Disclaimer
Today I tried to use Armament Haki to open a jar of olives... and ended up with olives flying all over the kitchen. I still need to refine my technique. Maybe I should practice with cans of pineapple in syrup, which are always harder to open. Anyway, while I continue to train my Haki in real life, let's continue A fan can dream... and write!
Chapter 5: Ambition in the Darkness and Echoes of Despair
The interrogation began in the dim light of the hedge maze. Sung Lee kept the royal guard immobilized, his small body exerting surprising pressure on the burly man. Vivi watched attentively, her dark, bright eyes fixed on the captured spy.
The tense silence was only broken by the distant whisper of the desert wind and the prisoner's agitated breathing.
"Who sent you?"
Sung Lee asked in a serene but firm voice, direct and blunt. His penetrating gaze locked onto the spy's murky eyes, seeking the truth beneath the surface.The royal guard averted his gaze, trying to maintain a façade of defiance even though his body trembled slightly under Sung Lee's weight.
"I don't know what you're talking about, brat. I'm a royal guard, loyal to King Cobra. You attacked me for no reason."
Sung Lee narrowed his eyes, detecting the falsehood in the spy's words. His Observation Haki, like a sharpened sixth sense, perceived the small inconsistencies, the subtle hesitations, the micro-gestures that betrayed the lie. He didn't need to raise his voice to impose himself.
"Don't lie", he simply said, maintaining his calm but incisive tone.
"I know you were spying on us. And I know your loyalty is not to the King. Who's paying you? Answer honestly. Baroque Works?"
The name of the secret organization echoed in the dense air of the maze. The spy reacted with a slight start, a subtle change in his breathing, barely perceptible to anyone, but enough to confirm Sung Lee's suspicions.
Vivi gasped slightly, her eyes widening a little, aware of the gravity of the accusation implied by the name.The spy tried to regain his composure, but his voice sounded less secure, a barely contained defensive tone, when he replied.
"Baroque Works... I don't know anything about that. I told you, I'm a royal guard. I was following orders, watching... suspicious activities."
"Suspicious activities of what kind exactly?"
Sung Lee insisted, pressing with the question, remaining calm but not giving ground.
"Suspicious of what? Of trying to discover the truth about Whiskey Peak, perhaps? Or maybe about Baroque Works' plans for Arabasta? Is that what scares you?"
The spy fell silent for a moment, his gaze lost, struggling against his convictions and fears. Sung Lee, observant and patient, waited, reading in the guard's body language the hesitation, the internal conflict. The spy's resistance began to crack under the constant, though discreet, pressure of the interrogation.
While the interrogation continued in the maze, far away, in the opulent royal chambers, King Cobra paced back and forth with growing unease. Vivi's absence was lasting too long. A growing worry, more intense than usual, spread across his tired face.
"Any news?" Cobra asked one of his advisors, who waited silently in the room. His voice sounded subdued, reflecting a deep paternal concern. The advisor shook his head deferentially, maintaining formal composure.
"Your Majesty, the royal guards continue the search in the palace and gardens. But we have not yet located Princess Vivi. It is possible... that she has simply retired to rest somewhere secluded. Her adventurous spirit and curiosity are well known, Your Majesty..."
Cobra sighed deeply, running a hand over his face, feeling the weight of responsibility and uncertainty.
"I know, I know perfectly well. But this time... this time my unease is different. I feel a bad premonition deep down. It's a feeling... as if something is wrong, something out of place."
In another wing of the palace, Igaram's panic reached almost comical heights. He led an improvised patrol of royal guards with a determination bordering on desperation, running through the corridors, giving rushed orders, and tripping over the furniture.
His characteristic silver wig was precariously tilted and sweat beaded on his forehead as he called out to Vivi at the top of his lungs, his voice increasingly high-pitched and strident.
"Princess Vivi! Little Princess! Answer me, please, it's urgent! Where have you gotten yourself into?! If anything has happened to the Princess, King Cobra will summarily execute me! And then, I know it, he'll turn me into a human umbrella as eternal punishment! Oh, my dear Princess, answer me!"
The royal guards accompanying him struggled to maintain professional composure, although some barely contained laughter at the pathetic spectacle of their security chief. One of them, trying to calm the growing hysteria, gave him a clumsy pat on the shoulder.
"Calm down, Lord Igaram. I am sure the Princess is perfectly fine. She is young and possesses great curiosity, as we well know. She will most likely reappear at any moment."
"No, no, you don't understand!" Igaram groaned, bringing both hands to his head in a gesture of genuine despair. "This time is fundamentally different! I feel it deep in my being! Something terrible is happening, I know it! And it will all be my fault for allowing her to wander alone through the palace! I am a useless guardian, a complete failure!"
Back in the dimness of the maze, Sung Lee continued to press the spy, maintaining the tension with a strategic mix of direct questions and subtle psychological ploys. He had registered a slight but revealing tremor in the spy's hands when Baroque Works was mentioned, a fleeting flash of genuine fear in his eyes when Whiskey Peak was discussed. These small details, imperceptible to an untrained observer, were for Sung Lee's analytical mind silent confessions, increasingly large cracks in the spy's flimsy armor of lies.
"I know for sure that you know something relevant", Sung Lee said in an even graver and more persuasive tone, leaning slightly forward, accentuating the intensity of his gaze.
"And I also know that you are scared. Fear, however, will not protect you in this situation. Only the truth can ultimately do that. Tell me exactly what you know about Whiskey Peak. Tell me who your real boss is in this plot. Confess the whole truth, and perhaps... just perhaps... then I might consider helping you to some extent."
The spy hesitated again, visibly torn between his imposed loyalty and the increasingly intense pressure of the child interrogating him with implacable calm. Silence spread again in the maze, charging the night air with palpable tension. Finally, the spy exhaled deeply, in a silent gesture of inevitable surrender to the implacable logic of his situation. His head fell forward with absolute resignation.
"Alright", he murmured in a subdued voice, barely audible, the bitterness of defeat evident in every syllable. "Alright... I'll talk. But you must promise me... promise me under oath that you will let me go after this."
Sung Lee watched him in silence, with a penetrating gaze that offered no easy guarantees, carefully avoiding any explicit promise, letting uncertainty and a faint, uncertain hope intertwine in the spy's tormented mind. The truth, on occasion, is extracted with skillful tacit negotiations and promises that do not need to be articulated aloud.
The spy inhaled deeply, gathering the last vestige of his broken determination, and began to speak, the words flowing clumsily at first, like a dammed river struggling to break through, but then flowing with increasing speed as the confession gained its unstoppable momentum. He revealed, with increasing resignation, that he did indeed work for the Baroque Works organization.
His specific mission was to discreetly monitor Sung Lee and Princess Vivi, following direct orders from one of the higher-ranking officers within the organization's structure. He confirmed, just as they suspected, that Whiskey Peak was a key operational base of Baroque Works in Arabasta, strategically used as a clandestine port of call for various large-scale smuggling operations and, even more sinisterly, as a covert and safe meeting point for organization agents, bounty hunters, and other disreputable elements. And finally, with a last sigh of defeat, he revealed the code name of the mysterious officer who had given him the orders for surveillance and attack:
Mr. 8.
The revelation of the name echoed in the silent maze like a muffled thunder in the stillness of the night. Mr. 8. A code name, without a doubt, but also a concrete clue, the first tangible piece in the dark puzzle to try to unravel the complex hierarchy of Baroque Works operating in the shadows of Arabasta. Vivi held her breath, her eyes reflecting the deep awareness of the critical importance of the information they had just obtained. Sung Lee, for his part, maintained his apparent calm on the outside, but inside his analytical mind the scattered pieces of the intricate puzzle were finally beginning to fit together with a disturbing strategic clarity.
"Mr. 8..."
Sung Lee repeated softly, weighing the name.
"Do you know anything else about him? His true identity? His exact position in Baroque Works?"
The question floated in the dense and expectant air of the maze. The spy shook his head with resignation, his gaze lost in the darkness between the hedges.
"No. Absolutely nothing. I only know for sure that he is one of the higher-ranking officers within the organization. He always works in the shadows, just like all of us, really. No one I know within Baroque Works knows his real name or his real face. We only receive strict orders through anonymous and impersonal intermediaries. That's how the organization works, compartmentalized and secret to the core."
Silence fell heavily again in the labyrinthine maze. The partial truth had finally been reluctantly revealed, but paradoxically left behind many more disturbing questions than concrete and reassuring answers. The threat of the Baroque Works organization was now tangible, absolutely real, and palpable in the rarefied air of the night. Whiskey Peak loomed increasingly clearly as a nest of snakes, a nerve center of illicit activities.
The mysterious and elusive figure of a certain Mr. 8 moved stealthily in the deepest shadows, pulling the strings of a dark plot they were beginning to unravel. Danger, in short, had multiplied exponentially in just a few hours.
At that precise moment, in the oppressive dimness of the hedge maze, with the crucial key information obtained after an arduous interrogation and with the spy finally defeated in his purposes, a cold and calculating determination ignited strongly in Sung Lee's usually calm eyes. He looked directly at the defeated and resigned face of the captured spy, and in a surprisingly firm and resonant voice in the stillness of the Arabian night, spoke his final words.
"You can, if you wish, persist in your mistake and continue to lie to hide the truth you know. I guarantee that, in the end, you will inevitably end up talking and revealing everything you know. You can be sure of it."
The spy closed his eyes in a gesture of absolute resignation, an imperceptible shiver briefly running through his body as he perceived the implacable determination emanating from the child who had defeated him in intelligence.
"I suppose that... ultimately... every one of us is just a dispensable pawn in a much larger and more complex game of power that escapes our control... and, paradoxically, sometimes... even simple pawns like me come to believe illusionally that we possess the real capacity to alter the course of the board... or even to change the imposed rules... What irony..."