Check out advanced chapters on P@treon: [email protected]/CosmicKaminari
----------
"What... what's going on, Domino?!"
Magellan arrived at the sixth level of Impel Down braced for a full-scale prison break. What he actually found stopped him cold.
Across the battlefield, dozens of Sadi's were weaving through a crowd of level-six criminals like butterflies through a storm, Bullet, the devil's descendant, included. The sight prompted him to turn toward Domino, who was watching from the edge of the chaos, with open bewilderment.
It wasn't an unreasonable reaction. Outside of Bullet, who was in a class of his own, the other criminals held here were no slouches. Years of imprisonment had dulled their edge somewhat, but not enough to make them manageable, certainly not for a single jailer to handle alone.
And yet Sadi seemed to be managing just fine. More than fine. The criminals were going down one after another, and she looked almost relaxed doing it.
Magellan stared.
"Oh, Director, you're here!"
Domino flinched at the sudden voice beside her. She turned, saw Magellan, and the knot of dread in her chest loosened considerably. She drew breath to give him a proper rundown of the situation.
She didn't get the chance.
One of the many Sadi's broke away from the battlefield and appeared in front of them both.
"Do you two really want to stand here and chat right now?" Sadi planted her hands on her hips, lips pressed into a pout as she looked between them. "I'm exhausted. Director, now that you're here, get in there and help me pin these idiots down."
"Ah, sorry, Sadi-chan!" Domino said with an awkward laugh. "You seemed to be handling things well enough that I... well. Sorry."
Magellan found himself in an equally awkward position, though he recovered faster. He stepped past Domino and moved to the front of the battlefield without another word, already calling up the power of his Venom-Venom Fruit.
Then he looked at the swarm of Sadi's tangled up with the criminals and stopped again.
"Sadi-chan, which one of you is actually you?" He glanced sideways at the Sadi standing beside him. "My Observation Haki isn't exactly refined. If I cut loose in there, I might catch you in it."
"Don't worry about that, Director." Sadi smiled, easy and sure of herself. "My speed and Observation Haki are good enough, and the ability I'm using right now won't let you hit me even if you try. Use your power freely. I'll work around you."
She meant it. The Noble Phantasm she was using allowed her to slip between spaces, something close to spatial teleportation. Even a wide-area attack like Magellan's venom was something she could sidestep, and if it came to the worst, she had her sword and her magical abilities to fall back on. Of everyone currently standing in Impel Down, she was arguably the least threatened by Magellan's Venom-Venom Fruit.
"Alright," Magellan said. "Stand clear then, Sadi-chan."
He wasn't going to waste time second-guessing her. And even in the unlikely event she took some venom, the antidote could be administered afterward. Right now, shutting down this riot was what mattered.
"Poison Dragon!"
Magellan's voice rang out sharp across the level. Without another word he unleashed his trump card. Purple venom surged across his body in churning streams, and a heartbeat later it had shaped itself into a massive dragon built entirely of toxic fluid, coiling and rearing above the battlefield.
The pirates around them went wide-eyed.
They had already been finding Sadi's abilities troublesome enough on their own. Now Magellan was here too. The math wasn't hard.
Most of them knew exactly what Magellan's Venom-Venom Fruit was capable of. There had been a time, before they ended up in here, when that poison had put them on their knees more than once. They were notorious criminals, the kind whose crimes were bad enough that the Navy and the World Government had quietly scrubbed any record of their existence from the seas. But none of that history made facing a Poison Dragon any easier.
"Damn it, why is this woman so hard to deal with? We've been at her forever and she still won't go down!"
"I was planning to be long gone before Magellan showed up. How did it end up like this?"
"That's it, I'm done. Magellan, I give up, I surrender!"
"Are you an idiot? You're going to throw away a chance like this?"
"You're the idiot. One Sadi was already a nightmare, and now Magellan's here too. You really think we're getting out?"
"Why not at least try? I've had enough of this place. I'm not spending one more second down here."
"I'm not dying here. You remember what Magellan's poison feels like. I'm not going through that again."
"Same. I surrender too! Magellan, I'll go quietly, just put that thing away!"
"Please, whatever you do, don't let that dragon loose!"
Voices broke out across the cellblock. Some of the pirates didn't just talk, they turned around and walked back into their cells.
Magellan wasn't interested.
"Hmph. Who do you think I am?" His voice was cold and flat. "I'm the warden of Impel Down. You don't get to cause trouble whenever you feel like it and then just walk it back when things go wrong. You broke out. Now you pay for it."
He looked up at the swarm of Sadis still moving across the battlefield.
"Sadi-chan, there are too many of you in there. Step out for a moment and let my Poison Dragon handle the cleanup. Then we move together."
Sadi, or rather the many Sadis spread across the battlefield, nodded in unison.
She knew Magellan's limitations well enough. His Venom-Venom Fruit was overwhelming in raw power, but his Observation Haki had never been his strong suit. Asking him to pick one real target out of a field full of her clones without accidentally catching her in the blast was asking too much.
"Understood. I'll cooperate, Director Magellan."
The words came from every Sadi on the battlefield at once. Then, all at once, they peeled away from the fight and moved toward Magellan's position.
The pressure on the pirates dropped instantly.
They did not feel relieved.
Every one of them understood what it meant. The clones had cleared the field. Magellan's venom was coming.
Panic swept through the crowd in an instant.
There were exceptions, of course. The Red Earl, who had already lost his bout, stood watching it all with a calm expression. A dose of venom wasn't something that would trouble him much. A handful of other hardened criminals shared his indifference.
And then there was Bullet.
He had been trading blows with Sadi's clones, tangled in the web of her sword work, when he noticed them pulling back. His eyes snapped wide. While he was still batting away the blade net closing around him, he shot out a hand, Armament Haki crackling black across his fingers, and grabbed for the nearest Sadi.
"You wretched woman, where do you think you're going!"