The laboratory shudders.
Dust sifts from the ceiling in pale curtains. The floor tilts—not much, just enough to make the pods sway on their moorings. A roar rolls across the island, blurred by stone and distance, as though the earth were turning in its sleep.
Inside the great chamber, the pods begin to open.
Fluid recedes. Glass hisses. Fifty cylinders holding Uta clones drain in unison, and fifty more holding Gordon clones follow a heartbeat later. The clones step out, blank-faced and blinking, each movement a note struck on a hundred bodies at once.
Their eyes change.
The left eye of every clone twists into a red cross. The right eye collapses into a black void. Their mouths stretch into the same manic grin—Tot Musica's grin, carved across a hundred faces.
A voice booms through the laboratory. Not human. Not quite. Something vast and hungry, speaking through the walls themselves.
"STOP THEM! Protect the Sing Sing Power."
The clones' heads swivel in perfect unison. They file out—silent, purposeful, a river of identical faces pouring through the laboratory's exits. Behind them, dozens more pods remain sealed. Dozens more clones float in stasis, waiting.
---
Eight figures tear through the ruins: Shanks, Hongo, Beckman, Law, Bepo, Eliane, Sanza, and Jannali.
Jannali and Eliane lead the pack. Eliane flies—black wings snapping into existence behind her, flame flickering at her back as she skims just above the rubble. Jannali runs beneath her, boots pounding against cracked stone, afro bouncing, headscarf whipping.
Bepo calls out from the rear, "Are you sure we are going the right way?"
Eliane looks over her shoulder. "Yes, Mr. Bear! This is the right way!"
Bepo's ears flatten. "It's just that we didn't see this when we were here!"
Jannali replies without slowing, "Yeah, nah, mate. You were off your chops."
Beckman's hand shoots up. The group skids to a halt.
"I hear something."
Law's hand drifts to Kikoku's hilt. "What?"
Jannali curses, her third eye pulsing beneath the headscarf. Her lip curls. "Oh, bloody hell."
"Footsteps," Sanza says, his voice high and thin. "Lots of them. They're running straight at us."
Nobody notices that Shanks has gone still.
He is staring at something in the distance, something only he can see. The color has drained from his face. His hand hangs slack at his side, nowhere near his sword.
Law yells, "We should hide!"
Beckman nods once, pointing to a tangle of collapsed walls and creeping foliage. "There."
Everyone moves. Everyone but Shanks.
"Uta..." he breathes.
Hongo is halfway to cover before he looks back, pausing mid-stride. "CHIEF!"
The group turns. Shanks is walking—slowly, steadily—toward the oncoming horde.
Sanza asks, "What's wrong with him?"
Law's jaw tightens. "His Haki. He reached out to sense what was coming, and he saw her face a hundred times over. Now it's got hold of him."
Jannali finishes for him, her tone flat. "Bloody brilliant."
Hongo sprints back, grabs Shanks by the shoulders, and shakes him. "Chief! Snap out of it!"
Nothing. Shanks's eyes are fixed on a place none of them can follow.
Bepo's head whips between the empty road and the Emperor drifting down it. "Um, Captain...?"
"I'll handle it." Law lifts his hand—
Beckman catches his wrist. "Easy, kid."
The ground has started to tremble with the rhythm of a hundred feet. Sanza announces, "They are almost here!"
Jannali shoulders past them all. "We're not here to fuck spiders." She shoves Hongo aside. "Move your arse."
Jannali shoves Hongo aside. "Move your arse!"
She draws back her hand and slaps an Emperor of the Sea across the face.
The crack echoes through the ruins. Bepo's eyes go wide. His ears flatten against his skull. He whispers, "Um, did she just slap an Emperor?"
Law tugs the brim of his hat down over a smirk. Beckman strokes his chin, losing the fight against a grin.
Hongo sputters. "What do you think you're—"
Jannali grabs Shanks by the shoulders and shakes him violently. She slaps him again, forehand and backhand.
"Pull your finger out! We need ya! I didn't come all this way for him to have a nana nap!"
Shanks blinks.
The haze in his eyes clears. His brow furrows. He looks at Jannali—at her hand still raised, her face flushed, her heaving chest, her breath coming in sharp bursts.
Jannali tells him, "Bout bloody time!"
Hongo rushes forward. "Chief, you—"
"Yeah." Shanks' voice is rough. "What...?"
"Explain later," Law snaps. "Move!"
Sanza announces, "They are coming!"
Eliane waves, her wings dissolving as she lands. "This way!"
They follow her, diving behind fallen columns and thick curtains of vines as the hundred clones thunder past. The clones' feet strike the stone in perfect rhythm. A hundred pairs of ruined eyes, red-cross-and-void, stare straight ahead. Not one of them turns toward the shadows. They do not see the group hiding.
Crouched in the dark, Shanks murmurs, "What happened?"
"You saw a clone," Beckman says. "That thing got in your head again." He tips his chin toward Jannali. "The girl knocked you out of it."
Shanks rubs his cheek. "Must be part of her powers."
Beckman's mouth twitches. "Yeah. Something like that."