Chapter Text
Kid wasn't happy.
The ten year old boy loved camping, make no mistake. But he liked being with his friends more.
"Why couldn't we do this next weekend? Killer would have at least been able to come then." He grumbled for the third time in as many hours, and, of course, he got the same answer.
"Because I have to be out of town for a conference next weekend," his mom said patiently as she helped him set up his tent. "This will be our last chance this summer to do this as a family."
Kid huffed, knowing all of that but still irritated.
His mom glanced at him and then smiled. "You'll have plenty of time to practice with your friends while I'm away. I heard you started singing for the band? I'm happy."
Kid felt his ears turn slightly red in response and tried to shrug it off. "We needed a frontman; Wire can't sing and Heat's too quiet. Killer has a good voice kind of, but he said he likes mine better."
"I've always loved your singing, you know that. One day I know the world will see just how special you are." She kissed his forehead and laughed when he scrunched up his face before he readjusted his goggles like she might have messed them up.
"Oh, your dad's here." A truck pulled up into their campsite and his dad stepped out of it, carrying bags of marshmallows and graham crackers. He was smiling but Kid frowned at him, something seemed off about his expression.
His mom must have noticed it too because she took the bags from his dad and handed them to him, asking Kid to put them away.
He waited until they thought he was out of earshot before circling back around the tent to listen.
"-all gone. No one knows where they went. They didn't disappear too close to us, but it still makes me nervous. Heard cops at the store talking about it, they haven't got a clue what's going on. I think we should head home after tonight just in case. Maybe it's nothing, but I'm not taking chances with Kid here. I'm keeping my gun loaded and in our tent, either way." Kid felt a chill go through him at his dad's voice.
His dad was a pretty relaxed kind of guy, given his military history. Hearing him sound so solemn wasn't normal. The only time Kid ever saw him even close to this serious was during the work out sessions where he taught Kid and his friends to defend themselves.
Kid quickly moved back to the coolers to put the stuff away before his mom came over to check on him.
By nightfall, he had forgotten all about the ominous conversation.
Kid had fallen asleep in his mom's lap after eating his sixth s’more, and listening to his mom sing an old campfire song.
He guessed they had decided to keep him in their tent last night, because he woke up between them. He frowned when he sat up, seeing his dad's gun propped up next to him.
Kid wanted to just go back to sleep, but he really needed to pee. He thought about waking up his dad to go with him but shook it off. He was a big kid, he didn't need an adult to go to the bathroom with him.
He walked a little way out of the campsite with his roll of paper to find a good spot. It didn't take long before he finished and he pulled his pants back up to go back to camp.
That's when he heard it.
For the rest of Kid's life from that point on, he would always scream at himself, wondering why. Why hadn't he just gone back to camp? Why couldn't he have written the sound off as some wild animal? Why couldn't he have just gone back to bed with his parents, safe and sound?
Maybe they would have lived.
But that Eustass Kid had been a curious ten-year-old boy who had never known real fear in his life. Who had a father he believed to be stronger than anyone, and had more curiosity than good sense.
Kid went to investigate the noise.
He must have walked about twenty yards, far enough that the light from the lamp at the tents was like some far off star. The sound had disappeared and Kid had just turned around to head back to bed.
When he heard it again.
It was louder, clearer now. It made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end as he tried to figure out what that noise was.
Kid felt his feet numbly carry him further into the woods.
That's when the smell hit him and he wanted to retch. It smelled like a mix of old pennies and a dead animal, like the decayed squirrel his dad had found in his bedroom wall one summer.
There was an opening in the woods close to him. He covered his mouth and nose to breathe through his shirt, and snuck closer.
There was a flashlight being held by a strange man who was groaning. "I can't believe this. The boss is going to have our asses! This is the third time in a row! You couldn’t have left at least one of them alive?! We can't go back empty-handed this time, and where the hell are we going to find more at this hour?"
There was a growling followed by a wet ripping noise. "I just get so hungry. And they were already bleeding a lot..."
"You damn ghouls and your appetites. I can't believe I have to work with you, could have worked with a shifter, at least then there would be something left for me." Spat the man holding the flashlight aimlessly at the ground.
"Don't get all uppity with me, you damn bloodsucker. That last one wasn't my fault." Another ripping sound followed the comment.
"Fuck off! I only drained her because you said you were bringing the other one back alive!" Flashlight guy made a disgusted sound. "And could you not get entrails everywhere? It's already going to be a bitch to get rid of all this. I'm not helping this time."
Kid froze when the clouds drifted, letting the moon's bright light shine down to fill the clearing, giving him a lot more details than he ever wanted to see.
The other man was crouching on the ground, hovering over something. There was red staining the ground at their feet, a liquid that was pooling thickly as the smell wafted through the woods on the summer night's humid air.
The 'thing' on the ground had a face. A woman's face. Her sightless eyes staring at him in frozen horror.
Right before the crouching man took a bite out of it.
Kid gagged silently before he turned around and started running as quietly as he could back to camp. He had to get to his parents, had to get them away from here.
Then he tripped, falling right into what had to be the driest, loudest, biggest pile of leaves in the woods. The sound echoed through the woods and Kid froze, heart hammering in his chest as he strained his ears to try and see if they had heard him.
When he heard nothing, he stood back up as quietly as he could, wincing at every little sound he made before creeping back to the camp.
When he made it to the clearing, he dove for his parents’ tent, shaking them awake. He tried not to scream when they woke up, looking at him in confusion. His dad went from tired to alert the moment he saw the sheer panic on Kid's face, his mom a quick second.
"Baby, what is it? Why are you covered in leaves?" She wrapped her arms around him and his dad grabbed his gun and left the tent to look around.
Kid could barely speak as he told her what he had seen.
A lot of parents might have said he just had a nightmare or something like that, but his mom wasn't the type to take chances. She just picked him up, slipped on her shoes, and started carrying him to the car, his dad close behind as he opened the door for her, having apparently heard everything. "We're leaving."
"Why? What's the rush?"
Kid wanted to scream when his dad whirled around to aim his gun at the same flashlight wielding man from the clearing.
"There's no need to leave. In fact, I have a great opportunity for you all. Why don't you all just come with me." The man crooned.
It was weird. Kid was scared but he wanted to go over to the man, to follow him wherever he wanted to go. It just terrified him that much more. His mom only held him tighter.
His dad didn't hesitate one second and pulled the trigger, clipping the man in the shoulder.
Kid thought the man should have gone down screaming, but instead he just hissed before looking at them with more consideration.
"Strong minds. Yes, you'll all do nicely." When he moved he appeared almost instantaneously in front of them, Kid's father fired a bullet right between his eyes. Apparently that hurt a lot worse than the shoulder wound had, and the flashlight man started cursing while clutching his face.
" Go , get Kid the hell out of here!"
His mom opened the truck door and shoved him in before racing to the other side to get in. She hesitated for only a second as Kid's dad shot twice more right into the man's face.
She floored it, tearing down the dirt road as fast as the truck could go.
"What about Dad?!" Kid was scared but he didn't want to just leave his father back there with whatever that thing was.
"Your dad can take care of himself." Kid could tell she was saying that for both of their sakes and not just Kid's.
Suddenly an icy chill went through him as he remembered something really important.
"But mom, what about the other one-"
They both screamed when their car was suddenly rammed from the side, forcing them to skid across the road. Kid expected to see another car as the cause, but all he saw was a man in black with a really, really red smile.
"Get out, get out! Go!" His mom quickly shoved him out the other side of the car through the now-busted window just as the red grinning man punched through her own to grab the wheel. She surprised the red smiler by clamping onto his arm and stepping on the gas, putting the drive stick in reverse and taking him with her, and as far away from her son as she could get.
Kid's mind was going in a thousand different directions at once as fear set his heart racing. He didn't want to leave his mom, but he had to try and find help.
He ran through the woods in the direction of the closest town. If he could just get to the sheriff's station –
A blur appeared in front of him and Kid didn't have time to scream when pain bloomed in his head, followed by his vision turning black.
"And baby makes three~ Sleep well, boy. It'll be the last peaceful night of your life. As for me, the Clown should be pleased."
Eight Years later
Law didn’t approve of the jobs Doflamingo had been throwing at him lately. Cora insisted they were important and that Doflamingo was giving him more responsibility than anyone other than himself, but that didn’t make the annoyance of looking over everyone as they chewed their way through an illegal laboratory any less dull. Especially when he wasn’t supposed to join in too much, because he had to supervise them.
Of course, tearing the place into pieces was important, and the following negotiations with any surviving experiments would be important – maybe they would find something worth keeping out of this entire mess.
But it wasn’t as important as going after the brains of the operation and sucking every last drop out of them to send a message.
Law was good at sending messages. Doflamingo should know, he had taught him himself. And he enjoyed it immensely. But instead, he was stuck here, babysitting the attack. It was frustrating.
The first wave hit the main exit points, a barrage of shifters, vampires, and ghouls charging in so fast that a normal eye wouldn’t be able to follow them. All the while, Law stood observing from his perch on the top floor of the adjacent building. He would wait for the first floor to be confirmed cleared before joining in. The basements would, naturally, be where the real fun would begin. The first floor of the place was very nicely isolated for an abandoned building – it was one of the first things that had attracted Doflamingo’s attention.
Law knew when the entrance to the underground facility was opened immediately. The stench that snaked not only out of the basement, but through the whole building and outside where Law waited, was more than enough to have his undead heart pumping with anger. Blood, but old and stale; he could imagine it coating walls and floors, sticky and wasteful.
Law pounced, clearing the space between the buildings in a solid leap to take his place at the fore of the army, gliding in through a window easily and relishing the crash of the glass as it shattered all around him. He could hear fights beginning just a level underneath his feet and slipped through the dark recesses of the building towards the stairs in the middle, leading the second wave of fighters close on his heels.
The second group of fighters, with Doflamingo’s favorite puppy right at the head, dashed past him through the doors that had been torn off of their hinges. The fight was spreading two floors down, now, Law’s awareness of it sharp. He walked at a slower pace than the rest of them, here to ensure things went right rather than to partake in the proceedings, as he made his way to the deepest levels and the, supposedly, most secure place of complex; the laboratory.
All Law could think was how that foolish Clown had only managed to lock himself in a cage .
He proceeded lower, following level after level, yelling at the incompetent morons he was in charge of to keep the experiments alive, goddamn it Pika, I don’t care if it laughed ! He wasn’t sure how Doflamingo had ever allowed such incompetence in the family in the first place.
Some floors down – these smelled of rot, death, metal and dirt and there were fewer fights now, only chains being rattled, screams and howls and cries and pleas echoing off of the stone walls - the air was cold and stale, and gore decorated the walls. Law would feel like scrubbing the underside of his shoes if he ever stepped deeper into them. He supposed there was some use for underlings, after all.
These were the oldest experiments, the one from over eight years ago when all those hikers had disappeared from the reservations in the Southern territories. He supposed there wouldn’t be too many of them left anymore, if the intel on what had been done to them was anywhere close to the truth. The attempts had been so completely foolish and cruel, but they had persisted and learned from their mistakes.
Well, they weren’t going to live through the mistake of incurring Doflamingo’s fury and making him dirty his Family’s hands with a disposal such as this. Law was here to make sure of it.
He was the first to hit the last floor, breaking the necks of two guards before they could even think to attack him. He jumped forward, leaving a shifter severely disoriented while the fight followed him in, most of the upper floors already under their control. He would have to go and sift through the experiments, see which ones could be salvaged, which ones must be... discarded.
But that was for later.
His main priority was beyond the massive heavy iron door, and he could have laughed at Caesar for thinking such a thing could stop any one member of Doflamingo’s family, much less anyone with Doflamingo’s own blood running through their veins.
He unsheathed Kikoku from his back, the sound of metal slipping over metal ringing loud in the confined space. It only took one slash to cut diagonally through the thick door, and Law planted his foot right in the middle of it, sending both heavy pieces crashing against the opposite wall with a fierce kick.
He smelled the gunpowder and oil and the sharp scent of silver in the air a moment before he heard the shot, but it was enough. He ducked under the bullet and shot forward, crashing into the other vampire’s chest and forcing him back into the wall so harshly that it dented. The clown lashed out, throwing Law back a few steps, but Law made sure to grind the pistol into the ground and flatten it under his foot, still hefting his blade.
“If you think this little fortress is enough to challenge the Donquixote Family,” Law grinned wide and dangerous. “You are a bigger fool than I imagined.”
“Shurorororo,” Caesar laughed like he thought he could still walk out of this. Well, he wasn’t being taken down because he was smart, admittedly. “What can you do with that little toy of yours?” He bared his sharp teeth and lunged at Law’s neck, his speed impressive.
But not as impressive as Law’s. He circled out of the attack, before kicking the vampire right into the remnants of the door he had taken down earlier. At that point, he forced the blade through the other man's chest, cutting out a neat square like he had done so many times before, and reaching in to take the beating heart right out of his body.
“I’ll be keeping this,” he declared, and before Caesar could do anything other than twitch, he pulled out a small silver stake and ran it through the organ, paralyzing him completely. While silver was not deadly to vampires as it was to shifters, vampires were a bit weakened by it. Moreover, it was quite impossible to move with anything stuck through your heart, which humans themselves had worked out for themselves hundreds of years ago.
This was so easy it was offensive. He hadn’t even worked up a sweat. And most of the fights on the upper levels had died down already, only a couple of scuffles that Law suspected were the experiments, and not Doflamingo’s people still making a ruckus. He put away the staked heart under his coat, hefted Caesar’s unmoving body over one shoulder and made his way back up, clearing out every floor he passed.
Passing back through the foul smelling room immersed in dried gore, he caught a glimpse of striking red amongst the congealed black covering the walls and floor, but it was gone – off and to the stairs at the other side of the building before he could think to pursue. If it was an experiment, Law figured, someone would catch it.
Right now, he had his own job to do in all of this, and it was taking this lump of sorry flesh off to Doflamingo.
Kid ran, he ran and he didn't stop until he burst out into the cool night air. When someone tried to grab him as he paused, the iron grip crumbled like a tin can in Kid's own vicious hold. A swift movement had the thing's face buried in a cement wall. He would have killed it just for touching him, but he had bigger issues.
The buildings blurred around him as he ran, barefoot and clad only in thin, rough hospital scrub bottoms.
The first uninhabited house he found, he broke in and stole whatever looked like it might fit him. His frame was bare muscle and lacked any fat, leaving him quite emaciated. Even so, clothes didn't fit him, but he found decent shoes.
As he ran through back alleyways, he knocked out the first person who tried to mug him, taking their clothes and money.
Kid had no idea where he was until he found himself at a bus station.
Grand Line City.
Just one city away from home.
Kid had stood there, frozen and uncertain of what he should do. His parents... weren't there, and he couldn't risk going back to his old house.
His answer came to him when he watched a group of friends walk by while playing some kind of video game.
Friends.
Killer .
His mind made up, he bought a ticket for the first bus to South Blue City.
Killer had never exactly forgotten about his childhood best friend. But one could say he had moved on- he had graduated high school, gotten set up in a half-ass decent machine shop to do a job he loved and a second job at a butcher's to pay the bills. He was a fairly well functioning adult (meaning he hadn't caved in any stupid shithead client's skull yet. Yet being the key word. If that dicknugget with the beautiful Indian Panhead brought it in one more time with skid marks...) and even had himself a nice little house with a fully finished basement in it that he had inherited from his parents.
But he hadn't ever forgotten his best friend, the one who went on a camping trip and never came back. The one he had desperately wanted to put off another week so he could bring Killer along. No, he had never forgotten that, and somehow the guilt had stayed with him. Kid had been his best friend- he should have been there. Even if a skinny little shit of a twelve-year-old would have been able to do jack-all against whatever had taken out Kid's battle-proven Marine father.
That guilt made him leave the back door unlocked. It didn't matter if the neighborhood was getting a little shifty, he never could lock it. It was like he was still waiting for Kid to slink in the back door hiding his bloody nose, or split knuckles, wanting to clean up at Killer's before he went home so he would avoid the scolding his dad always gave him for brawling, just the same as always. He knew it wouldn't happen, but....
When Kid arrived at the family home of the Soldiers, the back door was just as unlocked as he had always remembered it being.
Kid had been a nervous wreck the whole trip to his old neighborhood. Every change he encountered was like a slap in the face, and the things that had remained the same brought little comfort.
And there was that familiar pain in his stomach. At the moment it was bearable, but he was used to being fed the medication that kept him and his hunger in check around this time.
He just hoped he could make it to Killer in time.
He firmly crushed the fear that his friend might not even be there anymore.
He had to be.
So when he got to a familiar old house and saw that old motorcycle in the backyard, he almost cried with relief.
Swallowing his emotions, Kid stumbled up the back porch and knocked.
The door swung open- Killer had never fixed the shitty latch on it- and the smell of raw meat wafted out to him. Killer had left a pot roast on the counter, probably planning to make it for dinner. At the moment, Kid could hear his friend in his bedroom on the upper floor, and, though he had heard the knock, was taking his time. Likely setting aside whatever invention he was tinkering with. After all, whoever it was, they could let themselves in.
Kid felt his stomach clench painfully at the smell.
It was like he blinked and just lost time. One moment he was standing in the doorway, the next he had both hands buried in the meat, tearing it apart and stuffing it into his mouth.
The taste made him frown. It tasted old, almost inedible. He wanted... fresh , but this would have to do for now.
By the time he heard a creak of a floorboard in the hallway leading to the kitchen, he had already devoured most of the roast.
"Oi, who is it? Wire, I swear if you're trying to 'fix' my cooking again I'll whap you with the newspaper," Killer called, still taking his damn sweet time as he meandered through the hall. He could hear… weird sounds in the kitchen, and frowned as he came up to the doorway.
"....Kid?"
Kid had the bloody meat hanging out of his mouth as he looked up and he froze.
He honestly hadn't thought things through this far. Kid had been so focused on getting somewhere safe and familiar that he hadn't stopped to think about the consequences of his sudden reappearance.
He covered his mouth as the meat disappeared into it.
"Killer...."
He wanted to rub his eyes, but he knew it wouldn't erase what he had just seen. Kid, alive and... maybe not well, because he had eaten the entire pot roast, all two pounds of it... raw. But alive.
"Um... you might wanna clean up," he offered, pointing toward the sink.
Kid moved like a skittish animal, slowly wiping his face dry with a hand towel after scrubbing it with warm water.
His hands were shaky as he tried to think of something to say. Eight years in 'hell' had done a number on any social skills he used to have.
"Um..."
"I'm glad you're alive," Killer offered. "Wire and me, we got the whole crew together. Searched every inch of those god-forsaken woods, along with the police. We, uh, never turned up anything. So... I'm glad you're back."
What else was he supposed to say? Kid had been taken, hidden away somewhere he couldn't find, and obviously something terrible had been done to him. He didn't know what and though he wanted to ask, he was 99% sure Kid didn't want to think about it, or talk about it, or admit it happened to him.
So he would pretend he didn't even want to know, and ask no questions that weren't really important.
Kid managed to relax minutely. He hesitated only for a moment before he took a few steps forward, then awkwardly hugged his best friend.
He shook as he tried to repress everything, but a few tears still made it out. He buried his face in Killer's neck and let it sink in at last. He was out.
He was free.
"I missed you..." He choked out. " They're dead... my parents are dead. They didn't make it."
Killer wrapped his arms around him, strong and warm and smelling like safety and pack and home . "I'm not surprised, Kid. I knew that if anyone ever wanted t'hurt you, they'd have to go through both yer parents first. But I'm sorry, Kid. They'll pay fer it, an' hard. I promise you," he rumbled, folding him in as best he could. He was still taller, though not broader. And Kid was his best friend.
Any hesitancy and anxiousness melted away the longer Killer held onto him. He didn't ever want to let go again, but they had other things to do for now.
"Killer... I can't explain everything yet. But... Do you believe in monsters?"
He pulled back just enough to lift his bangs so Kid could see him raise his eyebrow as high as it would go. "Kid, you just ate two fucking pounds of raw meat I was gonna make for dinner. If that ain't some inhuman shit, I'm a goddamn talking monkey."
Kid actually smiled for the first time in years at Killer's small joke.
It was good to be home.
Some time later found them sitting at the table in the kitchen, Kid clutching a warm mug of hot cocoa as he moved his little finger over a scar in the wood that he himself had made as a boy. He smiled faintly at the memory of him and Killer fighting over the last pancake and Kid accidentally stabbing the table as Killer ate the pancake, mocking Kid's defeat.
He had told Killer everything.
At least what he knew and could remember. The constant flow of drugs and surgeries had fucked with his memory so many times it was hard to tell what had actually happened and what was just a nightmare.
He told Killer about how he and his parents had been taken. How they had been brought to some research compound run by monsters.
How he had watched his mother die when her body could not keep up with the changes being made to it.
How his father had been mutated until his mind was erased.
And now, how his own body had undergone so many changes he honestly didn't know if he even counted as 'human' anymore.
Kid avoided bringing up the experiments themselves and he made it clear he wasn't up to talking about it either.
"Then just last night something happened. Some other group attacked the compound. Sometime during the fight a lot of us got free. I got the hell out while I could. Came here..." Kid shifted in his seat. "And now... I have a problem."
Killer reached over the table to take his hand and squeeze it. "Yeah, Cap, you sound like you got a whole fuckin' bushel full'uv'em. But we'll get ya through it. Jus' tell me what'cha need."
"I need you to chain me up in the basement." Kid said stiffly. "What they did to me… there's a lot of… side effects . The meat thing. Animal meat is fine for now, but… it's not what I- what my body needs. They gave me pills to suppress it, but I don't have those anymore."
Killer gave his hand another squeeze. "Um… all the time? Or just… until you get a handle on it?" He didn't like the idea of chaining his friend up in the basement, but if he had to, he would. But he would like it a whole lot better if it was only temporary.
"I don't know…” Kid carefully squeezed his friend's hand, more out of the need to comfort himself. "I think I'll be alright for a day or so, with fresh animal meat."
Killer grinned. "Now that, that I can supply. I work for a butcher on nights. I can slaughter the damn cow or chicken and bring it straight home," he promised him, using his other hand to cover Kid's in his. "We'll make it work, Kid. We'll figure things out."
Law stormed through the mansion, family members freeing a path at the sight of the potent fury burning in his eyes. He was just about ready to tear heads off if he ever discovered who had messed up his job so completely. Doflamingo wouldn’t approve, but fucking damn it, he was beyond pissed . It was probably good he didn’t know who exactly was to blame for this.
He crashed the door to Doflamingo’s office open and stormed inside, throwing a wad of clipped together papers on the desk in front of the older vampire.
“They are incompetent,” he hissed out, fighting to hold back the chilling growl that was building up his throat for long enough to explain. “I set up a number of them to keep watch for a reason!” He stalked back and forth through the wide expanse of the office. “There was an actual success. Part vampire, part ghoul, part shifter. Can you imagine a creature like that? And your incompetent followers let it escape.”
He had been going through all the information they had recovered from the lab after Caesar’s retrieval. As the original intel had hinted, most of their attempts had ended badly, or worse, but there had been one, barely a child when he had been taken, that had survived through the complete transformation. He had even kept his mind. And after looking through every mention of an experiment during the raid, both questioned and killed, he had discovered this one was missing .
There was nothing that riled him up as much as incompetence. Especially when it made him look bad; because this had been his goddamn job, the responsibility Doflamingo had given to him, and now he had messed it up because someone couldn’t do as they were told.
Doflamingo took up the papers, one eyebrow popping up as he rifled through it, reading faster than a human could comprehend.
Then he frowned.
"This is someone stronger than your typical grunt, Law. It would take someone of your level at least to restrain anyone this dangerous."
He laid it down open to the page with the subject photographs, a powerful, badly scarred male with hair so red it was like a living flame. His muscles were a thing of beauty- and lethality.
"It's far more likely he overpowered whoever discovered him or impeded his escape, rather than a simple failure of incompetence. We took some losses on this raid, and I wouldn't be surprised if he was accountable for some of them.”
Law took a deep breath, forcing his anger down. He wanted to argue – god, he wanted to rip whoever let this happen to shreds, but he knew well enough that the moment losses in the family came up, there was no winning against Doflamingo.
Besides, there was truth to what he was saying and it was itching under Law’s skin, a sharp sense of dissatisfaction, and dare he say it – failure. He had relied too much on the earlier gathered intel, made too many assumptions and decided Caesar couldn’t have possibly succeeded, so there was no need to waste any of the stronger fighters on controlling the experiments. In the core of it all, this was his mistake and that made him angrier than anything else. But it was an inward anger, one that couldn’t really be released against the outside world, because it wouldn’t make a difference.
He crossed his arms, as if he needed the barrier to hold the emotions back, and turned towards Doflamingo once more, looking less feral.
“What do we do with him, then?” He asked, the rational part of his mind that knew how to solve problems coming back to him at the retreat of the anger. “We cannot allow something like that to run loose. We need to hunt him down, see if he can be reasoned with.”
Don steepled his fingers, brow furrowing as he considered. "Mmmm. You are right, we can't just let him run around loose. I'm sure they never taught him how to control himself, likely even encouraged him to give in to his basest, most violent instincts. But if he's kept his mind as these records claimed, and I think he has, he won't want to be the monster of destruction they were trying to force him to become. He'll resist as hard as he can, but he won't know how to really tamp down his urges. That medication they were giving him to suppress it for him...."
He took a deep whiff of the paperwork; a scent sample had been included and he could taste the stink of strong chemical medicine.
"Ugh! If we put some of this out as bait, he should come running. He'll know this keeps him sane, and he'll want it. Take some and go Hunting, my fledge… check back alleys and the fresh corpses of the streets, such as drug deals gone sour and gang wars come to a head. It's as close as he can get to the fresh meat they've been feeding him without murdering anyone himself," he instructed, removing a jar of the medication to hand to Law. God fucking christ it stank! Eustass Kid would be able to track the scent for a goddamn mile with the Shifter’s nose he had.
Law’s eye lingered on the picture in the open file, thoughts fleeting back to that flash of red that had caught his eye on his way out of the lower levels. If only the man had run towards him , they’d probably have him already, one way or the other. Someone like him would be too valuable to just kill. But in all likelihood, he was also too dangerous to be left on his own. Unsupervised, uncontrolled… it would be only a matter of time before his human morals crumbled and he went on a killing spree if left to his own devices.
Law found the idea of it very distasteful. He didn’t want to put this man down.
So it was time for a hunt. Well, that suited him just fine.
He took the medicine and made sure the lid was cracked to ensure Eustass would be able to smell it from afar. While Law could recognize the smell as very strong, it luckily didn’t bother him too much. He had spent far too much time around hospitals and medications during his meager human life, and also later during his extended studies, to find this kind of chemical smell offensive.
“I’ll have him back here in no time,” he smiled, turned and walked out of the office much calmer than he had been stepping in. Law didn’t bother with addressing anyone on his way out of the mansion, and let his predatory instincts lead him into the deep of the night beyond it.