"Primis."

Even as he jumped away in an attempt to escape the trap, he knew it was too late, far too late. He had been caught since the very moment he had so carelessly climbed on board, slicing away at fodder while foolishly unaware of the danger.

He felt the floorboards rattle and shake, and felt the Ley around him begin to twist and spin, almost like-

Strings.

One look at the poles told him everything he needed to know. The strings tied to them were unraveling at frightening speed and swinging in every direction; some of the strings stretched below to the hull, while others rose up and spun around to attach themselves to the top of the main mast that rose well above the poles.

He watched helplessly as the strings crisscrossed across the air, completely restraining all forms of light from entering the constructed semi sphere.

Ah. This is turning into one shitty situation.

Darkness. Complete, stifling darkness. And now, from somewhere in front of him, he heard the woman's voice again.

"Maiden's Veil." She said aloud, and Leonardo prepared himself for an imminent attack. Yet something still wasn't right. It was as if he was missing something crucial, as if a weapon he desperately needed had been forgotten.

It wasn't the weapon he had in mind either. That weapon he could conceal for now. This was-

He heard the attack before anything else. He heard the clothes rustle, he heard the scraping of the footwear on the floorboards.

He swerved to the left in an attempt to avoid the slash, but still felt a sharp object cut through his right cheek before hearing the sound of his attacker sliding across the floor and away from where he stood.

The woman was wearing bells, so this is most certainly the man.

He was hardly focused on who it was, though. That was not of importance in comparison to what was now turning out to be a huge problem.

He had not just lost his eyesight, but somehow, his ability to sense Ley as well.

"Quite impressive, I must say. Your speed is extraordinary." Schweitzer's voice drifted through the darkness, in all its confident glory. Oh, everything was going right for him today.

Leonardo thought about withholding the questions he had, but decided to ask anyway. "What the hell did you do to me?" He shouted into the endless curtain of black.

As expected, he only received the sound of footsteps closing in as a response. "Survive long enough to find out, young man." A low, low voice so close to his ear he was nearly stunned for a precious half second.

Nearly.

CLINK! The sound of his sword colliding against Schweitzer's weapon echoed in the lightless room. He could tell from the contact that it was a dagger, so at the very least, he had no need to worry about ranged attacks.

Schweitzer pulled back, and Leonardo spun around to counter the piercing thrust that came from behind him-

And felt a sharp pain drill into his side. He had missed the swing and hit nothing more than air, while Schweitzer met his mark.

Something hot and warm, something he knew all too well, rushed out of the wound slowly before Schweitzer pulled out the dagger and fled into the shadows once more. Fighting the urge to fall to his knees, Leonardo gathered his bearings and tried to get an idea of where the enemy could be.

CLINK CLINK CLINK!

The sound of bells emerged right next to him, but it was just a second too soon. He ducked, and felt something whirl right over his neck and drift away.

"AAAAAARGH!" The frustrated scream of the woman Schweitzer had called Mizuki pierced his ears like a whistle. "I almost had him!"

Schweitzer laughed, and began to walk towards Leonardo. "Well, you could've revealed the sound of the bells a little later then, Mizuki. You were too hasty." He said this in such a carefree manner, as though he was out hunting a duck or perhaps a deer for dinner.

Still Leonardo tried to desperately sense Ley, and still he failed. It wasn't simply the fact that he was unable to sense Schweitzer and Mizuki's Ley, but the fact that he couldn't even feel his own. It was a feeling that he hadn't felt since he was twelve, and bothered him greatly.

"I must say, you are a remarkable fellow. Most would have been cut into ribbons or conceded defeat by now." Schweitzer said, still in that pleasant tone.

Pleasant? As if.

"Marvelous speed and reflexes, as well as the physical strength to remain standing after getting stabbed. And without the ability to sense Ley as well. You would make a wonderful specimen for my research!"

His waist felt as though he was rubbing hot coals on it, he couldn't see, and he couldn't sense Ley. Gotta stay composed.

"Oh, I'll bet you'd see me as a wonderful specimen, but you won't be able to kill me so easily!" He said, and that seemed to irk Schweitzer to some extent.

The carefree tone vanished, but he still had an air of confidence as he spoke. "Oh, no, young man. I'm afraid you will die here. Its quite simple really...a man who cannot use Ley against two opponents who can is in a near unwinnable situation."

"A man who can't use Ley? Like hell. All I can't do is sense it! If I just-"

Schweitzer cut him off smoothly. "You were thinking that if you simply release your Ley wildly and aimlessly, you can still manage to strengthen your blows, correct?" He heard the silence and smiled. Sometimes a dialogue with no words told a chapter's worth of content.

So now he gathered his own Ley and surrounded himself, protecting his body from harm. "Let me show you exactly what your misconception is, young man!"

Leonardo tensed his muscles as he heard a loud creak from the distance, as though Schweitzer had just leaped at him. Instinctively, his eyes swung from left to right as though uselessly searching for the enemy.

A loud THUD right in front of him made his swing his sword from down low to the air above his head, and this time he caught Schweitzer's dagger with his blade. Yes! Before he could process his next move, he felt the ground leave his feet and air flowing past him as he soared through the air, and slammed into the the curved string wall surrounding them.

Everything was on fire now, his back and right arm included. He grasped the dislocated shoulder and pushed inwards, reattaching the joint once more. The pain that followed was damn near unbearable, but he managed to avoid crying out.

"You see, young man? I can use my own Advanced Ley just fine. But you? You're done for as of right now." Schweitzer's voice seemed far away now, or maybe it was everywhere all at once. Through the pain in his throbbing shoulder and the bloody wound at his side, he couldn't tell.

Especially not without sensing Ley.

Dammit, I would've finished this in minutes if I could just pinpoint them!

"Your idea of releasing Ley in an uncontrolled manner was odd, to say the least...but it would have worked. You were correct to assume so. However, what's happened to you is not so simple. Isn't that right, my dear Mizuki?"

His dear Mizuki nodded enthusiastically. "That's right, that's right! Lloyd is a genius at manipulation of Basic Ley! He can sort of...um, he can remove it! And, uhm...do something like, breaking...chains...?" She trailed off, and left Leonardo staring in the direction of her voice with an expression of disbelief on his face.

What the fuck was that?

Schweitzer ignored this completely, and drove on. "As she said, I can remove the ability to use Basic Ley-"

"That's not really-"

"-and by doing so, I can completely restrict access to Ley itself altogether." He continued, ignoring Leonardo's attempt to cut him off flawlessly.

"You believed I was simply attempting to block your senses, but that is completely wrong. The stages of Ley are all linked to one another by connections similar to chains. If one of those chains is removed, the ones above become completely inaccessible. That is my own attribute, you see. I can completely remove the chain that connects one stage of Ley to the other."

So he's got some extremely troublesome Elemental Ley, huh? To say troublesome was putting it lightly. His ability was ridiculous. Coupled with the woman's own Primis, he could probably extinguish the lives of hundreds effortlessly.

But it also gave Leonardo an idea. It wasn't a strategy, and it certainly wouldn't help him out of his current predicament, but it was an idea.

And at the moment, he had nothing else to grasp to.

"So I assume you had something to do with how your fleet managed to mask all your Ley from us? Hiding Ley for hours on end will kill you!" He said, and this time it was the girl who answered.

Her voice was closer, not close enough to attack him but not far enough for him to relax either. "Of course it does! But with my knowledge of Seals and his attribute, we-"

"That's quite enough explaining, Mizuki. I have no intention of revealing every single detail about us to the enemy." Schweitzer interrupted swiftly.

The woman sounded on the verge of tears as she responded. "But...but your genius should be known across the world! He's going to die anyway, so why can't I?!" Leonardo could've sworn the loud jingling of bells followed by a thud he heard next was the sound of her stamping her foot on the floor like a child.

He heard the sound of footsteps from in front of him and focused on the direction of the noise. "I am not like Hoffman. I have no intention of becoming a man who performs experiments for the sake of personal gain. If the enemy dies, that is all. No need to throw caution to the wind because of my knowledge." The footsteps stopped abruptly, and Leonardo lowered his shoulder in preparation for an attack.

CLINK.

A bell, mere centimeters away from his face-

Instead of ducking to the right, he leaped to the left, straight at the direction of the jingling sound. Something sharp and deadly whistled past his face as he did so, and he thrust his sword upwards to meet the woman.

"AIEE!" He felt something scrape past his blade, and knew he had finally managed to get a hit on his two opponents. Feeling confident, he sliced diagonally through the air and hit something much harder. Sparks flew from the end of the sword, and for a fraction of a second, he saw the woman with her solitary arm raised, blocking his sword with a sort of metal glove that had sharp needles at the end of the fingers.

Her appearance had changed slightly as well, due to the active Primis. Her previously green kimono had now changed colour to black, and the blindfold that had once been tied across her face had fallen to reveal the horrific sight of her eyes. They should have been empty sockets, but now appeared to be filled with two balls of black string, twisting around inside the empty chambers in a sickening display of her power. And then, his eyes shifted to the missing right arm, and just before the light from the contact between the two fizzled out and the sparks vanished, he could have sworn he saw a massive snake-like thing where there should have been nothing at all.

He wanted to continue the exchange, but the fact that he could not use Advanced Ley to deliver a truly powerful slash made him change his mind and leap back, far away into the darkness of the strings.

"Where did he injure you?"

"My waist. Its not much, but I wasn't expecting it to actually cut through..."

In that moment, both men suddenly had a flash of insight. Schweitzer focused his Ley on the target before him, and began to realize something. It was difficult to make it out because of Mizuki's Primis, but he could just about sense the young man's Ley. It was...something he had scarcely seen before.

And at the same time, Leonardo had a moment of great clarity. What appeared in his mind was a question, but a question that gave him a great many ideas and plans.

Why aren't they attacking me at the same time?

Schweitzer's voice once against drifted towards him, but now it was much farther away. "You are an interesting one, you know. I have battled a reasonable amount of Ley users and won, but you have an affinity with Advanced Ley I have seen only a select few times...the amount I can probably count in one hand."

"Do you know what the shape of a person's Ley is in its raw, untamed shape?" He asked, and Leonardo automatically remembered a lesson Borris and Whitebeard had given him when he first started training. However, he remained silent, still thinking about his options.

Schweitzer continued, "Each person has a field of Ley that they can call their own. One can think of it as a bubble in the sea. However, the difference is that bubbles have a solid shape, while that personal field of Ley does not. It is, in short, an irregular mass in its raw, unprocessed state. For Ley users such as you and I, when we are not using Advanced Ley, there is a slightly more firm shape to it in that raw state, but on the whole, it will still remain an irregular mass."

"Advanced Ley is so important because it is what shapes that mass. If a person can properly use it, they can protect their bodies, strengthen their weapons, and support their Elemental Ley. By severing the link between your Basic and Advanced Ley, I made sure you would be unable to freely wield that power, to be unable to shape and mould it as you please...thus effectively cutting your strength to below half of what it could be."

"But you are a bit of a special case, young man. For you, even that raw state has a solid shape. A lot more distant from your body and unstable, but it has a shape. You are not unique, but certainly a rarity."

Leonardo heard all this, but never paid any real attention to it. Nevertheless, he felt like he had to at least pretend to be paying attention. "Oh yeah? And what does this have to do with anything in this fight?" He was sweating profusely, and his waist felt as though it was tearing itself apart.

Schweitzer scowled at this response. "Your Ley, young man. Normally, any old person would barely leave a scratch on the skin of a Ley user without access to their own Advanced Ley. But you, on the other hand...it is weak, but you have a natural capability to pierce through Ley...not hard enough to deliver a mortal wound, but enough to cause trouble." He stood there and waited for Mizuki's signal.

CLINK. A single, forlorn ring of her bell.

Leonardo heard the sound, and pinpointed where it was coming from, all the while keeping his senses peeled for any sign of movement from Schweitzer.

This is insane, but...insane is all anybody can do in this situation!

He threw himself forward at the direction from where the sound of the bell came from, brushing aside the uncomfortable throb in his waist and the sharp pain that pierced through his right shoulder each time he moved. He threw everything aside and ran, aimed at nothing but the darkness where the woman lurked.

"Wha-" He heard Schweitzer's stunned shout from behind him and smiled, before swinging blindly into the darkness. He hit thin air, but...

CLINK CLINK CLINK!

Aha. There you ARE! He dragged the sword from right to left with everything he could muster, and struck something unexpectedly hard. Sparks flew from the contact between metal and metal, and he saw that woman's face once more, now straining under the pressure of his weapon.

Refusing to let her get away, he lowered his upper body closer to the sword and pushed, forcing her to twist her arm away from the sharp edge of the blade. It went forward and so did Leonardo, who deliberately struck the tip against the floor. He pressed down on it and swiveled his entire body around, balancing himself on his upright sword.

THWACK.

The sound of his foot bashing into Mizuki's skull made him grin, altough he had managed to piece together the fact that he would not deliver much damage in this state from Schweitzer's speech.

Everything else depended on dumb luck and his own reflexes.

With no time to waste, he raised the sword the moment his feet touched the floor and advanced at Mizuki, this time aiming for what he was sure would be her throat. The sword ripped through the air, but touched nothing.

CLINK!

From just inches away from where the edge was, he heard the faintest of jingles through the stifling darkness. Earrings. That's what she is wearing. Earrings with bells. He thought, and brought his arms down this time, taking another gamble on what her next move would be.

If her bells rang and she knew the sword is this close to her throat, the only way she's instinctively going to go is...

DOWN! He felt something shred underneath his sword and grinned, pushing it with everything he had to get it to pierce the flesh. And it did indeed go down, just the tiniest bit.

And it was enough.

"NOOOOOOOOOOO!" The woman's howl was louder than any scream he had heard before, resembling the cry of an injured beast rather than a wounded human. Somewhere under that screech, he heard someone call her name with a panic that did not quite fit the cool and contemptuous voice of Lloid Schweitzer.

Leonardo heard him coming and glanced back by sheer impulse, momentarily losing his focus and unaware that the massive, beast-like thing looming behind the woman was now rising above both her and him, preparing itself to strike.

Schweitzer thrust his arms forward with the dagger in hand, and felt it smoothly slip through flesh and bone. A second of silence followed, a second where all three parties slowly realized what had just happened and what to do next.

Except for Schweitzer, that second was one second too little.

"GACK! AAAAHHH?!" Mizuki's voice, just above where the dagger was. Her voice was now not just strained, but it sounded as though she was struggling to spit the words out through something filling up her mouth.

Blood.

The word formed itself in Schweitzer's head and made his eyes bulge as realization hit him. And then, he felt something disappear from his waist. There was no pain, no urge to scream. Just a silent gasp, and a powerful force that threw him several feet backwards and onto the deck.

Mizuki was screaming, but it felt distant, somehow. Everything felt distant. The darkness, the voices, the humid smell of salt in the air...they were at sea, of course there was salt in the air, yes...and then one clear voice did indeed make it through Schweitzer's delirium.

"Hey, Schweitzer. You were talking all that big and impressive crap about Basic Ley, but you left out a pretty important piece of information from me, didn't you?" The young man was far away, and not just because everything was dizzy and spinning though the darkness either. He really was farther away now.

And then, once more through the darkness with more confidence than ever: "You can't actually tell the difference between Ley users in the dark...can you?"