-Real World-
The three members of the Whitebeard Pirates still outside the city had Naraku and Teach to deal with. That left the Straw Hats inside the walls to handle everything else — and "everything else" currently meant keeping Princess Vivi alive in a city that had partially fallen.
Sanji moved across the rooftops, Vivi unconscious in his arms, his long legs clearing the gaps between buildings without breaking stride. The city below was chaos — shouting, the crack of distant gunfire, smoke rising from the direction of the gate — but the rooftop path was clear. He hadn't run into a single rebel since leaving the wall.
Vivi came around somewhere over the third block, jarred back to consciousness by the motion.
She looked at the unfamiliar roofline around her, felt the warmth of someone carrying her, and the rigid tension in her shoulders unwound slightly before she was fully aware of why it had been there.
"Mr. Sanji." Her voice was quiet. "The city gate — is my father still alive?"
She already looked like someone who had prepared herself for bad news.
Sanji gave her his most confident expression. "The gate got blown open while you were out — some traitor inside, like we figured. But Luffy's brother Ace arrived right when it mattered. The Whitebeard Pirates are holding them. No matter how many rebels they throw at that gate, they won't get past those three."
He didn't mention Cobra directly, because he didn't know. The explosion had turned everything near the gate into a stampede. He'd gone up with Vivi and not looked back. He answered what he could answer honestly, and left the rest alone.
Vivi absorbed this and smiled, the kind that didn't reach her eyes. Even saved — even if the capital survived today — without Cobra standing behind it, the kingdom had a different kind of problem. She had no political footing of her own yet. The moment the king's protection was removed, every ambitious faction in Alubarna would start calculating.
One step at a time.
"We're heading to link up with Luffy," Sanji said. "Stay with me."
He heard his name from below before he'd finished the sentence.
He looked down.
Nami was standing in the open square below, alone, in a blue bikini. Sanji's brain made several decisions in rapid sequence, none of them good.
"Sanji! Down here! The meeting point changed — something happened, they sent me to find you. We need to move."
Sanji was already dropping off the roof, Vivi still in his arms, drawn downward by a force roughly equivalent to gravity plus Nami's neckline. He landed in the square and crossed the distance between himself and the bikini at a pace that could charitably be described as eager.
Nami noted that he was still holding Vivi rather carelessly for a rescue situation. She suggested, gently, that he hand the princess over. Sanji complied immediately.
"You've worked hard," Nami said warmly, accepting Vivi into her arms with a kind smile.
Vivi, looking at the girl in front of her, felt something she couldn't quite name. Nami was never this warm. Nami's kindness was real but it had an edge to it — it costed something. This version didn't cost anything, and that was wrong.
"It's no hardship at all," Sanji was saying, performing the first syllable of what was clearly going to be a much longer sentence about honor and beauty and knighthood, when a hairy leg wearing pink women's shoes connected with his face at considerable velocity.
The impact launched him sideways into the wall of the nearest building, through it partially, and into the dark interior beyond.
"Hahaha—" The laugh that came out of Nami's mouth was wrong in every possible way — pitch, register, and the particular quality of someone who had rehearsed this and found it funnier than expected. "Just like the intelligence said. His IQ reaches zero the moment a woman appears."
Vivi stared.
Then she looked at the face. Looked properly, at the smile that was slightly too wide and the eyes that were enjoying this slightly too much.
"You're Mr. 2," she said.
The face of Nami dissolved. What replaced it was elaborate, dramatic, and wearing more makeup than anyone in a combat zone had any business wearing. Bentham — Mr. 2 Bon Kurei — stood there in full okama regalia, Vivi settled against his hip, and performed a small bow.
"Correct answer, Princess. No prize, I'm afraid." He raised one hand in a precise chopping motion. "Now — do forgive me — but you'll want to sleep through the next part."
The strike hit Vivi's neck cleanly. She was unconscious before she finished falling, and Bentham caught her without disrupting a single hair.
He took a moment to appraise her with the eye of someone who had strong opinions about beauty in all its forms. The stories about Princess Vivi's appearance had not exaggerated. By any objective measure she was extraordinary — bearing, features, the complete package. Bentham found her very beautiful, and then privately found himself slightly more beautiful, which was the natural conclusion he reached about most comparisons.
He was about to move when the wall he'd kicked Sanji through produced a sound, and then produced Sanji.
The shoe-print was still on his face. The bridge of his nose had been reintroduced to itself at a novel angle, the bleeding had stopped but the evidence remained, and his eyebrow was doing something architectural. He looked, in short, like someone who had been kicked through a wall by someone wearing pink heels, and who had taken that very personally.
"Put her down." Sanji's voice was extremely level. "Whatever part of you is currently touching Vivi's skin — remove it."
He was furious in three directions simultaneously: at having been tricked, at who had tricked him, and at the method of trickery, which had weaponized something he was not capable of defending against by any rational means.
Bentham set Vivi carefully on the ground, because he was not going to damage the merchandise, and then straightened up with the loose, ready stance of a man who was very comfortable in a fight.
"The Sky Screen doesn't lie, Sanji," he said, with the earnest enthusiasm of someone sharing good news. "You are absolutely going to become one of us eventually. You have the bone structure for it, the legs for it, frankly the personality for it — a little polishing and you'd make a wonderful okama. Wouldn't you rather start early? I could introduce you to the Kamabakka Kingdom personally."
Sanji's expression passed through several stages, ending somewhere between revulsion and existential dread. He had seen what the Sky Screen showed about his future. He was aware of the Kamabakka Kingdom's role in it. The fact that a Mr. 2 was standing in front of him right now, looking at him with the evaluative warmth of a recruiter who has found a promising candidate, was not helping.
"Shut. Up." He was already airborne, right leg extended, channeling everything in the direction of Bentham's neck. "Collier Shoot!"
Bentham met the kick with his own leg, thigh to thigh, the impact stopping both of them dead. The Mane Mane no Mi (Clone-Clone Fruit) gave Bentham his face-swapping ability — but he had earned everything south of the neck through years of Okama Kenpo, and his legs were not something a cook from the East Blue could simply overpower.
The two of them held the contact, neither giving ground, each reading the force in the other's leg.
Bentham was, against his professional judgment, impressed. "Such lovely technique," he murmured.
Sanji's eye twitched.