The return journey through Les Marais Oubliés felt heavier than the outbound trek. Spanish moss clung to the crew like damp grave-shrouds, and the air tasted of iron-rich mud and ozone—the ghosts of storms yet to come. Jelly bounced nervously beside Théo, his gelatinous body dimming to a worried indigo whenever the cypress ghouls creaked overhead.
"Mistress of the Mist," Yasopp mused, kicking a random stone into the murk. "Sounds like one o' your tall tales, Lucky. Remember when you swore Limejuice's socks were haunted?"
Lucky Roux gnawed on a smoked turkey leg, unfazed. "Were haunted! One threw itself at Monster's Banana stash!"
Bonk Punch snorted. "And 'Bayou's Reckoning'? Reckon that's what Tante Delphine calls her indigestion."
Limejuice adjusted his sunglasses, though the swamp's gloom rendered them useless. "Nah. Sounds like a bad band name. Bayou's Reckoning and the Soul-Sugar Shakers."
Benn Beckman blew a smoke ring that twisted into the shape of a hangman's noose before dissolving. "Focus, idiots. Delphine doesn't waste breath on metaphors. Shadows with no faces? Rituals bleeding the swamp?" He glanced at Shanks, whose usual grin had hardened into a pensive line. "You've been quiet, Chief."
Shanks paused, his boot sinking into mud that bubbled with whispered fragments of rebel songs. "That 'Mistress'… Delphine meant Marya. Her Devil Fruit, those scars—it fits."
Gab shuddered, rubbing arms prickling with swamp-chill. "Fits what? Apocalypse bingo?"
"Balance, she said," Shanks murmured, watching a crawfish specter scuttle over his boot. "But death's knocking. And Bayou's Reckoning…" He shook his head, crimson hair catching the moss's sickly glow. "Smells like a war even we didn't start."
Monster hefted his axe, cleaving a low-hanging vine. "So we cut the shadows. Simple."
"Simple," Benn echoed dryly. "Like navigating Big Mom's library sober."
The Red Force came into view, its hull streaked with algae and Gadget's latest "innovations." The submarine, now dubbed Dusk Dancer, resembled a drunken kraken's fever dream: waffle-iron plating welded haphazardly to obsidian steel, a periscope crowned with a stolen Krewe bandana, and a propeller fashioned from repurposed soup ladles. Gadget snored atop the conning tower, tangled in ropes, a wrench clutched in his hand like a scepter.
Building Snake stood ankle-deep in gears, holding a colander helmet dripping syrup. "Welcome back. Try not to wake the 'genius.'"
Yasopp whistled. "He turned the sub into a food truck?"
"Worse," Snake deadpanned. "He installed a 'Mood Engine.' Says it runs on good vibes." He kicked a stray spring. "Repairs? Somewhere between 'miracle' and 'catastrophe.' But nothing's on fire. Yet."
Jelly morphed into a wobbly hammock beneath Gadget. "Bloop! Naptime fortress!"
Lucky Roux sniffed the air—maple syrup, salt, and batter. "Dinner time. Who's brave enough to eat Gadget's 'welding spice' gumbo?"
Benn scanned the deck, frowning. "Where's Hongo? And the Dracule princess?"
Snake shrugged. "Hongo went after Marya and Mihawk. Said something about 'supervising brooding.' That was… three rum bottles ago."
Shanks' gaze drifted to the marshes, where the bone tree's shadow stretched across the water like a warning. "They'll turn up. Mihawk's allergic to getting lost."
Benn lit a fresh cigarette, its ember cutting through the creeping dusk. "And Marya?"
"She's her father's daughter," Shanks said, a ghost of his grin returning. "Stubborn as bedrock and twice as sharp." He clapped Lucky's shoulder. "Now—about that dinner. Extra spice. I've got prophecies to digest."
As Lucky vanished toward the galley, Gadget jolted awake, shouting, "THE TURBINE NEEDS BUTTER!" before face-planting into a coil of rope.
The crew burst into laughter—a raucous, defiant sound that momentarily silenced the swamp's whispers. But high in the cypress canopy, a jazz-mimic parrot watched, its eyes glowing the same eerie blue as Les Guédés'. It ruffled feathers tattooed with a serpentine cipher, then took flight, trailing a single, sour note into the dark.
*****
The swamp's golden-hour light filtered through cypress ghouls, casting long shadows that danced like drunken puppets. Mihawk led the way, his stride slicing through curtains of Spanish moss while Hongo juggled three Soul-Sugar crystals plucked from a vendor's abandoned cart. "Bet I can keep 'em airborne till we hit the Red Force!" he crowed, just as one crystal shattered against a tree, releasing a phantom wail that smelled of brine and regret.
Marya paused, her Void-scarred arms prickling. "Good luck with that."
"Watch this," Hongo grinned.
A cold gust silenced him.
Les Guédés materialized from the mist—skeletal figures in tattered festival suits, their hollow eyes fixed on Marya. Phantom trumpets blared a note that vibrated in their teeth. One spirit drifted closer, its bone fingers reaching toward Eternal Eclipse's hilt.
"Back off, phantom," Mihawk warned, Yoru's tip grazing the marsh water. The blade's edge sent ripples that made the spirits recoil like startled eels.
Hongo gulped. "Uh... are we the entertainment?"
The Les Guédés drifted into a tight circle, blocking their path. When Mihawk turned left, they mirrored him. Right? Same. A spectral trombone blatted impatiently.
"Late for... what, exactly?" Mihawk muttered, eyeing the sinking sun. "My wine cellar doesn't admire itself."
Marya's hand tightened on her sword. "They're herding us."
Hongo nudged a spirit's translucent coattail with his boot. "Fine! Lead the way, Jazz Hands!"
The Les Guédés guided them to a murky waterway choked with black mangroves. The waterway shivered. From the inky murk, nightmares surfaced—thirty feet of scaled fury armored in stolen Marine ingenuity. Warshell gators slid into the twilight, their movements eerily silent despite the tonnage of grafted steel crushing their spines. Rivets bit into thick hide like metallic parasites, holding hull-plating carapaces that wept rust and swamp slime. Beneath crude World Government targeting visors, their eyes burned with unnatural Haki-gold intensity, scanning the mangroves with predatory calculation.
Violet-tinged steam hissed from jury-rigged exhaust pipes along their flanks, saturating the air with the cloying, burnt-sugar stench of Soul-Sugar. It was a smell that clung to the tongue—sweetness curdled with something deeply wrong. Propellers fused to their muscular tails churned the water into a sickly froth, swirling with flecks of iridescent powder leaking from their cargo.
And what cargo it was. Strapped to their armored backs with chains knotted in voodoo sigils, bulging canvas sacks strained like overfed ticks. Iridescent Soul-Sugar crystals spilled from poorly stitched seams, scattering prismatic dust across the water's surface. The dust pulsed faintly, mirroring the bioluminescent algae that crusted the gators' hulls—a diseased, rhythmic glow like infected wounds breathing in the dusk. On each sack, stark against the filthy canvas, a stenciled emblem glared: a coiling serpent devouring its own tail. Bayou's Reckoning. The mark of shadows with no flag, no face, only the weight of stolen memories and reptilian fury.
"Sweet mother of chaos," Hongo breathed. "They've turned gators into... trucks?"
Marya crouched behind a cypress knee. "The hulls are reinforced with Living Gold. And those bindings..." She pointed to knotted ropes dripping black wax. "They look like...Voodoo sigils. Slave labor meets dark ritual."
Mihawk's gaze sharpened. "Efficient. Repulsive."
A twig snapped. Five Marine spies in swamp-camouflage gear stumbled into the clearing, hauling a net full of squirming crawfish specters. Their leader froze, spotting Mihawk.
The swamp held its breath. Mihawk's golden eyes, colder than the sinking sun, swept over the panicking Marines. Their leader's dropped net unleashed a flurry of spectral crawfish, their translucent claws snapping at the humid air with phantom clicks. "Hawkeyes?! B-But Intel said—"
"Intel," Mihawk interrupted, his voice a blade drawn across silk, "persistently mistakes my patience for predictability. A tedious flaw."
Chaos erupted.
"Code Black!" a spy shrieked into a Den Den Mushi, voice cracking. "We've got a War-Lord problem! Repeat, War-Lord—!"
Another Marine, hands trembling violently, drew a seastone dagger. "S-Stand down! We're with Vice Admi— OOF!" Hongo's hefty rum flask, propelled with surprising accuracy, connected squarely with his temple. The Marine crumpled.
"Whoops!" Hongo chirped, already scrambling behind a cypress knee. "Slippery fingers! Must be the swamp air."
Marya didn't flinch. Her focus snapped past the floundering spies. "The gators. They're reacting." Her hand was already on Eternal Eclipse's obsidian hilt, the blade whispering free with a sound like ice cracking over dark water.
The warshell gators' Haki-gold visors snapped from scanning amber to hostile crimson. Steam vents along their grafted hulls roared like enraged teakettles, spewing Soul-Sugar-scented vapor that turned the twilight air violet and cloying. One monstrous beast, easily thirty feet of armored scale and riveted steel, lunged with terrifying silence. Its reinforced metal jaws, dripping swamp slime and bioluminescent algae, snapped shut like a bear trap where the dagger-wielding Marine had stood a heartbeat before, reducing a thick mangrove trunk to splintered pulp. Iridescent Soul-Sugar dust puffed from the canvas sacks strapped to its back, shimmering in the gator's exhaust.
More figures melted from the dripping mangroves – reinforcements answering the frantic Den Den Mushi call. They formed a ragged line between the pirates and the precious cargo gators, weapons raised but faces pale beneath swamp grime. "Hold!" their apparent new leader barked, trying to project authority despite the tremor in his voice. "We're allies! Bayou's Reckoning! Stand down! The cargo must—"
Mihawk moved. A flicker of black cloak, a silent blur, and Yoru was a silver crescent in the gloom. Two Marines cried out as their rifles were severed cleanly at the barrels. "Your cargo," Mihawk stated, his boredom palpable, "is currently obstructing my path to a decent vintage. An intolerable nuisance."
Marya was a storm of focused destruction. Eternal Eclipse became a whirlwind of shadow, its blade shearing through voodoo-charmed chains with eerie ease. Soul-Sugar crystals spilled like cursed diamonds onto the murky water, dissolving into prismatic mist that made the air taste of forgotten sorrows and burning sugar. Hongo, meanwhile, was a whirlwind of chaotic improvisation. He lobbed another rum flask – this one bursting into harmless, sticky flames on a gator's targeting visor – and ducked a retaliatory swat of its propeller tail. "Try disinfecting, you overgrown newt!" he yelled, scrambling away from churning water.
The Marines fought with desperate fervor, protecting their monstrous charges and illicit cargo. Bullets whined past Mihawk's hat (ignored) and sparked off Marya's Void-scarred forearms (deflected with contemptuous ease). One Marine, younger than the rest, his eyes wide with terror-fueled determination, fumbled with a device strapped to his back. It was sleek, alien, humming with ominous blue energy – Vegapunk's Atmos-Nullifier. "Forget protocol!" he screamed at his comrades. "Contain them! Now!"
He slammed a button. A shimmering grid, like solidified heat haze, lanced out from the device, instantly locking onto Mihawk, Marya, and Hongo. Before any could react, a transparent, dome-shaped forcefield snapped into existence around them with a resonant THOOM. The air inside turned deathly still, then vanished.
The effect was instantaneous and horrifying. Sound died. The roar of the gators, Hongo's shouts, the clash of steel – all snuffed out. Hongo gasped, a raw, silent heave, clutching his throat as if drowning on dry land. His eyes bulged, veins standing out on his forehead. Marya staggered, her stoic mask cracking into wide-eyed shock. The vacuum tore at her lungs, a crushing, soundless agony. She swung Eternal Eclipse at the barrier, but the blade met unyielding, humming energy, its dark edge flaring briefly but failing to bite. Mihawk, his face a grimace of fury and suffocation, drove Yoru's point into the dome with all his might. A spiderweb of cracks radiated from the impact, but the barrier held, fueled by the device's desperate power drain. The Marine operator grinned savagely, teeth bared in a silent snarl, holding the button down as the Nullifier's seastone cores glowed dangerously white-hot.
Then, the prototype failed. With a shriek of overstressed metal, the Atmos-Nullifier exploded.
The forcefield vanished instantly, releasing the vacuum with a concussive WHUMP of returning air that staggered everyone. The Marine operating it was engulfed in a blue-white fireball, the blast tearing through his comrades nearby, scattering limbs and searing the mangroves. The shockwave slammed into the nearest warshell gator, buckling its grafted hull plating and sending it thrashing into the water in a geyser of mud and violet steam. Amidst the carnage, a Den Den Mushi, miraculously intact, gurgled a final, distorted message: "Mayday... Atmos-Nullifier failure... Hawkeyes... Mist... Shadows..." before falling silent.
As the stunned survivors blinked through smoke and ringing ears, the temperature plummeted. The swamp's humid breath turned to ice crystals on their skin. From the water, the mud, the very air, Les Guédés rose.
They weren't merely spirits; they were manifested history. Skeletal figures draped in tattered, rotting remnants of Carnival finery – faded velvets, moth-eaten lace, brass buttons green with age. Their hollow eye sockets burned with cold, witch-fire blue light. Instruments of bone and shadow materialized in their grasp: a ribcage xylophone chiming discordant notes that vibrated in the marrow, femurs carved into silent flutes that nonetheless shrieked psychic pain, a skull drum beaten with phalanges, emitting a bass thrum that made the swamp water shiver. Their movements were a jerky, disjointed parody of a second-line parade, yet their presence radiated ancient, implacable fury. The air filled with the phantom scent of grave soil, absinthe, and old blood.
They didn't attack the pirates. They flowed past Mihawk, Marya, and the gasping Hongo like a spectral river, their hollow gazes fixed on the remaining Marines. The ground beneath the spies began to swell. Mud bubbled and heaved like a living thing, thick ropes of glowing algae and cypress roots erupting to snare their ankles. The water itself seemed to rear up, forming grasping hands of liquid darkness that pulled at them. The Marines screamed, a sound quickly swallowed by the Les Guédés' silent, cacophonous dirge. They fired, but bullets passed harmlessly through the bone musicians. One spy, trying to flee, stepped onto a patch of seemingly solid ground only for it to liquefy instantly, sucking him down with a choked gurgle. The swamp wasn't just alive; it was hungry, and the Les Guédés were its vengeful heralds.
The remaining Marines, witnessing their comrades being consumed by the sentient marsh under the spectral gaze of the island's ancient guardians, broke. They dropped their weapons, their alliance with shadows forgotten, and fled screaming into the darkening, vengeful embrace of the Forgotten Marshes, leaving behind the groaning, damaged warshell gators and the glittering, cursed remnants of their Soul-Sugar cargo. The silence that followed, punctuated only by the gators' pained hisses and Hongo's ragged coughing, was heavier than the vacuum that had nearly killed them.
The silence after the Marines' screams faded wasn't empty; it was thick, suffocating, saturated with the swamp's victorious exhalation. Violet Soul-Sugar dust settled like malevolent pollen on the churned mud and the groaning, sparking hulks of the warshell gators. Mihawk lay sprawled near a shattered mangrove root, Yoru still loosely gripped in one hand, his face pale beneath the grime, his breathing shallow but steady. Hongo was face-down a few feet away, one arm flung out, fingers twitching near his shattered rum flask, his unconscious mutterings about "80-proof disinfectant" barely audible bubbles in the muck.
Marya lay closest to the water's edge, Eternal Eclipse resting across her chest like a fallen shadow. Her raven hair fanned out in the inky water, and the Void-scarred veins on her exposed arms pulsed with a faint, sickly light, reacting to the concentrated residue of Soul-Sugar and ancient magic saturating the air.
The Les Guédés did not vanish. They hovered, spectral sentinels in their tattered finery, their bone instruments silent now. The witch-fire blue light in their hollow sockets fixed on Marya. They drifted closer, a silent, chilling procession moving through the water and mud as if it were mist. One spirit, clad in the rotting remnants of what might have been a naval admiral's coat centuries ago, extended a skeletal hand. It didn't touch her, but passed over her, the cold emanating from it making the water around her ripple and steam faintly.
As the spirit's hand passed, the water behind Marya began to stir. Not with current, but with intent. L'Esprit du Bayou, the sentient heart of the marsh, awakened fully. The dark water thickened, coalescing into serpentine shapes of pure, liquid darkness that slid sinuously over the bank. Glowing algae swirled violently, forming intricate, pulsing sigils on the surface.
Then the ground moved. Thick, gnarled cypress roots, slick with black mud and writhing with bioluminescent worms, erupted from the mire not like plants, but like the muscular tentacles of some primordial leviathan. They ignored Mihawk and Hongo entirely, coiling with terrifying gentleness around Marya's ankles, her waist, her shoulders. They weren't rough; they were possessive, deliberate. One root, thick as a man's thigh and dripping luminous slime, slid beneath her neck, cradling her head.
The Les Guédés watched, their silent presence an approving audience to the swamp's claim.
With a soft, sucking sigh, the mud around Marya liquefied. The roots tightened their grip and pulled. Slowly, inexorably, she began to sink. Not dragged violently, but subsumed. The thick, dark water and yielding mud flowed over her legs, her torso, swallowing the obsidian gleam of Eternal Eclipse, then her chest, her shoulders. The roots guided her descent, ensuring her face remained clear until the last moment. Her expression, even in unconsciousness, seemed etched with a profound weariness that mirrored the swamp's ancient gaze. Then, the dark water closed over her face, and she vanished completely. The disturbed mud settled quickly, leaving only faint ripples and the lingering glow of algae sigils that slowly faded, like dying stars. The roots slithered back beneath the surface, leaving no trace but a slightly depressed, muddy patch.
The Les Guédés lingered for a moment longer, their blue gazes sweeping the devastated scene – the broken gators, the spilled Soul-Sugar glittering like cursed stars, the unconscious pirates. Then, as one, they dissolved into the deepening twilight mist, their departure marked only by a final, chilling whisper of phantom brass that vibrated in the bones, not the air.
Silence reclaimed the Forgotten Marshes, heavier and more profound than before. Only the pained hiss of steam from a crippled warshell gator and Hongo's occasional, wet cough broke the stillness.
Hours bled into the swamp's eternal gloom. The moon, fractured by the cypress canopy, cast dappled silver light over the tableau of ruin. The wreckage of the warshell gators lay like beached sea monsters, their vents hissing plumes of violet-tinged steam that curled like dying serpents into the chill air. Scattered Soul-Sugar crystals glittered dully amidst the churned mud and splintered mangrove roots, their iridescence muted under the moon's fractured gaze.
Near the water's edge, Mihawk lay utterly still, sprawled beside a shattered root, the legendary Yoru a dark line against the muck beside his limp hand. His face, pale beneath streaks of swamp grime, was turned slightly towards the patch of unnaturally smooth mud where the water met the bank. His breathing was shallow, invisible in the cool air, but steady. A few feet away, Hongo was a crumpled heap, face pressed into the mud near the shards of his prized rum flask. An occasional, wet, unconscious sputter escaped him, a bubble forming and popping in the sludge near his mouth. Both men were deeply, utterly insensate.
The silence was profound, broken only by the gators' pained exhalations and the incessant chirp of swamp insects reclaiming their domain. Then, a subtle disturbance marred the inky water near the bank – not a splash, but a slow, deliberate parting of the algae-scummed surface. Ripples spread silently.
Slowly, cautiously, a head emerged.
Théo "Mudpuppy" Savoie. Mud-caked hair, dark as the water itself, was plastered flat to his skull. Streams of water traced paths down his cheeks, catching the weak moonlight. His eyes, wide and luminous green like phosphorus in the deep, scanned the scene with an unnerving stillness that seemed older than his years. He took it all in: the groaning, sparking hulks of the armored gators; the glittering, cursed debris of Soul-Sugar; the prone, unmoving forms of Mihawk and Hongo, looking like casualties claimed by the marsh itself.
His gaze, sharp and knowing, lingered longest on the patch of disturbed, unnaturally smooth mud near the waterline – the spot where Marya had vanished. A flicker of profound unease crossed his features, a deep, instinctive wariness warring with an intimate familiarity etched into him by the swamp. He didn't speak. The secrets whispered here – the ozone tang of Vegapunk's failed weapon, the cloying decay of spilled Soul-Sugar, the profound silence left by the Les Guédés and the marsh's own voracious hunger – were written plainly for him in the mud, the water, the very air.
His luminous green eyes swept over the unconscious figures once more, confirming their oblivion. Then, without a sound, he submerged. The dark water closed over his head as smoothly as oil, leaving only widening, silent ripples that faded swiftly back into the brooding, watchful stillness of Les Marais Oubliés. The swamp held its breath once more, its newest secret sinking into its dark heart.