WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT COST

A sigh of relief breached his lips before reality kicked in and turned him back into a tense bundle of nerves. This rescue mission was a disaster. He was in an unknown location, nowhere near finding Cleo, and had nothing but a creepy mutilated doll for company.

His next sigh was a soulful one.

As if the aforementioned list of failures wasn't enough, Echo's eyes narrowed on the bare space he'd woken in and wondered if he'd truly escape the dreamscape, or if this was just a new layer to the torturous illusion.

God damn it!

He resisted the urge to kick the dark room's only object, aka the doll, before memories of his mother's puppet-killing stories had him tear its cotton-filed head off. He then headed for the exit, not knowing if his mother's lack of regard for age-appropriate tales had just saved his life or made him waste a precious ten seconds, and tore the door right open.

Echo stepped inside a clinically white corridor where two thick staircases, both standing strong on opposing sides of the passage, beckoned him closer. One went up, the other led down, and down he went for what nefarious activities didn't prefer the cold, wet shadows of the underground?

He bolted down the stairs, narrowly avoiding a broken leg, and paused at the sight of rows upon rows of empty cages and a pale-faced—

"Koala?"

The revolutionary's vacant eyes remained fixed on the plush toy she held cradled to her chest.

"Koala?" he repeated and frowned when the woman's stare remained glued to the stuffed animal. (A red fish riddled in holes he noted upon reaching her.)

"We should continue. There might be—"

A scream surged down the hallway, its familiar timber rushing all rationality out of his body. Echo moved on auto-pilot, legs carrying him at break-neck speed toward the anguished plea.

The maddening sound came from a small circular lab filled with all kinds of strange medical equipment and tables laddered with brightly colored vials. His brain ran a mile a minute, thoughts jostling each-other within the tight confine of his skull.

How many people died to make these? Tens? Hundreds? And yet, chilling as it may be, it wasn't this horrific thought that liquefied his insides but the unbearable sight of his daughter slowly melting alive.

She was laid on a steel table, beads of thick, fat tears rolling down her ashen cheeks as a mess of molten fluids dripped down what was left of her right forearm straight into a wide funnel. At one end of this mockery of a med-bed, a tall furry figure lazily ran a clawed digit up and down Cleo's sole.

"STOP!"

Cleo's screaming eased into sobs as Echo nullified the lioness's power with his own. The mink turned with a lazy grin, revealing the edge of sharp fangs that quickly disappeared behind the large red bubble of her gum.

Pop!

"Finally!" she said in a cheerful tone, before theatrically exclaiming, "Ladies and gentlemen, please, take your seats, the show is about to begin."

Wha—?

His bracelet was ripped off his wrist and sent flying across the room, and before he had a chance to process the unexpected chain of events, slim fingers gripped the back of his head.

"Now watch," a sultry voice whispered in his ear.

The voice was as familiar as the tone, yet they didn't mesh at all. His and Koala's interactions had been guarded, distant even. Nothing to hint at this abrupt shift. But there was someone, a woman he'd prayed to keep an ocean apart, one whose every word was a poisonous seduction.

A quiet no fell from his lips as true debilitating terror washed over him.

"No, no, please—"

"Shhh, don't disturb the artist," Ilsa said.

"Koala! Koala, you need to fight her!" he said even as he tried in vain to catch a peak at the possessed figure behind him. One second was all he needed. A single glimpse of her and she'd be free.

Pearly laughter curled in his ear even as he failed to jab his captor. Worse, the Ilsa-possessed-Koala used his own momentum against him to pin both of his arms to his back.

Cool air fanned his nap, lips he could only picture as the vivid crimson shade his mentor favored hovering a hair away from his crawling skin. "I have a message from my master: you destroyed my property, now watch me destroy yours."

"Please, don't do this! Ilsa, please! I'll do anything, anything."

Ilsa hummed into his neck.

"Kill me instead. Torture me. Tie me to a fucking cross, I don't care!… Just let her go… Please let her go."

"I am to make you suffer."

"Then do it… Fucking do it! Hurt me!"

"I will." Ilsa's grip tightened on his strands, forcing his tear-brimmed eyes to meet Cleo's delirious ones. "Enjoy."

As if on cue, the lioness brought her attention back on Cleo, her predatory gaze shining with nauseating glee when she ran a finger up the curve of Cleo's ankle… And frowned.

Echo's heartbeat thundered in his chest. At this rate, he only had a couple of minutes left before debilitating toxins assaulted his system, but as worrying as this may be, it was far from his biggest problem. Ilsa was.

{The Kesu Kesu no Mi is a paramecia devil fruit favored by the World Government for its destabilizing power. Its past wielder was a Cipher Pol agent, and after his untimely demise, a great search was launched to harvest the Kesu Kesu no Mi's new fruit,} his father had written in his parting letter. {I wished to offer it to Benjamin on his upcoming birthday; thankfully, none alive knew I'd found it, and none remains to tell you ate it.} And hadn't that been a whole new pile of shit to swallow. {The Kesu Kesu no Mi, as you'll find out, can block the devil fruit power and/or haki of any given person in sight.}

He gave it ten seconds before his mentor realized it was he who blocked the skeptic-looking mink's devil fruit, and an additional ten at best before she figured out the loophole. The moment she forced his gaze away… He couldn't let that happen, yet no amount of struggling would see him free. He'd tried to use his power on her, had tried to scratch her with his claws, but Ilsa was an unmovable force; a fucking leech cozying up to his back.

{But the World Government wouldn't deploy such resources for a basic cancelation power. No, they want it for its awakened form.}

Yes, in his current position, Ilsa was out of reach.

But not her partner.

Echo's eyes narrowed on the scowling mink, and without pause, he reached for the power simmering behind his irises.

Whips of light flailed his vision. They lashed at his sight, leaving him to stare through a needle-sized slit surrounded by pure blinding sunlight. A shape appeared in the crack, curvy like a pear, red and purple dusted in pink with a smooth, brown stem on top.

{Because the Kesu Kesu no Mi can erase a devil fruit.}

The sunlight spread, its glowing flames licking at the screeching fruit. Red, pink and purple darkened to charcoal before the charred mass became ashes.

The grip on his hair tightened.

"I don't know what you're playing at, but it stops now," Ilsa growled in his ear right before she hurled him into a table. Shattered vials soaked his front in what he assumed to be inoffensive red, purple and pink fluids, and despite the danger, despite the darkness, Echo's lips lifted into the phantom of a smile. How he wished he could see his uncle's smug expression crumble when he learned the horrid devil fruit responsible for said fluids was gone; His miracle cure, the one he'd dedicated his life to, forever erased from existence.

"Oi, Lils," the lioness said with a pop of her gum. "Don't waste the merchandise."

"Sorry, love," the Ilsa-possessed-Koala said, her words carrying the traces of a pleasant smile that may or may not have stretched into a blood-thirsty grin when she smashed Echo's face into a wall.

"You know, Saint Benjamin is right: your mother's blood ruined you."

Sticky rivulets flowed down Echo's split forehead. They painted his lips, spilling in through the corners, and with the metallic tang of iron on his tongue, he said, "My mother made me human."

"My point exactly," Ilsa replied snidely before speaking up in a loud and cheerful voice. "Sorry for the interruption beautiful, please continue."

Pop!

"I'd love to, but your pet's still screwing with my power."

A dramatic sigh preceded his face's impact with the floor where pain and gore erupted from his nose.

Good, focus on me.

Sabo would come, he knew he would, if only for Koala. He just needed to hold on, keep Ilsa's attention on him long enough for the other two revolutionaries to catch up. Cleo'd made herself small, so very discreet she didn't peep a sound even when Ilsa settled on his back and pleasantly offered to relieve him of his eyeballs. He wished he could seek his daughter out, if only to encourage her restraint, but he was entirely too dizzy and disoriented.

"It's a shame, so much potential wasted by the stain of humanity. But just because I can't kill you doesn't mean I can't break this feeble mind," Ilsa said with a hard press of a finger to the oozing split on his forehead. But he didn't feel it, the sting of her poking, for it was nothing compared to the wake of toxins surging through his body.

In the next instant, a pool of acid corroded his veins. His toes curled, calves twisting into knots before the torturous sensation colonized his thighs.

A scream tore up his throat only to hit the clenched barrier of his teeth. They were clamed shut, his jaw set in a tense line not by will but by the paralyzing poison that spread alongside his self-inflicted agony.

"What the hell?" Ilsa mutter overtop, but he paid her no mind for the faintest of whisper had captured his attention. Footsteps.

The owner of said footsteps barged in a moment later with all the stealth and discretion of a wild boar.

"Dragon claw!"

… Or a bloody dragon.

The floor shook, tiles splitting up like newly spawned mountains.

There was a minute shift at his back, the barest of twitch betraying Ilsa's surprise.

Now!

Echo redirected all of his last remaining clarity and strength to his left hand, the one Ilsa had unknowingly shifted closer to, and with the sweep of his last cooperating digit, he nicked Koala's inner-thigh.

"You fucking!… shit…" his mentor managed to growl before Koala's body succumbed to sleep, effectively expelling the Cipher Pol agent's spirit back to her own.

The distinct sound of fists on flesh mingled with an animalistic growl. People were fighting around him, Hack and Sabo against the mink he supposed, but had no way to confirm. He was locked in a world of pain, his body captive of the revitalizer-turned-poison that would joyfully toy with him for hours if not days to come. All he could do was listen, focus on the commotion in the flimsy hope of deciphering the outcome.

Seconds ticked by, a torturous instant after another, and as he listened on, his eyes shrouded in darkness and his lips sealed by toxins, his father's parting words came back to haunt him.

{Unfortunately, the use of the Kesu Kesu no Mi's awakened power comes at a great cost, my son.}

He swallowed.