Chapter 67

Grandline, Paradise, Water 7

Walking over to the different stores Azul asked the various shopkeepers if they had seen anything out of the ordinary and quickly received the information he had been looking for. After all, down here at the coast where rarely any visitors ended up at, smalltalk and news travelled fast and acurately to starve the various shopkeepers of their boredom.

Apparently a batallion of marines had stomped through the streets, lead by a tall man wearing, wearing a white coat with the kanji's for 'absolute justice' written on its back, while his face was covered in scars accompanied by a curled mustache.

His rugged look had scared a lot of the shopkeepers. That's why they remembered him so vividly.

Furthermore, he had been adressed as vize-admiral, which explained to Azul why they had been able to take the crew down without too much of a struggle.

Thanking the shopkeepers for the information, Azul began his track up into the city, already formulating a plan on how to reach them in time. Though he had the feeling that he may have to break into Impel Down, bringing a light skip into his step at the bubbling excitement.

Soon Azul reached his goal, the marine outpost. Disappointingly the base was rather empty so all he achieved after raiding the place was a lot of shivering and quivering marines that could barely talk in fear, some rather scrunched together information on when they left for Impel Down exactly and to his amus.e.m.e.nt a big white coat with justice written on its back, belonging to the captain that was usually living in this base, seemingly his spare one, going by the clean state it was in.

Wrapping it over his shoulders and hiding his face partially under a hat with 'marines' written on it, Azul pushed of the ground with a boom, arriving at his ship in seconds, which he brought back into the shipyard for safekeeping, earning him a few confused gazes which soon turned into kind smiles when he pelted them with berry notes.

Having made sure his ship was taken care of Azul threw over his borrowed uniform and disappeared into the air, running with billowing flames as if on an invisible street towards Enies Lobby, just above the tracks for the sea train, which he had found out lead directly to said island.

Meanwhile the strawhats and Robin had arrived in Enies Lobby and, under struggles from a rather pissed of Luffy, were lead through the city part of Enies Lobby, straight towards the later part of the island where they would board a marine ship that would take them behind the humongous 'gates of justice' and on direct course to the infamous prison, Impel Down, to be locked away for the rest of their lives. Thus explaining why they were struggling so much, having long reached the conclusion what their fates were to be, should they not escape somehow.

The only ones not struggling were either the scared ones, the injured ones, or those like Robin who was more of a thinker then an actor, and her thoughts had traveled to many possible directions, though the only one that she thought may be crowned by success was if Azul somehow managed to find out what happened and reach them in time...

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While he was running over the ocean's surface, Azul began to plan how he would bail those morons out. Of course he could just crash into the island like a berserker but that would only delay him in catching up to the captives and possibly bring down the full might of the marines on his head, which he simply wasn't strong enough for. Thus he had decided to play ninja and sneak in under the guise of being a marine captain.

After travelling for ca. 20 mins. Azul arrived at Enies Lobby's harbor, surprised himself how much faster he was than he would have been by train or ship.

Making sure nobody spotted his illuminating figure running through the sky, Azul landed between rows of empty buildings and began to swiftly jump from roof to roof, knowing full well which the captives endgoal would be after coming to Enies Lobby.

From the distance Azul could see that the giant bridge that connected the first half of Enies Lobby, which was home to the many subordinates, with the second half of the island had began to move back up, signalling that the captives had already reached the second half and were on their way towards the waiting battleship that would take them through the gate of Justice, which was with groaning sounds beginning to open.

Having realised that he needed to hurry if he wanted to catch them Azul increased his already impressive tempo, making him at maximum a blurr to the human eye. Soon he had reached the end of the first half of Enies Lobby and was able to see from its edge that the gate of justice had opened to the intended width, until it began to close once more, meaning the captives had gone through already. With widening eyes Azul rushed through the air once more, discarding all stealth in order to catch up to them in time.

Luckily for him nobody spotted him but it, even though that was the least of his worries. With each burning step the closing gates came closer and Azul was able to spot the warship in the distance, having started to turn right, straight for the following gate of justice that would lead it towards Impel Down.

Standing in the air, Azul took a deep breath to calm himself and rest his burning muscles for a second. After all he had just run miles upon miles in recordtime only to nearly get crushed to paste.

After he had regenerated a little bit, Azul gazed over towards the warship, only to groan in frustration as it had already reached the halfway open gate of justice, leading it directly to Impel Down. Willing himself forwards in annoyance, Azul rushed forwards once more, already going through the best ways he could sneak the captives away, but knew he had no possible ways to do so. The biggest problem was that he didn't know who would take them in, and with it hindering Azul at taking them away by force. For now at least.

The best way would be for him to disguise himself as member of the crew and follow the captives down into Impel Down where he would think up a way on how to continue. Having decided on a course of action, Azul rushed through the closing gates once more, this time with a little bit more breathing room, soon arriving behind the warship, where he opened one of the portholes and after a lot of struggling to fit through simply smashed himself a bigger entrance into the ship, having reached the limit of his patience for the moment.

Inside he found himself conveniantly inside some kind of locker room, where he found some kind of marine-grunt uniform for himself. Though it didn't really fit so he ripped it in half, wearing the shirt as a vest instead, after which he ventured upwards on deck, near the sh.i.p.s entrance so he would be positioned the best to follow after the captives who soon enough arrived on deck.

Checking them over, Azul found that some of them were a little hurt but nothing too grievous. They should survive, probably...

While he was standing there in his ripped apart marine uniform, one too many times gazes were leveled at the huge man that had suddenly appeared on deck, confusing some of the marines who had never seen such a tall man before and didn't recognize him as someone they had seen before on the ship but simply shoved the thought to the back of their minds. After all, nobody could possibly appear on their ship without their knowledge. Fortune gazing down on Azul who simply didn't care about all that and after checking the crew and Robin over got bored and stuck his finger inside his nose, searching for some enlightenment in those tricky holes.

And so it came that an unofficial prisoner was delivered into the infamous prison Impel Down, bringing much joy to the inhabitants in the coming hours and horror to those that tried to guard them. The stowaway on the other hand couldn't have asked for a better birthday present for the coming day.