Heaven Has No Limit Chapter 10 - Let Him Cook

“Get a move on it!”

“Quickly! Lord Judge said everything must be perfect for the Saint’s arrival!”

Eighteen servants labored to carry barrels of wine, lugging them atop their shoulders, and rushing towards the kitchens. A girl, pink of hair, curly of brows, clad in her best attire, a flowing, hot-pink dress, with matching pink shoes, moved aside the rushing servants, paying no heed to them, nor to their creased brows, their labored breaths, and lengthened strides.

The Head Butler barked with veins bulging across his throat. “Fools! You almost collided with Lady Reiju! Be careful!”

“S-sorry!”

“Forgive us, Lady Reiju!”

They dropped to their knees, their foreheads kissing stone and gravel. They trembled, quivered like leaves drifting in the wind, like flags flapping in the breeze, awaiting punishment, or judgment, or both.

She said nothing, gesturing with a single hand for them to move on.

“T-thank you! Thank you, Lady Reiju!”

“Thank you!”

Not a single one of them could mean her harm. Her father long informed her, in the days when he pulled her aside and cared enough to educate her on the finer scientific aspects of genetic engineering. A genetic command instilled in the vast majority, the Germa Army, ensured forfeiture of the right to disobey and the right to rebel.

Beyond that, the inability to disobey was an innate subconscious awareness of their replaceability. The fact they were clones was not known consciously, but understood innately, thus a fear lingered within their genes: the fear of their creators, who were, for all intents and purposes, their gods.

They hurried away, continuing their tasks without thought. There were others, too, she saw. These were not members of the Germa Army, but servants, maids, who had slaved away all through the night. On their knees, on all fours, polishing all the statues, sweeping every iota and speck of dust, mopping floors, and waxing corridors. There was a shine to every corner and every floor. When she’d walked anywhere, everywhere, her reflection accompanied her, gleaming in ceramic, steel, and stone. 

In the distance, a battleship flying the flag of the World Government appeared upon the horizon. The rising sun approached behind it. Casting an orange, almost golden glow upon the vessel, and the sight of it in the distance made the servants slave away faster. Red carpets, the sort of which she could not recall ever being rolled out for any occasion, had lined the way from the docks to the Throne Room. 

Women, lips fat with lipstick, faces thick with powder, eyes painted, dressed in the revealing silken outfits of exotic dancers said to come from an island called Alabasta, awaited at the docks.

Her father had acquired them, she’d learned, recently, from a Black Market auction. She had seen them, practicing their performance night after night with a manic fervor. Practicing until their toes were filled with sores and blisters, their voices were nearly hoarse, and their bodies dropped from exhaustion. Practicing as though imperfection would spell failure, and failure would spell death.

Or perhaps, worse.

“Reiju! Where are you?”

“Here, Father!”

Reiju rushed forward. Her heels got caught on the ends of her pink dress, and she almost stumbled, cursing both the heels and the dress that restricted her mobility. There were not things she wore often; rather, they were not things she’d ever had cause to wear. Likewise for the makeup that had been adorned by the maids, and likewise for her hair, styled into a long, singular ponytail.

Were her mother to see her, she would scarcely recognize her, dolled up as she was. Yet, her mother seldom saw anyone as she’d been confined to bedrest ever since delivering the quadruplets, having barely the strength to do anything but eat meals and wallow.

“Your mother is a hypocrite, Reiju,” her father often said.

Once, Reiju had been kinder to her mother. Once, before her father outright forbade her from speaking to her mother whatsoever about their plans and her mission. Then, he had called her aside and told her the ailing woman would not understand, and it would only make her health worsen faster. They spoke only of her mission in code and whispers, in privacy and secrets.

Her mother had sensed something different going on with her and had asked multiple times, but due to the modifications placed on her, Reiju could not disobey her father. For the sake of her mother’s health, she could not, and would not, tell her what her father had planned for her. Only shaking her head in silence.

However, her mother was sick, not stupid. She had noticed how much more her father doted on her, paid attention to her, cared for her, invited her to his office and lab where the project issued by her ‘target’ was growing, and there, he tutored her directly.

Her mother’s reaction had not been that of joy or gladness. She expressed no happiness that her and her father’s relationship had improved considerably over the past several months.

For the first few days, she had been confused.

As the days turned to weeks, she grew suspicious.

As the weeks turned to months and her health declined...

She grew paranoid.

“Your father is capable of doing horrible things.”

“Please, talk to me. Tell me why he’s always inviting you to that room in private? The room he won’t let anyone else into?”

“What is it you two have been whispering about, Reiju? Please, please tell me.”

“If he’s making you do something you don’t want to do—”

“Reiju, you’re my daughter. I’ll do whatever I can to protect you! Please!”

The words were never overt, never outright stated, as such suspicions, the nature of them, could never be allowed to be overt. Reiju, though young, was astute. Her mother’s concern was of a different nature, and she sensed something amiss with her constant queries. Thus, she had divulged them to her father.

Their resulting argument had been apocalyptic.

Different from her father's explosive temper, there had instead been a cold, utterly chilling fury she had never seen.

“That you think I would be capable of… My own flesh and blood, Sora. My flesh and blood.”

“You’ve never cared about your flesh and blood! Look at what you did to your sons! How am I to know if you cannot stoop to even newer lows, Judge?!”

“All I do, I do for the sake of this family. For the sake of our legacy. Our kingdom. I am not the twisted villain you’ve conjured in your nightmares, woman. Nor are you the tragic heroine in this ordeal. I never forced you to marry me. You were the one who got on your knees and begged. You chose this life. You. You, Sora!”

Her mother’s condition deteriorated after that argument. She’d been bedridden for weeks, too tired to even eat. Before, the Doctor and her father’s estimates were that she had a few years left, but after that argument, it was down to mere months at best.

Yet, Reiju had never forgotten the argument, the accusations, the words thrown back and forth, and the vitriol between her parents. Especially what her mother had wrongly suspected. She was young, not stupid. Young, not ignorant. Her mother had been entirely in the wrong, but the fact that she’d suspected such a thing made Reiju have questions.

“Why did you marry Father?” 

That question, she’d asked, her sick, frail mother, her hands connected to intravenous drips, an oxygen mask placed over her face, her eyes sunken, and tired.

“If you have no faith in him at all, why did you marry him?”

“I… loved him, Reiju,” she’d rasped. “I loved… the man he was.”

Her mother’s answer made Reiju see the world in a new light, because her father’s answer was the opposite.

“Love? Is that what she told you?”

Her father had all but laughed outright at the claim. He felt no such thing as love for her mother, and did not believe it was love. The only thing her father loved was himself and his legacy.

“It was because I had power, I had wealth, and I had prestige. That’s all.”

That was all.

“Your mother is a hypocrite, Reiju.”

Reiju always suspected, but hearing the conflicting reasons made her have doubts. She doubted her mother’s words. Her mother’s reason. Her father, for all his faults, Reiju had come to understand he never lied to her. He did not have a deceptive bone in his body. He would tell her the truth, unfiltered, unabashed, without care for feelings or sentiment. Thus, his words, blunt and cold and unfeeling as they were, sounded more valid than her mother’s claims.  

Reiju searched through old books, pictures, documents, newspapers, and found the one that had their wedding, the announcement of the King of the Germa Kingdom, getting married to a Princess from a North Blue Nation of little to no renown, one embroiled in war. One, that by the mere fact of an alliance with the Germa Kingdom, had its former enemies turn to allies, swearing fealty to them all.

Older newspapers had documents of her father’s battle prowess, of his supposed genius, of his reputation as one of the top scientific minds, compared side by side with Dr. Vegapunk, Caesar Clown, and Scien. The nature of their experiments called into question their disregard for lives or test subjects relegated to a passing sentence, a list of casualties, glossed over, but it was clear, from then, that her father had always been this way.

The newspapers of her father’s deeds predated the wedding; thus, her mother had always known what sort of man she married. His political beliefs, ideologies, his viewpoints of the strong ruling, the weak obeying, of royalty and nobility existing to be served, of kindness and virtue, being hindrances… he never hid any of it. 

He never pretended to be something he was not. Her mother saw it all.

Yet she married him anyway.

Because he had wealth, he had power, and he had prestige.

“Your mother is a hypocrite, Reiju.”

Wealth. Power. Prestige.

Without any one of those three, her mother and her father’s union would be unlikely. Her birth would be unlikely.

“She speaks of kindness and love, conveniently ignoring that both are privileges only available to the strong. Do you think she would still speak of such stupid ideals if she were a starving peasant, gnawing on rats?”

Her mother had chosen the type of man she married. Even if Reiju wanted to be generous and say her mother didn’t have a choice in the matter, as the options were either a political union or destruction…

Then her sin was that she was weak.

As a weak woman, lacking power, all she could do was bind herself to the arms of the strong. When given the choice between marrying a man she saw as a monster or allowing her people to face destruction?

“Your mother is a hypocrite, Reiju.”

Her mother’s answer could only be the former.

“In the early days, you think she opposed my ambitions? Ha! She relished it. She loved watching me fight, conquer, kill! She loved knowing she was married to a strong man! A man who could protect her! What she loved was not me, it was the power I possessed! She was intoxicated with it! We wined and dined! We feasted and toasted on our enemies' corpses! She savored the merits of being a Queen to a Tyrant! That was what she loved!”

Why then did her mother later cry foul when that same man’s ambitions extended to her children? 

Perhaps, if her father never planned to modify her and her siblings, her mother would have continued at his side, supporting him, his actions, his deeds, as his loyal wife. So long as his ambitions only harmed others but not her or her children, she would be content.

“Your mother is a hypocrite, Reiju.”

There was no other term to call it but hypocrisy.

“I am not entirely unaware of my own faults. Vegapunk, that man I hate, often pointed them out to me. If your mother really was the Angel she wanted you to believe she is, ask yourself this… what possible reason would such a woman have to marry a man like me?”

Her father stood at the docks, his thumb running uneasily over his right hand, in that manner he did when he was lost in his thoughts. She followed his gaze beyond the rippling waters of the sea that were said to spell freedom for few, and death for most. There, to the ship approaching with its sails fully unfurled, the blue cross with five circles, each of equal size.

He said nothing, watching quietly, yet it was in his silence that Reiju gleaned his thoughts. Somehow, they had gotten closer over the past few months. Closer than Reiju ever believed to admit. Enough so that she could read his moods and his thoughts at a glance, and he, too, looking at her, could almost always tell what she was thinking.

The sea breeze blew his hair backwards as he gazed off into the distance. Seagulls squawked as the ocean waves rose and fell, and as rising dawn gave way to true day.

“The Saint will be arriving soon, Father.”

He nodded, his gaze never leaving the sight of the approaching vessel.

“Your things?”

“They’ve all been put into suitcases.”

“Your notes?”

“Packed with them.”

“The special Den-Den Mushi I gave you?”

“Also packed, Father.”

Her father fell quiet.

“Does my mother know I’ll be…”

“I’ll inform her after you’ve departed.”

“I understand, Father.”

His dark eyes crinkled. “You—”

“Father?”

“I used to think sons would be the ones who would carry on my legacy.” 

He shook his head.

“I never thought a day would come when I would cherish one daughter over four sons,” Vinsmoke Judge laughed. “Had I known… I’d have modified your brothers in the womb.”

He fell quiet, his voice trailing off.

“Had I known just how much joy a daughter could bring.”

The distant ship slowly got closer to the Harbor. Her father lightly patted her head as he took a deep breath.

“I know you’ll make me proud, Reiju.”

Those words were the closest Vinsmoke Reiju had ever gotten…

To the warmth of a father’s love.

=====)+(=====

In a few years, a man’s daughter is gonna be getting backshots.

“Now announcing the arrival of the Saint, Saint Jaygarcia Noah!”

There was not a single fucker he could see at eye level, because all of them were on their knees. As far as his eyes could see, it was people kneeling, and people bowing, because to kneel and bow in front of a Celestial Dragon was to buy a few more seconds of precious air, and to continue to subscribe to life.

Not that Noah would kill anyone for not bowing, of course. That was beta shit. If he wanted to snuff the light out of a person for disrespecting him, it needed to be for something more serious than not bowing. 

Something like being ugly, or being fat, or being both.

Stepping off the ship and onto the floating kingdom, he took a deep breath before scrunching his nose.

Even the air smells… 

Bitchier.

Noah’s eyes pulsed. His Observation Haki stretched far and wide, sweeping over the entirety of the Kingdom. He clicked his tongue as he stepped forward, marching slowly down the docks.

Besides Vinsmoke Judge, not a single person had Haki. This entire nation, aside from its King, could be no-diffed by a single Logia Fruit User. Not even one of the good ones, either.

He’d always heard about how the Grand Line was built different, how it was on that David Martinez shit 24/7, but hearing and experiencing it were two separate things. The moment they’d exited the Grand Line proper and entered North Blue, it was like he’d been downgraded from Spotify Premium. 

The weather went from being a butterfly-tattoo alt-girl on speed, to a church-girl gasping at the word ‘dick.’ The Sea Kings were smaller, tinier, and would instead be better called Sea Cucks instead. They didn’t need a Log Pose or an Eternal Pose, and ordinary compasses still worked. It was smooth sailing all the way. The pirates in this part of the sea weren’t shit either. They saw the ship flying the sigil of the World Government, and booked it as fast as they could.

North Blue isn’t even the weakest of the Four Blues…

He stood in front of Judge, who bowed in front of him, and his gaze flicked to the right, to Vinsmoke Reiju, kneeling beside him, before he flicked it back to Judge.

The Power Rangers aren’t complete…?

Right, those brats must be like… two years old or something.

In a few years, I should remember to tell Judge to Let Sanji Cook. If I'm gonna be fucking his sister... least I can do is let him have his kitchen.

He might even be able to make genuine KFC Chicken if I give him the recipe.

“It is an honor to welcome you to the Germa Kingdom, Saint. I have prepared a—”

“Business first,” Noah waved his hand dismissively. “Business always comes first.”

Vinsmoke Judge beamed as if he’d been made into the fucking Emperor of West Blue. 

“Yes! Saint! Right this way!”

=====)+(=====

He… is even more amazing than I had thought.

Vinsmoke Judge had all his doubts cleared upon officially meeting Saint Jaygarcia Noah. His gaze had darted, once and twice, back to the white-suited boy accompanied by a member of CP0. The boy was rather tall, which gave him no specifics of his age, but he bore a maturity and a well-built musculature that spoke of rigorous training. His eyes were sharp and keen, and there was an air of danger that came from him which Judge could not claim he had ever felt in the presence of a Celestial Dragon. 

He was utterly unlike his expectations, and utterly unlike his imagination. The image he possessed of a Celestial Dragon was not always for the best, as both he and Vegapunk had once theorized that their behavior was a result of inbreeding. It was, of course, a thing they could not prove without access to the Lineage Factor of one, and there was no merit to proving it, regardless, so it was merely a theory that they discussed during their varying research.

Saint Noah, however, was clearly cut from a different cloth than the rest. Strong-jawed, able-bodied, he was, perhaps, an apex of his kind.

The boy's appearance was almost enough to make him feel less reservations about what he planned for Reiju. He would not mind, at all, having grandchildren that bore such features.

“Well?”

Judge hurriedly led them into the private experimentation chambers, his daughter trailing behind. The room had only two things of note: the first was a large chalkboard, which had yet to be wiped, and contained some of his lessons on the Lineage Factor, which he’d been providing his daughter. The second was, in the very center of the room, a large vat filled with embryonic fluids and necessary life-sustaining liquids containing a lifeform floating suspended within.

The individual within was of a young age, and bore, at first glance, considerable facial and genetic similarity to the Fishman the Saint had so generously provided him, months ago. However, only partially, for rather than being a sea bream variant of a Fishman, it was instead a pufferfish variant, with sharp, deadly quills sticking out of the spine. There were also traits not belonging to that Fishman, but to others.

“This is it, Saint,” Judge gestured with pride. “Project FT-01. There has been no rejection detected, despite originating from multiple Lineage Factors.” 

The clone growing in the vat was his magnum opus.

“It is enough to be called a miracle.”

Before it, Vinsmoke Judge had never been able to create clones that contained the Lineage Factor of more than one individual. That is, a clone of a person would always be a clone of a person, as a copy of that person that was identical in almost every way, save for minor alterations in height, musculature, and sex. 

Attempting to create a clone of an individual that had the traits of another individual was a task that had been beyond him. Prior attempts had ended in failure due to there being a consistent rejection of the conflicting immune systems, which would always treat the other genetic material of the secondary added Lineage Factor as an invader.

Not only had he failed in this topic, even Vegapunk, who said that it was theoretically possible, conceded it would take decades to find an answer. Thus, all of Judge’s clones were clones of a single sample of one person. He thought it impossible for a clone to have more than one originating Lineage Factor.

Until Saint Noah told him otherwise and created a clone with three Lineage Factors.

“What the fuck is this?!”

Vinsmoke Judge turned to the Saint, his heart leaping to his throat. “S-Saint?”

“It’s not finished cooking,” Saint Noah pointed. “When you spoke to me on the Den Den Mushi, you said, at the time, that in three months, it would be complete. It's been more than three months, and it still hasn’t cooked.”

“It…” Judge blinked. “It… is done, Saint? The gestation process is complete. The clone is, as it is… fully ready. It can be taken out and—”

“It’s a fucking brat.”

“Y-you…” Judge was flummoxed. “You wanted a fully grown—”

“No fucking shit! What do I look like to you? You want me sending—” He paused, then rubbed the bridge of his nose. “What is it with you people and child soldiers? Using kids as your weapons is so ass, man... It's so ass.”

Saint Noah took a deep breath.

“Grown, Judge. I. Want. It. Fucking. Grown.”

“Even…” Judge hesitated. “Even with our augmented aging process, Saint, an artificial human still needs about five years to reach adulthood.”

“Five years?”

“Y-yes, Saint. Five years,” Judge said hastily. “H-however, due to this being a Fishman-Human Hybrid, it may be sooner…” 

Saint Noah stood there, tapping his feet impatiently, in a manner that told him he was not at all happy with that news.

“Five years… five fucking…”

He pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Fine. We can work with that. Fortunately, for you, I’ve got time to burn. Just need to make some changes to the schedule...”

Saint Noah clicked his tongue, staring at the figure floating in the vat. He stared at it, in silence, for several minutes, where no one else in the room dared utter a word.

“...It’s no Miracle.”

“Saint?

“I said it’s not a Miracle. You just couldn’t see it because you didn’t know shit about Fishman genetics.”

Vinsmoke Judge froze. It took everything he had to prevent himself from excitedly rushing towards the Saint. He cleared his throat, asking slowly,  “Could you… explain, Saint?”

“Fishmen have the same blood types as humans,” Saint Noah said,  turning to him. “You can transfer blood from the fish to man and man to fish, which means there’s little conflict in our hardware. Hell, the fish fucks are also capable of breeding with humans.”

He turned back to the glass, tapping it with his index finger. 

“Despite this, they have one thing we don’t… which is subspecies mutability.”

“Subspecies… mutability? You mean—”

“There’s Shark Fishmen, Octopus Fishmen, Whale Fishmen, fucking Blobfish Fishmen for all I know,” Saint Noah scoffed. “Varying subspecies of the same main species. Humans don’t have subspecies mutability. If a human fucks a human, their baby is always gonna be a human. What happens if a Whale Fishman fucks a Starfish Fish-Girl? Is the child a Whale Fish-brat, or a Starfish Fish-brat, or something in between?”

Judge found himself posed with a question he truly did not know the answer to. He had never interacted much with the Fishmen, nor had he any reason to. How was he to know what the result would be when two different subspecies of Fishmen copulated?

“The answer is all of the fucking above,” Saint Noah said. “They can take any form of their original parents, and sometimes, even forms not of their parents. You could get an Eel Fishman brat out of the union, and the Fish Fucks would shrug and just figure it's okay, cause maybe one of their ancestors was an Eel Fishman or something.”

That’s…

“Saint, if I may ask, how did you come across this knowledge?”

“I’ve got a few hundred Fishman slaves and usually drill them for questions,” Saint Noah said dismissively. “They’ve got no concept of paternity fraud because of that shit. Cucking, they have an idea of, but the notion that a kid isn’t theirs? Flies straight over their heads.”

That was an interesting fact about Fishmen that Judge had never expected to learn. 

“You’re saying because their genes are incredibly adaptable for the sake of their varying subspecies… it increased the acceptance odds of multiple Lineage Factors?”

“What else?” 

Amazing. 

Vinsmoke Judge was awed.

A thought came to Judge. A strange thought. It seemed almost beneath him to ask; however, Judge feared that if he did not ask now, he would never get the opportunity to do so again.

“Saint, may I make a small request?”

=====)+(=====

The fuck is wrong with this man?

“...carries genetic information in living things. It’s a damned instruction manual that tells your cells how to grow, how to function, and what traits you have—”

…Why’s he writing this all down, doesn’t he know this already?

Noah pointed to the blackboard.

“...two long strands that twist like strands into a double helix. Each strand is made up of smaller parts. I don’t know what you call it, but I call it bases: A, T, C, and G. These are what form the instructions…”

Noah was getting irritated with the looks that Vinsmoke Judge was giving him, eagerly and maniacally scribbling down things, as did his daughter, Reiju. Their eyes were shining as if he’d given them the Holy Grail, and Noah could not understand for the life of him what it was they were on.

Why the fuck are you this excited about High School-level Biology?

Judge’s request had been to explain, in his own terms and words, his fundamental understanding of the Lineage Factor. Noah found that it was basically just asking him to spitball what he knew regarding DNA. 

Noah was no Einstein. He didn’t have gigabrain processing power. What he did have was a First-World Education. That he never went to College wasn’t because he was stupid, it was just that he saw the writing on the wall that said more kids of his generation would rather be YouTubers than Astronauts.

“...where was I? Right. Chromosomes. Two X is female. One Y is male. Humans usually have a total of forty-six chromosomes that come in twenty-three pairs each, and… why are you looking at me like that? What’s with that face that says you don’t know what a— No, you do. You probably have a different name for it—”

Most people probably forgot the stuff they learned in High School about biology. No one would care to remember jack about fuck if it didn’t affect their daily life, but that was the kicker. It did affect Noah. He had a very solid reason to cram and remember as much shit as he could about biology. A reason brought on by two of the most dreaded words in history:

Covid. Nineteen.

That shit had fucked him up, thrown his life in a different direction than planned, and was the source of no small number of his arrests. Back then, if a bitch wasn’t wearing a mask and so much as cleared their throat in his direction, they were going home in a fucking stretcher.

He hadn’t gone viral at the time when the pandemic was in full swing, but he had been watching. He had nothing else to fucking do while stuck indoors all day but watch social media and doomscroll. There, then, he began taking notes, learning, jotting, noticing the sheer amount of drama from the controversy around vaccines, and figuring out that controversy was where the clicks were at.

He honed his ragebaiting skills during those days. He spent hours online roasting the mom who wouldn’t prick her kid because she didn’t want him to be autistic, and endlessly cheered on the moron who went and took ten shots of the vaccine thinking it’d make him an X-Man.

Now that I think about it…

A strange, weird thought came to Noah, a thought that was perhaps the wildest fucking shit he had ever had.

“Judge.”

“Yes, Saint!”

Noah grinned.

“What do you know about creating viruses?”