[Thick ribbons of smoke recoil and extend, sliding across a desk that has seen some serious battle damage. A drawer hangs preciously from its hinges as plumes of smoke unfurl across the desk. In the thicket of it all, a hand forms, fingers stretching and hover. A pile of rocks teeters in the silvery sea; it is a towering mass without much direction, just up.]
[A torso forms; a crop of hair peaks out from the smoldering mass. Light flickers dimly in the deep blanket of logia; red and oranges flare through sheets of gray. Then, a sigh - a pulse of life. Blue eyes slowly ease themselves open before shutting back and dissolving into smoke.]
Another year.
[His voice sounds like an echo, something far off.] Another year in this damn hell hole; another missed chance. The decision to come to these seas, to sacrifice who we are for a greater sort of a good. What is it? At the end of the day, who is justice? Do we have that right to call ourselves good if all men are born evil?
[The smoke ripples, something trembles. The hand disappears and reappears with a large stone wrapped in knuckle-biting leather. The wrist rotates, turns counterclockwise so vigorously, it feels like it could snap. But tendons turn to nothing more than delicate fingers of ash and the stone gently finds its place atop the tower of its kin.]
Mariejoie - the Great Hall of Justice and another execution I am missing. An important one, one to tie everything together. His son, of all people; I should have seen it coming.
[The smoke freezes abruptly. Skin forms, a torso collects, a face pieces together and Smoker chomps on his cigar, biting through leaflets angrily.] And how many of us will end up the carpet of this insane war? How many of them will be nothing more than cannon fodder?
[Finally, Smoker forms. The edges of his body flicker, not entirely solid.]
How many people stuck here will be nothing more than the same?
venomized