Chapter Text
“Mister Dracule? Go right ahead, Blackbeard is expecting you.”
The immediate deference is to be expected. No doubt the on-site staff have been informed of his name, his preference for directness, and his very large bank account. Mihawk strides past the bowing guards, into a waiting room done over with entirely too much tacky gold gilding and black velvet, and through the door a secretary holds open for him.
“Ahh, Hawkeyes Dracule himself,” the portly man waiting on the other side beams. Marshall Teach, or Blackbeard to the underground circuits, dresses in the same ‘fashion’ as both his waiting room and his private office. He rises and comes out from behind a desk large enough to bear a full-sized mattress, and nods deeply upon realizing Mihawk has no intention of accepting a handshake. “Welcome, welcome, such an honor to have so distinguished a guest in our humble halls!”
Humble. Hmph.
“A pleasure,” Mihawk deigns to reply.
“Come, sit! Please help yourself, I had my staff break out the GOOD refreshments for this, not the off-the-shelf wine reserved for our run of the mill customers.” Blackbeard pours two glasses, handing one over before Mihawk can decide whether to accept or not. As to be expected, the merchant promptly swallows a gulp, without any sign of properly tasting the alcohol as it goes down. “Now then, I know you’re not one for niceties, so what can I help you with today? Looking to liven up your decorations for an event? Or possibly some private entertainment?”
“Decorative, strictly.” Hrmph. Against his expectations, the wine is tolerable. Perhaps the only aspect of this grating encounter that will be. “I have begun a landscaping project upon my estate, which will result in quite a bit more room for the watergardens-”
“Ahhh, and you’d like something to put in them!”
It would be the height of counterproductivity to glower at being interrupted. So Mihawk simply nods. “Exoctic is preferable, of course.”
“Of course! Or else you wouldn’t be coming to me, now would you!” Chuckling, Blackbeard downs another gulp, dark eyes gleaming over the rim of his glass. “I’m thinking a dangerous man such as yourself would appreciate that same trait in others, right?” Not... an incorrect assessment. Mihawk inclines his head in another shallow nod. “What’s the time frame on this landscaping project of yours?”
“At least a year or two before anything live can be added. But I prefer to study my options in advance, when possible.”
“Prudent, quite prudent, but in that case: the only real question is, do you want something fully grown from the start, or would you rather start small?”
An unpleasant sensation makes itself known in Mihawk’s gut.
When he offers no reaction beyond the arching of a brow, Blackbeard’s smile grows wider. The man gestures, stepping back and turning. One wall of his office is a large window, looking out over the main floor of the warehouse that serves as his operation’s headquarters; tanks and pools and transport containers of all sizes fill the space, coming and going with their cargo, both living and not, legal or otherwise.
The opposite wall is dominated by a mostly empty aquarium, the bottom filled with black pebbles, a few paltry bits of landscaping and tiny plastic hides scattered around. In front of said tank, however, is a long, narrow table, bearing five artfully made fishbowls of assorted shapes, elegantly etched clear glass, and a single decorative item apiece.
Aside, of course, from the tiny merfolk trapped with.
Or, Mihawk supposes, the tiny mer children.
(Ages fourteen to sixteen, he knows, but that hardly makes them grown in anyone’s eyes.)
“My prized possessions,” Blackbeard purrs, moving to stand on the opposite side of the table, all the mers watching him warily. “Exotic, rare, incredibly valuable, each of them.”
“Small,” Mihawk points out.
This remark simply makes the merchant throw his head back to laugh. “Zehahaha, yes, but! Not naturally small, I assure you. Came across a handy little toy, some years back - secret of my success, you might call it.” He causally pats at the large black stone hanging around his neck; polished, gleaming obsidian, which seems to suck in all the nearby light. “Easiest way to keep a mer hidden is to keep ‘em in your pocket, after all! But it doesn’t last forever, AND, any offspring of one of my specially shrunken items doesn’t stay that way, I promise!”
That unpleasant sensation tightens its grip.
“None of these seem to be old enough for that sort of activity just yet.”
“Ah, they aren’t quite, I admit - but this strapping fellow,” Blackbeard smirks, tapping the lid of the second-to-last bowl, causing the mer inside the bare his teeth and slam his thick tail against the glass, “Well he’s just about old enough to spawn. Probably will have to strap him down for it, but I intend to get at least one viable clutch out of him by the end of the year. Do you recognize the breed?”
“Wano Fighting Fish,” Mihawk says easily. He lets himself look. Decent musculature, no obvious signs of injury or malnutrition or otherwise ill health, but- pale. Sluggish, for all that he’d tried lashing out. Hair grown out longer than it used to be, and almost certainly not by choice. The jagged-edged broadsword decoration sticking up from the bottom of the bowl feels particularly insulting. “A pod of them has regularly migrated past my family’s island since I was a lad.”
“Here in the East Blue? My, what do you want to bet that’s where this fish came from! And here I thought he must have gotten lost and wandered over from the other side of the globe!”
The young mer again bares his teeth.
Shut up Kuina, I don’t get lost!
Yes you do, Zoro, that’s why I’m always sent to find you!
“So,” Blackbeard hums, drawing Mihawk’s mind back to the present. “If you might be interested in raising some tame stock, I could give you a special deal on a few of his first guppies; or if not, we just got in a shipment from the South Blue, including a feisty Junktooth Brawler...”
“On the contrary, I’ve always admired the elegance of Wano Fighters. And this Emerald coloration would work quite well in my gardens - I don’t suppose this one himself is for sale?” Mihawk knows the answer before he asks, but... There is an instinctive need to try, regardless.
Sure enough, Blackbeard laughs again, jovial and unconcerned, despite the way his hand remains possessively placed atop the sealed bowl. “Ah, ‘fraid not my friend, these beauties truly are my prized possessions, and they’ve all got some intense breeding programs waiting for them soon enough.”
He did not come armed. But if there were so much as a gold-handled letter opener visible on Blackbeard’s desk, Mihawk thinks he would snatch it up to drive through the blaggard’s throat. “If you insist. To be quite honest, however, I’m not certain I see the appeal of the others.”
“Ohhh, my dear Hawkeyes, DO allow me to elaborate! This one, for instance,” The merchant moves down to the far end, the bowl with a miniature iceburg, around which the imprisoned mer’s long yellow tail is uncomfortably coiled. “My most recent acquisition; doesn’t look like much, until you realize he’s actually a Northern Germa Hue!”
“Hm.” Surprising. “So far as I am aware, that particular breed only comes in one of five colors.”
“Pink, Red, Blue, Black, and Green, yes, but this rarity here is a mutant, an Inverted Stealth Black!” One single sharp blue eye glares from under long bangs at Blackbeard’s finger where he taps the glass. “The scale pattern matches up exactly, and my geneticist confirmed it.”
“Fascinating.” And new information that explains a few lacks in what he already knows. “Do you expect the mutation to breed true?”
“No idea! But that’s half the fun, getting to find out, zehahaha! Now, this skittish fellow,” the next bowl, the next child, who visibly restrains himself from ducking behind the plastic skull decoration to hide from Blackbeard’s intense gaze. “Just a boring little guppy, right? Except, he’s a mutant too - a Yellow-Bellied Short-tail, until something in the color scheme gets thrown off, and ta-da, fully green scales!”
Not entirely fully green, Mihawk can observe easily enough the iridescent shimmers that highlight where the terrified boy would have borne blue versus yellow scales, but he lets the point stand, moving on to get the ‘show’ over with. “And this? A Common East Blue Betta?”
“A species quickly becoming UN-common, Hawkeyes, or don’t you keep up with environmental reports?” He does, in point of fact, but saying so hardly fits with the image of ‘reclusive, arrogant aristocrat’ that earned him an audience with the biggest name in blackmarket merfolk smuggling on this side of the world. “Rumor started spreading about fifteen years back that eating a Betta’s fins could fix all kinds of health problems, the over-poaching picked up speed, and now, wouldn’t you know, there’s hardly an East Blue Betta to be seen anymore! Makes this little lady quite happy to be nice and safe in here, aren’t you, Sweetness?”
He taps the glass, and the tiny mermaid rises away from her palm tree with clear reluctance, putting on a wide smile that Mihawk could recognize as forced with his eyes closed.
“Got this one pre-owned,” Blackbeard says in an exaggerated whisper. “Bought her from a low-level thug who just used her for burglaring boatyards, of all things, until he got smart and went for the big bucks. But hey, at least he trained her well!”
'Trained', yes, with dire threats and intimidation tactics. Mihawk forces himself to remain calm, or at least the closest he can remain at the moment.
“And this,” they move down the other end of the table, the fifth and final bowl, decorated with the fake stone statue of a rearing lion and containing a blur of yellow and red. “Heh. My first and truly most valuable fish.” Smirking, Blackbeard does not simply tap the glass, but rather, picks up the bowl and gives it a dramatic shake.
Again, only the lack of a sharp blade holds Mihawk back from stabbing him.
When the container falls still, so too does the little mer inside, tumbling to collide against one wall with a furious scowl. “Congratulations, you have a Goa Goldfish.”
“Oh, not just any goldfish, my friend. I hope you won’t take offense to the question, Hawkeyes, but have you ever heard of a Nika Sunfin?”
Well. That certainly proves Blackbeard knows exactly what he has in his possession. “An extreme genetic rarity, I believe. I was not aware it could manifest in such a common species.”
“Any kind of scaled mer, my friend, ANY kind. Hard to keep alive, in most cases, but we’ve unlocked the secrets to that, haven’t we little one?” Another shake of the bowl, albeit more brief, and then Blackbeard sets it back down with a final chuckle. “I’m afraid I haven’t got a fresh batch of the chemical stimulant I use to reveal his true colors, but perhaps the next time you visit! It’s always quite a stunning sight.”
Undoubtedly. One of several reasons the ever elusive Sunfins are so valuable a prize. And also alarming in its own right: it normally takes sustained high emotion or extreme stress to force one of those chameleon merfolk to morph into their pure white scales, hence so many dying in captivity and driving them nigh to extinction centuries ago. If Blackbeard has a chemical form of causing the change, however, then that certainly explains why the boy is still alive, and also bodes extremely ill for his future.
Mihawk has what he came for.
He spends a few more minutes in odorous conversation with Blackbeard, confirming details of a non-existent landscaping timeline, agreeing to a visit in a year’s time to inspect newly hatched merlings that Mihawk will not allow to come to exist, and then-
He leaves.
He must leave, or risk the entire operation.
He steps out of that office acutely feeling the sensation of small, betrayed eyes glaring at his retreating back.
The secretary, guards, and other staff are suitably deferential and accommodating as Mihawk departs the building, retracing his route and confirming the exact sequence of turns, corridors, and stairs required to reach Blackbeard’s private office and the prisoners kept within. He emerges outside. Slides into the waiting limousine. And informs the waiting pair of men, “He has all five of them.”
For once, Shanks is grim rather than cheery, while the Revolutionary Dragon appears ready to commit murder.