The survivors stumbled into the lab's control room, their white Vanguard robes singed and reeking of burnt material. Commander Orpheus loomed over a holographic map of Karathys, his Starfall Trident propped against a console sparking with corrupted data. The room buzzed with the low, insectile whine of mercury filtration systems, the air thick with the cloying sweetness of Dr. Lysandra's mango rum—a scent that clashed violently with the copper tang of blood still fresh on the soldiers' gloves.
"Out," Orpheus growled without turning, his voice a tectonic rumble that shook the vials on Lysandra's cluttered desk. The survivors froze, their leader—a wiry man with a gash across his cheek—swallowing audibly.
"B-but, Commander, it's the Dracule Mihawk and—"
"Did I stutter?" Orpheus pivoted, his seastone-reinforced armor screeching like a wounded beast. The lattice of burns across his face pulsed crimson under the hologram's glow. "Wait. Outside. Until. We. Are. Done."
The soldiers scrambled backward, tripping over a pile of discarded ancient artifacts—a corroded trident, a scroll etched with Void Century glyphs Lysandra had labeled "Naylamp's Grocery List (DON'T TOUCH)" in glitter ink. The door hissed shut, sealing them in the mercury-choked hallway.
Dr. Lysandra slouched in her chair, boots propped on a stack of Poneglyph rubbings, sipping rum from a beaker. "Dramatic as ever, Commander. You'll pop a vein." She twirled a mercury-powered stylus, its tip sketching nonsensical equations in the air. "Though if you do, I'd love to study the spray pattern."
Orpheus ignored her, stabbing a gauntleted finger at the hologram. "The Leviathan cloning vats are at 78% efficiency. If the girl reaches the Pyramid before—"
"—before your trident gets its shiny prongs handed to you? Yawn." Lysandra flicked a switch, flooding the room with the discordant screech of a den den mushi choir she'd reprogrammed to sing sea shanties. "Relax. Karathys has survived worse. Remember when you tried to 'purify' the mercury lakes with dynamite? Good times."
The door slid open again. The survivors crept in, their leader's Adam's apple bobbing like a buoy in a storm. "Sir, the targets—Mihawk and his daughter—they're heading for the Pyramid of the Drowned Sun. They've already breached the outer catacombs."
Lysandra perked up, her mismatched eyes glinting. She lunged for the control panel, her indigo lab coat sending a cascade of star-metal screws clattering to the floor. "Oho! Let's see the prodigal brat, shall we?" Her fingers danced across the keys, pulling up a grainy feed from a drone camouflaged as a vestige bat idol.
The screen flickered to life: Marya and Mihawk navigated a narrow causeway, their blades glinting under the pyramid's bioluminescent fungi. Lysandra whistled. "Look at her! Elisabeta's spitting image. Same stubborn chin, same 'I'll-murder-your-dreams' glare. Adorable."
Orpheus' trident sparked, golden Haki arcing across its prongs. "Enough prattling. Deploy the Tidebound Guardians. Flood the catacombs with mercury gas. I want their lungs dissolving before they reach the Poneglyph."
The survivors paled. "B-but, sir, the Guardians—they're still unstable from the last test. Proto-Mono rigged their control units to play… polka."
Lysandra snorted, rum sloshing from her beaker. "Polka-pocalypse! Classic Glitchy."
Before Orpheus could roar another order, the western monitor exploded in a shower of sparks. Proto-Mono tumbled through the wall—or rather, through a poorly disguised duct tape patch—her electric-blue hair crackling with Chaos Core Energy.
"Glitchy fixy, make it— WHOA!" She somersaulted over a console, her mechanical arm morphing mid-air into a bubble wand that spewed neon foam across the room. "Hi, new friends! Party time?"
Orpheus' eye twitched. "You."
Proto-Mono beamed, oblivious to the seastone shackles materializing in his grip. "Ooh, shiny bracelets! For me?" She lunged for the trident, her holographic arm phasing through its shaft. "Pretty stab-stick! Can I—"
The entire lab shuddered as an alarm blared. Monitor 12-E lit up, showing the S.S. Sparklefridge—Proto-Mono's "improved" warship—crashing through a Tidal Sentinel, its marshmallow cannon firing a salvo of flaming sugar into the mercury lake.
Lysandra cackled, scribbling notes on her sleeve. "Marvelous! The Living Gold's reacting to the sucrose—see those harmonic tremors? It's singing!"
Orpheus backhanded a console, silencing the alarm. "ENOUGH! You—" He rounded on the survivors, who were now edging toward the exit. "Mobilize every soldier. Activate the Haki-suppression turrets. And someone shoot that clone into the sun!"
Proto-Mono gasped, clutching her chest melodramatically. "Meanies! No sun-trips for Glitchy?" She dissolved into static, reappearing atop a cryo-chamber labeled Imu-β. "Let's play tag!"
As chaos erupted—Orpheus bellowing orders, Lysandra cheering Proto-Mono's "innovative entropy," and the survivors fleeing—the drone feed lingered on Marya's face. Her eyes, cold and resolute, met the camera's lens for a heartbeat… before Eternal Eclipse's hilt smashed it to pieces.
*****
The mercury lake churned beneath the stone causeway, its silvery surface fracturing into star-shaped ripples as Marya and Mihawk descended deeper into the catacombs. The air hung thick with metallic vapors that stung the throat and blurred vision, forcing Marya to pull her scarf over her nose. Above them, the Pyramid of the Drowned Sun loomed, its gold-leaf tiles peeling like ancient skin, while bioluminescent fungi clung to the walls in pulsating veins of blue and green. The hum of Karathys' Living Gold reverberated through the stone, a low, resonant frequency that made Marya's teeth ache.
Mihawk moved ahead, Yoru's blade slicing through cobwebs strung with skeletal remnants of ancient tribal priests. His coat swept the damp floor, scattering beetles that skittered into cracks filled with blackened mercury residue. "Stay close," he muttered, though his tone carried less command than caution. "The Vanguard's traps are seldom disarmed."
Marya's fingers brushed the wall, where a mural of Naylamp—the serpentine sea deity—had been defaced by World Government graffiti. Her Void veins prickled, the curse's tendrils writhing up her arms as if sensing the pyramid's secrets. She paused, her boot nudging a corroded trident half-buried in silt. "They erased them," she said quietly, more to herself than to Mihawk. "But the island remembers."
A sudden bloop echoed from the shadows.
Mihawk's hand tightened on Yoru's hilt. Marya spun, Eclipse half-drawn, as a small translucent blue figure wobbled into the flickering light.
"Hi, new friends!" Jelly Squish bubbled, his starry eyes widening with delight. He morphed into a perfect replica of Marya's coat, complete with a tiny embroidered Jolly Roger, before collapsing into a giggling puddle. "Bloop! Your turn!"
Marya froze, her blade hovering mid-air. For a heartbeat, her stoic mask slipped—a flicker of surprise, then something softer—before she sheathed Eclipse. "...What is that?"
"A distraction," Mihawk growled, pinching the bridge of his nose.
Jelly bounced upright, his gelatinous body quivering. "I'm Jelly! Bestest helper!" He stretched his arm into a wobbly ladder toward the ceiling. "See? Climb-time!" The ladder promptly melted, splattering mercury droplets that hissed against the stone.
Marya's lips twitched—a near-smile swiftly stifled. She crouched, studying him. "You're… some kind of experiment."
"Yep! Failed, flopped, fabulous!" Jelly chirped, morphing into a miniature Tidebound Guardian. Its coral scales dribbled down his sides like syrup. "Metal puppy-dogs! Rawr!"
Mihawk sighed, the sound echoing like a blade being drawn. "Leave it. We don't have time for—"
"Wait." Marya held up a hand, her gaze locked on Jelly's bioluminescent glow. It pulsed in rhythm with the Living Gold veins, casting faint constellations onto the walls. "He's leading us."
Jelly jiggled triumphantly. "Glowy rocks! This way!" He oozed toward a narrow fissure in the wall, his light intensifying.
Mihawk's jaw clenched, but he followed, Yoru's edge carving a warning into the stone as they navigated the passage. The fissure opened into a cavern where mercury cascaded in toxic waterfalls, pooling around the base of a crumbling ancient barge. Jelly launched himself onto the deck, his body flattening into a bridge. "Hop-hop!"
Marya stepped onto him, her boots sinking slightly into his squishy form. "...Remarkable," she murmured, curiosity bleeding through her reserve.
Mihawk lingered ashore, his golden eyes narrowing. "This is absurd."
"Afraid of a little squish?" Jelly giggled, extruding a wobbly hand to tug Mihawk's coat.
"Do. Not. Touch. Me."
They reached the barge's stern, where Jelly's glow illuminated a mosaic of Naylamp's face, its moonstone eyes cracked but still gleaming. Marya traced the glyphs beneath it—"The gate hungers."
A roar shook the cavern. Above, a Tidebound Guardian's metallic scales scraped against the pyramid's exterior, its fused Star-Metal claws tearing at the stone. Jelly whimpered, melting into a puddle. "Scary puppy!"
Marya's resolve hardened. She knelt, her voice uncharacteristically gentle. "Lead us further. Quickly."
Jelly perked up, reshaping into a bouncing orb. "Aye, stabby friend!"
As they pressed onward, Marya's gloved hand brushed the locket in her pocket—her mother's face smiling up from the darkness. For the first time in years, the weight of it felt less like a chain and more like a compass.
*****
The lab trembled as Proto-Mono ricocheted off walls like a hyperactive pinball, her mismatched boots leaving neon-blue tread marks on the steel floors. "Glitchy fixy, party time!" she sang, ducking as a Vanguard soldier's seastone net sizzled past her ear and melted a hole in a mercury containment tank. Toxic silver liquid gushed into the hallway, dissolving a surveillance drone mid-hover. On the monitors, Commander Orpheus' scarred face contorted into a snarl, his gauntleted fist crushing the armrest of his command chair.
"Focus your fire, you brainless grunts!" he roared into the intercom, spittle flecking the cracked screen. "She's heading for the reactor core!"
Proto-Mono giggled, her mechanical arm morphing into a bubble wand that spewed rainbow orbs into the pursuing squad. One orb detonated, coating the soldiers in glittering sludge; another sprouted wings and pecked at their helmets. "Tag! You're sparkly now!" She cartwheeled into a ventilation shaft, her holographic leg flickering as she kicked the grate shut behind her.
Dr. Lysandra leaned back in her chair, boots propped on a stack of encrypted Poneglyph transcripts, and took a long swig from her rum-filled beaker. The liquid sloshed, its mango sweetness clashing with the acrid stench of burnt circuitry. "Marvelous!" she crowed, slapping the desk as Proto-Mono reprogrammed a turret to fire confetti. "You've outdone yourself, Glitchy! Five stars for chaotic panache!"
Orpheus whirled on her, his Starfall Trident crackling with golden Haki. "This is your mess! Rein her in, or I'll melt that grin off your face!"
Lysandra twirled a mercury-coated lockpick between her fingers, her monocle glinting. "My mess? Darling, you're the one who stored unstable clones next to the self-destruct codes. Tsk." She nodded to a monitor where Proto-Mono had graffiti'd Orpheus' profile with a cartoon crown and the label "Sparkle King." "Besides, chaos is exquisite data. Look at those energy spikes!"
The commander's burns pulsed crimson under the lab's sickly light. "When the Dracule brat carves that smirk off your skull, I'll laugh."
"Promises, promises." Lysandra hopped up, snatching an ancient hairpin from her wild curls to pick the lab's biometric lock. The door hissed open, revealing her private sanctum—a cluttered den reeking of exotic chemicals and nostalgia. "Do shout when you've caught the girl. I'd adore to dissect her tragically-riddled psyche."
Orpheus' trident slammed into the floor, fracturing the tiles. "I'm not your errand boy, alchemist!"
"Aren't you?" She blew him a mercury-infused kiss and slipped inside.
The sanctum was a shrine to dead ambitions. Shelves groaned under jars of pickled Titan-Sea King embryos, their lidless eyes milky with formaldehyde. A chalkboard scrawled with half-erased equations read "Primordial Current = Collective Unconscious??" in frantic loops. Lysandra kicked aside a crate of mango rum empties and knelt before a safe disguised as an ancient tribal relief—Naylamp's face, its moonstone eyes dull with dust.
Her hands, steady for once, dialed the combination: Elisabeta's birthdate.
The safe hissed open, releasing a breath of decayed paper and regret. Inside lay a leather-bound journal, its pages swollen with saltwater stains. Elisabeta's handwriting spidered across the margins, the ink bleeding into sketches of Karathys' pyramids and a smiling toddler with raven hair—Marya, years before her mother's death.
Lysandra slumped into her chair, the ghost of a laugh dying on her lips. She traced Elisabeta's final entry, smudged by tears or seawater:
"Lys—if you're reading this, I'm gone. Protect her. The gate isn't locked. It's hungry."
Outside, alarms wailed as Proto-Mono's latest "improvement" sent the eastern reactor into meltdown. Lysandra ignored it, her thumb brushing a pressed mangrove leaf tucked between the pages—a relic from their last expedition together. Elisabeta had insisted it was lucky.
"Still a sentimental fool," Lysandra muttered, but her voice cracked. She snapped the journal shut and pulled a vial of mercury from her coat, its surface swirling with stolen Haki. "Alright, 'Beta. Let's feed the gate."