A lavish carriage trundles down a badly paved road. The four horses pulling it trot across the pavement with a little trouble even at their reduced speed. A bored looking chauffeur sits atop the carriage barely egging the horses on as they continue down the path. A voice, over enunciated and stern, calls out of from carriage's innards. Immediately the chauffeur sits up straight, like a boy scolded by mother superior.
"Uh, What sir?"
The voice, slightly more abrasive this time: "I said why we are going so damn slow, I paid good money for the best driver at our last town so I could get to places fast, not because I am in any sort of charitable mood."
"Well, sir you paid good money for the carriage I just happen to be the man responsible for driving it, besides these roads are rather bad, not kept-up well you see?"
"Look I don't want your excuses I just want you to speed up this infernal contraption, and smooth out the ride already."
"Sir, I can do one or the other, like I said these roads are pretty bad; any faster and you could be at a large risk of breaking a horse's leg, and I think you can appreciate that 3 horses is much slower than 4, okay"
"Look I am rather rushed right now, so I would appreciate if you sped up I will pay for any horses which may, in anyway. be damaged by these actions."
"Sir it's not about damaging the horses, well it is, but you have to realize if one gets hurt all the way out here we will be down to an incomplete team and that would make the entire journey exponentially longer. We would have to rest more often and our top speed would be reduced even if we did get to a nice road, which out here is unlikely."
"Look man, you're a chauffeur, and I am a business man its obvious here who has more going for him, and let me tell you that I did not get to my quite prominent position by playing everything safe. In order to get ahead sometimes you must gamble, so let loose your reigns and speed on my boy."
"I must advise against it-"
"And I must insist on it, go."
With a small sigh the chauffeur takes a stiff hold of the reigns and whispers under his breath.
"sorry my beauties, but the job comes first. Yah,"
With a snap of the reigns he urges the horses to travel faster and they set off, a muffled voice shouts congratulatory remarks from the carriage and thumps the inside door to signal his pleasure, but the growing noise of hoof on paving stone all but silences any meaningful communications. The chauffeur begins to ease up slightly on the reigns as the horses fall into a natural rhythm with the new speed. He lets out a small sigh. The trouble isn't over yet, but luckily he had kept the horses to a safe sped over the most difficult part and these horses seemed to fare pretty well. Of course that didn't mean a stray stone jutting out a bit too far, or a slight ditch where a stone used to reside, couldn't change all that rather quickly.
And it did.
Suddenly instead of cobblestone or rather on top of cobble stones thick roots appeared. Blinking the driver wasted the second he had of action stunned. Almost immediately the startled horses, also apparently unaware of the roots until too late, hit them and fell in a pile as the carriage was thrown violently to a stop and the driver launched through the air. All he could think was that he could have sworn those roots weren't there before. Luckily when he landed it wasn't on the hardened cobblestones as he feared but rather more of the peculiar roots that just seemed to spring up. Then he noticed something the wood roots weren't roots at all. Unlike the normal roots these wooden objects had a much more uniform nature, lacking the knots and discoloring of normal tree roots; they were also much larger than the flimsy trees dotting the road seemed to need. In a huff the business man emerged from the carriage. He was rather short and rotund. On his head he wore a polished top hat over a mat of greasy thick black hair. A small but long crooked nose perched on his face over a meticulously trimmed mustache waxed out away from his face in a massive curl. His eyes were rather beady and they scanned the surrounding area with a quick and methodical feel. Seeing the chauffeur lying on the bed of wood he quickly rushed over.
"Oh dear, boy what happened, it was going so well"
"sorry sir, these roots appeared out of nowhere, looks like the entire team is out of it. This trip just got a lot longer"
Suddenly the business man stop pay attention instead running his surprising slender fingers over the smooth wood, and he eyes widened.
"Not to worry nothing you could have done to prevent this." He said reassuringly, as his eyes began to scan the edge of the woods.
"Sir?"
"A strapping man like you doesn't miss a massive mess of roots like this do they?"
"No it was just like they appeared out of nowhere"
"Exactly" The man said straightening up and producing a small flintlock pistol out of his jacket.
"I don't follow, sir"
"Show yourself bandits."
"You think this was a trap?"
"I know it was," He said continually scanning the surroundings his pistol tracking his eye movements with a practiced precision. "Do you know about the devil fruits, son?"
Even in this strange predicament the chauffeur couldn't help but chuckle; sure he had heard of the strange devil fruits. Who hadn't? but just rumors mumbled by over imaginative kids stories twisted by people's flair for the dramatic.
The business man eyed his sternly. His chuckled sort of petered out.
"I assure you this is no laughing matter they are real and we have just come under attack by a man in possession of one"
"A man in league with the devil?"
"It's possible. Few study the strange fruits, and even less with any measure of success"
A slow clap echoes from the trees, as a man drops from off of one of the lower branches a rifle lying across his shoulder. The business man's gun immediately focuses on him. The newcomer looks rather unkempt. His hair was brown, short and mostly covered by the dark blue forage cap that sat on his head, what hair could be seen was unkempt and thick. He wore an unbuttoned dark blue shirt over a plane white shirt both of which had ample twigs and leaves taking residence on them. Along with the plain dark blue pants he was wearing this gave him a rather bland appearance. His face fit that description rather well also. However his features told a different story; his eyes where calm and collected and his smile was dripping with self assured arrogance.
"But you must remember there is a big difference between recognizing a problem and being truly prepared for it."
"Your certainly confident in your abilities, but I believe you'll find that my aim is true and your day is going to get quite less fun."
"Oh please what can you do with that gun anyway?"
The business man now had his turn to chuckle had he cocked the flintlock pistol back and aimed straight for the bandit's face. "Well if you truly are a devil user then I am sure you are familiar with the material sea stone, am I correct?"
The man's smile didn't even falter "Oh well, you are fancy aren't you, not many can afford such a rare material, but alas it would be a waste to use them on me."
"Why?" Then suddenly the business man's eyes got much larger, and he stammered and immediately began spinning around.
"Because you're not the devil fruit user."
"Because I am not the devil fruit user."
However just as he begins to turn around the gun he held was knocked out of his hand by a thin and long chunk of the same wood. Quickly, what was just a second ago a thin long chunk began to warp before the chauffeurs startled eyes as it grew in thickness and quickly wrapped itself around the business man as if it was as malleable as rubber then suddenly stiffened and the business man found his torso encased in a thick wood ring. So startling was the turn of events that the chauffeur didn't even look at the man who did it until he was almost looming over him. This made the first viewing even scarier. The man in question was large, really large perhaps close to 8 feet tall, with a long and stiff face. The man dress only amplified the size. He wore a massive heavy wool coat draped over his massive shoulders, under that he wore a nice buttoned checkered shirt, suspenders, a bow-tie, and a pair of well kept slacks. As different as his clothes were from his partner, so to was his face. Whereas his partner was unkempt emanating an aura of self-assuredness, this man was impeccably dressed down to the massive leather gloves, and his face shown none of his partner's arrogance. Instead his almost inhumanly long face wore a blank expression on his rough square jaw under his bored flat nose, the only part of his face registering anything were his brown eyes which constantly flickered around never really focusing on anything in particular. His hair was long, blond, and stringy falling down past his shoulders. To complete the outfit he had a jet black bowler perched on his head. The chauffeur though he was going to die. Instead the large man leaned down and offered him a hand.
"I am sorry about your horses I tried to giving them a softish landing as well, and about your rough fall, but alas for the plan to work sacrifices must be made." He said in a deep voice without changing expression.
"So you made this, softish landing for me"
"Yes"
"But you are robbing us?"
The man tilted his hand back and let out a barking laugh "Most certainly, or else this whole exercise would have stunk with a pointless cruelty to it, and that's something I can't abide by"
"Are you going to bind me like that man"
"Are you going to attempt to escape?"
The chauffeur gulped and said "Yeah, probably" before even thinking about it, he didn't know why he said it and immediately regretted it.
"Then yes"
"Looks painful."
"It's not," and with that the big man turned to leave.
The chauffeur went to take a step forward, "aren't you going to tie me up" only to find that his feet were currently tied together by the same wood wrapping up the businessman. He felt like he was going to fall forward but luckily took a couple hops and was able to find his footing again resting up against on of the large wooden root like things.
"So you're a devil fruit user, I thought those were just stories?"
The large man turned around placing his two fists together as if holding a sword and sheath in front of him at arm's length and made a motion to mine drawing the sword out of its scabbard. But instead as the two fists drew apart from one another a wooden dowel appeared and lengthened, traversing from one fist to the other. Once the mime was done he spun the wooden dowel through the air and it began to change until it had formed a rudimentary sword.
"I ate the Wood Wood fruit, I've become a wood man" still no expression.
"Trust me man, I knew him before he got that fruit he was always a wooden man" the other bandit interjected. "Now get over here and help me search the carriage for the goods.
"Alright,"
The other bandit was rooting around inside the carriage. "Spices, fruits, herbs, what the hell kind of shipment is this?"
"Something is certainly fruity about it," The tall bandit says catching a bunch of bananas tossed out by the first bandit
The smaller bandit's head sticks out and just stares at the taller bandit for a second.
"Always the comedian, anyway look here most of this stuff is worthless, but give this a check, okay. what's it worth?" He says handing an ornate wooden box to the taller bandit. "See if you can open it?"
"No can do this lock's seastone I can't create a key for it"
"Seastone, eh. Well then it must be valuable, I'll just try to jimmy it when we get back to town let us take it. Here see what's in this." Again tossing a small crate to the taller man who places his palm against the lock and when he removes it the lock fell apart unlocked.
"Hmm, looks like some gold and silver jewelry"
"Alright, that's good and here's the bank's money transport." The first bandit gestures the second one who sticks his torso into the carriage to get it
"You fools you realize you're going to get caught don't you" The business man shouted having finally squirmed into a sitting position.
"Oh don't be a sore loser, we'll be long gone by the time that wood brace goes away."
"yeah probably, of course if a person were to circumnavigate such a problem" he yawned opening his mouth really wide, then exhaled, the chauffeur watched in amazement as the round business man exhaled and exhaled and exhaled. He got thinner and thinner until he could easily slip out of the wooden brace. Which he did, scampering away.
"Huh, circum- what" The second bandit said sticking his head out of the carriage. "Damn it he got away, look at this. We've got a man to find". The unkempt bandit unsung his rifle from behind his back, and gripped it tightly looking around. As Samuel removed his head from the carriages and began to stretch out to his full size when the now much slimmer business man hit him with his entire body and he landed on him jumping from the top of the carriage where he was perched. Despite the man's large size, the full body impact on the man's large shoulders sent him slamming into the ground head first. Steel flashed and the second bandit could tell Samuel had been hit; how bad was yet to be determined. The now not-so-sure-about-business man followed up by jumping at the shorter bandit and smacking the rifle away as he attempted to step away and ready it. He succeeded in smacking the rifle head and the shot fired off and missed, a bullet embedding itself in a nearby tree trunk. The short bandit wasn't to be taken that easy. Quickly he closed the distance between him and his attack and brought the wooden butt right at the man's nose. Evidently he didn't expect such a drastic change in attack strategy and the wooden butt caught him on the shoulder with a sickening crack as he quickly attempted to dodge away. The second bandit followed up by swiftly containing with a sideways swipe trying to connect the midsection of the rifle with the business man's head. The gun swung grazing the top of the man hair and he responded by jabbing quickly at the bandits stomach with the small knife he now held in its hand blood flicking off it. The bandits quickly retreated from the short man's reach, bringing his rifle back close to him and began to block the punches thrown by the business man with the rifle. Suddenly Samuel shouted out having evidently gotten back on his feet. The short man was distracted for only a second but that was more than the bandit needed he swung his rifle butt in and upward arc connecting with the short man's chin and launching him off the ground and onto his back, stepping over his now downed opponent his flips the rifle around and quickly the short man finds himself bleeding out of his mouth and staring down the barrel of a rifle at a very angry man. His face was lacking that composed, calm, demeanor it had shown before, now his eyes were alright with a frenzy.
"Samuel" He shouted "Samuel are you okay, I swear if he killed you I will come to your funeral and laugh."
"Just grazed my shoulder, I should be fine I just need to bandage it up."
"Next time try not to get jumped."
"Next time don't miss."
"Don't change the subject I'm not the one bleeding here."
"Oh really check your stomach."
Sure enough a trickle of blood was running down a small cut across the second bandit's chest.
"Self –inflected."
"Oh yeah I forgot you like to keep your rifle sharpened, although it hits me right here" gesturing to his heart "that you care about my welfare"
"Shut up," He mumbled visibly relaxed now, his finger let off the trigger just a smidgeon. "Alright, keep your head down and don't move we'll be off now, try anymore of the theatrics we just witnessed and you'll find us not so easily fooled, nor so easily forgiving."
The guard simply wipes off the blood trickling down his lip and sneers at him. "You're out of bullets. You missed your one shot"
"Wrong. This is a south blue special rifle capable of semi automatic fire and carrying 6 shots in a revolving chamber. I may not be a devil fruit user, but I do have my neat tricks."
"hmm, compensating are we?"
"Yeah well he has to spend all day around a man famous for his wood, so you know…" Samuel says chuckling, the guard cracks a smile at that too.
"Thanks, Sam agreeing with the prisoner over me, just peachy,"
"No problem Fredrick." He says as wood wraps around the guard once more this time wrapping around his legs as well.
"We best be off. So listen you two the bonds will naturally loosen after a while as the wood begins to relax you'll be able to jimmy out of them then." And with that the two bandits disappeared off the path out into the open fields lining the cobbled road.