10 Part 1.10

And So The Clock Turns

One of the most common tactics the administrators of Level Four use to cause us prisoners grief is physical labor. Lots of it. They have us line up, point guns or pitchforks at us, and have us chop wood. Lots of wood. I've chopped so much wood, I've stopped using the axe they hand me and just use my hands.

Then they make us carry the wood for miles and miles. Level Four is huge. It takes days to make a round trip around it's circumference. We take the wood, and throw it into fires to feed the flames and make them burn brighter and hotter than ever.

At least I'm not doing it alone. It's large crowds of us that chop wood all day. Speaking of large things, I had a growth spurt!

I'm fifteen years old and I'm six and a half feet tall. Heh. Maybe I have some giant blood in me like Warden and a lot of other people I've seen.

Speaking of giants, I've seen actual giants! They're huge! Giant even! I barely come up to the top of their feet. I spent some time chopping wood next to one. He had a beard tied up in multiple knots. His name was Fredigar.

"Son of Fredigar, and son of his father Fredigar!" As he said so often.

He would go on and on about how he turned to piracy after escaping slavery. Then he got captured and sent to Impel Down. Then he would talk about Elbalf. Home of the 'true' giants. Warriors of great skill, renown, and honor... sometimes.

"Honor is a tricky thing. It's honorable to stop a thief. It's dishonorable to be a thief. It's dishonorable to kill a thief if they are married and have young children. It's dishonorable to this, it's honorable to do that. It's confusion upon confusion. When in doubt, follow your heart. You'll never go wrong. By that, I mean go left. That's the side of your body where your heart is."

Fredigar always seemed impressed when I mentioned how I had lived here my entire life. He seemed to think that where someone was born determined what kind of person they would be. I'm not exactly sure why. Then he listed some examples.

"People from Mariejois are all assholes. Giants from Elbalf are the best warriors. People from Dressrosa are all overly emotional, don't blame them though, they've been through some shit. People from North Blue like the cold. Now, having met you, I've learned something new. People from Impel Down are the most brutal humans I've ever met!"

That's stereotyping, and that's wrong.

What did he mean about me being brutal? I'm not brutal. I mean, I'm not sure about the exact definition of brutal, but I don't think I'm it. I've gotten in a few fights sure. But I make sure that I don't have to fight those guys ever again. Either through excessive snitching or me punching them hard enough. Sometimes they got back up afterwards.

Oh yah. Girls. That reminded me. There's girls! Attractive girls apparently, lots of them. I haven't seen a lot of girls until I reached Level Four. Fredigar explained it to me though.

"Girls don't last long in Impel Down unless if they're strong enough. Girls strong enough are found on Level Four or below."

"What happens to girls who aren't strong enough?"

Fredigar just nodded his head away and I turned away from chopping wood to look. There was a dead body layed out there. One of their legs was missing.

"Oh. That's sad."

You know what else was sad? Extremely so!

I lost a fight. Badly. So badly, I got my arm broken in three places. It was a little hunchbacked man named FahGrah. It all started when he stole my wood.

I tried to reason with him about how I needed that wood. And I did. If you didn't make your wood chopping quota to burn and make Level Four even more hellish, they but you on a torture cycle. Mainly poking you with pitchforks or putting you on a rack. Racks suck. I've been racked.

Is that why I'm so tall? Because my limbs were stretched out?

Anyways, FahGrah took my wood and I took exception to that. Words failed to convey how upset I was. So, I tried the tried and true method of getting wood. Fighting for it.

I've gotten faster since I was young. I'm stronger too. My Moa Moa ability only makes me that much stronger.

As strong and as fast as I was, FahGrah was a thousand times faster and stronger. He threw me around like a rag doll and snapped my arm how I usually snap other peoples. As I was writhing on the ground in pain, he spit on me and laughed, walking away with my wood.

I limped back to my place on the chopping block next to Fredigar and got back to work. I needed to get enough wood so I wouldn't be racked. Again. Fredigar just laughed at me when I told him what happened.

"Yah. That happens when you pick a fight with the former second-hand man of a Yonko. One of the Four Emperors."

"Former? What happened?"

"He got caught. Duh."

The next day FahGrah was dead. He was dragged away in chains, similar to the chains that Magellan gave me that I still wear. Then they threw him in a pot of lava. He was laughing the entire time, and Fredigar and I watched when they used a metal strainer to fish out his shackles. They then slapped them on the next in line to be executed and dragged off.

"Circle of life."

"Why don't the metal shackles melt when they throw them in the lava?"

"We're underground 13. It's called magma. And no clue. I'm not a metallurgist. I'm a giant warrior."

That was life on Level Four. I had grown comfortable again. The hellish heat didn't bother me anymore and I had grown stronger. Very strong. It had taken me five years, but I finally felt like I could stay here without anything going wrong. Of course, that's when things went wrong.