He could hear the sound of cannonfire and hurried footsteps from the upper decks, but he felt as though he could hardly care. It was as though he was inside his own tiny bubble of memories and regrets, walking upstairs aimlessly without any knowledge of what his purpose was.

The singular question he had in mind was whether or not his family was still alive. He, Brice Redneck, would never be able to forgive himself if something were to happen to them.

If those bastards so much as scratch them, I'll...I'll...

He would what? He couldn't save his wife and daughter, not from here. And now, he was only betraying his second family with his own indecision, just as he had forsaken them with his betrayal.

But how? How could he face them? How could he possibly walk up to Leonardo now and tell him he wanted to be part of the crew again? That shamelessness was exactly what he hated about people. That powerlessness, that need to bow down to other men for help. The only people he had ever accepted as his superiors were Whitebeard and Borris. Nobody else, not even Dot Leopards himself. Hell, one could say he hated Leopards, much less accepted him.

He couldn't believe it when Holdings of all people had drawn a knife against his throat and forced him to listen to his orders. One of the most trusted members of the Caine crew, and a Shadow Ley user that had the capacity to decieve people with ease. They had been making use of him as a spy for some time now, and the years of experience he had as a senior member of the crew and as a master at espionage tactics gave him a certain air of authority most scrubs didn't have.

"You're gonna have to listen and act to every word I tell you, Redneck. He won't harm your family, as long as you know your damn place. But if you don't, and start doing funny shit thinking I'm not watching...don't blame me for what will happen to them. Molly, Bria, Giorgia. All three of them."

He would have killed him right then and there regardless of that knife, if it weren't for his family being in serious danger. There was no choice, he knew. There was no choice, yet he found himself furious at his helplessness for the last few months, tracking the movements of everyone close to him and sending information that could get the man who had saved his life killed.

And now, all hell had broken loose. Who knew what would happen with Molly and the kids now? Blackbeard might already know he had been exposed as the spy. And that monster was unlikely to make a favourable decision for him when he had been working for Whitebeard for a dozen years.

He looked down at the pistols strapped to his waist and shook his head.

"Brice?" A familiar male voice. He looked up, and met eyes with Jackie. He stood at the top of this flight of stairs, holding one of the crates they used to carry the ammunition in his hands. "What the hell happened? You look paler than a full moon!" He asked, climbing down with his concerned gaze set on Brice.

He moved his tired eyes from the pistols to Jackie's face. "I...dunno, kid. Or maybe I do. I gotta do somethin hard, maybe the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. But I can't bring myself to face the people I need to face, or to call myself one of the Whitebeard Pirates, to do it." Jackie listened on, mystified by the sudden cryptic dialogue from the happy-go-lucky Brice.

Brice saw the bewilderment on Jackie's face, and shrugged. "Look. I betrayed the crew, alright? I wish I didn't, but I had to. My hands were tied by Blackbeard, the son of a bitch. How am I supposed to get out there and call myself a man now?"

Jackie thought about it for a few seconds and replied, "Well, if you really regret what you did, maybe the best thing you can possibly do is to stop being a pussy and get up there to fight. Standing around here doing nothing isn't changing anybody's mind, is it?"

"And besides, nobody cares if you think you're a man or not. Why don't you show them that yourself?" He asked.

Brice stared at Jackie, pondering. Well, whaddaya know. He's no kid. That's a man through and through. Unpolished, but a man all the same. He thought. There still lingered the worry as to what might happen to the kids if he were to retaliate against the Blackbeard fleet directly, but if he didn't, he would end up losing everyone he had. And that was not an option.

"Anyway, I need to get going now. This crate ain't filling itself." Jackie said, and continued down in a jog. Brice watched him go, somewhat admiring the grit of the former ship captain. His advice wasn't the greatest, but the reason why it stood out wasn't because it was great. It was more so the fact that his words were exactly what he himself would have told someone else in the same situation.

Take yer own advice, eh? That's what they tell ya. He thought to himself with a hesitant upward curl of the lips he could not quite describe as a smile, and trotted up the staircase.

* * * * *

Veltmann stared at the churning ocean beneath his feet as the two powerhouses of the fleets slammed the water from one end of the battlefield to the other. The waves shifted, moulded themselves into fists and slammed into Martinez, who managed to block the brunt of the attack with a transparent wall of water. From in front of him, Cotton waved her arms and fists in elegant, crescent-shaped arcs, making the water around her swirl through the air in gentle strings. It was mesmerizing, and reminded him of a ballerina prancing back and forth upon the wooden platform at the center of a certain amphitheatre in Italy. A pointless memory to be sure, and he found it humorous that he should remember that now of all times.

Another attack from Cotton, and this time Martinez dodged and sped across the surface to engage in a counter. He missed what happened next though, thanks to the freak wave that loomed over and threatened to capsize his tiny rowboat. His singular hand grasped tightly to the edge and the hook on his right arm slammed through the wood, holding him in place as the boat lurched and crashed into the wave sideways.

Drenched but alive, he spit out seawater and managed to wrestle his hook out of the wood. Even a Ley user was helpless to the elements if his luck were as bad as this. The enormous clash between Ascendants booming overhead wasn't exactly helping the weather either, especially thanks to their own leader's ruthlessness.

Veltmann had been around long enough to know Blackbeard didn't care at all for the people that worked under him during battle. He was a good leader and a brilliant tactician, but in battle he was his own solitary army. Those under him were simply pawns that moved themselves forward.

Marvelous cruelty. Yet he still cannot hold a candle to myself. He thought proudly. But it was a mere thought, not something he would dare voice within range of anybody from his ship. Another bang erupted from the clouds, but he knew well it wasn't lightning.

Things were escalating fast, and he needed to get to the Ivory faster.

* * * * *

Cotton raised her fist and swung it with all her might, halting against the arm of Martinez. The blow shook the entire area of water they stood on, creating a sort of seaquake that sent water droplets soaring into the air. He pulled back from her and sent a sharp-edged crest of water zipping through the waves, narrowly missing Cotton's right thigh as it went past her. "You're definitely an entertaining one to fight against!" She said merrily as another crest missed her head by half a foot.

"Do you think this is a game, Sue Cotton?" Martinez demanded as he strode forward after her with his glowing baton in hand. "Do you find this ridiculous dance to be so liberating that it makes you smile?" He twirled the baton and snapped it high above his head, raising a long snake-like pillar to the sky with Cotton hanging on to it. About a mile away, where the right-hand men of the fleet captains fought, Borris raised his head and gazed at the structure extending to the sky like a massive beast.

Heh. You've got your work cut out for you, Sue.

Cotton hung onto the solidified water tightly, thanks only to her own affinity with water. Her black hair arced through the air like a raven's wings as she was thrown back and forth forcefully by the movement of the huge structure. For a second, it stopped, and then swung itself downwards, right towards the Den.

She had only a split second to react. Partially thanks to her Basic Ley, she managed to somehow divert more strength to the wall and swerve her body out of the way in time, just before the massive pillar hit the top edge of the towering wall.

The structure broke apart right between the Ivory and the Marigold, splashing all over the combatants aboard the decks of the ships. "Woah!" Dorothy cried as the water completely drenched everyone, and soaked her bright blue dress. "Captain! Are you alright?" She yelled at Cotton, who was hanging on to the edge of the wall with all her might.

"Do I look like I'm alright? Of course I am, you idiot!" She replied just as loudly, and hauled herself to the top. As she rose from her knees, she had a feeling it wouldn't be long until she would need every scrap of strength she could gather to kill Martinez, and that meant bringing down the Den.

Oh well. It wasn't like she could keep it up forever anyways. Hmm, how much longer? Ten minutes, maybe fifteen at best. This thing is ridiculous, even for my normal standards. As she prepared to take off down, she noticed something glimmer from the distance for a split second.

Just a split second.

BOOM. The explosion would have torn apart any normal human's arm clean off, but Cotton was far from any ordinary woman. She raised her hand to her face and examined the hole in her wrist from the projectile fired by the See of the Blackbeard Pirates. Smoke poured out of the wound, and the flesh around it was baked and hissed softly. "Not bad for a cowardly sniper." She said with a smirk, and leaped off the wall as if nothing had happened. With her feet on the slanting base of the wall, she slid down and smoothly ran towards Martinez, who was astounded at her resilience and stamina. Somehow, the wall still stood, and somehow the woman still remained on her feet. "It was never in my plans to push myself this far...but perhaps I was wrong to assume I would not have to." He said, unaware that the smallest of smiles was creeping across his face. "I humbly apologize for underestimating your strength."

As Cotton closed in on him and swung her fist towards his face, time seemed to slow down. Six inches...five....four...not fast enough. The singular word that left his lips was just that little bit faster.

"Primis."

It was as if the entire sea erupted simultaneously. Cotton found herself suddenly struggling to keep her footing on the surface as the water began to get several times rougher, pushing her away from Martinez. Before she could decide her next move, a massive waved engulfed and threw her several meters back, though she managed to keep from sinking into the water. Her Advanced Ley wouldn't be bested by a mere wave.

And besides, she had some much bigger problems to deal with now.

There were seven...no, eight whirlpools in the water, some spinning clockwise and the others anticlockwise. The amount of Ley in each one was mind-numbing, as was the force of the swirling currents. The whirlpools weren't his Primis, nor were they her biggest problem. She could tell something was still missing, incomplete somehow. But Martinez had disappeared in the explosive blast, and she couldn't tell where exactly he was. And so there was no way to prevent what came out of the water next.

The sound was muffled at first, coming from deep within the whirpools as they began to reverse the directions they were spinning in. It was akin to the screech of a teakettle, only this sound grew louder and louder by the second. As it got louder, Cotton came to a dark realization. Not one. Multiple screeches. There's a shit ton of these bastards down there!

She leapt aside just inches away from the blue serpentine body that split the waves and emerged from the water, with its head springing out from the whirlpool like the end of a whip. One by one, seven others rose with their huge mouths open to engulf anything that came within range. Each head was almost the size of the Ivory, and the rest of their bodies surely stretched down for miles underwater.

Eels. Moray Eels. Cotton thought, staring up at the looming snakelike thing towering above her. Would you look at that. These things can chew up a hundred of me, no problem.

"Cerulean Moray Garden." Martinez finished as he stepped on top of the largest one, towering about a mile up above the chaos below. "I hope you were not under the delusional belief that the Captain would not bring forth his strongest available men to this fight, Sue Cotton." He said scornfully, looking down on her with that air of superiority still hovering around him.

Cotton brushed the water out of her eyes and smiled. "I've been thankful to Whitebeard for all my life. The training I endured and the ability to turn my eyes black wasn't all done for me to lose to a pack of animals."

"Go ahead, Martinez. If I lose to your fucking eels, I'll kill myself long before you can!"