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Banchina will be the first to admit, Mister Weaver-of-Fate’s labyrinth of tunnels give her the goosebumps.
Sure, paying close attention to her Observation means there isn’t a chance in hell of some spooky creepy-crawlie sneaking up on her, or anything else for that matter, but there’s still- something. Something lingering, just at the edges of her senses, and she can’t figure out what.
After the first day when they couldn’t find any sort of door, that red-haired ‘Noble Hunter’ girl and her big winged friend with the flames went ahead and sliced clear through the mountain they found themselves stuck inside. A bit more precise cutting from Miss Trafalgar with a knife borrowed from Olvia, and presto-chango, convenient staircase down into forested foothills, and beyond that the sea.
The others are taking full advantage of the fresh air and sunshine, but Banchina, ha, she just has to go and snoop.
“You really think there’s something else down here?”
Thankfully, she’s not snooping alone.
Portgas D. Ann seems pretty bound and determined to stick close, forgoing the outdoors to keep ambling through pitch black tunnels on Banchina’s heels. On the one hand, it’s a relief not to be alone; on the other, the kid’s a distraction. Not her fault, that - she keeps her steps quiet, her Voice too, doesn’t try to constantly engage Banchina with banter or otherwise make a nuisance of herself. But she is, present. And Banchina’s starting to think she might just need total silence to figure out what keeps nagging at her Observation like this.
“Maybe,” she tells the teen, coming to a stop at a five-way intersection of tunnels. The light of her torch doesn’t go very far; each one looms like a gateway to hell before them, left and right and up and down. “Maybe I’m just getting paranoid in my old age.”
“You aren’t old,” Ann has the decency to say right off the bat. “...I don’t think, anyway.”
“I’m almost forty, kid.”
“Oh! Yeah, that’s not old at all.” Banchina hums, eyes sliding shut, letting her Observation haki soak in everything it can find about their surroundings. “I mean it, my mom’s almost fifty, and I definitely know better than to call her old or anything close to-”
“Shh.”
Credit where it’s due, Ann falls instantly silent. Banchina strains. Not with her haki, but with her ears.
“...all is said and done, you’ve wound up, a skeleton...”
Banchina’s eyes snap open.
“HEY,” she hollers, startling poor Ann as the word rebounds and echoes down each tunnel. “IS SOMEONE HERE?”
For an achingly long moment, there’s no reply, and Banchina almost kicks herself for wishful thinking. But then: “...yes? Here, please...”
She takes off at a dead run, into the tunnel that slopes sharply downward. It circles around like a corkscrew, then levels off to the left, doubles back, and finally ends in a short steep drop. Banchina lands and almost bounds forward right away - would have crashed straight into the web if Ann didn’t suddenly seize her arm. Too focused on tracking the sound, on feeling out the passageway, she didn’t notice this, a thick circle of tightly woven strands that her Observation actively skates right off of.
Fateweaver’s work.
“Hello!” Banchina calls again, peering into the thick layers of webbing. Her torchlight can’t get through to the darkness on the other side, but even so, she can hear a muffled clatter, like bones tumbling against rock.
“Yes! Hi! Hello! Please be careful!”
Well, that seems to be a good start. “Very careful,” Banchina agrees, pitching her voice loud without shouting. “Are you trapped in there?”
“I am! There’s a fellow with some sort of spider Devil Fruit, he seems very dangerous-!”
“He’s been dealt with, don’t worry! Ann,” she lowers her voice, glancing at the kid, who looks paler than she did a minute ago, freckles standing out sharply against her skin. “Can you find your way back to the others, or wait here while I go get them? I think we’re going to need at least one of those sword brats to get through this.”
“Yeah, I can- I’ll go.” One strong leap, and off the girl goes, her own torch’s flames quickly fading out of sight.
“H-hello? Are you still there?”
“Still here,” Banchina confirms. “We’re going to get some help down here, to cut through this stuff and get you out!” That’s definitely a sob, the sound of someone in a world of trouble suddenly given a lifeline. “What’s your name?”
“Yorki- I’m Calico Yorki!”
Yorki, it turns out, must have been Fateweaver’s very first ‘souvenir’ from playing around with timelines. He also happens to be a musician, which explains why he got stuck down here, as far from the main chamber as possible.
“Didn’t like it when I played my guitar, or sang, or even whistled, the uncultured swine,” Yorki laughs, remarkably cheerful now that he’s no longer alone in the dark. “If I’d been able, I would have hogtied the bastard and tortured him with a full orchestra!”
There is one sticky moment, when Ann arrives with S-Blade, and Yorki says something about a ‘bag of bones’ that’s too quiet for Banchina to pick out. Within seconds, the Seraphim girl neatly slices through the webbing with her katana, making an opening plenty tall and wide enough for anyone to walk through.
‘Wide’ ends up being less than necessary.
At first, Banchina thinks Yorki must be covered in streaks of white dust or some such. But then a truly weather-beaten leather hat tips back, and she sees only exposed bone, and it is VERY difficult not to let out the shriek that wants to escape her throat.
Ann makes a startled sound; S-Blade remains perfectly unflappable.
“Much obliged, ladies,” Yorki says, stepping through the gap, bare feet clack-clacking against the stone ground. “I’d apologize for not being better covered up, but it’s amazing how much a lack of skin leads to a lack of shame, eh-heh-heh-heh!”
Even so, he’s definitely nervous, hanging back out of arm’s reach. Hat, torn-up green coat, and ragged pants held up only by a tightly-cinched belt are all the man has overtop his somehow living skeleton; other than the guitar cradled carefully close, no other possessions, not even a weapon.
“...well,” Banchina manages to say after a moment. “I’d say even when you did have skin there must not have been much shame to go with it, unless you had a shirt that went to tatters before that fine coat did!”
Yorki’s head falls back with a laugh, loud and long and full of relief.
“Bastard left him all alone in the dark for weeks.” Olvia’s jaw visibly clenches, even before Banchina adds in a low whisper, “And he told me he’d been adrift by himself, stuck in the Florian Triangle for decades, until some folks called the Tophat Pirates happened to sail right past his shipwreck. Man’s doing a decent job of hiding it, but I’d bet good money he’s not going to be able to handle being by himself any time soon.”
“I understand,” the other woman murmurs back, glancing over towards where Yorki is delightedly answering a deluge of questions from Bayline, Marmalade putting together dinner inside the half-circle of her cousin’s tail. “Lami and I started to hash out a rotation for keeping watch and getting other work done, I’ll make certain we accommodate him as needed.”
“Good.”
~Now that all is said and done, you’ve wound up, a skeleton
Your tale is failed, no dawn, just dust, abandoned on the seas~