Chapter 11: Trash
"Usopp, Chopper… You won!"
Sanji kept mum on Zoro.
"Hmm, I suppose you're not a famous pirate crew for nothing," admitted Kurt, stroking his chin as he set about a dozen pots of water to boil.
"It's not because… we're a famous pirate crew," said Sanji. It's because we're a family, Kurt. We win, because we fight together."
Kurt snorted. "You win because of luck. Which you've plum run out of, judging from the fact that no matter how hard they try, they're all still doomed. That being said, I'd prefer it if you could witness at least one of your crewmates suffering a devastating loss. Oh, I know! Let's take you back to your ship for a second. I hope your cyborg isn't already dead."
Kurt rang the boat bell, and a sea king eclipsed the moon, slobbering at the mouth. It craned its neck down and stuck its huge eye at the submarine's sole window.
"Yes yes, you will get your meal shortly sweetheart," Kurt promised. "I'm still preparing it. Oh, I should probably explain," he turned to Sanji. "Her name's Tyrell, and she's taken something of a taste to human flesh. Poor girl can't stop salivating whenever she sees me, partly because of my cooking, partly because she can barely restrain herself from tearing me to shreds. That's why you're going into the pie, son," he laughed. "You can talk all you like about 'family,' but in the end it's a dog eat dog world we're living in. Those fights you just watched are proof of that. The food chain—that's the natural order."
The sea king ducked back under and lifted the submarine on its head; the metal stilts wrapped around its snout like a harness.
"The natural order?" said Sanji. "What a croc. You're more adaptable than anyone, just find your happiness and stick to it."
"Happiness is impossible for me," said Kurt. "So I'm settling for the next best thing: revenge. Towards the ship, Tyrell!"
The bell chimed.
Sunny swayed and shook as dozens of insectoid robots attempted to rip into her. Even her Adam Wood couldn't take the abuse of their scrabbling steel claws and mandible pincers forever, and if they persisted the coating would come right off.
Holding on to a dangling steel cable, Franky pried one off her hull and chucked it into the ocean, but it was no use—the robot simply swam back to the ship and recommenced doing everything in its power to scrap Sunny into a million pieces.
"So amusing," Ushao clucked, as he sat on Sunny's lawn, surveying the metal head thug's futile efforts to salvage his ship for the worthless cause of ferrying yet another wannabe pirate king to his doom. "It's all for nothing, you know. Soon this planet will vanish and the seas will surge and swallow everything. All your little friends are no doubt getting pummeled into submission as we speak. And the scraps of your ship's Adam Wood shall be repurposed as the pillars of my glorious palace."
"Oh? So why don't you man up and take me on yourself, you scrawny little nothing?" Franky seethed, having been forced to expend some of his shoulder missiles taking out a single insect-droid.
"Simply because I don't have to. You're not part of the sacrifice scheme, boring as that is. You are deemed 'not human.'"
"Damn straight! I'm beyond human!" said Franky. "Oh shi—" Two insect-droids had dug their claws into his chest and were dragging him down off the side of the hull into the ocean.
"No, you are below human. Though do not be mistaken and assume it is because of your iron body that you are so judged. It is because you are filthy Water 7 vermin."
"What did you say!" Franky struggled against the Fasmibots and tried to climb back up the cable, but another insectoid robot was chewing on the upper end.
"Oh come now. Surely while you were in charge of the Franky Family (by dint of being the smelliest rat of the whole sad lot), even your train wreck of a nose could sniff the coattails of my family's famous scrappers."
"You mean you're with those Government stooges who tried to ruin Water 7 while Tom worked his hardest to patch the city up!" said Franky, absolutely incensed.
"Your beloved city was a shithole even after the Sea Train started up," said Ushao, now enjoying a pork sandwich without a care in the world. "We were just repossessing the more beautiful remnants of the Old City before you simians could ruin them. My folks in particular would throw their weight around to get the features and landmarks of the city scrapped for display as exhibits to make our estate's garden just a little more lavish. Rest assured it was quite pretty, really–well except for my exhibit. You see my exhibit featured the cherished possessions of thugs like you, from whom we could steal with impunity. I want you to imagine every moment you've ever laughed in your life, and then I want you to imagine my friends and I laughing ten times as hard every time we went to go look at all the stupid trinkets you would call treasures—things like lockets of lost loved ones. As though street urchins could ever be loved!"
Ushao laughed and laughed, a warped chortle that reverberated across all of Franky's circuits and fueled him with pure indignation. However, the cable snapped in Franky's hands, and Franky couldn't use Strong Right because that arm was being gnawed away at with alarming speed. He plunked into the ocean, and only his buoyant shoulder pads preventing him from sinking to his doom having to contend with a dog pile of robots ripping into him.
"Eat this!" said Franky, firing one his last missiles at Ushao, but one of the Fasmibots on board intercepted the missile and took the brunt of the explosion. Ushao poked his head over the edge of the ship to drive the needle further.
"Your ship sucks, too, did you know that? Oh, sorry, for a second I forgot how miniscule your brain is, and how you're incapable of knowing things."
"My ship sucks, does it?" said Franky, a diabolical plan forming in his mind. "Well how do you figure?"
"There's nothing grandiose about it. Sure, you have a nice lawn, but where are all the rare flowers? Where's the art of it all? What a boring, boring ship." Another bite of his sandwich. "You ought to feel ashamed."
"That a fact? Well I must say our conceptions of shame must be quite different, because from where I'm standing I create art through technology and practical efficiency, and all you do is just steal shit that ain't yours."
"You tiresome wretch, just drown already." Ushao blew a whistle and two more Fasmibots jumped overboard to join their brethren in finally Lockering Franky.
"Thank you very much!" With some effort Franky stuck the claws of the robots underneath and around each other's arms, causing a tangle they weren't designed to be able to extricate themselves from. That was five of the twelve robots down. "You were saying about my miniscule brain?"
Ushao's mouth twitched a little, but then he remembered there was still no way the huge lug could possibly come back on board. "That's all right, the other robots are doing a fine job cracking the Adam Wood shell of your shitty ship."
"Ah, about that shitty ship… can any old ship do this?" Franky placed a hand on the side of the ship and pushed down on a panel, causing each of the steel rappelling cables embedded all around the ship to deploy. Franky swung from cable to cable and jumped back on board.
However, there were still seven other Fasmibots to destroy, and he was out of ammo.
"Only one recourse left."
Franky ripped open his chest cavity even as his circuits spluttered and short circuited and rummaged inside, each subtle movement of his worksman's fingers causing untold pain, but he grinned and bore it.
Ushao grew more wary and drew his sword, approaching cautiously; this man was not the type to simply kill himself, and any explosion the cyborg might trigger would definitely destroy his precious ship. Ushao placed the hilt of the sword to his lips and played it like a harmonica.
The robots heard the call and ceased attempting to break the ship, instead drawing towards the source of the noise inaudible by humans, rounding up around Franky and Ushao. Franky could discern the screech only faintly, but just enough to understand it was a command to forget the wood and devour metal instead.
"This here is the vaunted Blade of al Nimivea," he boasted, brandishing the sword up high against the sun, letting her immaculate steel taste salt for the first time. "Long lost. Thought apocryphal. I didn't even tell Falstaff I'd found it; he would have murdered me in my sleep for it the first chance he got. Such is its might, its majesty. Something a scrapper like you and your precious family would have killed for without a second thought."
The Blade of al Nimivea, the legendary sword of Lib al Nimivea, Princess of the Sound Palace Memema, whose last stand against the combined forces of the inchoate World Government centuries ago was carried down throughout the ages to anti-Government malcontents all over the four corners of the globe. And the Franky Family was no exception.
"The whistle-blade forged by al Nimivea herself, which was said to be able to bend and distort the armor and weapons of entire enemy armies through just the power of music if played properly. She'd wanted to sabotage Pluton with it, but ultimately failed. There's just no beating divine pedigree, huh?" he laughed, clearly reveling in the prospect of becoming a demigod ruler of a new World Government.
Ushao believed that the unbroken lineage of Celestial Dragons was indeed sanctified and made holy by any number of capricious gods, but he also believed that the Sea Devil was the highest and most powerful deity, and that no humans had ever successfully curried his favor despite countless sacrifices made by seamen to honor the ocean, and rigid adherence to superstition, all to stave off the stormy wrath of the waves.
"How deliciously ironic. I'm going to be using the very saber which caused the World Government to quake in its boots to do you in and usher in our Final Global Reign. Now that you're only so much junk I doubt you'll even mind if I offer you down to the Sea Devil; in fact even that is leagues above the station you deserve. So why don't you just sit still and contemplate how completely you failed your crew while I butter up your metal for my hungry robots!"
"Where did you find that thing!" asked Franky, stalling for time as he continued rummaging in his chest cavity, grimacing all the while. "Wait. Let me guess. You found it scrapping ship wrecks off the ice floes of Baldimore."
"Wha-what!"
"Haha, biiiingo! Well, this may be disheartening news for you, but that toy you're holding couldn't hold a candle to the real Blade of al Nimivea."
"How can this be?" The song of the blade was indeed doing nothing to melt away Franky's metal body.
"You didn't by any chance happen to hear of a certain Legend of the Burning Tiger during your stay in Baldimore, oh most high one," Franky mocked. "Well guess what? That was ME. Turns out that, apart from my favorite hobbies of burning and being a tiger, I also dabbled pretty heavily in inventing and gadgetry. And guess who forged that very blade?"
"N-no…"
"Y-yes," Franky countered. "Yours truly. That is not technology that would cause me to quake in fear. That blade you hold in such high regard, my dear friend, is my trash. Now would you like to see some truly impressive technology?"
Franky finally ripped out his power core, holding the pulsating blue box aloft.
Comprehension dawning on his face, Ushao blanched and grew flustered. He could not understand why anybody would want to save their ship so badly. "It's just a ship! Not even the Adam Wood is worth giving your life for!"
"She's not just a ship, and would you shut it? There's no such thing as just a ship. She's my treasure, my dream, AND MY PARTNER IN CRIME!" he said with a DON.
Franky crushed the core between his fingers, causing a powerful electromagnetic shockwave to fry the Fasmibots' circuits. "Besides, who said I was dying? Don't you know who I am? I'm…" Franky locked his rectangular arms together and formed the trademark blue star. "SUUUUUUUPEEEEER!"
"This—this can't be happening…" Ushao crumpled to the floor, holding his head in his hands, a complete mess. Clearly failure had not been a possibility Ushao entertained.
"Now now. Your parents bribed World Government big shots to let them cart away some of Water 7's historical treasures and whatever was 'precious' to us, right?" said Franky, his reserve power supply (the cola power) beginning to drain as well. "I'm going to do you one better. I took something that was precious to the World Government, the very blueprints to an ancient weapon whose sheer power could rival Davy Jones's, and burned it in front of the forces of Dark Justice. Your juvenile little hobby club could never hope to measure up."
Ushao suddenly bubbled up into hysterical laughter. He had never felt nearly so low. Franky took it upon himself to lift up the poor sod and chuck him into the sea himself.
"My regards to Davy Jones! Or a sea king, whichever comes first!"
And Franky powered down, contented, (and unconscious until his crew came back to pour more cola into him).