Chapter Text
ACT I
Remember Your Name
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ
“My eyes have seen the sky burn"
"Have seen hell freeze"
"Have seen fish drown”
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ
The murky puddle of dirty water trembled as three children sprinted through it without hesitation, their hurried footsteps churning the filth into swirling clouds of grit and grime. The reflection of flickering red sirens shattered in the disturbed surface, vanishing as quickly as it had appeared.
The industrial corridors of District 3 shuddered under the relentless, chaotic rhythm of the alarms, their crimson flashes cutting through the darkness like jagged bursts of a waking nightmare. Luffy led the charge, his movements guided more by raw instinct than by sight—his bare feet slapping against cracked tiles, each step a ticking countdown, a desperate race against time. Behind him, Ace surged forward, gripping a makeshift weapon—a rusted scalpel lashed to frayed copper wires, its edge still glistening with fresh blood. But it wasn’t his blood. Ace had always known how to dodge bullets. His face was smeared with soot, his amber eyes burning like embers in the dark, fierce and unyielding.
Sabo brought up the rear, his fingertips still crackling with residual static from hacking the surveillance grid. The acrid smell of burnt circuits clung to his clothes as behind them, a monitor exploded in a shower of sparking glass and thick, oily smoke. He didn’t look back—didn’t need to. The heat licked at his neck like a warning, but he kept running, his breath steady despite the adrenaline.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the whirring approach of a CP drone—its sleek, angular frame slicing through the haze. Instantly, his mind calculated: *Seventeen steps to the next turn. Factoring in the drone’s weight, its speed, the slight drag from the humid air— 2.4 seconds before the next camera sweep. No margin for error.
“LEFT!”
Sabo’s shout tore through the chaos a heartbeat before the drone smashed into the ground behind them, its rotor blades seizing in violent, lethal spasms. Above, the distorted voice of the facility’s AI droned, “System failure,” before cutting off into staticky silence. Ace didn’t break stride. A leap, a sharp kick—the emergency door’s lock groaned, then gave way with a metallic screech.
The door swung open, and the night swallowed them whole.
Beyond lay Calypso, drenched in relentless rain—icy water cascaded from broken ventilation ducts, carving paths down the city’s rusted skeleton. The cold hit them like a slap, the downpour washing soot and blood into the grates below. Luffy hesitated, just for a second, his usual reckless momentum faltering as the weight of the storm pressed down.
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ
“My ears have heard”
“The thunderous sound of a tsar”
“Which is similar to a quasar”
“The difference is that a tsar blows off your ear”
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ
A buzzing pierced his skull—
—and then the entire world began screaming at once.
The voices were back.
Not just the shouts of CP soldiers or the mechanical whine of drones. These were deeper, wronger—neural static crackling between his synapses, the ghost-echo of forgotten commands, the industrial groans of factories kilometers away. He heard the click-clack of polished boots on metal corridors, the hungry roar of distant fires—distance didn’t matter, nothing mattered, because the sounds weren’t outside him anymore. They were in him, chewing through bone.
Luffy slammed his hands over his ears, fingers trembling, his very skeleton aching as genetic modifications writhed under stress—like his DNA was trying to claw its way out of his skin.
“FOCUS, LUFFY!”
Ace's hands locked onto Luffy's shoulders—anchors in the storm, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. Blood streaked down his forearm from a gash, vivid red against sun-darkened skin. He swiped the back of his wrist across the white streak in his hair, smearing soot and sweat, but his voice was steel wrapped in fire:
"Breathe. Look at me. We're getting out."
Luffy nodded once, sharp, swallowing fear like a bitter pill. His eyes—wild, lost —snapped to Ace's. And for one fractured second, the world stopped.
No more screams. No more static.
Just Ace's heartbeat— too fast but steady, drumming against Luffy's ribs where their bodies pressed close. Proof. Real. Here.
Then they were running again, always running, but now Luffy's steps matched Ace's, their shadows a single creature slicing through the rain.
Sabo's mind ignited—
— neurons firing at adrenalized speeds as scenarios unfolded and collapsed in the space between heartbeats. Every variable snapped into place: alley widths, patrol rotations, the weight distribution of Ace's makeshift weapon, the hitch in Luffy's breath that meant his genetic modifications were still stabilizing.
"Service tunnel—next street! Dumps straight into District 5's industrial terminal!" he shouted, already pivoting.
It was a trap.
He knew.
Every goddamn inch of that cursed tunnel was watched.
Motion sensors buried in the walls like teeth—like the tunnel itself was some slumbering beast just waiting to bite. But still... it was better than the drones. Better than dying piecemeal under open sky, with the whirr-whirr-whirr of rotor blades descending like scythes from the heavens.
Ace yanked Luffy forward with brutal force, dragging his little brother under a corroded pipe that reeked of rust and stagnant water. His fingers dug into Luffy's shoulder—clawed, really, desperate—as if touch alone could tether him to reality.
"Luffy, goddammit, focus on me!" Ace roared, raw desperation cracking through each syllable. "Three hundred fucking meters! That's it! We can make it!"
But Luffy wasn't listening.
His footsteps echoed hollow — mechanical —like a puppet jerked along by invisible strings. Muscles twitched under skin, tendons contracting on their own. And his eyes...
Clouded. Glowing red.
Then— screeeeeeech—
The metal screamed before it shattered.
Years of rust and neglect had eaten through the structure, and now— now — it gave way beneath them. Luffy didn't even have time to yell. The fall was fast.
The landing was brutal.
They crashed straight onto a live industrial conveyor—a river of blades and scrap, churning teeth of steel, sparking cables snapping with blue-white electricity.
The air crackled with the sickening hum of charged plasma.
From the shadows, they emerged— Pacifistas.
Their obsidian-polished bodies drank in the city’s sickly glow, reflecting it back in distorted, jagged streaks. Red eyes —not just mechanical, but predatory —locked onto them with the cold certainty of targeting systems.
"Units 17-D, 55-S, and 07-A." The voice was a guillotine’s drop. "Surrender. Or be decommissioned."
There was no time to react.
No time to breathe.
Sabo struck first.
He spun—a steel hurricane—his boot connecting with the Pacifista's knee joint in a CRACK that echoed like gunfire. The machine staggered, its leg buckling as hydraulic systems screamed under the impact.
One second of vulnerability.
Enough.
His teeth sank into the exposed wiring at the machine's nape, the taste of scorched oil and copper flooding his mouth as he yanked the cable free with a jerk that split his lips. Blood and machine grease dripped from his chin in equal measure.
Ace didn't wait.
He was already moving, muscles burning from the inside as he launched himself at the second Pacifista. His fist—wreathed in fire —slammed into the fissure between neck plates where the titanium was thinnest. The internal explosion was near-instant: superheated oil erupted like lava, painting the ground black as the machine convulsed, systems failing in a cascade of sparks and violent, jerking spasms.
Sabo spat out the piece of cable, his eyes burning with defiance.The first Pacifist was still struggling to rise, its limbs trembling, the crimson glow of its vision flickering erratically. Without hesitation, he yanked a metal pipe from the nearby wall—rust-eaten, but heavy enough to do the job—and with a leap, drove it straight into the machine’s chest.
The impact reverberated through the alley.
Metal against metal. Lights flickering out.
By the time the dust settled, only the husks of the Pacifistas remained—motionless, their systems devoured by fire and corrosion.
The rain washed the oil from the streets, carrying away the last traces of battle.
The metal framework groaned beneath their feet—a low, shuddering sound, like a choked lament rising from the city’s gut. And then— the world gave way.
The ground vanished. Freefall.
The world flipped upside down before anyone could scream.
The impact was brutal. They crashed straight onto an industrial conveyor belt—a living river of jagged scrap, rusted plating, and sparking electrical cables. The sound was a symphony of metal tearing through flesh, of hungry machines spewing garbage, of bodies crushing iron beneath them.
Luffy tumbled uncontrollably, his skull cracking against a shattered control panel. Sound vanished. For a heartbeat, there was only the gray, throbbing void inside his own head.
Ace yanked him up before his body even stopped moving. His fingers dug into the soaked fabric of Luffy’s coat, nearly tearing it.
"Get up! They're coming!" he shouted, panic bleeding from his throat like fresh blood. His voice clawed at their ears, sharper than the broken shards around them.
Sabo surged upright in a single leap. His left arm bled in ragged strips, an open wound that splattered across the metal beneath him like crimson paint on steel. Yet his eyes never wavered. They scanned everything—exits, weak points, the ticking seconds left.
The metal pipe in his grip shuddered with the conveyor’s vibration— heavy, jagged, slick with oil. But it was a weapon. It was all they had.
His gaze was ice. Sharp. Lethal.
For a heartbeat, it flickered turquoise—an artificial spark that vanished as fast as it came, leaving behind only pale, pitiless irises.
They didn’t stop. Not when the putrid stench of burning trash clawed into their nostrils. Not when the city’s lights began to drown behind rust-eaten scaffolds and alleyways choked by fog.
The asphalt gave way to trails of corroded metal. Sporadic raindrops hammered the ground like bullets on steel. Around them, concrete surrendered to the skeletons of machines—cold, forgotten husks, discarded like carcasses. A graveyard of obsolete technology.
This was where they needed to be.
Ace kicked open an empty shipping container, and both men slipped inside.
The space was claustrophobic—a suffocating metal coffin. Mold-caked walls exhaled the thick stench of mildew and dried blood, as if time itself had frozen inside this chamber...
or festered.
Sabo was the first to break the silence. His voice came out low, but coiled with tension—like a spring about to snap.
"We split up here," he said, already mapping their paths with a sharp gesture. "I head east. You two—north."
Ace didn’t move. His hands gripped Luffy’s shoulders, iron-tight, as if the younger boy might dissolve at any second. Luffy trembled, his wide, bloodshot eyes too stark for someone so small. His skin was ghostly pale, lips cracked, his body barely able to stay upright. His irises flickered unnaturally—shifting between shades of brown and violent red.
"No." Ace's voice was a tense murmur, edged with something desperate. "I'll draw them off. You stay with Luffy."
Sabo’s gaze flicked to their youngest brother—and in that brief, silent moment, he knew Ace was right. Luffy wouldn’t survive another chase. Not another second of running. He’d already pushed past every limit his body had.
Sabo drew a sharp breath, then nodded. He stepped forward, closing the distance between them in two strides. Kneeling in front of Luffy, he spoke fast, his words an urgent whisper— as if every extra second they stood there was a death sentence.
Three rules." Sabo's voice was steel wrapped in fire. "One: Don’t get caught. Two: Destroy the chip the second you can."
"And remember who you are," Luffy finished, his voice raw but unwavering.
Ace hesitated at the threshold. Then—with a sharp tug—he ripped a button from his coat. Small, unblemished white, it fit perfectly in his palm.
"Keep this. For when we meet again."
Luffy stared at the offering, brow furrowed. He didn’t understand why this mattered—but if it came from Ace, it had to be important. His breath hitched. The white button was warm, as if it still held the last embers of Ace’s touch.
Luffy crushed it against his chest—right where his heart hammered, wild and defiant.
Ace pressed his forehead against Luffy’s, their breaths ragged and syncopated.
"Listen—when we meet again, I’ll teach you how to make those fireworks you’ve always wanted to see. Promise."
His voice was rough, but the words were soft—a secret tucked between them like a match waiting to ignite.
Then he gripped Sabo’s hand, feeling the faint tremor in his brother’s fingers. No more words passed between them; none were needed. The weight of everything unsaid hung heavy in the space between their locked gazes—a silent pact written in grit and fire.
Luffy bit back his tears, jaw clenched so tight it ached.
Ace, though—Ace let one tear fall.
Just one.
Then he turned away, footsteps swallowed by the fog before they even faded. He didn’t look back. No promises of return. No goodbyes. Just the quiet certainty of a lit fuse burning down.
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ
“My Love, read this dusty lette”
“I'm sorry, I'm not coming home anytime soon”
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ
The world seemed to fall silent, even amidst the surrounding chaos.
Ace ran.
He ran until the soles of his feet tore against the jagged asphalt, until the muscles in his legs burned as if doused in acid. This was the price of modification—brute strength in exchange for living flesh. His tendons coiled like overheated springs, each step a stab of agony, each breath a warning: 'You're going to come apart at the seams.'
But he didn't stop.
They needed to see only him.
They needed to chase only him.
The Pacifistas, the hunters, the metal-voiced monsters—they all needed to fix their sights on his back. Never on them. Never.
"Follow me." The words tore through his clenched teeth with enough force to crack enamel. "Me. Not them."
If he had to die again, let it be with his bare hands ripping through steel plating—even if he had to use his own teeth to do it.
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ
“My soul was sealed in this muddy land”
“And the stars that shone today tear up roads”
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ
If he was going to fall, he'd fall screaming their names like a battle cry.
That’s what brothers did.
But the calm didn’t last.
Sabo sensed it first—the flicker of sensors activating in the dark, the muffled grind of metal joints shifting, the squelch of heavy boots stomping through bloodied puddles.
Instinctively, Sabo yanked Luffy close, crushing him against his chest.His back hit the freezing metal of the shipping container, their breaths syncing into one ragged rhythm— sharp with panic, sharp with survival.
He had to make a choice. Fast. Final.
They bolted like shadows through the storm. The rain fell in thin, needling streaks, turning the world slick and treacherous. Sabo knew they were being hunted. They always were. There was no erasing their trail completely— not with Luffy like this.
Sixty seconds. That’s all he had.
Sabo’s mind burned through possibilities like a wildfire—
discarding compromised routes, analyzing the terrain as if it were a living map. Then he saw it: an industrial dumpster, old and heavy with lead-lined walls. The kind that still scrambled signals.
Without hesitation, he pivoted hard.
“Trust me,” he muttered— more a vow to himself than to Luffy.
They reached it—one sharp kick sent the padlock flying. Sabo wrenched the heavy lid open and turned to Luffy, his movements precise, desperate.
"Here. It’ll be okay now." His voice was steel, but his eyes betrayed the weight of the lie.
With a quick jerk, he tore the button from his collar— the emergency beacon —and pressed it into Luffy’s palm. His fingers lingered a half-second too long before letting go.
"Don’t move until I come back. Or until you hear three quick knocks."
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ
“Baby, I'm about to turn into a ghost”
“And wander through the ashes of these ruined houses”
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ
Luffy’s hand shot out, fingers grasping at empty air where Sabo’s sleeve had been—but he was already gone. With clinical precision, Sabo slammed the metal lid shut. The
thud echoed like a judge’s gavel— final, irrevocable.
Darkness.
Luffy was alone now, swallowed by the suffocating black, save for a single sliver of light slicing through the dented metal. The air hung thick— a toxic cocktail of rust, acid runoff, and the cloying stench of rotting garbage —each breath coating his tongue with the taste of decay.
The floor beneath him was uneven, blanketed in a slick, oily sludge that clung to his clothes and seared his skin with a faint, chemical burn wherever it touched.
He didn’t cry. Not yet.
But his eyes burned. His throat ached.
Through the narrow slit in the metal, he caught Sabo’s final movements— a silhouette sprinting straight into the void, the sudden flare of a targeting laser igniting in the dark like the eye of a prowling beast.
More lights ignited. A dozen. Twenty.
A swarm of metallic predators emerged from the shadows, their heavy footfalls sending tremors through the ground like the footsteps of giants.
Sabo dodged.
His body twisted midair like a ribbon caught in the wind —fluid, precise — narrowly evading the blade that sliced through his coat but not his skin.
He already knew where they nested.
He knew before the Pacifistas’ red eyes flickered to life—before their targeting systems could even lock on.
Bare feet slammed against corroded metal— one, two, three rapid steps along the container’s side. Then a sharp leap launched him onto a suspended pipe, his body a fleeting shadow against the floodlights.
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ
“For the flames, for the hatred, for the false love of the country”
“For anger, for the pleasure of seeing organs on sidewalks”
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ
His hands seized a frayed high-voltage cable—weathered and exposed, like gripping the banister of a childhood home.
The scrap was his ally. Piles of industrial debris became makeshift staircases. Shattered girders transformed into gangways. Every movement was timed with surgical precision:
0.9 seconds until the next shot.
700 meters to the sewage creek—the only blind spot.
72% survival odds if he reached the water.
Then he ran.
The air hissed as a second blade grazed his neck— so close it parted the strands of his hair.
Almost.
Ahead, the drainage canal yawned open— a thick river of sewage and industrial waste, its surface gleaming under artificial lights like tarnished mercury.
But before he could leap—
CLANG.
A metallic crash shuddered behind him. Heavy. Relentless.
The fourth Pacifista.
Sabo glanced over his shoulder—and grinned. Breath ragged, clothes streaked with grime, body coiled like a spring.
Ready.
They were everywhere.
Luffy’s heart pounded like a war drum—too loud, too wild. It throbbed in his ears, his chest, even his teeth.
He squeezed his eyes shut. Breathed. Once. Twice.
No screaming. No calling out.
He had to listen.
Had to count the footsteps.
Had to measure the gaps between explosions and screams, between electric crackles and the *crunch* of metal on metal—until the chaos outside drowned out his own breathing.
Until it drowned out fear itself.
He couldn't scream, no matter how much he wanted to, his throat hurt and tears overflowed.
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ
“Forgive me, I just wanted a good life for us”
“The songs they have here are different”
“Angels and archangels turned their backs on us”
“Kamikazes fly over us”
“Clouds bring rains of fire that form floods”
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ