"Kid, I've never been to the South Blue -"

"- My captain is Kidd, my name is Killer."

"look, Killer - I've been all over the Grand Line and the Red Line, and spend quite a long time in the East Blue, but I was never in the South Blue." Shanks actually looks sympathetic as he looked over his prisoner, "I'm afraid you... I am afraid you have me mistaken for someone else."

The laughter was horrible, the sound of a man drowning, not a drop of mirth to be found. The realization that they've doomed themselves by chasing the wrong ghost.

Shanks gave the younger man a chance to exhaust himself back into some semblance of control, looking back at his own crew uneasy. He had no regrets with how he'd handled the Kidd Pirates up until this point, had found the captain's dogged pursuit of him to be highly amusing and almost flattering, right up to the point it put others in the line of fire.

To find out that fire was sparked by the cruelty of another man entirely soured the whole ordeal and left him almost pitting the survivors.

"Sail under my flag"

"My captain is Kidd"

"Kidd is dead"

"My captain is Kidd"

Shanks looked to the other men and women - the more reasonable ones he'd assumed, judging by their actions when he'd sunk their vessel. None would meet his gaze, their focus on the vice captain forced into a kneel at Shanks' feet.

"I could throw you back into the ocean?"

That got a reaction at least, the man lifting his battered face up to grin at him.

Always smiling. Always laughing. It twisted Shanks' stomach; the agony in his eyes with the cheer on his face.

"Please don't," called a voice from the assembled crew, "... Don't toy with him anymore."

He looked over their faces, looking for who spoke up, surprised to find the one to start begging one of the shortest of the members, a stocky man that wouldn't even reach Shanks' hip. He didn't blink, staring back.

"Kill us or don't.. just.. No more of these games."

"Told ya Monkey was wrong," another voice said, this time from the short woman next to the man, "A yonko is a yonko is a yonko. He's just another Kaido. Just another Orachi."

A few heads nodded, and Shanks.. well, he was a yonko, he's not sure what else they expected him to be? But being compared to Kaido stung, compared to Orachi was downright insulting, and maybe even worse... maybe even worse was the idea Luffy was out there, still putting him on pedestal.

In lue of Kidd, Shanks would need to keep Killer separated from the crew, kept somewhere more secure. Used each to keep the other in line. The problem was the wild look in the man's eyes when he did, the laughter... His crew looked at him with murder in their hearts - more so than he was sure any of his actions would warrant.

"Take any one of us instead," one of the taller men said finally, one of the two that had begged him for mercy as their ship burned around them. Their vice captain shook his head emphatically no, but did little more than laugh, no words able to slip past the wheezing fwafwafwa that echoed in the brig.

"What if I wanted to take one of the woman?" Shanks challenged, though coerced was not how he liked his bedfellows.

"Any of us," one of the girls offered, a desperation in her voice that chilled him, "Hell, we'll all go. We can make you very happy," she promised.

Ben had to grab their vice captain before Killer could harmed himself further after he slammed his own head into the floor as an attempt to get control over himself.

In turn, the men of the Kidd pirate crew looked ill at the thought, but not a single one of them protested.

They nearly rioted when he took their vice captain away any way.

His brig is full right now - not really designed to hold the entire surviving crew of the Kidd Pirates in its belly. Shanks' instead had the vice-captain drug up to his own quarters, his own first mate escorting the man himself, as Shanks' gave one last warning look to the assembled crew, turning heel and trying to ignore desperate calls for him to have mercy.

For the time being, Killer will be detained in Shanks' quarters, where Shanks' can keep an eye on him, and keep the man's crew on their best behavior.

What neither he or Ben are expecting is when he sighs, sinking down into the chair next to his desk, their captive starts to laugh again. Killer lurches toward Shanks, but instead of attacking, he drops to his knees before the other captain, cuffed hands on Shanks' knees.

A dark part of Shanks wanted to see how far the man would go.

Instead he grabbed a fist full of blond bangs, and forced Killer's head away from his crotch and turning to to look him dead in the eyes.

The laughter and tears had stopped, and though the man grinned, there was no one home in those eyes.

Shanks could hear Ben keeping himself busy elsewhere in the room. He's own thoughts scrambled to pivot, to restart the conversation to one he had control over. 

"Your crew mentioned Kaido. I was under the impression your little alliance was more then content to kneel to him until Mugiwara and Trafalgar showed up?"

"My captain is Kidd."

Shanks frowned. Ben paused in his shuffling to look over curiously. 

Killer seemed to latch on to this, repeating... "My Captain. My captain is Kidd."

Shanks shoved the man away to the 'bed' Ben had made for him, and stalked out of his own room, trying not to dwell on the interaction.

Killer is exhausted, slumped boneless to the side, but he does not sleep.

By the third day, Shanks knows there is something terribly wrong with the man, and he summoned on other the other 'commander's as they're called. Not the tall one, but the one who spit fire at him when he'd first taken their vice captain away.

The man is escorted into the room, the pleading desperate man gone in lue of a man seething in anger.

Shanks regard him quietly. The man says nothing back, but the hatred is palatable.

Finally, Shanks gestured to the body wasting away in the corner of his quarters. Heat does not turn his back to Shanks, never looks way for more then the time it takes to blink, skirting the room to his crew-mate's side.

"Killer-san?" he whispered. The man does not move, not until Heat hoists him upright, glancing uncertainly at his face.

Killer's lips are bloody from where he's been biting them to keep quiet, and he's tired and sickly, but no harm has been inflicted upon him at Shanks' hand.

His voice is like a child's, cracking as he called Heat's name, and the men embraced.

Shanks gives them their moment, as they touch and check each other over for new injuries, moving to sit causally at his desk across the room.

He's not the only one taken by surprise when Killer rises abruptly, trying to hid Heat's much taller frame behind his own body, keeping himself between Shanks and his crew.

"Please don't," the man begs, "I will do what you bid of me, please. I will obey. Please don't Shanks-dono -"

Heat, unable to move past his vice captain, at least holds on tight to him; the look on his own face is pinched with worry and fear. He shakes his head no, pleadingly, at Shanks.

Its' a far cry from the man he's 'hosted' the last few days.

"What will you obey, young Killer?"

"I am your servant," the man parrots, but who, Shanks doesn't know, "What my lord wishes, I shall do. Whatever task my lord commands, I will perform."

There's a desperation in his words, and Heat is speaking too, "Please, please, no more games, Emperor Shanks."

But Shanks needs so see something.

"Kneel."

And to his private horror, Killer drops. Not just to a kneel, but a bow, forehead pressed to the wood, hands flat to the floor in front of him, fingertips together.

"Kiss my boot."

Heat looks like he will murder Shanks with his own hands as his vice-captain crawls forward to do so.

"Suck my cock."

Killer's hands remain affixed to the floor, but he raises his head, mouth open, and Shanks stops it there, twisting a hand in ragged blond hair much the same way as the first night.

Shanks looks at Heat, who will kill him without hesitation, should he be given just a chance.

"Swear fidelity to me." he says, but his focus is on Heat.

Heat, who, without a beat, firmly states, "My captain is Kidd."

Here Killer pauses, teeth biting into his lip once again, jaw working like he wants to say something. He's starting to giggle again. Fresh blood drips down his chin, clinging to his goatee.

Shanks look back to Heat, who has lowered his head, shoulders slumped.

"Swear fidelity to me, and your crew goes free."

Killer looks like he might say something, but Heat repeats, "My captain is Kidd" and Killer says nothing.

"Swear fidelity to me, or I will kill this man."

"We all die," Heat says to that, "and I will not die an oath breaker. My captain is Kidd, and I will not follow a pathetic man who can not acquire loyalty without threats."

Ben is hovering at Shanks' shoulder, but Heat does not back down. Such a difference in the man who once begged him for mercy.

"I wasn't asking you." Shanks remarks, "but I do want to know, what does Killer say to all that?"

"My captain is Kidd."

Shanks does not order Heat's execution, much to the befuddlement of both captured men.

He also lets Heat take Killer back with him to the brig, watches the crew close ranks around their returned vice captain.

They all eye him with suspension, which he has earned, but the taller of the commander - Wire - does bow his head. "Thank you." And he sounds like he means it.

They are still prisoners, still regarded with wariness and suspicion. But Shanks' can feel the undercurrent of gratefulness at the simple gesture of reuniting the Supernova to his crew.

Now to figure out what he's going to do with the lot of them...

Ce que j’ai fait, ce soir-là (What I did, that evening) - Psycho Killer by Talking Heads 1977

When Papas was born - his family pack had predicted he would be an omega.

Carrier parents loose their scent the longer they are pregnant; a slow dulling of smells until it was gone altogether. For beta carriers, it was unnerving, but their sense of smell was weak to start with so the change wasn’t a life altering.

For an alpha or omega carrier, it was an identity loss of sorts. As the body took nutrients and energy from them for the growing baby, the flood of new hormones reduced them to the blank slate of a new life. Pack mates would rub and rub often to transfer smell of family back onto them, giving them a tether back to the personhood they had set aside for nine months.

As labor set in, strange smells would start to secrete from the oil glands. Not their own, but a bitter sharp thing that warned strangers away in their time of vulnerability. A smell only family could love.

Papas’ pack believed that the scents of a pup could be found in that profile. Elders would crowd the carrier as the labor ticked on, studying the smell. The window to understand the scent for alpha carriers was small - but maybe that was because fertility for alpha carriers was so low and thus not studied often. True alpha scents would return the fastest - once the pup was moving along toward joining the world beyond, the alpha body seemed to return more to its past scent profile - and by labor’s end, most alphas were back to smelling like themselves again like nothing had changed.

Betas would display this ‘pup’ scent for the duration of labor, nearly until the pup was crowning, before it eased of and their own scent returned. But beta scents were weak, and this pup smell was weaker. By the time a pup was born, all traces where gone and it was nothing but the overpowering smell of aggressively neutral that marked all pups.

As the most fertile, and most majority of carrier parents to start with, omegas oozed that strange future pup scent from labor’s start all the way until the umbilical was cut. And even then, their scent didn't return yet - instead the infamous ‘nursing omega’ stage started. A period where an omega was almost indistinguishable from an alpha in behavior - rude, vocal, aggressive, violent. Some called it the ‘mama bear’ phase, an omega nearly recklessly murderous in defense of their pup. Their smell was recoilsome to all but pups - even bonded mates put off from the smell and bonded nests often left to just carrier and pup until the pup was weaned and the omega stopped nursing, and their own scent finally returning.

But the period before the organosulfuric scent settled in, was what many - including the elders of Papas’ pack - believed to the a pups unfiltered future scent at its strongest. Sometimes, the elders would even prolong a carrier omega’s labor to be able to further study and divine the smell. Papas’ carrier had been forced to struggle for nearly three days as the pack debated over them.

In the end, it was predicted he would be an omega.

Papas spent nearly 13 years under the careful tutelage of his family pack - molding him into what a perfect omega would be for his future alpha bondmate. They’d already picked one for him - an alpha four years his senior from a merchant pack they wished to have more exclusive trading contracts with. Everything about his life was designed to serve his alphas family, to the point when he was 14 and his pack was stressing on why hadn’t he presented yet, and he realized he didn’t have anything of his own. No interest, no passions, no hobbies. Even his name until that point was picked to compliment his betrothed alphas pack.

As a pup, even as a young teen, he still has some freedoms he would loose once presented and bonded. And even if his elders claimed to know his scent - it was 14 years since they’d smelled it - and he took a risk that they didn’t really remember it as well as they claimed they did. And he chose to run away before they had a chance to learn it again.

That’s when he learned that the streets were hard for a packless child - and even as a pup - there were many adults that smiled at his too wide, whose gaze and hands lingered too long. The neutrality of his smell seemed to call them, and the others where more than happy to look away when the street smelled of pup in distress.

So he ran further.

He left the inner city walls. He left the safety of the outer walls. He ran and ran and ran until he crossed the heaps of derelict and rusted trash that had collected so far and wide it would have doubled Kutzk’s city size if it was counted in its limits. The scrap yard formed by the currents and World Government illegal dumping off their shores had redrawn the shape of the island itself, stretching miles past the half collapse lighthouse left abandoned when it no longer served any use to passing ships. The Scrap Rats who lived there now had too many other things in their lives to worry about than a pup, and Papas found a serviceable place for a nest to call home.

And it was a good enough home for the next year.

Maybe would have been a good home for longer.

But when Papas was born - his family pack has predicted he would be an omega. And somewhere in his 15th year, biology said he’d played child long enough.

Papas didn’t understand at first - what was happening. He felt itchy and anxious, pacing outside his home after tearing everything out and replacing it again and again and again.

He’d never been so picky about his nest before, but everything was wrong now and he didn’t know why. He was also starving but nauseous. The smell of food made him want to get sick even as his stomach lurched and groaned painfully, demanding not to be left empty.

His skin felt pricky, the brush of his clothes left him scratching; he’d drawn blood on his wrist before he’d finally just taken his hoodie off, the cuffs of the sleeves feeling like manacles. it had helped, but it also clued him into how warm it was, and he was worried he’d become sick - feverish. If he was ill - if he became too ill to fend for himself - he had no pack still. It could be a death sentence out here. He was painfully alone now. No one to care for him, tend to him. No one in his nest.

The next day was worse. He wanted to cry. He might have already started to cry. His throat was dry and sore and he felt like he couldn’t catch his breath.

He was sure he was sobbing by the third - or was it fourth - day. And then someone came. He wasn’t alone anymore and there was another in his nest. They smelled so good - he’d never smelled someone so strongly before, letting them rub their temple against his head, a smear of scent so bright and crisp left on his skin. He butted his head back - the oil glands behind his ears itching like never before the past few days, and pressing them against this strangers head felt. so. good.

He felt safe and loved and happy in a way he didn’t think he could. No feeling he’d every even entertained - its concept out of his wildest imagination.

Until he didn’t.

This stranger was holding him down - refusing to let him move, face pressed suffocatingly into his nest. Papas was pretty sure he was crying out for help, but the stranger laughed. Their smell was stronger now, but it wasn’t soothing anymore. It was smothering. It choked him, make it harder to breath, to think. His body hurt in new ways, and the alpha - his heart knew it now, his stranger was an alpha - called him terrible names, and then hissed omega at him like a slur as they forced him down. Terror gripped his heart as he felt their breath heavy and hot against their neck, teeth grazing the gland there. They meant to bond with him.

And Papas was alone and unable to stop them. He’d run away from a pack that cared for him to prevent this, yet here he was all the same.

Hot blood pulsed and poured over his bond mark and Papas cried into his nest, clawing at the bedding, at himself, nails breaking as he begged for help.

But the sharp pain of a bite never came even as the scent of blood poured out over his nest. Was this it? Was he the omega bondmate to a stranger? Was he tied to an alpha he didn't even know the face of?

Blood across his back, thick in his hair. But the smell was fading, the overwhelming smell of nothing at all blanketed his mind and his panic didn’t feel so sharp anymore.

Strangers in his nest again, interlopers at his door. Instead of red blood dripping over him, a sun of red hair popped up under his arm, crawling up into his space at his side and pressed its small tiny head to his throat. Papas took a deep breath, mind going numbingly blank as his heart struggled to calm, and small arms wrapped around him, pulling him close.

He hadn’t been part of a pup nest since he ran away. The smell of child different now- a jagged nothing cutting though him and forcing the smells of the world away. He let himself focus on that. Clinging to it and the terror slipped away, the itch that had let it in to start with falling quiet.

Papas’ first heat was not over, but the waves lost their intensity. Minutes slipped to hours until he could think for the first time in days. Eyes like the sun itself stared up at him, a literal child in his arms.

Outside his nest, he could smell the displeasure of another sulking around, how mint and earth could smell threatening and bitter he wasn’t sure, but it also smelt welcoming and maternal. He would met Killer shortly after when Kidd pulled the blankets of Papas’ nest aver his shoulders and usher him into the sun. Killer painted in the visceral red of an alpha’s split lifeblood. Someone murdered, stabbed in the back, all in defense of Papas. Killer - three years his junior - but standing tall and defiant. Looking ready to take on the whole world.

Papas - who might now legally be an adult in the eyes of Kutzk authority having presented finally - took one look at the children that had saved him, hands outstretching to take his - to take him away from here. His nest of years - his own home - with the corpse rotting away in the dull sun of the alpha who’d violated it safety.. He took their hands, and became Pack. Kidd and Killer took him home to their own pup nest, Killer holding him as the heat continued, as he cried and sobbed and clutched at his new Packmate, trying to forget the terror that marked his rite of passage into adulthood, to find safety and comfort in the arms of the pup who'd open his nest to Papas' without a second thought.

As Kidd watched the horizon for threats those following days, Killer might have whispered they were equal in that nest - but Papas knew better. His hormones might go on to mark the start of Pack Heats moving forward; he might be the oldest right now; he might be the ‘adult’. But Killer was Pack leader. Kidd was his co-leader. Children both. He tried not to put them on a pedestal, the pair saw him as family after all, even if he saw them as saviors.

But these were the only ‘alphas’ Papas would ever wish for again. Killer happily comforting him in the nest when his biannual heats rolled around, when no one else was there to hold him and care for him yet; Kidd getting to play guardian, playing attack dog, defending the lighthouse nest they’d commandeered for themselves. And with Papas, they were better able to defend it from other Scrap Rats. Starting to build a real home in the ruins. The start of Pack Eustass.

The starting point of this story is after all is please for the love of all things good, give better sex education to children. This theme is strong with this story, and we are going to see that popping up more and more.