DIVINE DIVIDE

Four years later…

Seated at his vanity desk, Echo pointedly ignored the ridiculous array of hair styling products (ranging from sticky straightening gels to stifling fixation sprays) and wrapped his fingers around a slim black hair tie. He slipped the inconspicuous elastic between bow-shaped lips and styled his chin-length brown hair in a messy ponytail. Satisfied with his scandalous outlook, a grin touched his lips as he imagined their esteemed guests' hard stares and curled up noses. It wasn't ideal, but it sure beat being welcomed with dripping smiles only to be stabbed in the back by their malicious gossip and over-flowing disdain. Now, their faces would match their feelings, naked for the world to see the rot. His father might faint, a thought that gave him pause before he shrugged at his reflection.

Echo's gaze flew over his cluttered bedroom, his chest filling with warm comfort at the sight of annotated blueprints and completed projects, before he located his boots under a pile of copper scraps and forced his feet inside the stifling fabric. Then, with no more excuses to stall, he threw one last longing look at his over-flowing toolbox, squared his shoulders, and abandoned the peaceful quiet of his room.

The mansion's tall archways answered his light footsteps, the dreary echoes escorting him through lavishly decorated hallways.

His father's rich taste in antic art was reflected in every painting, sculpture, and other unconventional antiquities that littered all walls and corners of the Albrecht property. This had brought Echo to a fascinating conclusion: too much of something turns it invisible. A sad reality that applied even to the unimaginable. Indeed, where Echo'd grown desensitized to art, Celestial Dragons his age, even the few who'd initially shown hesitance, inevitably embraced Mary Geoise's darkness.

Echo forced his mind away from these morose thoughts as he pulled a tall set of double-doors open and entered the east wing's exposition hall. A shy smile teased his lips and brightened his guarded features as sunrays braved wall-sized windows, but he paid the spectacle of lights no mind. His attention was captivated by the tall girl dusting a head-less bust covered in seafoam green patina near the middle of the hall.

Gliding up to her, Echo voiced a soft greeting.

"Good morning," Shizo whispered back.

Her cheeks took on a rosy tint when she dipped a hand inside her worn pocket to reveal thin slivers of folded paper.

"Happy birthday."

Air caught in his lungs while the most pleasant type of warmth spread through his chest.

"They're lovely," he said, lips lifting to reveal twin dimples as he cradled the royal blue and sand-colored swan origamis. "Thank you."

Shizo's shy smile widened in kind to share the hint of pearl-white teeth before it vanished under a curtain of midnight-blue tresses.

"I should get back to it," she said while gesturing at the tens of dust-speckled art pieces.

"Ah yes. I'll see you tonight? I'll borrow some leftover cake," he said with a lopsided grin.

"I look forward to it… Echo."

His heart missed a beat before the pumping organ sped into over-drive. It thumped in joy at hearing his name isolated from the blasted title slaves addressed him by, and with a skip in his steps, he made his way toward the hallway's second set of double-doors.

Today was going to be a great day! Echo patted his breast pocket, a goofy grin pulling on his lips when he thought of the folded birds nestled against his heart. He felt as light as a feature, ready to conquer the world (or, well, ready to face the horde of blood-thirsty dragons gathered in the ballroom), but the shrill of shattering ceramic killed his momentum.

Air caught in his lungs, chilling despite the soft season.

A twisted smile. "It's alright… Come here, baby-bird."

Echo clenched his eyes shut, a whimper crawling up his throat as he begged the ghost of his mother's voice away. He had no time for this, not when he could hear the familiar click of his father's high-booted heels rising behind the closed doors. Echo's skin broke in cold sweat, and with his heart in his throat, his brain in his chest, and his lungs equally out of place, he rushed back to where Shizo sat staring, unblinking, at the terracotta mess.

"Get up," he said, eyes darting toward the double-door.

Click. Click. Click.

"Get up, Shizo!" His voice was strained, hands shaking under the weight of their combined apprehension. (Terror. Debilitating terror). "Go to my room, say I ordered you to clean my bathroom… Go!"

"I-I…"

"You have to move!" he whisper-shouted.

Shizo blinked, her unfocused gaze looking right through him, until Echo pressed clammy palms to her alabaster cheeks.

"Please."

Thankfully, his friend snapped out of her stupor and disappeared behind the corner mere seconds before his father barged in through the hallway's second set of pitch black doors.

"Echo? Are you al…" his father trail off when his bright blue eyes landed on the broken ceramic. "right…" Constantin, cheeks as bright as his hair, clenched his jaw and glared at his personal servant. "Gather all the slaves!"

The creepy slave's lips, sewn shut by an intricate pattern of criss-crossed stitches, turned gray as his telepathic powers expanded to the entire household.

"WAIT! It was me, father! I—I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking. I just… I hate vases…" Echo's amber eyes flickered to the floor while his blunt nails scratched the inside of his left arm. "It just…" He wet his lips. "It reminded me of her…"

"… You should have said something. I'd have kept it in my apartments." Constantin's gaze softened, and with an exasperated sigh, he slung an arm around Echo's shoulders and stirred him toward the hallway's exit. "Now, I understand that this invaluable piece of art hurt your delicate sensibilities, but I'm still taking this off your personal account."

"Of course!"

"That's three hundred million berries."

For a vase? Benjamin got his hands on living legends with such money… Not that it mattered. He'd empty his entire vault if it'd keep his friend safe.

Echo cleared his throat. "Well, I broke it so… I'm sorry."

"What's done is done. We have more pressing matters to attend to, like a ball-room full of guests and the disastrous mess you've made of your hair. Don't think I'm letting you anywhere near them in this state."

*

The word 'full' was a bit of an overstatement, for Echo's birth had stripped his father bare of both political and social status. Still, there were more guests than for Echo's eight birthday, and by the time he'd had a—long and painfully awkward—dance with their sneering heirs, his feet were aching from subtle stomps, hands sore from deadly grips, and head throbbing from the constant onslaught of antipathic emotions. Kids couldn't hide their feelings, teens couldn't be bothered to try, and Echo, despite the unfriendly nature of their interactions, was strangely grateful for their bluntness.

"Happy birthday, Mongrel," one had whispered in the middle of a cut-throat waltz. Saint Charlos, a spoiled egotistical dim-wit Echo's father blindly believed to be his friend. It would help him in his insatiable quest to regain his status. Echo knew it, and he'd tried. Really. He'd bitten his tongue to blood so he wouldn't lash at the other boy, reigning in his own disgust whenever their parents prompted them to play together. But in that moment, with the stress of the earlier incident still raking sensitive nerves, Echo's tongue ran loose.

"Thanks, Piglet."

He felt the punch coming long before he saw it, an instinct that prompted him out of the way of the red-faced swine's attack. Then, taking advantage of the other's momentum, Echo hooked a foot to his portly boy's unbalanced ankle and sent him crashing to the floor.

"Oh my," he said, hand flying up to cover his chuckle. "Are you alright?"

"You freak," Charlos hissed, "wait until-"

Bad timing deprived Echo of an uninspired threat as a frenetic woman skirted to a halt aside the floundering boy.

"Charlos, baby, what happened?!" Large jeweled hands tugging him off the floor. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine!" Charlos snapped. "I'm leaving."

Happy birthday indeed.

Echo greeted his next dance partner with a cheshire grin.

*

Three days later saw him ambushed at the breakfast table.

"We're going to the shooting range," his father said.

Echo's grip tightened on his teacup, trembling fingers clutching the scalding porcelain like a safe-line.

Why now? Why ever?

After a shaky exhale, one he disguised as a cooling air-blow, Echo peered over the rim of his cup.

"I was going to work on my goggles—"

"You can work on your pet project later," his father said with a disinterested hand wave. Sparks of irritation twinkled behind his uncharacteristically cold eyes. "This is important."

Unable to conceal his tremors, Echo set his cup back onto its plate.

"Father," he started in a tentative voice, only to be interrupted by the scrape of the man's chair.

"I have a mild annoyance to handle first, but I expect you there at noon."

Echo's bewildered stare followed his father's stiff, retreating form. "But… Father, wait!"

"Don't forget your gun."

*

Echo had known for years that there was something wrong with his homeland. Still, he spent half of his young life struggling to put a finger on it, and the other half finding flimsy excuses or turning a blind eye to the clues that threatened Mary Geoise's merry go happy illusion.

At age three, he'd been gobbling his parents' words, swallowing contradiction like hot chocolate because adults were always right.

At age four, he experienced the violence that simmered beneath human's fragile minds, and nodded in sobbing acknowledgment when his father explained that this was why they needed their guidance. Then, once the tides of grief had settled, he'd concluded that adults were mostly right. That, or his previous belief didn't apply to humans.

At age five, he'd found out that Celestial Dragons weren't as virtuous as they claimed, but labeled his uncle's over-reaction to his slave's clumsiness as an isolated incident. It was also at that age that he'd met Shizo and figured that adults, even gods, even his father, came up with the strangest excuses to keep humans and gods apart.

A year later he'd started to question his people's godly status, which had earned him a scolding from his tutor, a screech from his not-mother, and a flurry of sighs from his father. But truly, if they all bled red, and they all ate, and slept and cuddled, and experienced feelings with the same intensity and range and even looked alike then… Well, if they weren't all humans, maybe they were all gods? (A theory which had, to his disappointment, earned him the exact same amount of exasperated denial from his balding father).

At seven, he discovered a worn-down book under his desk drawer's fake bottom filled with tales of god-like powered humans. A fascinating if not disconcerting discovery that later led to a long talk about devil fruits and why, despite his growing eagerness, he should never eat one. (Echo, having noticed a correlation between his father's alarming hair loss and the frequency of his sighs, didn't tell him how he'd happily trade his god-like status for the ability to fly). In his desk's secret compartment, he'd also found a rough map of a world he wanted nothing more than to explore.

Then he'd turned eight and been forced to re-evaluate his entire world view when his uncle took him to Mary Geoise's shooting range…

// His eight birthday party had just been concluded with his uncle and father's cheered upon gifts of a platinum handgun and a diamond encrusted snow-white hip-holster. His uncle had excitedly proclaimed they should go try it, and while Echo's father had been reluctant (a reaction which, in retrospect, should have clued him in on the following disaster) Echo had still been high from the celebration and eagerly followed Benjamin all the way across the Domain of the Gods.

The shooting facility, divided in an indoor and outdoor section, spanned as far as the Red line's precipice. The outdoor section was covered in short artificial grass splattered with what Echo had initially assumed to be red flowers. A mistake that was swiftly corrected when he'd caught sight of the tall wooden crosses looming over the painted grass, empty in the late hour, safe for those hidden behind hole-riddled bodies.

The drumming of his own heartbeat had dampened his uncle's words of "misbehaving slaves" and "deterring punishment" as well as his grumbled complaint at the lack of a living target. They were a distant buzz, as was the disappointment radiating off the man, for Echo'd been plunged into a down-hill battle with his lungs. He was fighting the thralls of a horror-induced fog, dark spots blanketing his sight as an old conversation returned to mind: "To eat a devil fruit is to welcome the devil". A scary prospect, one that had marginally dampened his enthusiasm at the time, except he now realized his father had had it all wrong.

The devil didn't need an invitation. He was already inside. \\