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Coby lay on the floor of the tavern, shaken by Luffy’s punch.
It slowly dawned on him that Luffy had done it on purpose.
“Am I that helpless?” he thought.
Coby stood up shaking his head, feeling somehow clearer than ever, as if that punch had awakened something.
“ If I don’t take advantage of what Luffy-san has done for me, I might as well still be a chore boy on Alvida’s ship!”
“Sir!” Coby said, dropping to a bow before the officer in front of him. “Please let me join the Marines!”
“I’m going to do it! I’ll silence those ‘impossibles’ and those ‘nevers’ for good! This is my one chance! I won’t throw away what Luffy did for me!”
“Lieutenant! I don’t think that’s a good idea,” barked a sailor. “Pirates are known to plant spies. I don’t trust-”
“I’M NO PIRATE! I WANT TO BE A MARINE!”
Coby blinked in surprise. It took him a moment to realize that the outburst was his own voice.
Only two days ago he had screamed to Alvida’s face that she was an ugly hag; that he would personally escort her to a Marine prison cell.
Now he was shouting his dreams with reckless abandon in a tavern full of an entire Marine fleet.
Since when was he, Coby, nothing but a useless cabin boy, someone who could raise his voice to those bigger and stronger than himself?
Just who was this new Coby, and what was he capable of?
He looked up at the Marine.
“Don’t take being a sailor lightly, lad,” the seaman said, with a faint smile. “Consider yourself enlisted.”
Coby felt his heart leap.
Perhaps there was something to be said for taking chances.
Coby lay on the ground of the Marineford summit, acutely aware that his entire face hurt, along with a distinct sense of deja vu.
“Coby!” gasped Helmeppo, tears dripping onto Coby’s face. “You’re alive!”
He pulled Coby close, cradling his body and sobbing.
Helmeppo was kneeling in a puddle of blood.
It took Coby a moment to realize that the blood belonged to neither him nor Helmeppo.
He stared blearily over the battlefield.
“Ace?” Coby said, his voice horse. “L-Luffy…?”
“Ace is...Ace is dead,” said Helmeppo, his voice like gravel. “And I’ll never forgive Straw Hat for what he did to you.”
Coby might have smiled at Helmeppo’s protectiveness under different circumstances.
“But then why…why are we still fighting?” he murmured. “Why... is this necessary?”
Coby watched a Marine plunge a bayonet into a pirate who was already injured on the ground. Coby flinched and felt a tremor run through his body, as if he was the one who had just been stabbed.
A pirate aimed a rifle at a Navy officer who was screaming for his family.
There was a voice, a quavering of a voice in Coby’s head.
He jolted in Helmeppo’s arms, looking around wildly.
A scene manifested in his head, unbidden: a woman and child beaming at him. People Coby had never seen in his life, yet he could see them clear as day.
Coby could hear a voice calling out for them, desperately. He suddenly felt as if the heart beating in his chest was not his own.
Gunfire.
Coby keened in Helmeppo’s grasp, felt as if a bullet had just pierced his own head, felt pain that had nothing to do with the remaining sting of Luffy’s punch, as the images vanished.
“The voice,” Coby whispered. “It’s gone.”
“Coby,” Helmeppo murmured, looking incredulous. “What voice?”
Another scream cleaved through his head like a knife. He saw a sudden flash of visions: a locket, bearing the image of a smiling woman cradling an infant. A deck out at sea, pirates laughing and dancing around him. A young girl with arms outstretched to him crying “Papa!” A pirate leaning a ship’s railing, murmuring “Aren’t we all children of the sea?”
Dozens of voices, souls, feelings, images, all burst into his head. They cried out in terror, sorrow, heartbreak, desperation. Lives were flashing before his eyes in their death throes; lives that were not his own.
Coby fell from Helmeppo’s arms and vomited. Souls were extinguishing around him, their last thoughts, wishes, hopes, dreams, howling through his mind.
“Coby, what’s wrong?” gasped Helmeppo.
“I...I don’t know…” Coby heaved, trembling. “I feel... sad. ”
“Sad?” repeated Helmeppo, staring.
“The voices…” he murmured, clutching his head as though it would burst. “They’re disappearing…”
He stared out across the carnage, the blood splattering the ground, as pirate and Marine alike seemed determined to only further the bloodshed. Every slash, strike and bullet was ringing through his mind and body.
How could this be justice? How could this be what he had dreamed of?
He saw a space, as Admiral Akainu flung aside the carcass of a fallen Marine in a shower of molten rock, the smell of burned flesh and hair hanging in the air.
A chance.
“THAT’S ENOUGH!” he screamed, thrusting his arms wide. “STOP THIS! IT’S A WASTE OF HUMAN LIFE!”
He didn’t know what he was saying as he shouted into the chaos, tears spilling down his face, arms trembling against the horror that was Admiral Akainu.
“WE’VE STOPPED THE PIRATES, WHY ARE WE CHASING THEM? IT'S POINTLESS BLOODSHED! THE WOUNDED CAN STILL BE SAVED IF WE TREAT THEM! BUT WE’RE SENTENCING THEM TO DEATH! THE MARINES WHO DIE FROM HERE ON OUT, THEY’RE FOOLS WHO WILL DIE FOR NOTHING!”
“Who are you?”
Coby jolted back to his senses.
“A soldier who doesn’t serve justice has no place in the Marines,” growled Akainu, his expression unchanged. KCby saw the hand bearing down on him of molten rock and lava, heard death hissing in the rocky, molten blaze.
He had been sentenced.
He thought of this chance taken, this last chance to do what was right.
And then hand swept in front of him. A hand bearing a sword.
“Well said, young Marine.”