing up. It got even worse when he went into spy work. Being Sengoku’s replacement goldfish was fine by him, it wasn’t like he wasn’t projecting his issues with his dad right back on the man.
Law was someone he was a little less excited to meet. He knew both men by their reputations, but Law’s was a lot less… pleasant. Rosinante’s reputation was that he was a clumsy man with some scary skills hidden beneath. Law’s reputation was something he’d think they were making up if he didn’t have access to the marines file on him. Bodies dissected like a particularly cruel child would have done to a frog, just without the murder part.
His devil fruit made Law a true nightmare in a fight, but it also kept his body count low. It was a bit difficult to kill people when your strongest weapon was one that allowed for brutal but nonlethal takedowns. Perhaps that also encouraged Law’s reputation to be what it was, dead men tell no tales, but his opponents did.
Thinking about it made Drake’s appetite wane, but when he got his lunch it was back in full force. He wasn’t someone who could turn down a warm meal right in front of his face. Years of eating marine sanctioned gruel had made Drake very appreciative of any food that tastes like anything other than cardboard and could have a temperature other than luke-warm.
After his meal he’d search for the Heart Pirates. Based off of all the supernova stuff he’d seen around all of this odd generation, not really, too spread out age wise in his mind, meant that all eleven of them would be arriving at Sabaody at roughly the same time. He was still very likely to miss them, the seas made meeting an inevitability but meeting intentionally impossible.
He didn’t have to look too hard; however, the father and son pair approaching him first. He could see the dynamic taken from all those reports already in their moves. Law lead and behind him was always Cora, ready to back his son up for whatever. Cora almost looked cool and almost matched his son. Cora’s dyed black hair, fairly recently dyed by Drake’s estimation, really helped smooth over the illusion that while Law took after the other parent they were related. Cora almost looked cool in that he flipped a cigarette into the air and caught it in his mouth, before promptly, hopefully accidently, swallowing it.
Law takes the other seat, Cora wandering over to the counter, probably to order food for his group. The question now is what does Law know? Does he know that he is an ex-marine? Or does he know the much more secretive nature of SWORD? It would be a very bad leak if he was aware of the latter but he did not doubt the ability of the marines to leak sensitive information.
“How many people have you killed?” Is how Law opens up. Which tells him nothing but the known fact that Law was a bit off.
It wasn’t like most pirates weren’t a bit, or a lot, off. It was almost a requirement for a pirate, or a marine for that matter, to be a bit off. But still, that wasn’t just a question you asked.
“What?”
“Not as a pirate, but as a marine. How many people did you kill?” Law just digging in deeper made Drake want to cry out ‘and who’s this asshole’. But he knows exactly who Law is and knows enough about people trying to nettle you to not rise to it.
“That’s none of your business kid,” Drake keeps his tone even and dismissive, the pirate's version of peer to peer respect.
“That’s true. Want to tell me anyways?” Drake would not yell at Law. He wouldn’t. His job was to try and bring Law and Cora into, or back into for Cora, the marines through the warlord system.
“Listen kid, if you’re going to ask me questions, I’m going to ask my own right back. Why didn’t you take the warlord position when it was offered?” When Crocodile went down Law was on the short list of those that were offered his position. When all those on that short list respectively told the marines to fuck off Drake got a very fun hour of his dad complaining over the den-den mushis.
“I’m not going to work with Doflamingo or those celestial bastards,” Law says both names with equal amounts of venom. It’s a bit of a surprise, he expected some on the mention of the celestial dragons, most pirates had anything other than fond feelings towards them, but he didn’t expect the same reaction toward them as to the man who shot his dad.
“Fair enough. Looks like Rosi is joining us,” Cora had finished ordering, a long line making it take longer than it should have. He calls the man Rosi on purpose, to test the waters with the name it appears Cora has basically completely abandoned.
Cora doesn’t grimace, but Drake can tell that the man was close. That’s good for relationship building reasons. It’s a small mishap that doesn’t piss off the target enough to taint the relationship and when the targeter apologizes it builds a stronger bond than most forms of normal interaction. It can’t be done too often, the risk is that your social blunders do more damage than good, but a just right amount does wonders. It also makes the bond seem more real, not the perfection that would send off anyone properly paranoid.
“Whoa, don’t call me that,” Cora almost seems jovial in his correction, sliding a meal to Law before sitting down himself, pulling a chair from a nearby table and nearly taking the rest of the table with him.
“Sorry, thought it was a nickname,” those non-name parts of bounties could be a complete crap shoot. Drake could remember a moment from early on in his career in the marines where someone ended up with the title of ‘that bitch’ because that’s what all other pirates who knew him started off saying his name with that bitch. This was only eventually fixed when an up and coming pirate from West Blue started using That Bitch Melora as her full name. One internal poll later That Bitch Melora was the only pirate with the title of ‘that bitch’ left standing.
“It’s a name from a life of crime I’ve left behind,” Drake gave an exhale through his nose, saying he found it funny, but not enough to actually do something about it.
“Left this life to raise your son and then came back to it with him?” It was a common enough story about parenting as a pirate, but everyone knew that wasn’t the story.
Cora just chuckles and checks the time. The father and son pair quickly finish up their lunches before heading off to do something. Drake manages to get Law to accept a piece of paper with his den-den number on it, making no illusions of the pair actually calling him.
It takes a while to get your ship coated to dive to Fishman Island. They have enough time to bump into each other again.
The auction house goes to shit not an hour later. Drake would have been fully supportive of that if the going to shit had not been triggered by Monkey D. Luffy deciding to clobber a celestial dragon. Drake would like to make a snappy comment about watching other people live out your dreams but he’s mostly too stressed out from goddamn Kizaru showing up.
His ship was coated enough that it was only necessary for his crew to get back to the ship and then go down to be in the clear. It was a mad dash to get there but it was a mad dash with no casualties and no arrests. Drake thanks every god he can think of as they make their descent to the seafloor.
In the middle of Drake taking some calming breaths the ship’s den-den mushi rings. He almost thinks that it’s Sengoku looking for an update on what all that was. It couldn’t be, Sengoku doesn’t call from that den-den, but when he calls on the other line Drake expects he’ll have to give a full report. It’s the first time that this someone has called, the psychic snail not changing in appearance just yet. Drake answers the call.
“Marine-ya, look up,” Drake does just that. He comes to the realization that while he was aware that the Heart Pirates ship, the Polar Tang, was something called a submarine. He never bothered to look up what one of those were, ships were never something he was all that interested in and it wasn’t like a ship was all that different from another besides the accents you put on or in it.
“Damn Trafalgar, if that’s what you’re working with, why’d you stop in Sabaody?” The reason why Sabaody was such a choke point was because of the need for coating. Drake wasn’t sure he would have stopped there if he didn’t need to.
“If Strawhat-ya didn’t start the show I would have. Probably not in the same way, but I would have started it all the same,” Law chuckles a bit thinking of the chaos that the Strawhat brought.
“Not that I don’t respect it,” Drake was a big fan of the crackdown on the auction house because of all of this, who wouldn’t be? “ But you didn’t strike me as the moral crusader type.”
“I’m not, but I don’t necessarily think you need to be one to want that building to burn down. But if you know any crusaders point them at Doflamingo, he had a hand in that business,”
“I’ll pass that along,” To Sengoku mostly. The fact that it was a warlord doing this made it marine business and not just the worst of the worst criminals.
Law hangs up after that, the submarine now near the docking space. It wouldn’t be a friendship, maybe not even a spoken out loud alliance but Drake thinks they can get along now.
That’s the first step, getting along with his brother and nephew.