Hi, guys! I'm back with another chapter - and this one starts with a flashback from Maria's time on the islands before she met up with Robin, Franky, and Brook!
Thanks to pizzafan123 for the Favorite!
Alder Niis - You've got the flu? Ouch. And yes, we are finally learning about Maria's metal-ness! Of course, it's going to be a while before she can finally make sense of it all, but we are starting to figure things out!
Anyway, here's the chapter!
Chapter 90 (or 4 in SW) - Day 4: Recaptured
Maria was really was getting used to running around in the jungle, fending off the monsters that kept coming at her. At the same time, she was able to find a number of those muscular men and knock them out before they could shoot too many of the animals on the island. The whatever-it-was that they had been shooting - the bolts and the strange green bulbs at their ends - clearly wasn't good for the animals.
Maria couldn't help but wonder if the animals were aware that she was helping them, but since they had been continually attacking her for the last few days without stopping, the teen figured that they probably hadn't noticed.
"A little help would be nice right about now," Maria muttered through gritted teeth as she moved through the trees, jumping from one to the next like stepping stones.
"There she is! Get the little troublemaker!"
Maria didn't even bother to look back to see who exactly was chasing her; she knew just by the guy's voice.
The Straw Hat pirate cursed her luck. "Seriously, why don't these guys learn their lesson and leave these guys alone?"
An idea occurred to her then, and she let out a sharp barking noise that sounded more like an animal's than like any sound a human could make.
But to any other animal who happened to be nearby...it might sound like something else. Maria really hoped that it did, anyway.
"That's the kid that Shiki's looking for! The one who caused Dr. Indigo all that trouble! We're going to get a huge reward if we manage to capture her and get her into the boss!"
"Don't speak so loud, you idiot! Didn't you hear that noise earlier? There's probably a monster somewhere nearby!"
Maria grinned, a dark aura seeming to come over her face. If only they knew what she could become.
Maria saw that she was coming close to the edge of the island, from just beyond the trees. She was tempted to jump off and see where where that was going to lead, but she decided to take another route, letting out another bark as she turned sharply.
"There it is again!"
"I thought you said this place had been completely cleared of those crazy animals!"
"There must have been one that we missed!"
Maria snarled something that sounded like a curse under her breath. Just her luck. She should have taken the chance and jumped off the edge like she had been thinking of doing. The teen instead decided to go deeper into the island then circle back around in order to try and find another island to jump onto.
She wasn't sure if she would be able to make it, but she wasn't about to just let these...these dummkopfs catch her.
Unfortunately, Maria ended up running into something else.
Memory Break - Present Day
Maria's POV
Franky brought the grasshopper to a stop, bringing me out of my thoughts...and into a nightmare.
"Damnit," Franky muttered, looking ahead at the smoking carnage. "We didn't make it in time."
"Even what fires there were have burnt themselves out," I muttered, noticing the smoke rising from the destroyed buildings of the village. I glanced down at the large, neat holes that went in a ragged line right on the outside of the village. "Looks like those Daft Green trees are gone, too. Shiki's men must have yanked them out." I clenched my fists, feeling my temperature heighten as small flames appeared on my shoulders.
"And look over there!" Brook pointed at an area of carnage ahead of us, and my breath hitched in shock.
"That's..." I couldn't believe it. "Those animals...they..."
The flames really started to rise from my shoulders then. Those animals - the monsters that had attacked the village - were lying there in the carnage, looking like they had been burnt and died.
I really wanted to burn something then, but I knew that I couldn't afford to be angry now. I forced myself to take a deep breath in and out, and the fire disappeared.
"It's just like the photo from the newspaper," Robin said in a grim tone, looking around.
"This is downright horrific," Franky muttered. "To think that this bastard's planning on doing the same thing to the East Blue!" The cyborg got the grasshopper to roll forward again with a soft revving noise.
"You've got that right," I agreed. "And those animal-monsters...he uses them like tools! Experiments with them!"
"What?" Robin looked at me in surprise. "How do you know?"
"I ended up finding a couple squads of them when I was running around. Big guys - each carrying a bow and a cylinder full of arrows that had glass bulbs full of a green liquid at the tip. Each time one hit an animal, they got really aggressive really quickly." My eyes narrowed as I saw what looked like the carcass of a long-necked herbivore dinosaur. "These creatures deserve to be treated better than this. If these were Pokemon and Shiki was considered their Trainer, he'd be arrested for illegal experiments and animal abuse - to the severest degree."
"With all this carnage around, it's hard to think that our captain wouldn't be around here," Brook remarked, looking around.
"I was thinking the exact same thing." Franky raised his voice. "Straw Hat! Say something if you can hear me!"
"Luffy-san!" Brook called. "Are you out there?"
I was about to add my own call for our captain to theirs, but then I caught sight of something ahead of us: a giant spiral of some kind that stretched up into the heavens, dark and ominous. And the ground ahead of us looked like it had been plowed through by something.
"I don't like the feel of that thing," I commented warningly. "It looks like something bad happened over there."
"Then we'd better check it out." Franky revved the grasshopper's antennae, and the bug responded by pushing on the wheels a little harder. It pushed through the plowed ground - which was surprisingly more solid than I had thought that it would be - and jumped off a small cliff before landing in an indent that surrounded the spiral.
Now that we were closer to it, I realized what exactly it was that we were looking at. And who was trapped inside it.
"What happened?!" Franky stared up in shock at the heads of our fellow crewmembers: Usopp, Sanji, Zoro, Chopper, and Luffy. All of them out cold.
"Luffy-san," Brook said in concern.
"This is messed up," Franky continued, shaking his head.
"We'd better get them out of there," I commented, frowning up at the spiraled tower in front of us - only now did I see that it was entirely made of dirt. "It doesn't look like they're doing too well trapped in there."
Robin nodded in agreement. "Right." She crossed her arms, clearly showing that she was planning on using her Devil Fruit abilities.
Franky ran for the tower of dirt and started to climb up, digging his bare feet into the dirt for a foothold. "Whoa! This thing's really solid for being made out of dirt. Everything's been compacted in."
"It'd probably have to be in order to hold them in place," I commented, looking up at Luffy and the others. A slight frown came over my face, and I started forward myself while Robin started to murmur something - probably the number of arms she thought that she was going to need.
I felt a pinprick at the back of my mind as I reached the tower myself - at the same time, Franky reached Usopp and started to yank on the sniper's exposed foot in order to get him out of the dirt tower.
Memory Break - 3rd POV
Something was thrown at the back of Maria's head, and the teen caught it. Looking the orange disk over, she looked at a teenager wearing a blue and black "superhero" costume and gave him a curious look.
"Gear came up with it a few days ago," the boy explained. "Now seems to be a good time to test it as any." He walked over to the exit. "You coming?"
Maria grinned. "Like I'm going to pass this up!" She dashed out after him.
Outside, a large, strange land vehicle was already moving out of the docks. Maria was quick to toss out the device Gear (whoever he was) had made, becoming surprised when it suddenly morphed into a metal board that was hovering in the air.
"Now that is cool," Maria stated, grinning. She jumped on, the costumed boy following suit. "Let's go!"
Memory Break - Maria's POV
I shook my head to get the memory away. Where had that come from?
"Maria-san!"
I blinked, then looked over at the surprised skeleton, who was starting at me - or, what I seemed to be holding at that point - with a surprised expression.
I followed his gaze...and my eyebrows shot up when I realized that I had the same floating board in the crook of my arm that I had seen in my memory!
"Whoa..." I couldn't believe my eyes.
"How did you get that to appear, Maria-san?" Brook asked, sounding just as surprised as I felt.
I frowned slightly, not exactly sure how I was going to explain - I wasn't exactly sure how it had ended up there, either.
But, for some reason, I did know how this..."hover board" worked.
I dropped the board on the ground...but it didn't hit the ground, instead hovering a few inches above the dirt. I jumped on it and willed the thing to go up. Surprisingly, it did so at a pretty fast rate; I ended up reaching Franky in seconds.
"Whoa!" Franky looked at me in shock. "Where did you get that? It looks super!"
I smirked at his comment, but I didn't say anything. Instead, I looked over at the crewmate who was in front of me - Chopper - and I started digging into the dirt around him in order to get him out. Chopper was in his small form, so it was easy enough to make a small hole and pull him out.
"Robin!" I called down. "Think you could make a net or something? I got Chopper out!"
I saw a criss-cross of peach-colored lines appear below me, and I dropped Chopper down onto them. A moment later, Usopp was freed curtesy of Franky. The rest of the crew quickly followed suit, with Zoro being the last one to get tossed down.
"What could have caused them to get caught in that?" I asked as I lowered myself to the ground.
Franky slammed into the ground as I picked up my hover board. "Probably that Shiki guy." His voice came out in a snarl.
"But why?" Robin frowned. "I find it highly unlikely that he would have come after any of us now, after we have been trapped here for a full week."
I hummed in agreement, frowning. "We're going to have to wait for the guys to wake up if we're going to figure out what exactly is going on here. I don't know if any of us would be able to shake them awake or anything..."
Robin made a thoughtful humming noise in response to my statement.
While a thoughtful expression came over her face, I let my mind wander elsewhere...
Memory Break - 3rd POV
Maria gritted her teeth, glaring around the clearing - and the men from Shiki's crew who had hemmed her in. She gripped her phoenix staff in both hands, both ends of the wood set on fire so that she could do double the damage no matter which way her opponents were coming from.
What made her really annoyed, though, was the fact that she was trapped in the same crater-clearing that she had woken up in after escaping from Shiki. And that same level of anger was starting to come back.
Maria was really tempted to let her anger get the best of her, but she knew that could do a lot of damage to the jungle, too, and the animals probably wouldn't appreciate her for that. So the teenager instead focused the energy that was coming through...and forced it through the rest of her body.
The energy rush that followed - nearly overran Maria and could have caused her to black out, but she hung on until the black spots cleared from her vision.
"Let's see how you can take me on now," Maria muttered. Now that her staff was gone because of the energy rush, she charged at a pair of men in front of her, charging up her fire.
Before she was able to get too far, however, the lip of the crater suddenly rose up in front of Maria, causing her to come to a short stop as a snarl formed on her face.
"Well, well, I didn't think that you'd manage to avoid my men and cause my plans so much trouble!"
Maria didn't need to turn around in order to see who was speaking. She let out a snarl as fire broke out across her back in what almost looked like a pair of wings.
"Grrraargh!" Maria turned sharply and threw out a bolt of fire in the direction of the flying man behind her, but he shot upward before the attack could make contact.
"The fact that you also forced me to come out also makes me extremely annoying," Shiki added in his infuriatingly calm tone. "How about you just go back to Dr. Indigo like a good little -"
"Don't you dare tell me to go back to that freak!" Maria turned sharply on her heel and threw her arms forward, causing the fiery wings that had been on her back to shoot out in all directions - both towards the circle of men and towards Shiki. The red-orange shade of the flames took on a different shade - one of a white-orange - as it went about and honed in on each of the figures, catching the men making the ring that was keeping Maria in by surprise.
Shiki managed to dodge a few at first, but even his flying around didn't save him from all of them; one caught him in the back and the rest followed suits, latching onto his yellow-and-orange-striped robe and trying to burn at his hair.
It was at this point that the energy that Maria had ran out, and she was forced to stop pouring all her energy into her homing fire attack. She collapsed down onto one knee, reaching out and willing her staff to come back - which it did after a moment.
"A good effort," Shiki remarked dryly, "but not enough." Something changed in the air, and the fire on his clothes and hair faded abruptly. Before Maria could even move, the Golden Lion had grabbed her head, causing a loud pop! to be clearly heard.
Maria gritted her teeth, unable to move on her own as she felt herself be lifted up off the ground.
"Maybe I won't send you back to Indigo," Shiki decided aloud. "But I am going to make sure that you're not going to cause me any trouble anytime soon. I'm sure that the incoming pirates would appreciate some...entertainment. Jihahahahaha!"
Maria gritted her teeth and cursed everything from the Master Emerald to Arceus to Kingdom Hearts for putting her into this situation. Why make her the only one who could be affected by Shiki's Devil Fruit ability?
Was it just because of what she had found out about her powers...?
Maria was sure that she was going to break her teeth from how hard she was gritting them. Seriously, she couldn't have been given a warning sooner than the day after this had happened?
Maria really hoped that she wasn't going to end up getting caught by anyone else like this anytime soon.
Change in POV - ?
The figure watched from the doorway as Shiki walked in, his arms folded under his arms like they always were. "Well?"
"You could have warned my doctor that the pirate was going to react like that," Shiki growled darkly, glaring at the figure leaning against the doorframe.
"Even if I had warned you, I doubt that you would have taken it seriously," the figure replied. "She was quite the unassuming character before, right? Seeming just like any other average human?"
The dark look that the figure got in from Shiki response to her statement made a strange smirk come over her face. "And? How was she when you found her?"
Shiki's glare intensified. "I can't help but wonder if you withheld information on purpose. That girl was in far better control of herself than you claimed that she would be, not to mention that she was able to put back the animals' SIQ injections!"
"Really? I didn't think that she knew about that."
"She shouldn't have. Those men can stay out of sight of even the most dangerous monsters." Shiki glared down at the figure. "You find all of this amusing. Why?"
The figure shook her head, purple eyes keeping her emotions hidden. "There are some things that I'm still trying to figure out about her, Golden Lion. From what it sounds like to me, though, it seems that she's starting to..."
The figure winced, then, and rubbed her head. A moment later, a dry, dark laugh escaped from her. "It seems that I'm wanted somewhere, pirate. While I would like to stick around and see what you're going to do, I have some other business that I have to take care of. Ja ne."
There was a purple flash, and the figure disappeared from sight.
Shiki swore, feeling less and less like his fun-loving self. This visitor had cause more than enough trouble for him because of that Fire Staff, and it didn't exactly help that his brand-new navigator, the little Baby Doll, wasn't accepting him as her new captain.
The Golden Lion was going to have to do something about that.
I'll give you two guesses as to who that figure who made the purple flash was. ;) And what was it about Maria that has changed from what she was like before? You guys'll have to wait a couple chapters in order to find out!
I'll see you next week!
