Another chapter ready for y'all! Sorry for the lateness again. I was catching up on some anime episodes yesterday, watching Bleach Movie 4 (The Hell Chapter), and making myself a beta account. Here are my replies to reviews on the previous chapter:

ThiefofStealth: lol Gomen, gomen. And damn it, I did it again. D: I really need to get off my lazy ass and get back to writing this fanfiction, churning out the chapters like I used to. Yep, the dream definitely means that the plot thickens! There have been hints towards the plot thickening here and there. See if you can go back and spot them! Oh, and the plot thickens even more this chapter! :D

Thunderqueen-nat: Oh, trust me. I have MANY kick-ass ideas for the end of this arc. This is gonna be a major character building time for Diamond/Damon. :) I can't wait to see how it turns out myself, lol!

Thomas Drovin: Well, Diamond will definitely be Damon again by the time the dream happens in real life... And while the rest of the crew seems to be managing fairly well, Diamond certainly ain't. Poor fem-boy always manages to knock herself out! XD

DarkLord98: Yep, and there'll be more hints towards that particular arc as well! Oh, it's gonna be so epic!

NightmareKnight1: It's true. Have you seen all the freakin' yaoi fanfictions out there? You can hardly find a single page in the archive of any fandom out there without finding at least two yaoi fanfictions anymore. And plus, all the 'girl falls into One Piece' fics... think they were done by guys? Well, okay, some of them probably were, but definitely not the ones were the main character ends up with Ace. Seriously, what the hell's up with One Piece fangirls' obsessions over Ace? Just because he walks around without a shirt on and died tragically doesn't mean he's the world's hottest guy. His DEVIL FRUIT is the reason he's the world's hottest guy. XD But joking aside, all the yaoi fics seriously creep me out, and when you compare them to the amount of yuri fics, well...

Chapter 37 start!

The Death of a Martial Artist?

Of Unfair Options, Unconsciousness, and Talking To Swords

Previously on One Piece Full Blast:

And then, it was over.

The storm, a rabid animal that bore down on us mercilessly, passed over us and swept into the distance.

Breathing hard, I willed the slightly sandy seawater to return to the barrel and promptly collapsed onto the warm sand. We were now in a room of damp sand shaped like a half circle, but nobody had been touched. In the end, I had beaten the storm.

"O-Oi, are you gonna be alright?" Usopp asked gently.

Grinning weakly, I panted and collapsed into the sand, exhausted even though I had just woken up not even a full hour ago.

"Never b-been better," I groaned, and promptly passed out.

If I thought my dreams of future death were over, I was terribly and unfortunately wrong. This time, however, it wasn't about people I hadn't met before but might meet in the future. This time, it was about someone close to me. Someone who had pretty much raised me, became a father figure to me, and who I missed every day.

For an impossible amount of time to measure, I experienced the cold, inky blackness that accompanied unconsciousness. But before I knew it, I was back in the streets of New York City (Manhattan, to be specific), standing in front of a large warehouse, empty and gray, with the number '13' marked on it in blue. The din of the city roared in my ears. Cars honked angrily at each other to get the hell outta the way. People conversed on the sidewalks, carrying shopping bags and cups of McDonald's Frozen Coffee and whatnot. In an abandoned parking lot that looked like something out of West Side Story, several guys had started a game of pick-up basketball.

But none of that mattered to me.

"Warehouse 13," I breathed, staring at the huge, dilapidated building that I knew like the back of my hand. "I'm... home."

Someone walked through me, making me jump. I hadn't expected to be basically a ghost. Having someone walk through you was a rather uncomfortable feeling.

I heard a familiar, exasperated voice coming from down the street. "No, no, no! He's not on his death bed. He is dead. Are your ears attached to your brain properly? Geez, you people are idiots - - YES! I want a grave at the church. No, I don't have the money now, but I have connections. ...What? No. NO. Oh my gods... I'm done. Just get the grave ready, okay?"

I blinked and grinned, turning to the left to see my friend and fellow martial arts student Jason. He had sandy hair that was slicked back, sea green eyes, and was tall and lanky. Before my dad Aeso had dropped me in the world of One Piece, Jason had been a stronger and quicker fighter than me, but with all the training I'd done lately, I would probably be able to beat him now. The twenty-year-old usually wore a striped, colorful shirt and shorts, but today he was wearing a black suit-and-tie, like he was going to a funeral or something, and was hanging up a cellphone. Since when did Jason have a cellphone?

Oh, right. Jason had connections in the New York City black market. He provided us with most of the supplies we couldn't beg for or steal ourselves, and that was a lot, because like I have said before, I refuse to steal from anybody.

"Jason!" I called, but then kicked myself. I'm in a dream. Just like people could walk right through me, he wouldn't be able to hear me.

My words fell on deaf ears and the elder student continued pushing down the street, weaving in and out through pedestrians and sneaking into Warehouse 13. I shrugged to myself and followed. Although he had closed the door in my face, I had a feeling that I could phase through it as well, and sure enough I was met with no resistance, simply stepping through it and into the other side.

The warehouse was usually well-lit and cheery, a homey feel to it despite being mostly empty and very dirty, but something had changed. Now I felt a sad, almost silent aura emanating from my old home. Despite not exactly existing in this world, I could feel the coldness of the cement floor against my sneakers. Drapes had been pulled across the mucky windows. Jason headed over to a table with nothing but a Dell laptop on it and powered the device up, a scowl present on his face.

I frowned worriedly. This was not the Warehouse 13 or the Jason that I had known. Who had he been talking about on the phone when he had mentioned the death? Did they think I died or something? And where the hell's Cracked-Up Kane? He was usually sitting at this table, drinking coffee and coughing. Maybe the pro martial artist had finally gotten over whatever disease he'd had (he never told us what it was)?

As Jason surfed the Web, a pained look flashed in his eyes.

"Dammit..." he cursed. I blinked, a little shocked. Jason was known for keeping away from swear words. I mean, even as damn Christian as I am, I swear a thousand times more than Jason does, and he's pretty much atheist. He believes one hundred percent in the Big Bang Theory and says science can explain everything. Jason put his head in his hands and... started crying? "Dammit... damn you, Damon! Why the hell'd you have to leave!? Kane's disease just got worse and worse... it got a little better once we found out what had happened to you, but now he's... now he's..."

My eyes widened. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Jason and Cracked-Up Kane knew what had happened to me? How? Had Aeso given them the memo? And from the way Jason was crying and what he was saying... it sounded like Kane had died. But no, that's impossible. The doctor Jason had bribed to look at Kane told us in secret that our mentor wasn't supposed to die until after New Year's.

"DAMN, YOU DAMON!" Jason roared to the ceiling, weeping. "COME BACK, ALREADY! KANE'S DEAD!"

I fell back in shock.

No way... it couldn't be! It had to be a lie! There was no way Cracked-Up Kane could die so early? Right?

I wanted to scream. I wanted to slap Jason upside the face and tell him he was lying. Either that, or go in a dark corner, curl up into the fetal position, and deny everything for a few days. Because there was no way Kane would die on us like that.

I simply wouldn't be able to accept it.

My dream changed. Warehouse 13 and the city of New York rippled and then faded away completely, leaving an empty void in its place. It was different from the timeless blackness that accompanies unconsciousness - - rather, it was the usual place I went to when I talk to Aeso. And sure enough, a second later, my bat-winged daddy stepped out of the inky, starless space.

"Diamond-chan," he said seriously. His red eyes were hard. "If you don't return to your world within a week... your mentor will die. Of course, even if you go home, Kane'll still die within a few months, but he'll have a little longer to live."

My eyes widened.

"No..." I muttered, my body starting to shake. "You're lying!"

"I'm sorry, but it's the truth."

I swallowed heavily and glared at him, willing myself not to break down and cry like a little girl. I wiped my eyes furiously. "Is there any way I can go home?"

"Well, yes," he admitted, "but there's a certain power to open portals that lead to other universes, and that's controlled by the 3 Fates. Unfortunately, they weaved in your Fate String the power to jump between the real world and other universes only twice. What this means is that you basically have a two-way ticket from this universe of One Piece back to your old world, but you can't come back here, and you don't necessarily have to return home."

"Okay. So you're saying I can either stay here with the Straw Hats and Vivi, destroy an army of demons, Senshi, and monsters, and become the Prince/Princess of Atlantis... or return home, give Cracked-Up Kane a few more months of life, possibly screw over the entire multiverse, give up on Lucy, who I'm falling in love with, and lead a mundane life until the end of the world?"

He shrugged, tapping the handle of his scythe awkwardly across his shoulder blades. "Well... yeah."

"That's not fair! Isn't there a third option?"

"Look, I'm doin' everything I can over here in Heaven, but I'm not really getting anywhere. God says you need to make a choice, so you gotta make a choice. Give your mentor a few months of extra life but let everyone else die? Or save total strangers both in your world, universes you already know about from 'fictional' media, and in universes you probably don't even know existed yet... and let Cracked-Up Kane die in a week?"

I swallowed. That wasn't fair.

I mean, the obvious choice would be to stay here so I can fight the enemy and save everyone I care about and those I've never met or seen before, sacrificing the man I'd come to see as my dad for the entire multiverse. That would be what a hero would do. But all the same, somewhere deep inside of me, I wanted to go home so I could earn Kane another three or four months to live. Is that really so wrong? After everything he's done for me, I felt like he didn't deserve to die so soon. I didn't want Jason to cry and cuss like that. I wasn't sure how I would even be able to live with myself if I sacrificed the man who stole me my leather jacket, saved me from countless street thugs, and taught me how to protect both myself and those I care about.

"Just think about it, okay?" Aeso told me, frowning sympathetically. I glared at him. There was no way he could understand how much mental and physical stress I was going through lately, and then he threw this on me! But before I could chew him out, give him a piece of my mind - - that's right, the dream faded away and I fell back into pure unconsciousness.

My last thought was, 'Everyone in my family but my mom's totally messed up.'

When I woke up, I was on a pirate ship. Well, that wasn't anything new. In the past two months, waking up on a pirate ship had pretty much become the norm for me. The weird bit was that I was tied to the ship's mast. Now,I was still a little groggy and my brain felt feverish, too, like I was really sick or something, but that immediately woke me up. If you're tied to anything, you're gonna snap awake pretty quickly.

I surveyed the situation. An annoyed Nami and scared Vivi were tied to the mast on either side of me. A bunch of pirates were moving around slowly all around us. Their leader, a huge man with an unproportional head, stood at the front of the boat. An incredibly strong gust of wind was blowing in the same way we were traveling, and the pirate ship flew across the sand. The crew was busy wrestling a camel to the deck of the ship so they could tie it up, too. I couldn't sense any water near by.

I blinked, momentarily distracted. 'Wait a minute. Deserts don't have boats. That's kinda the point of them being deserts. No water. Therefore, no boats. Uh... so what am I doing on a boat in the middle of the blazing hot desert?' My feverish brain searched for an explainable answer and drew a total blank.

I mean, come on. It was a boat sailing on sand and my brain was hurting like hell. The best thing I could come up with was that I was experiencing one of those desert hallucination things. What was it? A mirror? A garage? A mirage? Yeah, that's it! A mirage.

"Diamond-chan!" Nami said suddenly, looking at me in surprise. "You're awake already? Chopper said you might not be up again for another two days."

I nodded weakly and tried not to think about what Aeso had told me. "Yeah, but I feel like hell. My head hurts like a bitch. Uh... what happened? Why the hell is a ship on the freakin' desert?"

Vivi looked at me with relief. "Thank goodness you're up. Lucy-chan was really worried. Tony-kun said you passed out from the mental strain of keeping the water shield around us. Thank you, by the way. If you hadn't protected us with your powers, we might not be here now."

"Great. So why is there a ship on the desert again?"

"The wind is so strong that it can sail this ship across the sand."

I blinked. "That's some strong wind... wait, if the wind's strong enough to push a sailboat across the desert, how come there's not another sandstorm? I mean, I'm not complaining, but..."

Nami somehow shrugged through the rope that tied us to the mast. "Better not to ask," she deadpanned.

"True."

The desert pirate gang's leader stepped towards us and opened his mouth to say something, but we all heard a familiar, far-off shout.

"GUM-GUM ROCKET!"

"Lucy!" Nami, Vivi, and I gasped, scanning the dunes. A rubbery hand shot out of nowhere on the starboard side and wrapped around the mast, causing the desert pirates to freak out comically and panic. A second later, there was a straw-hatted flash of a person, and suddenly the mast broke apart into a thousand pieces. Unfortunately, it broke about half way up, and didn't affect the rope that bound us at all. The boat slowed and stopped moving altogether.

Another second later, Lucy dropped from the sky onto the ship's deck at my feet. She lay there with dizzy eyes.

She looked at the pirates' huge captain, who was gaping at her. "Gomen, gomen," she muttered tiredly, looking exhausted. "My throat's so parched I couldn't tell where I was going. Anyway, you guys have any water? Water..."

"We've got a barrel of seawater in the storage," said the huge man, "but I don't think you'll want that."

She let out a disgusted moan. "No way!"

Nami's eye twitched. "Hey, didn't you come to save us?"

"Yeah, what she said!" I agreed, my own eye joining hers.

She pouted. "I just came to get some water. Oh, you're awake, Diamond-chan? Shishishi! I thought you were dead! Shishishishishi!"

I stared at her, unimpressed. "Usually when you think someone might be dead, you don't laugh, baka."

"Lucy-chan, save us," Vivi implored. "I think they're going to eat Eyelashes!"

"Eyelashes?" I repeated, not sure if I'd heard her correctly. "Who the hell would want to eat eyelashes?"

"It's the camel's name," Nami explained in a deadpan tone.

The girl idiot stared at the princess. "Can you even eat that thing?"

There were two huge steps, casting a shadow that covered Lucy. "We, the Barbaro Kaizoku, have a saying!" he declared.

There was a beat.

"...Saying?"

"It is, 'There is nothing that moves on the desert that is inedible."

"Would that include other people?" I hummed.

"No," he admitted.

Lucy grinned and giggled. "I even eat stuff off of the floor!"

"You'll get a tummy-ache."

"Then I'll be careful."

"Eyahahaha! Strange lass!"

"Shishishi! You're pretty strange yourself!" She pointed at the camel named Eyelashes. "Let's eat!"

It cried anime tears while Nami kicked Lucy in the back of the head angrily, somehow managing to do so even though she was as tied up as Vivi and I. "WHY!?" she demanded, shark-faced.

My eye behind my eye patch twitched some more. How did we get to this...? Maybe if I had been having a normal day, I would've been able to just go with it, but I had a migraine, my mentor was going to die in a week unless I abandoned my nakama and the multiverse, my throat was completely dry, I was starving, I had to go to the bathroom, and I pretty much felt like crap in general.

My head throbbed. Damn, I wish I had headache medicine.

"Hahaha! I am the captain of the Barbaro Sand Pirates, Barbarossa," the huge man told us, sitting down calmly and grinning widely despite the fact that our own captain had destroyed his mast. The other pirates had all calmed down by now and were sitting down and laughing, too, even releasing Nami, Vivi, and I. "You're Lucy, right? I apologize for the rough treatment of your friends. So you said you were hungry?"

"Shishishi! Ah, don't worry about it!"

"Urusai!" Nami snapped, whacking her over the head.

"But, Captain," one of the pirates spoke up, "we don't have enough planks left on the ship to repair the main mast. And without the main mast, we won't have enough propulsion to set sail."

The other pirates panicked. "He's right! He's right! What do we do!?"

"At this rate, we're going to die meaninglessly out here in the middle of the desert!"

"Oh, no! We're going to die meaninglessly! We're going to die meaninglessly in the middle of the desert!"

I double-sweatdropped. Geez, that right there was why Advil is still in business... well, that and protecting your friends from sandstorms with a will of their own. Damn, did my head hurt! I thought I just had a migraine at first, but seriously, my head was pounding worse than the world's most intense hangover. Not that I knew what a hangover felt like, but still.

I heard Usopp mutter something that sounded like, "What the hell," but the world seemed to be fading in and out of darkness. The pain in my head was intensifying, if that was even possible. I moaned and laid down on my back, rubbing my head in an attempt to ease the agony a little. No such luck.

The world returned from its newest vanishing act.

"Is Diamond-chan okay?" Lucy asked me, suddenly right up in my face. She had really great grammatical skills, ne?

(That was sarcasm.)

"M-Migraine," I muttered. "Need to... sleep."

Her mouth moved, but I couldn't hear her say anything. I tried asking what she'd said, but I couldn't hear my own lips, and the world was once again darkening into nothingness. An empty void beckoned for me with an irresistible gravitational pull. As easily as if I'd been sucked into one of Blackbeard's Black Holes, the world disappeared and was replaced with dark, warm, space.

Then nothing at all.

XxxDIAMONDxxX

I flickered in and out of consciousness for the next two days, catching random glimpses of what was happening in the world I'd fallen into. I saw snatches of an advancing army getting chased away by high-speed dung balls, then barren desert and the Straw Hats pulling me along on a sled much like Chopper's, only Diamond-sized and curved at the edges, and filled with seawater. They would glance worriedly at me here and there.

The second day, I woke up to see a city protected by a row of mini mountains, and Anne happily talking to Lucy while patting the head of a strange, giant purple lizard that stood on its hind legs.

"Anne-oneesan!" Sanji swooned like the hopeless bastard he was. "You're okay! I was so worried when you got lost~!"

"Hey, Diamond-chan's up again!" Chopper exclaimed.

I groaned and blinked stupidly at Anne's... lizard friend. "What's going on now? Why does Anne have a lizard that thinks it's a human?"

"Ah, Diamond-chan's up, too~!"

"Please, just shut it, ero-cook... I don't feel good enough to deal with your crap right now."

"We were heading to the nearest town to get information on the Rebel Army, as well as more food and water," Vivi explained. "And actually, that was a good question. How did you find that lizard, Anne-san?"

"He confronted me in the desert and decided helping me was a better survival choice," the scantily-clad Whitebeard Pirate explained. "What's wrong with Diamond? Why does she look like she's been through a war?"

"She protected us from a sandstorm and nearly fried her brain in the process," said Chopper.

Anne blinked. "Really?"

"She's such a baka," Usopp sighed, though he looked down at me with concern. "Oi, Diamond-chan, are you really alright? Anne's right, you seem really pale."

I lifted my hand out of my makeshift saltwater bath. I could tell the ocean water was doing its job and healing me, because my head's throbbing was now less of a migraine and more of a really uncomfortable headache that wouldn't go away. My brain still felt weak and there was a dull throbbing in the back of my head, but I was a hundred times better than before. "Never been better," I said weakly, my throat dry and my voice cracking.

Of course, I spoke too soon, as always, and fell unconscious again.

The third time I woke up, I woke up for good. We were now outside the gates of the mountain-protected city I had seen before, with Anne nowhere to be seen. There was the outline of the Sea Cat we had encountered on our way to Alabasta around the doors themselves, and the gates were made of some pure white stone that seemed to radiate peace. The doors were forest green with a design I couldn't make out engraved on them.

Lucy was standing alone about three hundred feet away from the doors, her hands folded across her huge chest like the female version of a badass. Sanji and Usopp stood together, blocking the path going right (if you were exiting the city). Zoro and Chopper stood side-by-side directly opposite from them. Nami and Vivi were hiding behind a rock outcropping, taking care of me while the others did... whatever the hell they were doing.

"Now what's going on?" I grumbled, annoyed that all this plot was happening while I was passed out like a bitch. I was still laying in the sled-bath, though my head didn't hurt at all anymore and my throat was back to normal. I assumed someone had forced me to drink water, even unconscious as I was. The one thing that was really uncomfortable was that my entire body was wet, and the seawater in the sled-bath was now about as hot as the rest of the desert, like a steaming hot tub in the middle of the world's largest oven. Using my demigod powers, I cooled the water down to a reasonable temperature and willed myself dry, so I only felt the cold and not the water.

Nami jumped and looked at me. "Oh, you're up again! It turns out that the villagers in this city had been getting attacked by the Sand Pirates, and meanwhile some guys posing as Rebel Army leaders were there. Anne suggested we pretend to attack the city so that the Rebel Army imposters can understand what it means to be heroes."

Now that my brain was back to normal, I connected the dots. "Ah. So we're basically just pretending to wreak havoc on the place and have them 'defeat' us?"

"That's right," Vivi agreed. "You look a thousand times better, Diamond-chan. It's only been a few hours, but all the color has returned to your face."

I mulled this over. "Anything I can do to help?"

Nami shook her head and smiled. "No. Just lay there and rest. You need to regain your energy."

"But I feel fine now!"

"You're laying down in a substance that heals you, but I bet you won't feel fine once you stand up."

"I'm - -"

"Please listen to us," Vivi cut me off, making me pause in surprise. The bluenette didn't often do rude things like talk when others were talking. "Lucy was worried sick for you. If you hurt yourself by wasting energy you don't have, she'll be really upset. She really likes you, Diamond-chan."

I blushed. "M-Matte! Don't go saying that!"

She raised her eyebrow in surprise. "But it's true. Don't tell me you can't see it yourself. She blushes and looks even happier than normal when she's around you. Your casualty has had her extremely upset. Lucy-chan obviously really likes you!"

She... really likes me? Could Vivi possible be right? Was that straw-hatted moron of a girl really in love with me?

My face was totally red. No way. No way could that be. She was totally blank when it came to things like love and relationships. Then again, Lucy did seem to really enjoy that time we danced during the party at Arlong Park. And all those times I'd seen her cheeks red when she'd been looking at me - - all those times I'd caught her staring at me on Drum Island, her flush when we accidentally got in each other's faces during Chopper's welcoming party, when I was telling her off for eating all our food.

No way.

No possible way on Earth. Or whatever this planet was called.

Lucy? In love with me, of all people? Lucy in love with me, Diamond D. Digger, more properly known as Damon D. Digger - - a person from another world, someone who's not even fully human, someone who killed his/her own sister, who can't even tell what gender he/she is anymore...

Could Lucy really be in love with me?

'Yes, you idiot,' the voice of Chiwohiku spoke in my head, making me jump in surprise. 'Of course she loves you. My master isn't very bright...'

"Oi!" I protested, my eyes wide, a deeper blush on my cheeks. "Chiwohiku!"

Nami and Vivi blinked. "Uh... gomen?"

"The spirit of my sword just spoke to me, though I don't know how, because I thought we could only talk to each other in my Inner World," I explained. They looked utterly confused, but just decided to fly with it. I said more quietly, "Chiwohiku! How did you just talk to me?"

"I can converse with you outside of your Inner World," Chiwohiku told me, like "duh." "You have neglected to talk to me since the day I brought you to your Inner World. It has been lonely."

"Oh." I suddenly felt really bad, but didn't quite know what to say to that. It was true. I hadn't even considered talking to the spirit of my kami no kosoru, Chiwohiku. When I first 'met' the spirit, so to say, she had said that kami no kosoru were basically the predecessors to the zanpakuto from Bleach - - like the failed first attempt or something. There, in my Halloween-land style Inner World, she had helped me unlock my true power: the power to activate my Sukiru Byo, or in other words, my Skill Second technique.

Oh, and I said before that Sukiru Byo is unique because it works pretty much the same way Lucy does Gear Second, except instead of using a rubber body to increase blood flow, I increase my blood flow by concentrating and moving the water molecules in my bloodstream as fast as they could go, right? Well, I was kind of lying. It's not exactly unique. Sukiru Byo is something that sons and daughters of the war god, Vesoghatsuo, can get, too. When they do it, though, they increase their adrenaline and sadistic fighting hormones to such a degree that it raises the flow of the bloodstream, as well as gives them extra power.

Their version is a bit harder to explain than mine, but that's the gist of it.

Oh, and do you remember Vesoghatsuo? He was the god who helped me train to get my balance and power back during the 'month-and-a-half' I spent in the dream. That was necessary because, as you already know, I had lost over half of it when his damned daughter, Lady Konton, used her Devil Fruit on me to turn me into the female form I'm in now.

Just a quick recap there.

In any case, I felt incredibly guilty. I had completely neglected one of my sources of power, a living sword that could appear in the form of my late mother in a world within me. Chiwohiku was immensely helpful in my battles. The least I could have done was spare her some attention, but I had almost forgotten all about her being a spirit within me.

Kami no kosorus were supposed to share one body and one soul with their owners.

They deserved respect.

I had not given Chiwohiku any respect at all. I hadn't even thanked her.

'Damn,' I cursed. 'I'm a huge bitch.'

"Don't worry if it seems like I've passed out again," I told Nami and Vivi as they watched the rest of the Straw Hats stare down the unnamed city. "I'm just going to my Inner World for a bit to apologize to Chiwohiku."

I relaxed in the once-again-cold seawater that filled the sled-bath.

And blinked.

How was one supposed to talk properly with a spirit residing in one's body? I mean, sure, Chiwohiku said that we can chat even if I wasn't in my Inner World, but it just seemed like a better idea to talk to her face-to-face. Seemed more polite, more respectful, and Lord knows my sword deserves all the respect she can get.

In Bleach, they just meditated and they were able to go to their Inner World, right? Since kami no kosoru were the first generation of Zanpakuto, maybe it would work the same way.

I concentrated, envisioned the Halloween-like world I had found myself in during me and Lucy's fight with Lady Konton. The 300-foot tree, the dead trees, the yellowy sky, the Soul Eater-esque smirking sun - - I saw it all in my mind, though I still smelled the dust and felt the heat of the desert around me.

Then, I was in my Inner World once again.

Once again, I am SO SORRY I failed to get this done on time. I am such a failure. XD Well, self-degrading aside, it's the end of the school year and exams are coming up soon! Ah, just wonderful, am I right? Not. I have two major projects that I have to work on as well as get done with my review packets for Math and stuff. On a completely unrelated subject, I've been listening to a lot of Weird Al Yankovic lately. Seriously, that guy is hilarious. XD

I added more plot bunnies to this chapter. :P Now Diamond-chan must choose between staying with her friends and saving the multiverse or returning to our world - - let's call it Alpha World, shall we? - - and saving her father figure. Pretty unfair. And not to mention the threat of the mysterious cloaked man and Damon's lookalike from last chapter. Things are gettin' pretty intense, folks!

Diamond: Shit-author, get your freakin' chapters written on time! And don't you dare kill off Cracked-Up Kane, ya hear? *glares daggers*

Uh... heh heh... I ain't making no promises here...

Lucy: Shishishi! Thank the gods you're okay, Diamond-chan!

Diamond: *enters blush city* O-Of course I am, you baka!

Usopp: You're acting strangely shy, Diamond-chan.

Diamond: Urusai, you.

Thank you all for almost 70 favorites and 60 followers! Keep it comin' and I just might reach my goal of 100 follows and/or faves for this novel of the story! :D Please note that following and/or favoriting is much appreciated, but in no way necessary for me to continue writing. And as usual, I would love it if you would post a review!

-TheRealEvanSG