Summary: Brok was multiple things. A conman, a kleptomaniac, a master of disguise, and a liar. He knew he wasn't a good person. That's why he can't understand how all of the pirates underneath Whitebeard seemed to believe the opposite
Link: https://m.fanfiction.net/s/13266258/1/Flimflammer
Word count:81k
Chapters:29
Chapter 1
It was a chilly day for the citizens of the marine-infested port town called Sandy Blossom.
The sea breeze that traveled through the port town showed mercy for neither the sailors who wore their caps too loosely or for the middle-class women who had decided to wear dresses that day. The breeze does nothing to deter one boy, however, who stands amongst a busy street with no concern for his own welfare. He shifts side to side impatiently while his shoes crack against the rocks and pebbles below him. His eyes scan the people surging past him, like two big factory lines at either of his sides. They all had their destination. In… or out .
One pseudo line continued further into the town where it encountered hundreds of market stalls aimed at the average seafaring man. The other pointed to an exit where one could return to a large huddle of docked ships and prepare for a long voyage at sea. The perfect spot, he decides, is right where these two opposing paths meet. With a flourish, he starts his demonstration.
"Say goodbye to damaged skin, and hello to silky smooth skin with the miracle of Hellburn's sunscreen! No longer will you have to suffer the sun's harmful rays! At the small price of only 20,000 beri, this wondrous concoction can be yours!"
Brok is the name that had been given to him at birth, and a lot of the local residents were familiar with his antics. He would usually pull himself out in the middle of the day when the port was at its busiest, and then he would go on about strange products of his own poor design. He was hardly successful in his attempts to make a business which was evident by his numerous failures for the long month that he's been stuck in Sandy Blossom. Sometimes a pitiful soul would come around to buy, but their kindness would quickly be driven away by a large, unpayable, price on Brok's ridiculous items.
"Jackson's at it again," comes the hoarse voice of a pale woman, stopping temporarily to observe Brok. The man next to her, another local resident with a head of black hair, scoffs in his distaste.
He says, "He hasn't sold a single item while he's been here. You'd think he'd learn by now!"
Brok, overhearing this, stops in his scripted ranting. He shouts out, "Ah! Carla! Would you like to try some of my newly-introduced Hellburn Sunscreen!? "
The pale woman frowns, wrinkles lining her forehead, as she gives a hardy, "No! You shouldn't be selling that stuff outside the marketplace anyway. You know the law!"
"Who's going to stop me?" Brok laughs.
Carla narrows her eyes and then looks over to a group of patrolmen that were currently checking through a suspicious man's suitcase. Brok follows the woman's steely gaze only to land on the same sight. Brok puts on an act of gulping down a mouthful of air while pulling at the collar of his trench coat nervously. "C' mon, Carla," he begs, an unnatural smile tugging at his lips, "Aren't we friends?"
Carla doesn't bother to answer him. She waves one hand in the air, her mouth opening to call the marines out, and Brok doesn't stick around to see what she's going to do next. He quickly tucks the sunscreen bottle into the flap of his trench coat and kicks up the gravel underneath his feet in what can only be explained as a quick escape. Carla's voice becomes background noise as Brok narrows his hearing on the heavy sound of boots following after his trail.
"She just had to point me out," Brok mutters to himself, glancing over his shoulder to see three marines at his heels. Brok knew that the lower marines didn't have the experience to actually put up a fight, so he was confident in his chances of getting them off his back. It'd be a disaster if they did, somehow, manage to subdue him. Certain people would put him through another five months of hell if they heard about a failed attempt of escaping a bunch of lackeys. He'd rather that not happen. Fortunately, he had years of escaping experience to draw from. This would be a breeze. He's gotten away from far more dangerous situations.
Brok turns sharply around a corner. He turns another corner again, escaping a narrow alleyway, and arrives into a large area filled with stalls and booths of all kind. He dashes through several stalls, bumping into multiple people before he enters into yet another narrow alleyway. He immediately comes to face an obstacle he must jump over: a homeless man sleeping with only a worn blanket to cover him from the weather's mood swings. He's vaguely aware of the old man's yelp once Brok lands on the other side, his heel barely scraping against the man's nose, but he continues onward with no particular destination in sight. All he wants to do is lose the marines.
Brok leaves the alleyway, rounds the corner again...
"Umph!"
He had accidentally tackled someone in his escape. The force of the tackle causes him to fall backward onto the ground as the man he had bumped into took a few steps forward in surprise.
"What was that?" The man asks. The man scratches the back of his head before turning to look at Brok's form on the ground. The man blinks once, twice, and then he glances over at his companion who had turned to see the cause of the noise, too. "Did you see what happened, Marco?"
"He bumped into you," Marco states the obvious.
"Ha? I got that part!" His companion tells him.
Marco gives his friend a lopsided smile. He then shrugs his shoulders, saying, "I know as much as you do, yoi."
Brok takes this time, while the two converse with each other, to get a good look at the two people in front of him. The guy called Marco, Brok picked up, was a man with a yellow tuft of hair atop his head. The shirt he wore did nothing to cover his chest, and that was when Brok's eyes came upon the man's tattoo. The Whitebeard Pirates. Marco had a simplified version of Whitebeard's defining illustration proudly displayed on his chest. If one were not to understand the symbol on Marco's chest, a feature that showed that he was apart of Whitebeard's crew, then one could come to recognize him differently. His bounty . Marco 'The Pheonix' was a wanted man with a hefty price on his head.
The man next to Marco wasn't a mysterious stranger. Brok immediately comes to recognize him as Thatch, another one of Whitebeard's commanders, with another large bounty. He had a curving scar on one of his temples, a black beard, and a white outfit similar to the one on his wanted poster. It just so happened that Brok was the unlucky fool who bumped into this man. Regardless, knowing they were apart of the Whitebeard Pirates, Brok felt as if these two men were walking piggy banks ready to be hammered in. Whitebeard was a wealthy pirate. Surely his so-called sons were the same?
Brok jumps up to his feet.
"You!" He points at Thatch.
Thatch points at himself, "Me?"
"Yeah! You look like you get sunburns all the time!" Brok tells him. He quickly fwips out Hellburn's Sunscreen and gestures to it wildly with a beaming, merchant, grin. "It looks like you need some of Hellburn's Sunscreen! It protects your skin from the sun's harmful rays!"
"Ah!?" Thatch's words stumble out, sounding hooked already.
"Here, why don't you try some?" Brok offers, flipping the sunscreen bottle upside down. He holds it out eagerly as Thatch quickly pops his hand out for a sample. Brok starts squeezing the thick liquid out of its container, not even bothering to explain it's disgusting texture, and then he goes on to explain, "Now all you need to do is smear it into your skin-"
Thatch doesn't get the chance to smear it into his skin. The man immediately shouts out in surprise as he waves his hand in the air as if he had just pulled it out of a fire ant hill. Marco looks at his friend with raised brows while Thatch continues about in his attempts to shake the sunscreen off.
"It burns!" He sounds off.
Brok recovers quickly, "That means it's working!"
"Walking in the sun would be less painful!" Thatch shouts.
"Haha! Don't make me laugh," Brok laughs, waving his hand in dismissal. His tone quickly changes, flat, "Now that you've tried a sample, though, that'll cost you 20,000 beli."
Marco is the one that answers this time. "For a sample?"
"Well hey, I never said it was a free sample," Brok sniffs, "Besides, this stuff is extremely rare! I can't just hand it out like candy."
Thatch's shoulders deflate in defeat. He digs through one of his pockets, probably looking for what spare change he had, but Marco's hand grabs hold of his companion's wrist to stop him from even considering to give away any of his money. "You gave it out willingly, yoi. We don't need to pay for it," Marco says.
"Now I'll have you know-" Brok begins, but he stops mid-sentence. The Whitebeard Pirates both give him a curious expression.
Brok robotically turns to glance over at a familiar group of marines that were now asking around if they had seen a man in sunglasses, a trench coat, and brown hair. Hearing their voices had given him a reason to stop everything he was doing.
Brok laughs nervously, turning back to the Whitebeard Pirates with a trembling smile, "Uh, now that you mention it, you're completely right! You don't have to pay a single beli!"
"But you just said-" Marco begins.
"Me? I said something? Surely, not. I wouldn't try to rob two respectable gentlemen! What do you take me for? A crook?"
Respectable gentlemen, he inwardly scoffs, who ever heard about a respectable pirate?
Marco looked ready to retort, but it vanishes when the marines spot Brok. The group quickly yells out, running toward him, and Brok turns sharply with the bottle of sunscreen still in his hands.
"Don't come any closer! Or I will have to unleash my secret weapon!" He crows.
The marines freeze, mid-run, hesitant.
One elbows the other, "He said he's got a secret weapon…"
"We all heard it!" The other two marines ring out together.
The Marines were far too busy with focusing their attention on Brok that they don't even bother to notice the two easily recognizable pirates behind him.
"He ain't got no secret weapon," one of them claims, "Look! It's just a bottle!"
The marines all nod together in agreement before breaking out in a charge once more.
Brok puts on a face of panic as they approach. Sure, he was just bluffing, but now he really didn't know what to do! There were two Whitebeard Pirates behind him and a group of Marines in front of him!
Brok squeezes the bottle without thinking much about what he was doing with his hands and the sunscreen spurts out straight like a water gun. The sunscreen flies to the pursuing marines until it splatters all over their uniforms. The one that was in the middle screeches to a stop as the sunscreen lands on his face.
"You call this a secret weapon?" The one in the middle laughs, smearing the sunscreen across his face in an effort to get it off, "This is nothing more than some smelly-"
He doesn't complete his sentence. Not when the pain hits.
The marine drops on the ground and rolls around in the gravel in pain. His hands are clawing at his face.
"IT BURNS!" He yells out.
Brok takes their distraction as an opportunity for him to get away. He turns on his heels, dropping the sunscreen bottle behind him, dodging past Marco and Thatch before crying out, "That means it's working!" to the poor marine that was writhing in pain.
Brok laughs as he sprints across the pathway. He turns and then-
And then-
Uh….
Another group of marines all turn to look at him. They had heard his charging footsteps.
Brok gulps.
"Would you guys happen to be interested in some sunscreen?" He offers weakly.
The Marines take a collective step forward.
"I thought not," Brok sighs as he hunches over in defeat. "I guess we'll have to do this the hard way."
The two marines that had left their friend rolling around the gravel eventually catch up to Brok, effectively blocking him off from turning right back around. Brok's eyes scan his surroundings for any potential escape routes. He can't say he finds an escape, but he does see an old man with a broom trying to clear the dust off of his store front's small porch…
"Excuse me, sir!" He says, running to the old man. All the marines shout out in alarm thinking that Brok was going to take the old man hostage. All of them nearly fall over when Brok reaches out, hands outstretched in such a manner as if to take the old man, only to snatch the old man's broom away.
It was the opposite of taking candy from a baby! It was taking a broom from an old man!
"I'm going to borrow this for a sec, k?" Brok tells the old man as he weighs the broom in his hand like a sword. "This is just what I need to pound these marines into dust!"
The marines all stare at him in blank shock before quickly shaking themselves out of their dazed stupor. Brok can feel the atmosphere swell with cockiness as they considered Brok. Surely, he imagines them thinking, a man with a broom can't stand up to the might of several men!
All of them ascend on him.
A lot happens in one minute.
Brok fends off the marines with frightening ease. He uses his broom to deflect basic sword attacks while hitting the broom across two of their heads. His attacks knock out the marines instantly. He sends them to an uncomfortable rest on rocky ground as he moves on to deal with their comrades.
Only one is left standing. Brok allows the marine's attack to barely skim the skin of his right arm before he clutches said arm to his chest. He stares at the marine with comically wide eyes, saying, "You broke my arm! It's going to cost 50,000 beli for my hospital bills!"
The marine stops and rubs the back of his neck sheepishly.
"Oh, geez, sorry. I didn't mean to- hey- wait a second!"
Brok laughs good-naturedly as he grips the broom with both of his hands. "Thanks for being a good sport, but I can't play with you right now. Not unless you give me a fee of 10,000 beli!"
"Who'd give you that much money!?" The marine barks as he swings his sword against Brok once more.
Brok deflects the blow and quickly whacks the man across the head.
The marine falls onto the ground.
Brok releases one hand from the broom, dusts off his trench coat with his free hand, and then he adjusts the sunglasses covering his eyes. "Looks like I swept them up," he chuckles at his own joke, even making the motion of sweeping the broom's straw bristles over a fallen marine. This action of his lands him on the receiving end of a stare from the old man who had watched the whole thing happen.
Brok stops once he notices that he still has an audience. He walks over to the old man again. He holds the broom out in offering to the elderly man.
The old man shakes his head.
"You don't want it back?"
Another shake.
"I was just borrowing it…"
Shake. Again.
Brok shrugs and rests the broom handle on his shoulder. "Alright then. Thanks for the free broom, I guess?"
Brok takes a step back and starts to whistle an old sailor's tune. He continues down the path back to the port. He is hardly aware that he had more than one audience member, but that wasn't one of his primary concerns. His most pressing concern is that he needed to get back to the small boat that had brought him to Sandy Blossom across the ocean. It was basically a floating house. Unfortunately, his little boat's sea-faring days were over, and now all he could do was use it as a simple shelter from the cold nights and rain.
It doesn't take long to reach his boat.
Of course, he notices the towering boat that, undoubtedly belongs to Whitebeard himself, but he doesn't pay much attention to it. He had no idea why Whitebeard was here, but he knew that the man wouldn't linger here long. This was just a port town made to resupply ships. There was nothing much else to Sandy Blossom. People that came often didn't stay. Especially when they found out that this was the marine's territory.
Brok hops onto his boat in one swift movement. He enters into the small cabin situated in the middle and tucks his newly acquired broom in the corner. He then collapses onto the only chair in the room located closely to a small end table by his hanging hammock.
Brok reaches up to his brown hair and grabs a fistful of it. It only takes one hard tug to have the brown hair slip off of his head.
He inspects the wig in his hands.
"Still looks natural," he mumbles, pulling one hand through his dark, green, hair. It was strange that his wig had a more natural hair color than his actual hair, but there wasn't much one could do about the hair color they were given at birth.
Brok starts itching at his scalp, scratching the parts that had been irritated by the wig, and then he throws the wig into a corner piled up with his other disguising items.
Brok sighs. He leans back in his chair as one hand reaches down to rest in one of his coat pockets. The only problem is that several objects stop him. Bothered by the clutter, Brok begins to pull the objects out one by one.
"Dammit, really …?"
Brok examines many of the objects that he had set on his end table with a puzzled expression.
Where the hell had he gotten all of these wallets?
Brok hangs his head in exhaustion once the realization hits him.
He had done it again ! He had pickpocketed all of those marines!
Brok doesn't have much time to consider the implications of his actions when the familiar sound of his transponder snail reaches his ears. He quickly turns to a little shelf he had recently installed on the wall where a few items lay, and it is there where he spots his transponder snail ringing. Brok stands up, stretching his arms out while he does so, and then he finally answers the snail with a firm, "This is William Hellburn speaking."
His relaxed posture is gone. There are only a few people that can call him, and all of them were dangerous individuals. He couldn't lack a professional, obedient, attitude when it came to those who held authority over him.
"Drop the act!" A voice comes out of the snail's mouth. The expression on the snail was an irritated one as the caller continues, "I'm sick of your aliases. Can't you just answer as Brok, huh!?"
"Apologies."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," the man's voice sounds dismissive as he goes on to say, "Whatever. The only reason I'm calling you is to give you your next mission." He then mutters, ungratefully, "Man, I really wish I didn't have to do this tedious stuff. I'm destined for greater things!"
Brok waits patiently for his boss to stop complaining. Finally, his boss tells him, "You're to infiltrate a slave ship that's heading to Sandy Blossom in the next four days. You won't have to stay stationed there any longer after they arrive. The objective is to report back information about the slaver's operations. Make sure they aren't thinking of double-crossing us."
Brok's lips twitch, threatening to form a frown.
"You're to stay with them until ordered otherwise."
"Understood, Spandam," Brok answers.
"Ugh! Don't call me so familiarly!" Spandam huffs out before cutting off the phone call rather abruptly. He gave no room for Brok to ask any questions, not that he would anyway. That was something his mother had made sure to pound into his head at a young age. Cipher Pol did not forgive those who asked too much. Brok was in Cipher Pol 5; the intelligence division of Cipher Pol. He was valued for his abilities in information gathering, and so they often sent him out on missions to report about things that the untrained eye would typically miss. Even so, that didn't give him a pass to question his authorities.
Brok shuffles through one of the pockets hidden in his trench coat and flicks a lollipop out. He pops it into his mouth as he continues to think about his current situation.
Cipher Pol thought they had him under their thumb. They thought he was a loyal little soldier. A fourteen-year-old under the oppressive eye of his mother.
He wasn't.
No. Cipher Pol was only a means to an end. It was something that gave him a vast network of people that he could push information out of.
And if there was anything in this world that he loved, it was information.
He loved cramming his head full of secrets and lost intelligence. He loved the tiny details everyone missed, the mysteries of a seemingly dangerous island, or the secret knowledge that only a few people had. There was nothing quite like the feeling of knowing something that others didn't know and being able to use that information to his advantage. The gathering of facts also opened new pathways to more things he didn't know.
There were others like him that paid him for the information he had with equally exciting knowledge. As an agent of Cipher Pol, he knew a lot that others didn't, and that gave him a considerable advantage over other people of his profession. Nevertheless, he would usually have to interact with these people under his various aliases. It would do no good if they knew a 'Brok' from Cipher Pol. That was the sort of thing that could get him killed.
Jackson Hellburn was just one of many. It was the alias he favored the most.
Just thinking about his aliases had Brok's mind spiraling into his past. His history in Cipher Pol had him infiltrating many pirate crews in which he had used countless fake names and fake appearances. Even his division commander, Spandam, had no idea who he was most of the time. He didn't even bother to ask. He simply trusted him to carry out his mission which usually involved turning in the pirate crews he infiltrated. Sometimes it was a simple gathering mission, but that was only with the big shots. The smaller pirate crews were relatively easier to trick.
Brok goes over multiple names he had taken up.
John Jacob, John Jingle, John Heimer, John-
Brok stops in his thoughts and pulls a hand down his face.
The names he had picked when he was younger and less experienced… were… well… kind of embarrassing. He didn't have a lot of creativity back then.
Brok yawns.
He pulls himself across the room where a newspaper lied on a pile of junk that he had collected ( stole ) during his time on Sandy Blossom. He then takes the paper with him to his hammock where he settles for what he hopes is for the rest of the evening.
He flips open the newspaper in interest. The newspaper was a great source of information. The only problem was that all the info that the paper had was public and easily accessible. It wasn't the kind of knowledge one could use to their advantage.
He scans through the newspaper until he reaches a familiar section. The bounties.
He sees a few familiar faces and then finds a couple of new ones. He reads something about an upcoming rookie named Ace, captain of The Spade Pirates, but that's the only thing that sticks out to him. Everything else seemed to remain the same.
Brok tosses the paper to the side. It slaps against the floor.
Pirates. Marines.
They were all the same.
Traitors. Backstabbers. It didn't matter what kind of organization, crew, or division that you were in. They were all the same in one way or another. There was no redeeming. No excuses. The average man suffered underneath their terror, pirate or marine, and there would never be any peace while men traveled the seas. They were all equally corrupt with their power whether it be real or false.
There was no 'justice' in The Marines, not when it mattered, and pirates didn't actually have freedom. No. Freedom comes only through one form.
Knowledge.
And Brok would make sure that, when the time came, he would become the freest man in the world.
Link: https://m.fanfiction.net/s/13266258/1/Flimflammer