Chapter Text
The chains rattled as they shoved him through the gates.
He knew this place. Two years ago, he'd broken in here to save Ace. He'd run through these same corridors, fought and even laughed despite everything. Back then, he was the one doing the breaking in.
Now he was the one being dragged inside. The thick, heavy air hit him, but the muzzle dulled most of it.
They’d put that thing on him for transport. Six hours ago. A leather mask pulled tight, steel locking his jaw and too many straps to count. The thing inside forced his tongue down and held it there.
Six hours of breathing through tiny slits. Of saliva pooling in the back of his throat because he couldn’t swallow properly. Of his jaw screaming, forced open at a fixed angle.
He tried to breathe.
Air seeped in through the small holes near his nose. It was shallow, warm and barely enough. His own breath came back at him. Every inhale felt like pulling glass through his lungs.
By the time the scent of salt, iron, and something sour reached him, it was faint…
Not because it wasn’t there, but because he couldn’t draw in enough air to notice.
He saw no familiar faces. No Magellan and no Hannyabal. He'd heard Magellan had been stripped of his title after the mass breakout, shuffled off to some back office doing paperwork.
Served him right.
But Hannyabal was Chief Warden now.
Shouldn't he be here, puffing out his chest and showing off his new title?
The Marine who’d led the transport walked ahead of him: Chasezet. Or “Cheesehead,” as Luffy had started calling him, mostly because it made that vein in his temple twitch. He was still walking in front now, though not as steady as before. One step hit harder than the other, just slightly off and every few seconds a quiet curse slipped through his teeth.
Luffy knew why.
Even so, his shoulders stayed stiff, his back straight, like he still owned the place. Maybe he did.
After a week in this man’s custody, Luffy knew one thing for sure: he really, really hated him.
The seastone cuffs burned cold against his wrists pulling at something deep inside him until even standing felt like climbing a mountain. His hands were locked behind his back, a chain running from the muzzle down to the cuffs. More chains had been added for the transport and the short length between his ankles turned every step into a shuffle.
A guard shoved him between the shoulder blades. "Keep moving."
Luffy stumbled into an enormous room and went still.
It wasn't a cell. It was a massive basin of steel, filled with water that bubbled and steamed like it was alive. He remembered this part. The "cleansing bath." When he'd broken in two years ago, he'd seen prisoners being dragged through here. He'd heard the echoes of screaming through the corridors. He hadn't fully believed how bad it was.
He'd been wrong.
They didn't bother removing the cuffs. Or the muzzle. Or even the striped prison uniform they'd forced him into before the trial. Two guards grabbed his arms while a third hooked a chain to a latch above him. The pulley groaned.
He was lifted off the ground and without warning, dropped straight into the boiling water.
Pain exploded everywhere. His muscles screamed. The water bit into every cut, every bruise, every raw patch on his wrists and ankles. He caught the smell of scorched rubber and realized with a jolt that it was his own skin. He tried to breathe but the muzzle let in nothing but steam. His lungs felt like they were on fire. He wanted to scream but the silicone shoved the sound back down his throat.
He didn't scream anyway.
Ace hadn't screamed.
He didn't know how long they left him in. Far too long.
When they finally hauled him out, water streamed off his body and the cold air hit his raw skin like needles. His legs gave out and he hit the floor hard.
“Get up.”
He didn’t move. A boot pressed into his back. “I said get up, pirate.”
Tch. Like “pirate” was something dirty.
Getting up was harder when your arms were pinned behind you, Luffy discovered. He forced himself to his knees with his body shaking. That seemed good enough for them.
They dragged him into the next room with stone and steel and no windows. His wrists were unshackled from behind his back and for the first time in hours, he could lift his head without tearing his shoulders apart.
Better… almost free.
In the center of the room stood a heavy chair, bolted to the floor like the one from the trial, with iron rings on the armrests.
He didn't move toward it.
He pulled back before they even reached it. Both heels digging in. His whole body weight going backwards. The guards on his arms stumbled one step before tightening their grip.
He twisted left. Got halfway free on one side.
One of the guards mumbled something to the other. Three more came through the door before he'd finished the second step.
He still tried. Because he was Luffy and that was the only thing he knew how to do, but there were too many hands and too much seastone. They forced him into the chair anyway.
They pulled his right arm flat against the armrest, palm up, exposing the inside of his arm. A strap tightened before he could pull back.
He looked up and saw it.
A brazier full of glowing embers. A red-hot branding iron lying inside it. Next to it a needle and ink.
No.
Not on my skin.
He pulled against the strap once, but it didn't move.
Gramps had warned him about this before the transport. All prisoners received the mark now, after the breakout two years ago. He'd known it was coming.
Knowing didn't help.
When they pressed it to the inside of his forearm the smell reached him first. Scorched rubber skin. His skin. Then the pain caught up. He bit down hard behind the muzzle, his body jerking once before he forced himself still. His vision flashed white. When it cleared, smoke curled from the mark on his arm.
He didn't look at it. Looking at it would make it real.
Before he could even process it, they were already tattooing something beneath it. A needle dragging through his skin, painful and precise. He felt it down to his nerves.
Then the chip. A thick needle pushed beneath the skin of his forearm.
Go away. Don't.
He tried to pull away but it was useless. The urge to scream rose in his throat and hit the muzzle and went nowhere. A low, muffled sound forced its way out of him anyway, but it was more a strangled groan than a scream.
They'll always know where I am.
All he could do was stare at the ceiling and wait for it to be over.
More prisoners were processed around him. He was vaguely aware of them, but heard the boots, chains and low voices trying not to break. He didn’t look. Didn’t have the energy.
Then a voice cut through.
“Please.” A ragged voice. “I have a family… I need to go home.”
Luffy kept his eyes on the ceiling.
“Shut it,” a guard said.
“My kids... they’re waiting... please...”
The voice sounded broken and desperate.
I get it. I want to go home too.
Luffy didn’t move. Couldn’t, even if he wanted to. Then, from somewhere to his left, came the hiss of a branding iron pressed against skin and a scream tore through the room. It sounded high and completely uncontrolled.
He tried to ignore the other prisoners and kept staring at the ceiling.
Then, finally, they removed his muzzle.
The leather peeled away from his face, taking small patches of raw skin with it. His jaw dropped open, aching from hours of being forced into one position. He coughed. It came out weak and ragged. Then he dragged in a long and full breath.
It felt like the first real breath in six hours.
“About time,” he rasped. His voice sounded like he’d swallowed sand from the desert of Alabasta.
The guards ignored him and hauled him out of the chair and cuffed his wrists in front of his body.
Fingerprints came next. They pressed his hands into black ink, then onto paper. The ink was cold and sticky. He stared at his own prints for a second.
045629. That's what they called him now. Not Luffy, not Straw Hat. Not even pirate. Just a number.
He'd had worse nicknames.
Then the camera. A Den Den Mushi sat on the table, blinking lazily. One of the guards shoved a wooden board against his chest.
IMPEL DOWN – MONKEY D. LUFFY – 045629
He frowned at it. "You want me to smile too?"
"Shut up and hold still."
The Den Den Mushi clicked twice. He caught a glimpse of himself in one of the polished metal plates bolted to the wall. Hair wet and plastered to his face. Dark shadows under his eyes. That same stubborn look he'd always had.
He looked tired. Older, maybe. But his eyes were the same.
They hadn't gotten those yet.
Then came the questions.
Name?
He said nothing at first.
They wanted him to shut up? Fine.
The guards didn't like that. A rifle butt slammed onto the table beside him and the papers rattled.
"Answer when spoken to, prisoner."
He sighed. "...Okay."
Name? "Monkey D. Luffy."
Age? "Nineteen."
Place of origin? "Foosha Village. East Blue."
They measured his height. Five foot nine. They weighed him. One hundred and twenty-one pounds. One of the guards frowned. "Underweight."
He shrugged. "Haven't eaten much."
Eye color? "Dark brown? Almost black."
Hair color? "Black."
Identifying features? He nodded toward the scar beneath his eye, then awkwardly tried to tug his striped shirt up with his cuffed hands, exposing the large X across his chest. “Those enough for you?”
Injuries or disabilities? A guard tapped his boot against Luffy's leg. Exactly where the bullet wound was. He hissed.
"Gunshot wound," he muttered. He thought briefly of the moment Chasezet had fired point-blank into his thigh with a seastone round. The bullet had gone straight through. He still wasn't used to that.
Blood type? He blinked. "Don't know."
The guard stared. "How do you not know your own blood type?"
He gave a small grin and shrugged again.
There was a brief argument before they decided to take a sample anyway. A grey-skinned doctor came in, with a permanent frown. The needle went into his arm without warning. He pulled out a vial, labeled it. "Type F."
Then he crouched and pressed carefully around the wound on his thigh, where dried blood had stiffened the uniform. "Gunshot," he said flatly.
"Infected. Reopened afterward?"
Luffy glanced at his leg. There was definitely dried blood on the fabric. He hissed between his teeth. "Yeah. Cheesehead's got bad aim."
The doctor ignored him and gave him one final antibiotic injection. Then he bandaged his leg roughly. Much less careful than the other doctor Quen had been back at Enies Lobby. He wasn't surprised.
Allergies? He grinned weakly. “Rules, the government and Marines I don’t like.”
The guard didn't look amused. "Not funny."
Any known associates or family? He went still. "That's none of your business."
Combat experience? He smiled. "Enough."
They didn't ask about his Devil Fruit. Everyone already knew.
When the forms were finished, one of the officers began reading regulations aloud. "Confinement is absolute. No outside contact permitted. No surface access. Two meals per day. One hygiene period per month. No physical privileges. Understood?"
Two meals.
His stomach already felt like it was eating itself.
That was a problem.
A big one.
"...Hope it's meat," he muttered.
The officer stared at him, waiting, but Luffy didn’t move. Didn’t say anything.
That seemed to annoy him.
Chasezet stepped forward one last time. "Enjoy your stay, Straw Hat," he said calmly. "Level Six is... permanent."
Luffy didn't answer. He just raised his eyes and met the man's gaze. No smile this time. Just that steady, burning promise. The kind that chains couldn't touch.
The steel door hissed shut. Chasezet lingered in the doorway, arms crossed. "We'll see each other again, Straw Hat."
Please, stay away.
Luffy tilted his head, his mouth pulling into something that might have been a smile. "Good. Then you can watch me leave."
For the first time, something shifted in the man's expression. Just a flicker of irritation. Then he turned and walked, or rather limped away. Luffy couldn't hold a chuckle. Then the door slammed shut and somewhere far below, an elevator began its descent toward Level Six.
The elevator dropped and kept dropping.
With every floor, the air grew heavier, taking on the smell of rust and mold. With every jolt, the seastone rattled against his skin.
For the first time, his gaze drifted to the brand on his arm. It was the mark of Impel Down, his prison number under it. It looked raw and red.
Burned into the skin. Yeah… not coming off.
He looked away again.
Cannot change it now.
Memories came without asking. Jinbei, Crocodile, Bon-chan, Ivankov. Last time he'd been here, the whole place had been chaos. There was noise, running and fighting and something that still felt like life, even at its worst. He'd torn through every level with one name in his head and nothing else. Now there was just the hum of the elevator going down.
And silence.
Same place, but different.
"Tch." he said. "Smells worse than Magellan's insides after a bad meal."
One of the guards snorted, but said nothing.
The elevator came to a stop and the doors creaked open. Rows of cells stretched along a long corridor, the floor dark and wet.
Torches burned along the walls, their flames weak, flickering like they were about to go out.
The air smelled like sweat, mold, and something rotten that had been there a long time.
He walked, but they didn't give him a choice. The guards dragged him along at their pace.
As they walked past, he glanced into the cells.
Shadows sat in the dark. Some barely looked human anymore.
One man had his face pressed against the bars, eyes wide, staring at nothing. Another sat in the corner, completely still, only his chest rising and falling. In a third cell, a woman muttered to herself, but it didn’t sound like words.
How long have they been here?
“Hey,” he said, quiet. “How long do people end up staying down here?”
The guard shrugged without looking at him. “Depends how long they last. Some a few months, a year, a few years… some? Until they die, but time stops meaning anything this far down."
Luffy didn't say anything after that.
He glanced at another cell. A man against the far wall with his knees up. Staring at the same patch of stone he'd probably been staring at for years.
I'm not doing that. I don't care what else happens, but I'm not just sitting.
They kept walking and Luffy sighed.
"You know, I actually don't have time for this." He said it like he was turning down an invitation. "I still have to find the One Piece."
The guards looked at him like he'd said it in a language they didn't recognize. One rolled his eyes. The other shook his head slowly and kept walking.
Then the air changed.
It didn't just get colder, but somehow emptier. Like the warmth was being pulled out of it before it could reach him. At the far end of the corridor, a tall, thin man walked toward them. He had a black coat and greyish hair. His eyes were like stones dropped at the bottom of water. The torches dimmed as he passed, their flames shrinking back from him like they knew something. Every prisoner in every cell went quiet. Even the guards straightened without seeming to realize they were doing it.
One of them whispered: "Director Talgera Morn."
As he passed, Luffy felt it. Something pressing against his chest. It was invisible, but it was squeezing the air out of him from the inside. His heartbeat slowed, his thoughts blurred at the edges and reached for something warm. The Sunny's deck, meat on a fire, Nami yelling at him, the sound of the ocean and all of it felt suddenly far away. He couldn't reach it anymore. It was like he could not be happy again.
What the hell is wrong with that guy.
A guard muttered beside him, barely loud enough to hear: "That's why nobody laughs down here."
Morn didn't look at him. Didn't slow down. He passed and whatever warmth was left in the corridor went with him like it had never been there.
When he was gone, Luffy stood very still for a moment. Then the air felt like air again.
They kept walking until they stopped at the end of the row.
"Your cell," the guard said. Grinning like it was the punchline to something.
Your cell.
The words felt strange.
The bars were thick and not just vertical but horizontal too, a grid of heavy iron making small squares. He found himself measuring them automatically.
Could I fit through one of those? Maybe without the cuffs. Maybe if...
His thoughts stopped. The seastone wouldn’t let him.
He looked through the bars instead. It was worse than he'd expected.
The cell was small. The floor was slick with damp and rot, water pooling in the low spots. The walls were dark stone, cracked down the middle, crawling with mold along every seam.
There was no bed or even a blanket, no basin, no window. There was nothing. He saw just a small hole cut into one corner of the floor and a single iron ring bolted into the ground with a heavy chain attached to it.
Even the torch outside looked tired.
He stood there. Scanned it once or twice.
"...Think I'd sleep better on the Sunny," he said, shrugging. "Way better."
The guards ignored him. They pushed him inside and his bare feet hit the wet stone. The cold went straight through his skin. The smell hit him properly now. It was rust, old blood and something he chose not to think about too hard.
He looked at the iron ring. The chain coiled around it and then he saw it.
Half-buried in the filth at the base of the ring. A broken shackle. And inside it, the jagged remains of a foot bone.
The guards paused.
"Damn it." One of them swore quietly. "They still haven't cleaned this one out?"
"Does it matter?" the other said, a faint grin on his face. "He's got company."
They left it where it was. Like it was nothing. Like someone had died in this cell and that was just part of the cell now.
"So what's that for?" he asked, pointing to the hole in the corner.
The guards exchanged a look. One grinned. "That's where you shit and piss, pirate. Miss, and you sleep in it."
He blinked. "Oh."
The guard laughed.
They grabbed his arms and moved him toward the anchor point. Luffy looked at the chain, then at the seastone cuffs already locked to his wrists, then at the dripping stone walls on every side.
"Is this really necessary?" he asked. "Does it look like I'm going anywhere?"
"Procedure," the guard said flatly. "Everyone goes on the chain."
They yanked his arms down, chaining his handcuffs to the ring and doing the same with his ankle cuffs. The chain wasn’t more than two meters long. The guard checked everything, gave the chain a sharp tug and grinned.
"All tight. Sleep well, Straw Hat."
Luffy said nothing. Just glared at him, that same stubborn glint still in his eyes, even now, even after all of it. Without thinking, he gave the chain a tug and immediately felt how heavy it was.
The guard laughed on his way out.
The cell door slammed. The sound rang through the corridor and kept going, echoing off stone until it finally faded into nothing.
Luffy stayed still for a moment, the weight of the chain pulling at his arms and ankles. He looked at the bars, the floor and the weak flicker of the torch outside.
Then he sat down. The stone was cold and his stomach growled once.
He stared at the dark until he couldn't tell it apart from the inside of his own head.
A week ago he'd been eating dinner with a kid and her mother.
He felt a tightness in his chest. Not the seastone. Something else. In the silence, it started to sink in.
This is real. This is happening. And nobody is coming tonight.
He breathed in through his nose.
Tomorrow maybe. Or next week, but they'll come.
His eyes moved to the bone beside him. The broken shackle. The quiet proof of how this place ended people.
I will not become that.
He whispered to the bone "Look like you had a rough time. I wonder how long."
Of course it didn't answer.
He looked down at the brand on his forearm. It was dark, but he could still see it and the number beneath it.
045629.
That's what they think I am, but they're wrong.
He closed his eyes and his stomach growled again.
Still gotta eat though.
Then he said quiet, to no one:
"...I'm getting out."
It was a promise.