Defect or Defend

Chapter Two

Luffy was in disguise at Enies Lobby, of course. No need to risk having them believe that she was betraying them. She remembered thinking that Lucci might find out who she really was, even with her powers, but thankfully he didn't.

She almost laughed at the irony at that moment; a Rear Admiral challenging the Government at large, and later being one of the few in the world to survive a Buster Call that, with both her status and connections, she could've called herself—not that CP9 nor Spandam knew that.

She imagined herself doing that, and involuntarily shivered. It was cruel—she knew Robin enough to know that as a fact. "Absolute Justice..." what stupid reasoning Akainu spread across the Marines.

"Civil Justice" was her own motto. No slaves... Fishmen mixed amongst humans... no Tenryūbito... the list went on. In fact, most of it was the Goverment's fault—pirates did spread havoc, but never on a widespread scale. Crocodile was only a pawn of the Military when he did it, and the higher-up pirates generally weren't ruthless. Enel—again, a King, part of the government there—caused the terror and destruction in Skypiea.

Of course, there were exceptions, as there are to everything. Like Marshall D. Teach. A warlord, though she did find something suspicious about him. She knew for sure when she met him in Mock Town—Teach was bad news.

She wasn't saying that Marines catching pirates was bad, but they really needed to start thinking in the big picture. If they hadn't destroyed Ohara, more discoveries could've been made. If they had become friends with Robin, they would have more success in finding Pluton than capturing her and putting a bounty on her head. Things like that.

The worst was Akainu. The very worst.

After Sabaody, she landed on Amazon Lily, Den-Den Mushi permanently damaged. She was brought and bathed, after she mistook a mushroom for another. At least she managed to pay attention to the Marine psychological training more often after that.

The mushroom was a type that covered her body, trying to suck the life out of her, and so the Kuja pirates took them off while they bathed her. She was unconscious at the time, but she soon came in contact with a blushing Hancock who kept asking for her to marry her. She refused, of course—no time for that with all the turmoil going on in her life.

About a month ago, Himeji was called to Sengoku's office. He told her, amidst her refusals to put her food away and to take her feet off the desk, that they would capture the Whitebeard Commander, Portgas D. Ace, and that she would have to participate in a war. She smiled grimly, not being one for unnecessary bloodshed. If they were just going to kill him, why not right away, instead of going to risk of it failing?

Of course, she kept her opinions silent. She instead asked why he told her specifically, and he replied that she would have to sit up at the front with her grandfather. She silently nodded, her bangs covering her eyes as she stood up and left the room. She hated the idea of a war. After being alone all her life—her grandfather wasn't allowed to visit her for the first thirteen years or so of her life, and she was never told why—then why make the soldier's families suffer the same, just to draw out another pirate that wasn't even planning to challenge the government nor become the Pirate King? Not that Edward's crew knew that.

She picked at her vest idly. It was strange, suddenly switching between being male and female, but she was pretty used to it by now.

With the Marines, she almost always had long, black hair in a thick braid down to her hips, or some type of ponytail. She usually created freckles, if only to create a larger distinction to her male counterpart. She didn't wear her Marine jacket, as being an assassin meant she often had to go undercover or otherwise be hidden, and since because of her being hidden from the world, she didn't have a Marine crew, no one could enforce it onto her. In fact, nothing whatsoever marked her as a Marine, something that many of the other Marines disapproved of.