A Force Against Inertia - Chapter 19
Title: A Force Against Inertia
Chapters: Prologue + 19 Chapters
Rating: R
Pairings: None, future installments will have pairings
Summary: Tesla decides he hasn't taken enough from Sanji and Nami. Before it's taken away, Nami and Sanji have something to say to each other.
A Force Against Inertia
By Dixxy Mouri
Chapter 19
“Well, Captain?” Tesla had called Curie into his office
“The subjects have been a little more resistant as of late,” said Tesla. He placed his glass on the railing. “My guess is that little chat she had with her captain has raised 0543’s spirits, and I believe she shared this with 0544. Now, granted, they aren’t as poorly behaved as they were when we first acquired them back in February, but 0543 has been snapping at the men whenever they use her number. 0544 started up again with that recently as well.”
Curie sighed. “That is annoying. But could it hurt the results?”
“That is what I am concerned with. As long as they continue resisting us, it runs the risk that they escape - even if it’s just a little walk around the ship like 0543 seemed to think it was all right to take, it could still interfere with our timeline.” Tesla put his hands together and closed his eyes. “We need to kill their hope.”
“And how do you plan on doing that, Dr. Tesla?” asked Curie.
Tesla explained his plan to Curie. She agreed, and they started figuring out the finer details.
Not long after contact with Luffy had been made, Sanji and Nami were brought to the room where they’d initially been force fed their Devil Fruits after the day’s experimenting was over. They looked around, almost able to see themselves so many months earlier, still able to swim, still thinking the ordeal might last a day or two at the most, still their old selves. They were forced to sit down and were strapped in, and then they were left alone.
“What are they doing to us now, Nami-san?” asked Sanji.
“I don’t know, Sanji-kun.”
The door opened and Tesla and Curie came in. The two scientists sat across from them in much more comfortable looking chairs, Curie holding a clip board and Tesla holding two small black boxes they both recognized: the devices that controlled their shock collars. They both sat up straight, as if this was somehow going to deter Tesla from hurting them.
“I thought this was the best room to conduct this procedure in,” said Tesla. He crossed his legs and put the controllers on the arm of the chair. Sanji and Nami relaxed for the moment. “The moment you stepped onto my ship, you ceased to be the people you were before. You are no longer Black Leg Sanji and you are no longer Cat Burglar Nami.”
“Screw you ! Luffy’s coming for us! He knows we’re alive and he knows you have us!” Nami said.
“Luffy’s probably really pissed by now - when he finds you there won’t be anything left of you or this ship!” said Sanji. He grinned. “He hasn’t found us because he hasn’t had a lead to go on. But he’s got your name, and now our whole crew is going to be after your head! You have no idea what it means to mess with the Straw Hat Pirates!”
“And this is where the problem lies. You’re still insisting after all these months that your captain is going to rescue you, and that your names are Sanji and Nami,” said Curie. “What you fail to realize is that it’s been nearly eleven months since your capture and two and a half months since that pitiful cry for help. No one’s going to come for you, and you don’t need names here. You are 0543 and 0544.”
“SHUT UP!” Sanji screamed. Tesla reached for the controller and pressed the button. Nami screamed as Sanji was shocked beside her, watching him in terror. The shock stopped, and Sanji was left breathing heavily in his seat, coughing and looking weak. Nami slowly turned her attention to Tesla and Curie, wondering what they wanted.
Tesla looked Nami in the eye. “Who are you? What is your name?”
“Nami,” she said. Tesla pressed the button. Nami felt the jolts of electricity race through her body - she shook violently in her seat, her wrists banging into the seastone cuffs and her heart racing. She screamed until the paint stopped and she was left feeling weak and tired in her chair, on the verge of tears.
Tesla asked Sanji the same question. He responded with his name, and Tesla pressed the button.
They were returned to the holding cell hours later. Neither of them could move, although every so often one or the other would twitch. They were laid out on the benches across from each other, and it was a struggle for them to turn onto their sides to face each other. “I can’t believe he’s doing this.” Sanji felt his body shake, rattling his body against the cold metal of the bench.
Nami looked at Sanji with tears in her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Sanji-kun,” she whispered. Sanji looked at her in confusion. She sniffled, feeling herself start to cry. Sanji wanted to go to her, but the shock treatments made his body ache too much. “This is all my fault. I’m so sorry. This shouldn’t be happening to us . . . I’m sorry. Please forgive me.”
“Nami-san, I thought we agreed we weren’t going to blame each other or ourselves-“
“No. I’m not talking about Tesla catching us in the first place.”
The cook looked at her, asking silently.
Nami clenched her eyes shut. “Remember when I called Luffy?”
Sanji felt his stomach knot. “What about it?”
“I . . . I argued with Tesla when he called me the number. He’s doing this because of me.”
Sanji’s eyes widened. “You think he’s mad,” he said.
“What else can he take from us?” she sobbed. “Our health, our ability to swim, our friends, our freedom . . . now he wants our names, too? He can’t even let us have that?” Nami held herself. “I really fucked up. I just . . . I just lost it.”
“We can defend our names. I don’t want to lose mine, either,” said Sanji. He closed his eyes. “I might have done the same thing in your position. Please, don’t blame yourself. I’m not mad.” He shook his head. “I’m not mad, Nami-san. We just . . . we don’t let him win. He’ll give up eventually with this whole . . . number shit. He’s got to.”
The following day was much like the first. The scientists started off with the normal experimental routine before returning them to the room where they had been force fed and now shock treated. Nami looked at Sanji with an anxious look in her eyes. Sanji returned the look, wondering what she was getting at.
“If it means we don’t get this anymore . . . should we just tell them our numbers when they ask who we are?” asked Nami. Sanji frowned and Nami closed her eyes. “Just for show around them. In the cell we can still use our names. It’ll get him to stop. I don’t know about you but anything I can do to better my situation right now seems really appealing.”
“I see what you’re getting at, but I don’t like having to sacrifice my dignity for personal comfort.”
“What dignity and what personal comfort are you talking about?” Nami said dryly.
Sanji sighed - she had a point. “Luffy knows who has us now. It should be any day now.”
“Right. It’s just for a little while. Then we can use our names as much as we want,” said Nami.
Tesla and Curie walked in and sat across from them. “We’re going to take the therapy in a different direction today,” said the captain. He looked at Nami in the eye, held up the remote, and spoke. “Nami.” He pressed the button and sent shockwaves through her body. She screamed, and realized the flaw in her plan.
I can’t stop him from using my own name against me . . . oh God . . . what’s going to happen now?
It was the end of the ninth day of the shock treatment. Tesla had shifted gears slowly over time until the only thing they were doing was the systematic removal of their given names during the course of a day. They couldn’t say their own names anymore, and they wondered how long it would be before they wouldn’t be able to say the other’s name.
Somehow, they’d gotten on the floor after being dumped on the benches again and were lying a few feet apart. Their breathing was quick and deep, and they were mouthing each other’s names to each other, trying to savor the sensation for as long as they could. If Luffy didn’t show up soon, Tesla would take their names from them.
Nami reached her hand and arm out towards Sanji. Even if Tesla took her name and Sanji’s name from them, she had to say something before it happened. Sanji looked at her with tired, sad eyes as he grasped her hand, and she felt her eyes beginning to tear up. “Sanji-kun . . . you’re my best friend, you know that, right?” She squeezed his hand tightly and felt him squeeze back. “You’re the only friend I have in the world anymore, and I wanted to make sure you heard that before something happens. I love you.”
He couldn’t believe his ears. “ . . . what?” She was saying what now?
She almost scowled at him, then shook her head. “No matter how much they try to destroy us, some things don’t change so easily, do they?” Nami opened her eyes. “Not like a lover - it’s platonic. Idiot.” Sanji smiled weakly in return.
“It’s been a long time since you’ve called me an idiot. It was kind of nice to hear it.”
“I could never go back to yelling and screaming at you like I used to.”
“I could never go back to looking at you like a hungry dog outside a butcher shop like I used to.”
Nami felt her voice starting to crack. “Even if we were to escape now . . . even if Luffy were to burst through that door right now and everyone followed us and brought us back to the ship . . . we’re never going to go back to the way we were, are we?” She clenched her eyes shut. “Parts of us really have died. Haven’t they?”
Sanji swallowed, fighting back his own tears. “He hadn’t killed us completely. Not yet.” He paused, then squeezed her hand. “Nami-san, you’re my best friend and I love you, too.” He closed his eyes and chuckled a little. “Not like a lover. It’s platonic.” Nami smiled at the joke and reached towards his shoulder, gently tapping it with her knuckle. They quietly looked at each other.
Even a failed attempt at normalcy was still a glimpse of the life they once knew.
“We still have each other. Even if we don’t have our names, or our dignity, or anything, we have that much.” Sanji struggled to pull himself towards Nami, and pulled her into an embrace. She rested her head against his collarbone and closed her eyes, savoring one of the last times she’d be able to acknowledge him by his name before Tesla took it away from her.
“I’m here for you, Sanji-kun.”
“I’m here for you, too, Nami-san.”
Nearly two weeks had gone by. The experiments had been all but halted while the shock therapy worked its magic on their subjects. They had yelled their old names at him in the beginning, swearing and trying pathetically to resist. Why they cared so much he didn’t know - it wasn’t as it they would have done anything with their lives, so no one would have remembered who they were anyways, and they were 0543 and 0544 now.
The captain of the science pirates grinned. Really, he was doing them a favor. What would history have remembered them for before? Being pirates? Villains? Now their previously criminal lifestyle would be a mere footnote in textbooks for years to come as students of science learned about what they contributed to the life work of the great scientist Dr. Thomas Tesla.
He had done them a favor.
Tesla walked into the holding cell where he was keeping 0543 and 0544. Curie reported that they had finally had a break through, and he wanted to see for himself. They were sitting side by side on the floor, staring at the door in front of them. He squatted before them, and they slowly looked up at him.
“Tell me,” he said. “What do you call yourselves?”
“0543.” She was staring straight ahead, devoid of any signs of emotion or lip service. Her face was sunken in exhaustion, her eyes struggling to shed tears that would not come. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that last bit of defiance from his female test subject was gone, and he would have no more problems with her trying to call her captain for help to try to fight back against his men.
“And you?” Tesla said, referring to her companion.
“0544.” He said it stoically, his voice filled with defeat and shame. He had had a high, nearly Rookie ranked bounty on his head before, and he had finally been taken down enough pegs. His will to fight back was gone, and he suspected that many of the more cautious scientists would soon cease to double-check his bonds when conducting their research.
Tesla grinned. “Excellent.”
Author’s Note
So. Let's talk about editing.
First of all, one of the two events I spoke of will be delayed at least one or two chapters. Second, there is a STRONG possibility that one of these chapters is going to include something else pretty rough, but not necessarily as bad as what you just read (really, I suppose any of these things I'm thinking of will depend on the individual reader's opinion).
I've been working pretty hard on this story for over a year now, so I'm very concerned with making sure it's done right and that everything I want to include or need to include is included and at that, included well. This goes for the second story as well (the third story is going to rely heavily on the end game of the second story, which I'm still trying to figure out the finer details of). Sometimes this means changing things at the last minute, so I want to apologize for jumping the gun on how the next couple of chapters were going to play out. I think I got overly excited about how close to the end I was but I'm pretty sure that there are still things I need to address before I post the epilogue and start focusing completely on Mass x Acceleration.
I'm not apologizing for the story itself, mind you - I apologizing for the last author's notes and my excessive enthusiasm.
I also wanted to thank you guys for reading, commenting/reviewing, and enjoying what I've written so far and I hope you continue to read and enjoy the story as it approaches its end. I especially want to thank everyone who has done beta work on this story at one time or another (Bronze Tigress, Dandy Wonderous, and ESPECIALLY Triple C, who helped out a LOT during the early planning phases of the story and MishaGirl, who's betaed most of the chapters as they came out and provided more idea bouncing).
-Dixxy
Chapters: Prologue + 19 Chapters
Rating: R
Pairings: None, future installments will have pairings
Summary: Tesla decides he hasn't taken enough from Sanji and Nami. Before it's taken away, Nami and Sanji have something to say to each other.
A Force Against Inertia
By Dixxy Mouri
Chapter 19
“Well, Captain?” Tesla had called Curie into his office
“The subjects have been a little more resistant as of late,” said Tesla. He placed his glass on the railing. “My guess is that little chat she had with her captain has raised 0543’s spirits, and I believe she shared this with 0544. Now, granted, they aren’t as poorly behaved as they were when we first acquired them back in February, but 0543 has been snapping at the men whenever they use her number. 0544 started up again with that recently as well.”
Curie sighed. “That is annoying. But could it hurt the results?”
“That is what I am concerned with. As long as they continue resisting us, it runs the risk that they escape - even if it’s just a little walk around the ship like 0543 seemed to think it was all right to take, it could still interfere with our timeline.” Tesla put his hands together and closed his eyes. “We need to kill their hope.”
“And how do you plan on doing that, Dr. Tesla?” asked Curie.
Tesla explained his plan to Curie. She agreed, and they started figuring out the finer details.
Not long after contact with Luffy had been made, Sanji and Nami were brought to the room where they’d initially been force fed their Devil Fruits after the day’s experimenting was over. They looked around, almost able to see themselves so many months earlier, still able to swim, still thinking the ordeal might last a day or two at the most, still their old selves. They were forced to sit down and were strapped in, and then they were left alone.
“What are they doing to us now, Nami-san?” asked Sanji.
“I don’t know, Sanji-kun.”
The door opened and Tesla and Curie came in. The two scientists sat across from them in much more comfortable looking chairs, Curie holding a clip board and Tesla holding two small black boxes they both recognized: the devices that controlled their shock collars. They both sat up straight, as if this was somehow going to deter Tesla from hurting them.
“I thought this was the best room to conduct this procedure in,” said Tesla. He crossed his legs and put the controllers on the arm of the chair. Sanji and Nami relaxed for the moment. “The moment you stepped onto my ship, you ceased to be the people you were before. You are no longer Black Leg Sanji and you are no longer Cat Burglar Nami.”
“Screw you ! Luffy’s coming for us! He knows we’re alive and he knows you have us!” Nami said.
“Luffy’s probably really pissed by now - when he finds you there won’t be anything left of you or this ship!” said Sanji. He grinned. “He hasn’t found us because he hasn’t had a lead to go on. But he’s got your name, and now our whole crew is going to be after your head! You have no idea what it means to mess with the Straw Hat Pirates!”
“And this is where the problem lies. You’re still insisting after all these months that your captain is going to rescue you, and that your names are Sanji and Nami,” said Curie. “What you fail to realize is that it’s been nearly eleven months since your capture and two and a half months since that pitiful cry for help. No one’s going to come for you, and you don’t need names here. You are 0543 and 0544.”
“SHUT UP!” Sanji screamed. Tesla reached for the controller and pressed the button. Nami screamed as Sanji was shocked beside her, watching him in terror. The shock stopped, and Sanji was left breathing heavily in his seat, coughing and looking weak. Nami slowly turned her attention to Tesla and Curie, wondering what they wanted.
Tesla looked Nami in the eye. “Who are you? What is your name?”
“Nami,” she said. Tesla pressed the button. Nami felt the jolts of electricity race through her body - she shook violently in her seat, her wrists banging into the seastone cuffs and her heart racing. She screamed until the paint stopped and she was left feeling weak and tired in her chair, on the verge of tears.
Tesla asked Sanji the same question. He responded with his name, and Tesla pressed the button.
They were returned to the holding cell hours later. Neither of them could move, although every so often one or the other would twitch. They were laid out on the benches across from each other, and it was a struggle for them to turn onto their sides to face each other. “I can’t believe he’s doing this.” Sanji felt his body shake, rattling his body against the cold metal of the bench.
Nami looked at Sanji with tears in her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Sanji-kun,” she whispered. Sanji looked at her in confusion. She sniffled, feeling herself start to cry. Sanji wanted to go to her, but the shock treatments made his body ache too much. “This is all my fault. I’m so sorry. This shouldn’t be happening to us . . . I’m sorry. Please forgive me.”
“Nami-san, I thought we agreed we weren’t going to blame each other or ourselves-“
“No. I’m not talking about Tesla catching us in the first place.”
The cook looked at her, asking silently.
Nami clenched her eyes shut. “Remember when I called Luffy?”
Sanji felt his stomach knot. “What about it?”
“I . . . I argued with Tesla when he called me the number. He’s doing this because of me.”
Sanji’s eyes widened. “You think he’s mad,” he said.
“What else can he take from us?” she sobbed. “Our health, our ability to swim, our friends, our freedom . . . now he wants our names, too? He can’t even let us have that?” Nami held herself. “I really fucked up. I just . . . I just lost it.”
“We can defend our names. I don’t want to lose mine, either,” said Sanji. He closed his eyes. “I might have done the same thing in your position. Please, don’t blame yourself. I’m not mad.” He shook his head. “I’m not mad, Nami-san. We just . . . we don’t let him win. He’ll give up eventually with this whole . . . number shit. He’s got to.”
The following day was much like the first. The scientists started off with the normal experimental routine before returning them to the room where they had been force fed and now shock treated. Nami looked at Sanji with an anxious look in her eyes. Sanji returned the look, wondering what she was getting at.
“If it means we don’t get this anymore . . . should we just tell them our numbers when they ask who we are?” asked Nami. Sanji frowned and Nami closed her eyes. “Just for show around them. In the cell we can still use our names. It’ll get him to stop. I don’t know about you but anything I can do to better my situation right now seems really appealing.”
“I see what you’re getting at, but I don’t like having to sacrifice my dignity for personal comfort.”
“What dignity and what personal comfort are you talking about?” Nami said dryly.
Sanji sighed - she had a point. “Luffy knows who has us now. It should be any day now.”
“Right. It’s just for a little while. Then we can use our names as much as we want,” said Nami.
Tesla and Curie walked in and sat across from them. “We’re going to take the therapy in a different direction today,” said the captain. He looked at Nami in the eye, held up the remote, and spoke. “Nami.” He pressed the button and sent shockwaves through her body. She screamed, and realized the flaw in her plan.
I can’t stop him from using my own name against me . . . oh God . . . what’s going to happen now?
It was the end of the ninth day of the shock treatment. Tesla had shifted gears slowly over time until the only thing they were doing was the systematic removal of their given names during the course of a day. They couldn’t say their own names anymore, and they wondered how long it would be before they wouldn’t be able to say the other’s name.
Somehow, they’d gotten on the floor after being dumped on the benches again and were lying a few feet apart. Their breathing was quick and deep, and they were mouthing each other’s names to each other, trying to savor the sensation for as long as they could. If Luffy didn’t show up soon, Tesla would take their names from them.
Nami reached her hand and arm out towards Sanji. Even if Tesla took her name and Sanji’s name from them, she had to say something before it happened. Sanji looked at her with tired, sad eyes as he grasped her hand, and she felt her eyes beginning to tear up. “Sanji-kun . . . you’re my best friend, you know that, right?” She squeezed his hand tightly and felt him squeeze back. “You’re the only friend I have in the world anymore, and I wanted to make sure you heard that before something happens. I love you.”
He couldn’t believe his ears. “ . . . what?” She was saying what now?
She almost scowled at him, then shook her head. “No matter how much they try to destroy us, some things don’t change so easily, do they?” Nami opened her eyes. “Not like a lover - it’s platonic. Idiot.” Sanji smiled weakly in return.
“It’s been a long time since you’ve called me an idiot. It was kind of nice to hear it.”
“I could never go back to yelling and screaming at you like I used to.”
“I could never go back to looking at you like a hungry dog outside a butcher shop like I used to.”
Nami felt her voice starting to crack. “Even if we were to escape now . . . even if Luffy were to burst through that door right now and everyone followed us and brought us back to the ship . . . we’re never going to go back to the way we were, are we?” She clenched her eyes shut. “Parts of us really have died. Haven’t they?”
Sanji swallowed, fighting back his own tears. “He hadn’t killed us completely. Not yet.” He paused, then squeezed her hand. “Nami-san, you’re my best friend and I love you, too.” He closed his eyes and chuckled a little. “Not like a lover. It’s platonic.” Nami smiled at the joke and reached towards his shoulder, gently tapping it with her knuckle. They quietly looked at each other.
Even a failed attempt at normalcy was still a glimpse of the life they once knew.
“We still have each other. Even if we don’t have our names, or our dignity, or anything, we have that much.” Sanji struggled to pull himself towards Nami, and pulled her into an embrace. She rested her head against his collarbone and closed her eyes, savoring one of the last times she’d be able to acknowledge him by his name before Tesla took it away from her.
“I’m here for you, Sanji-kun.”
“I’m here for you, too, Nami-san.”
Nearly two weeks had gone by. The experiments had been all but halted while the shock therapy worked its magic on their subjects. They had yelled their old names at him in the beginning, swearing and trying pathetically to resist. Why they cared so much he didn’t know - it wasn’t as it they would have done anything with their lives, so no one would have remembered who they were anyways, and they were 0543 and 0544 now.
The captain of the science pirates grinned. Really, he was doing them a favor. What would history have remembered them for before? Being pirates? Villains? Now their previously criminal lifestyle would be a mere footnote in textbooks for years to come as students of science learned about what they contributed to the life work of the great scientist Dr. Thomas Tesla.
He had done them a favor.
Tesla walked into the holding cell where he was keeping 0543 and 0544. Curie reported that they had finally had a break through, and he wanted to see for himself. They were sitting side by side on the floor, staring at the door in front of them. He squatted before them, and they slowly looked up at him.
“Tell me,” he said. “What do you call yourselves?”
“0543.” She was staring straight ahead, devoid of any signs of emotion or lip service. Her face was sunken in exhaustion, her eyes struggling to shed tears that would not come. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that last bit of defiance from his female test subject was gone, and he would have no more problems with her trying to call her captain for help to try to fight back against his men.
“And you?” Tesla said, referring to her companion.
“0544.” He said it stoically, his voice filled with defeat and shame. He had had a high, nearly Rookie ranked bounty on his head before, and he had finally been taken down enough pegs. His will to fight back was gone, and he suspected that many of the more cautious scientists would soon cease to double-check his bonds when conducting their research.
Tesla grinned. “Excellent.”
Author’s Note
So. Let's talk about editing.
First of all, one of the two events I spoke of will be delayed at least one or two chapters. Second, there is a STRONG possibility that one of these chapters is going to include something else pretty rough, but not necessarily as bad as what you just read (really, I suppose any of these things I'm thinking of will depend on the individual reader's opinion).
I've been working pretty hard on this story for over a year now, so I'm very concerned with making sure it's done right and that everything I want to include or need to include is included and at that, included well. This goes for the second story as well (the third story is going to rely heavily on the end game of the second story, which I'm still trying to figure out the finer details of). Sometimes this means changing things at the last minute, so I want to apologize for jumping the gun on how the next couple of chapters were going to play out. I think I got overly excited about how close to the end I was but I'm pretty sure that there are still things I need to address before I post the epilogue and start focusing completely on Mass x Acceleration.
I'm not apologizing for the story itself, mind you - I apologizing for the last author's notes and my excessive enthusiasm.
I also wanted to thank you guys for reading, commenting/reviewing, and enjoying what I've written so far and I hope you continue to read and enjoy the story as it approaches its end. I especially want to thank everyone who has done beta work on this story at one time or another (Bronze Tigress, Dandy Wonderous, and ESPECIALLY Triple C, who helped out a LOT during the early planning phases of the story and MishaGirl, who's betaed most of the chapters as they came out and provided more idea bouncing).
-Dixxy