Sofia was in her cell, hugging her knees, trying to ignore the plethora of voices of the people inside of her. They were panicking, even if she had already told them her plan to get out - their stay here was explicitly temporary. They just had to wait it out, and it would be all solved. However, they didn’t seem to have the same amount of resolve as she did.

She knew that only by sheer grit would she able to get out of this. She had to have the willpower to continue going on, to keep calm, and to keep focused. Through that, she had managed to discreetly and surgically close up and heal her wounds from the inside, by using her internal clone and the medical lab which she had housed within herself.

And while her clone was busy with that, by focusing herself, she had slowly closed off all of the exits to her castle body. The last thing she needed now was for these loons to reveal that she had this kind of Devil Fruit power. She hasn’t endured the days of testing back on Jaya just for them to screw it up now.

She then jolted in surprise as a guard slammed his baton against a bar of her cell.

“Doing well, Noble?” he asked her.

She nodded.

“I didn’t hear you there, dear.” he replied.

“I’m alright.” she explained.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

Sofia rose an eyebrow. She certainly was alright, what was this guy going on about?

The guard then shrugged with a chuckle and then walked off, to then check on some other prisoners, who seemed to be eating. Everyone was eating, in fact. Everyone except her.

Why? That was unfair, wasn’t it? Wasn’t she supposed to get food too?

“H-hey!” Sofia called out, trying to catch the attention of that guard again. “I’ve got no food.”

“Yeah, of course.” he chuckled back. “Because you already ate it.”

Sofia narrowed her eyes, he was definitely teasing with her now. But, why? They weren’t friends or anything, and he was supposed to be a serious member of a government institution, right? What was going on? Maybe he was an impostor? He would have to report that.

“I didn’t.” she clarified. “You might be getting the wrong person. Please, I’d like to have my food.”

“Oh, you definitely did, are you trying to harass me now, hrm? That’s punishable.” he countered.

Sofia’s teeth slid against each other tightly. She didn’t understand why he was doing all of this, or what the point of it was, but she had for sure that he was bullshitting her, and she didn’t like that at all.
“My food, please.” she insisted.

“No.” the guard laughed.

“Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s not up to me what you do with your food, why are you asking me that? You already ate it, so I can’t give you more.”

Sofia held her temples. This was irritating, and going nowhere.

“Are you bored?” Sofia asked.

The guard shrugged, and made a small smile, with a corner of his mouth digging into his cheek. Then, he turned and left Sofia there, without any sort of relief to her doubts. Just left her hanging there, in ridicule.

The noble stared out, bewildered. Was the guard mentally ill? Or he just wanted to screw with her? She was leaning toward the latter now, but why would he do something as unfair as that, in a prison? Didn’t he have to represent the government?

The fact that people down here could reach that level of bullshittery hadn’t been realized by her yet. She had been brought up in a world of - at least - a minimal level of honor and honesty. Sure, you could try to bullshit people, it happened all the time, but there was a degree of tact and respect that still had to be upheld, you didn’t leave people hanging without a reason to, especially not to someone like her?

Didn’t her nobility matter here? All of her work and effort to support the World Government, didn’t any of that count? He did refer to her as a noble though, so it seemed that it wasn’t merely a case that they didn’t know that she was of a favored family. And yet, they still treated her as trash just now. Why?

She didn’t understand any of it.

Yet, the fact that she was allowed to leave past a time frame gave her hope - however, what if that promise was going to be betrayed too?

Should she keep on caring about that promise?

She sat, and thought. And felt within her a trace of hope in the World Government. She wasn’t going to let go of it that easily, and it was possible that this weirdness was exclusive to just the prison. Maybe the outside world, that was the one who gave her this promise, still had a sense of honor to themselves.

But, if that was the case, she had another problem. Within this prison, if the people in charge weren’t to be trusted and could easily lie, what guaranteed her that they wouldn’t lie about her commiting crimes inside of here, for example? Or lie about her behaviour here?

If there was no honor to be upheld by them, then she actually had no reason to worry about her actual actions - she would just have to convince them to not speak unfavorably about her and lie, in the case that she did actually do something controversial.


She spent that whole day without food, and half of the following one as well, with just mockery and amused scoffs as replies to her pleads for knowing why this was happening, as if it was supposed to be obvious and she was the naive dumbass who wasn’t realizing it.

But, she had no idea. Just mocking her and teasing her without any sense or purpose didn’t make any sense to her. Sure, you could try to pressure other people to try to get something out of them, Sofia was familiar with driving a hard deal, but there had to be some kind of purpose to what he was doing.

She still hadn’t managed to understand that people could be mean just because they wanted to be mean, without any real reason aside from enjoying the pointless suffering of others, which was what the guard she had assigned to this part of the jail was inflicting upon her. He had been giving the food to someone else instead, treating them just because he wanted to and the food had to go somewhere. Why did he want to mistreat Sofia in particular? Because she was a noble, of the kind that normally bossed him around, and now that he could boss her around, make her suffer and feel confused and powerless just like how they made him feel, he was ecstatic. He just hoped that she wouldn’t die too soon, if she started to seem too weak he could probably actually give her some food. If she begged for it. He had fantasized a lot about what he could do to her, in the lull of the boredom of being a guard of a relatively eventless and unexciting part of the jail.

Sofia knew she had to get food. And the people inside of her had been worried as well, and while they have been sitting tight so far, if they started to get desperate, she would have a much bigger problem. Sure, she had managed to lock them in herself, but if they started to riot and lose their composure, she would be up for losing that fight with them, because they were inside of her and had weapons.

And apparently, people were allowed to go to the lower levels of this jail, simply upon request. During her time in this cell, watching outside, trying to understand what was going on, she had noticed that some inmates asked to go down to the lower level, and were allowed to just leave. However, it was also known that the lower levels were for more severe punishments, although, no cells.

That would mean that the inmates ran free and had to get their food by some other way, there wouldn’t be as strict guard control, Sofia thought. And if she wasn’t restricted by guards as much, she would be able to get food by her own means - these guards had no honor after all, right? She just needed to get on their good side, and being locked up in here and being assigned to only one guard really limited her chances at making connections and negotiations.

It didn’t take her much to realize what she had to do. She would take her chances.

“G-guard!” she called out, pretending to be sickly.

“Hrm?”

“I want to go to the floor below. Please release me.” she asked, with a weak voice.

“What?” the guard said, going nearer to try to listen to her. Sofia lifted herself up as well, swaying and apparently having difficulty with her own weight, getting closer to the cell’s bars.

“I want to go to the floor below.” she repeated. “Please release me.”

“Nah.” the guard chuckled. “You’re staying here.”

Sofia’s arm then shot out at bullet speed, and grabbed the guard’s collar. “I want to go to the follow below.” she hissed. “Please release me, or I will earn being sent to a lower level.”

“A-alright, alright!” the man stammered. “Chiiill, OK? Damn. Can’t you take a joke?”

She doubted he was joking at all. This was just an excuse to try to get away with what he was doing, and she wasn’t going to take it. She didn’t release her grip.

“Release me. Now.” she stated. “I’m going to the lower level.”

Quickly, the guard pulled out the key and unlocked her door, making the old and rusted metal creak loudly, and then pointed to the abyss that lead to the floor below.

“There you go.” he informed her, as he kept a smug look on his face, looking at her as if she was a miserable fool. “But be careful. That place is a lot more fucked up than there, hah! That's really more advice that I should give, Sofia. Consider yourself fortunate that I have been generous enough to let you know that. But, now that you know - you still have to go! There is no turning back! Haha! You fool!”

Sofia ignored his advice and weird logic - he couldn’t trust anything he said, anyways. Anything was possible, maybe it wasn’t fucked up, and he was just lying. She had no way to know.

“Goodbye.” she then stated, and marched her way out to then throw herself down the pit, letting herself drop down in a free-fall.

But, as she fell, she was suddenly slammed into the wall of the pit by a hoard of ice creatures of a sort (X-mas Event), and pinned against it. They seemed humanoids, make of crystals or glass, and freezing cold. And that cold was creeping up on her, creating a layer of ice that kept her stuck against the wall. Little did Sofia know that these beings were creatures that fed off the in the cold humidity that rose from the swamp below, and had found a home in this dark, long pit.

Bewildered, Sofia attempted to put up her castle barrier to protect herself, but she had no way to stay airborne to fight these fights, and they seemed to be able to maneuver around by freezing parts of themselves against the wall.

Without much hope to be able to defeat all of them, she mustered her willpower, and ignited her ambition, causing a wave of dominating energy to blast out of her, knocking out the ice creatures.

Although, she was still pinned against the wall. Frozen against it by the weird limb that this creature of pure ice seemed to be made of. And it was slowly melting.

Melting.

It hit her. She could drink these beings! What a great coincidence, as if some otherworldly being outside of her dimension had happened to roll this result on a wheel of fortune and somehow had to include them within this jail, and had decided to do so in this manner, in a way that happened to be convenient for what she needed!

And so, she started to gently suckle onto the ice being, drinking from its melting body - although, it seemed that not *all* of the ice was its body. All of the superficial ice seemed to be merely a production of its supernatural powers, it’s innermost ice seemed to be darker. But, Sofia wouldn’t let this chance go by. Slowly, she started to drink all of the ice water she could, and had her inner clone divert some of that water from her throat to give to the people inside via using the vials and other lab equipment that she had as improvised drinking glasses. There was a lot of water to go around too, because of how shrunken they were in comparison to the water that she was intaking, allowing her to easily quench the thirst of the people she had inside, plus have plenty of water to spare to store inside of herself.

There wasn’t particularly much for Sofia herself though, because of her normal size, but that was secondary, she thought. She could resist a lot more than the community of people within her, who needed a lot more help to survive.

And there, she waited, stuck and frozen against the wall of the pit, waiting for the ice around her to defrost soon enough for her to get out. But, as she waited, there appeared to be even more of these beings, larger and more mature ones, slipping out from the shadows and slowly crawling towards her.

Apparently they were strong enough to not have been knocked out by her Haoshoku wave, and without a way to defend herself. She still had her guns inside of her, but using those had to be a last resort. She doubted that there would be any kind of security in here, or any kind of camera (although, there actually was in reality), but even so, guns were loud, even if their sound would be near-imperceptible by being so small and shot within her.

But, then she realized her mistake in her assumptions. She actually wouldn't be able to use her guns at all. Because she had locked everyone inside of her, by closing up the usual holes. The only ways left for things to exit her was via the holes that she needed to live, such as her nostrils or throat. And it would be very hard to shoot properly through those, without any kind of architectural support for it, and she didn't have nearly enough time now to set that up anyways. She was stuck, until she could melt this ice around her.

She kept her poise though, although only as much as she could move from the waist up, as she was still pinned by ice under herself. It seemed that despite being monstrous creatures, they still understood the meaning of her body language, that she wanted to intimidate them to stay back. Although, her display of fierceness towards them was nothing more than a farce, there was actually no real threat behind it, because she couldn't fight. She was but merely buying time for herself.