Summary: Bringing the hammer down on the vilins!

  Warning! Chapters 53-56 were all posted back-to-back! Make sure you don't miss any!

  Chapter 56: A Good Woman's Wrath

  Lady Nora Isabule stared in shocked horror at the pictures sprawled across her desk. Despite the images being taken in low light, causing some of impact to be lost compared to the infiltration team's firsthand look st night, the Lady looked ill. Not that Luffy could bme her. Wanting to give her something else to focus on as he felt her horror only build as she continued to stare, he cleared his throat to get her attention. It was not her he spoke to, however. Instead addressing Chopper.

  "Chopper. Please repeat your findings for Lady Isabule."

  The young doctor, less phased than any of them humans despite still showing plenty of disgust, responded to his Captain's request.

  "The mutations are the result of something called MIQ, originating from Merveille. Apparently, the drug was some sort of failed experiment that a scientist there sold off to Fated Winds. According to the notes copied from the MIQ b, someone named Tolnd Ertas realized the 'failed' product was still viable for their own needs. It was discarded by Merveille due to causing major reductions to the intelligence of the victims, despite also allowing them to 'evolve' based on introduced animal DNA. The resulting hybrid was unsatisfactory for Shiki the Golden Lion, who wanted an intelligent army rather than just a horde of bloodthirsty, half-mad mutates."

  Chopper stalled at that, grimacing, and Luffy took over from him. Those were really all the facts they had, with the rest being pieced together supposition.

  "Based on overheard conversations while we were initially investigating, we think they intend to release the 'monsters' as a disaster. Somehow, they think they can pin it on the Crystal Suns, then use an airborne poison that only effects victims of MIQ to kill them off. They save the city, bme falls on the Crystal Suns, and then they move in to take control of the city as its saviors."

  Lady Isabule tore her gaze away from the images, visibly angry as she growled out a response.

  "I know exactly how they'll bme it on the Suns. Tolnd Ertas is a member of the Suns by family line. He's a useless, shifty, fuck up that we long since took out of any position where he could do any more damage. But he's technically a member of the Crystal Suns, and the popuce wouldn't care that he's basically a disgraced one. He's probably been spying for this group of conspirators for years, and offered up this insane idea as a way to 'get back' at the Suns for shuffling him off to the useless duties that he still manages to fuck up more often than not."

  Well, that would certainly do it, yes. Good to know their collective guesswork was probably on the right track. With that new information, Luffy redirected the conversation.

  "Then what do you want to do about it? We don't actually have any real evidence against Fated Winds. But we could break in there tonight and try to…"

  Lady Nora cut him off with a curt, angry chop of her hand.

  "Fuck no! This is far worse than anything I expected you to find. No, we're going after these bastards today. All four houses. These idiots might think I ignored the threat of Enel. But that's only because they never realized I squirreled away every Dial engineer that escaped Skypiea to work on defense solutions. I cked the proof I needed to go after these bastards, not the means…"

  Visibly reining in her anger, Nora closed her eyes and breathed in for a five count, then out for the same. When her eyes opened again to pin Luffy with a direct look, she was obviously more in control, if not exactly feeling any calmer to Luffy's empathic senses.

  "That said. I hope you and your crew might accept a commission, Captain. I want to take those MIQ victims as intact as possible. I have no idea, yet, if there is any way to help them. But by all that shines, I bloody well intend to try. That means taking them alive, and I'm not sure my people can do that. If I have my Dial Mechs raid the Fated Winds, and the city guard the two smaller houses, can your crew break into the Battered Coin and secure them?"

  Luffy nodded firmly. Though he really wanted to ask about her drop of the words 'Dial Mech.'

  "We can easily do that. Now that we've been inside, one of our Devil Fruit holders can teleport us to the hidden rooms directly. We'll disable anyone in the bs, then seal the room. After that we can move on to deal with the Battered Coin's security forces easily enough."

  Lady Isabule nodded curtly.

  "Perfect, Captain. I promise I will arrange whatever reward, within my ability to grant, that you desire for this. Just…try not to kill anyone you don't have to. It's going to take a while to sort out who did and didn't know what was rotten at the core of these groups."

  That, he could agree to. It was highly unlikely that random file clerks had known what their master's were up to behind closed doors. So long as they got the ringleaders and anyone who had known about the experiments, Luffy would be happy. When he said as much, Nora shook his hand grimly, and the two of them began to pn…

  ... ...

  Vivi's ability to bypass normal security was honestly more than a little broken, Luffy thought. Though the fact that she'd needed to look at images of the Lab in order to do so was not something he was pleased about. She'd seen some terrible things with Baroque Works, yes. But mostly of the murder and mayhem variety, rather than the cruel horror of mad science experiments. Still, she'd pointed out herself when he'd asked if she was willing that she'd chosen to join them in part to help people…and those who had been experimented on were still people. Even if they couldn't fix them, they owed it to them to try, as far as Vivi was concerned. And so, even if the images had made her a little green, she'd determinedly memorized the b and opened a door to it for them.

  Which is how he was now holding a bloody-handed doctor at gunpoint even as Chopper and Kaya frantically worked on the poor bastard that was the test victim of MIQ. They hadn't expected to interrupt an actual operation, but the two of them had lept into trying to help the man the instant they'd realized what was going on. Luffy had barely managed to get through the air door before them to secure the b, both of them having practically dived through as soon as they saw what was happening. From what he could sense, Kaya was having more luck than Chopper, with the MIQ at work giving off some distinct Spirit Energy vibes that he supposed shouldn't have surprised him. Most of the weird fuckery in this world seemed connected to it in some fashion or another, after all. Ignoring the gore and whimpering of the cut-open man as best he could, Luffy gred at the doctor, who gred right back.

  "Who the fuck are you? Get out of my b!"

  Luffy quirked an eyebrow, expression shifting to a snarl as his finger twitched, wanting desperately to put a round through this monster's forehead.

  "Really? You fucking think I'm going to just go, after seeing that? No. You're under arrest, by the authority of the Crystal Suns, for the murder and torture of countless citizens of Wind's Home."

  The doctor glowered…but disturbingly smiled a moment ter.

  "Funny. The Crystal Suns doesn't have any more authority than the Battered Coin does. Which means you're breaking and entering!"

  Before Luffy could stop him, the man lunged for some sort of switch. The doctor wasn't fast enough to prevent Luffy from putting a pair of rounds through each of his shoulders. But Luffy hadn't been aiming to kill, since this man was one of the few who might know something about MIQ and what it did. That proved to be a mistake as the doctor merely grunted…and an extra pair of arms ripped through his b coat and punched the switch. Time seemed to freeze for just an instant as Luffy sensed electrical Dials activating nearby…

  And then the howling began.

  Zoro and Kuina, wide-eyed, burst out of the b from where they'd stood guarding Chopper and Kaya. Immediately, something hit Zoro hard enough to throw him back into the Lab, where Hina thankfully hip-checked him away from the two working on the still-writhing man strapped to a medical table. Luffy had reacted in the same instant, fshing forward to clock the doctor in the back of the head, knocking him out. But the damage was already done. Robin, slightly slower to react but having been busy expanding her network of eyes and ears, shouted out what was already obvious.

  "The experiments are going crazy! The switch triggered some sort of injection mechanism in their colrs! They aren't just after us, they are spilling through a hidden door into a tunnel toward the city!"

  Luffy only had an instant to consider his options. There was no question that they needed to contain the monsters. Triggering his transformation into lightning, he shouted orders before the transformation finished.

  "Nami! Transform and help contain them! Hina try to bind them! Try not to kill them if you don't have to!"

  Already knowing that Kuina would be doing her best to do exactly that and seeing Nojiko rushing into the b via the still-open air door to help as well, Luffy put his faith in his crew to handle the creatures attacking the b. In his lightning form he burst out over the heads of the former civilians, took a fraction of a second to find the tunnel, and redirected himself down it. Despite the fact some of the monsters were fast, Luffy was far faster in his lightning form, and he quickly overtook and passed the MIQ victims within the tunnel.

  Turning in midair, he nded between them and the exit to the city, weapons away and bare hands fshing out coated in lightning. Hard punches that delivered a taser worth of electricity stopped the first two monsters…but they didn't go down. Whatever the MIQ had done to them, it had clearly enhanced their durability. One of them had at least been locked-up by the lighting, but the other had scales that seemed to shrug it off with only minor muscle-twitches. It sshed at Luffy with cwed hands, its speed more than respectable but nowhere near fast enough to catch him.

  Instead, he ducked under the blow and struck out with two more of his own, doubling the strength of both the punch and the lighting around his fist. It was still only perhaps a quarter of his physical power, but he was trying not to kill these things. Thankfully, this time the blow rocked the MIQ-Monster backward, though it still didn't put it down, and Luffy grimaced as the others behind it tore into it. Okay, this wasn't working, time to switch tactics. Still trying to stay non-lethal, Luffy reached for the obvious option, even if it was one he rarely touched. Still, up here on a Sky Isnd should be safe enough, and he narrowed the burst of Conqueror's Haki down as tight as he could manage on the group of frenzied manbeasts in the tunnel.

  This time, his efforts were rewarded as every single one of them froze up instantly. He ramped up the power smoothly, watching as they quivered…and then began passing out. Sighing in relief, he kept it up, sweeping the focal point over those of the half-human abominations that managed to retain consciousness through the initial sweep. He didn't want to stop their hearts or something, so he kept the focus tight and produced short bursts just strong enough to knock out the ones who'd borne through the initial fractional-strength bst.

  As the st one fell, he turned to see if he could figure out how to re-seal the passage that had opened into the city, where fearful civilians were staring at where the MIQ-monsters had nearly spilled out. Shrugging as he didn't see a means to raise the hidden bits of crystal that had slid into the floor, he reached into the darkest portion of the tunnel. Using the shadows there to hide the action, he pulled out a sizable sheet of steel. Acting as if it had been there all along, he turned and hefted it over the entrance, wedging it firmly in pce.

  It would have to do for now.

  Picking up the first two unconscious monsters, he began hauling them back toward the holding cells. Hopefully, the rest of his crew had already dealt with those inside…

  ... ...

  Luffy was stuck swinging between fascinated and grim as he watched the proceedings. Four days had passed since their raid on the Battered Coin, and the Crystal City was still stirred up after plentiful evidence was found. Not just by their own raid, but by the raids performed by the Crystal Suns and city guard, who had proven that the Fated Winds and those who had thrown their lot in with them had horrifically underestimated Lady Nora Isabule. Those raids had revealed that the Lady was very much a velvet glove wrapped around an iron fist when it came to protecting her city. Instead of being ill-prepared and short sighted, it had turned out that she was simply a believer in violence being a st resort, rather than the first tool one reached for. She had, in fact, been delighted when Luffy dredged up a quote from his original life.

  "Violence is the st refuge of the incompetent."

  Luffy didn't necessarily agree with the quote, which so far as he could remember was something out of one of Isaac Asimov's works. The Foundation Series, maybe? Wherever it had originated, Luffy didn't quite agree. Sometimes, the most efficient way to deal with a problem was the direct route, which often included violence. Other times, it was the only way to deal with a problem, in honest truth. That didn't mean he failed to understand the intent behind the quote, however. That, in an ideal world, an intelligent individual could always find a solution that didn't require violence, and a failure to find such a solution was a failure to look hard enough.

  Of course, it was also a failure if one assumed they would always be intelligent enough to find such a solution. And Lady Nora Isabule was no fool. While she had publicly and openly encouraged peaceful resolutions and refused to support anything like an open Arms Race with Skypiea…in private she'd made preparations to protect her people in case diplomacy failed. Those preparations were what was causing Luffy's fascination, as Lady Isabule had activated her contingency in order to raid the Fated Winds and other two involved Merchant Houses.

  The refugee Dial engineers from Skypiea had created Power Armor for her.

  Like virtually everything in the Crystal City, the locals had leaned heavily on various types of Crystals to make up for the scarcity of metal in the Sky Isnds. The result was, frankly, just as fucking gorgeous as the rest of the city. Glowing blue crystal made up the armor yer, the material apparently being stronger than steel in most ways and an incredibly good channel for electricity. Which might have seemed counterproductive, until you realized that the locals understood enough about electrical flow that they'd designed the armor to channel electricity away from the occupant of the armor. Luffy had tested it himself, the Engineers more than pleased to get a chance to see if their design would have properly worked against Enel.

  The results had been eye-opening.

  The armor panel he'd tried it on had successfully protected the dummy they'd strapped it to from an impressive amount of electricity. Eventually, when Luffy upped the amps and voltage far enough, the Crystal armor had broken down. But it had taken a serious, concentrated burst of focused lightning to pull that off. A single armor would likely have been taken down by Enel. But a dozen? Without Enel's Mantra, he might legitimately have struggled to take them on, particurly as they apparently had figured out how to channel the electricity into a heat bde that reached impressive temperatures.

  Added to Impact Dials that charged off any impact the armor took and fed that energy into an impressively complex array of Kinetic-Energy focused Dials, in turn powering the armor to make it several times faster and stronger than the human wearing it? They were an impressive as hell creation. Personally, Luffy didn't think they'd have been able to turn the tide against Enel if he was serious. But they could have given him an actual fight. Which was damn impressive against a Logia as insanely powerful as his had been. The only downside, of course, was the same one Usopp had realized when he'd discovered the seed crystals on their first day in town. The growth speed was slow, and difficult to direct.

  Each of the three dozen power suits that made up the grand total that the Crystal Suns had managed to create had taken literal years to grow. Cruder versions had been finished faster, or so Luffy had been told, but even those had taken a year or two. Meaning there technically had been a period where Wind's Home would have been very vulnerable to Enel if he'd been more aggressive. But Lady Isabule had been remarkably far sighted in ordering the armor's development. In the eight years since Enel had taken over, they'd reached the current point. In which those armors were legitimately a little scary. They'd certainly run utterly roughshod over the Fated Suns and the other Merchant Houses.

  Luffy was impressed, and he'd leaned hard on the Lady to make her promised 'reward' for their aid an instruction manual that would allow Pagaya to recreate the Dial systems involved. She'd been reluctant, for obvious reasons, and Luffy had needed to sweeten the deal a bit by offering Nojiko's services to speed up the growth of more Crystal Suits. Of course, the good Lady was well aware that her doing so only made it more likely that the Strawhats could reproduce them. But they'd also made a good impression on her…and were due to depart her territory soon anyway. Making them not her problem if they did choose to misuse them.

  All of that completely expined the fascination Luffy was currently feeling as he watched several of the suits move around the pza. The things were just as impressive now as when he'd first drooled over them in the wake of the raids. The grim mood that he was also waffling between was even easier to expin, sadly, given just what those Crystal Suits were guarding.

  An Execution Ptform.

  There was nothing beautiful about the ptform. It was, in fact, one of the few things he'd seen in the city made without a spec of Crystal or ornamentation. Something he was certain wasn't accidental at all. Those who earned the long drop from a short rope that came with its presence had committed crimes against the Crystal City worthy of its use. They were separated from the city, forever by the time that drop was over, and deserved not its beauty in their st moments. A bit of symbology even he could understand.

  Instead, the ptform was wrought of iron, likely imported at considerable cost. It was coldly utilitarian and built to st, with room on it for four men to be executed at once. The nooses were set around the necks of the first four without fanfare, including that of Whillem Ulric the Third, whose pn the conspiracy had been. In moments, he and the three heads of the other Merchant Houses would be the first to take the drop. But not the st. Forty-seven men and women had already been confirmed to be involved in the plot. All of them were to be executed today, and more might yet join them in the future as the evidence was sorted through. It was to be a long, grim day of death, but Luffy would not spare any pity for them.

  He had, after all, seen the numbers of those these men had killed. As well as the fewer but nearly as tragic number that still lived and we being worked over by Chopper and Kaya in hopes of saving them. These bastards deserved their fate, and he would watch the light leave their eyes, even if he took no pleasure in it.

  At least there was a good chance he'd get a shiny toy out of this in the end! Or, well, probably not him since the Crystal Suits wouldn't really be a net positive for him. But someone on his crew, at least. And possibly some more upgrades for his ship, too…

  ... ... ... ... ...

  A/N 1: Well, that's mostly it for my first original isnd! There is still a bit more of it in the most recent set of Early Access chapters, but it's really just cleanup and moving on. Overall, I'm fairly pleased with how this experiment went. Original isnds aren't going to be a huge thing that I do a lot of, but I AM going to need a few of them since I'm not handling the timeskip the way Oda did. The crew isn't going to get separated, which means they'll be traveling together and I'll need some pces to visit (in addition to them hitting up a few of the pces the crew would have while separated). This isnd was an early experiment in how to handle it, and I think it turned out pretty well. Some new upgrade options were added for members of the crew, including some of those that weren't on the original crew and thus don't have canon powerup options. And so far I've been told by most people that the isnd feels like it fits right into One Piece, which is precisely what I was aiming for :-). There were things I think I could have done a bit better, but for the most part I'm pleased with the result.

  A/N 2: Once per release, I remind people that...I have a Patreon Page! Nothing I write, fanfiction wise, is ever permanently paywalled. That said, I do have Early Access chapters. There is currently roughly another 15,000 words of One Piece - Halfway Broken in Early Access (Chapters 57-61). Also, of course, you also get access to my other Early Access chapters for my other stories. There is typically around 40-60k words of various works in early access at any one time. I always appreciate any support, since it helps me free up more writing time...but most of all I hope you just enjoy the stories!