Probably going back to a first person view by next chapter. It's easier to write in, warn me if I ended up talking about the MC in the first person somewhere, I was thinking about changing it this chapter and it might've slipped in sometimes.
Posting three... slices of life? interludes? Three scenes that I wrote to see where it was going and led nowhere together with the chapter as a "interlude" chapter. In case anyone missed it.
*Three weeks later, the Island, somewhere in the West Blue. 8 years before canon starts.*
"So goooooood~" A deep voice cried out in a creepy tone of pleasure as its even creepier owner was sent flying through the trunks of two thick, rock solid trees, bounced off the ground once and finally stopped after crashing against an even larger tree behind the destroyed first two.
The voice's owner was an upper-heavy blond man known as Dice, who fell off the large trunk he was indented into to ground, a last disturbing moan leaving him before his consciousness did.
"Huh, hah…" The opponent of the unconscious blonde panted out.
The three-armed gorilla, even larger than the already abnormally tall blonde, stood in the middle of the clearing as he tried to calm its breathing with various deep breaths.
Despite today's victory, Bob still couldn't shake the feeling that the strange masochist might actually be stronger than himself.
No, that wasn't right. Despite the victory, Bob knew that his opponent was stronger than himself.
Though they were close in strength, the main reason that the threerilla could win most of their fights was his opponent's tendency to let himself be hit for the pain of it.
This new opponent and the knowledge of his own weakness lit a fire under the primate that Bob hadn't felt in a while.
Much like Senju, Bob's whole life had been spent within the Island, a place where the tree-man was both the strongest person, what the threerilla had grown to think of as an unsurpassable goal -with the havoc that he could and did cause- and a priceless resource -with all the fruits that he supplied-.
Bob was already an old ape when he met the fruit-man, yet he had never eaten better.
So, as he grew with the constant fights against the lanky man and their subsequent steroid-fruits, Bob had come to be stronger than most of his kind. And after defeating all of the larger threerilla troops in the island to prove his power both to them and himself, Bob grew content with his strength, stagnant.
Satisfied with second place, after the lanky man that created him infinite fruits.
Then his world was turned upside down when the familiar lanky man showed up with another four unfamiliar furless gorillas that the threerilla king's instincts told him might be as strong as himself.
After meeting first Baccarat in a fear filled encounter -for the red-haired- and then the rest of the freed-slaves when Senju had literally dragged him to see the newly made village, Bob had spent almost all of the last three weeks training and fighting either the masochist or the fishman.
He had tried to fight Baccarat, but she bugged Senju into stopping the threerilla, and he had tried to fight Kimimaro, but Senju stopped that before it could begin.
The kid was helpful, so the tree-man liked to keep him around... and as much as he believed in his friend, the teenage ninja soldier seemed to be both more deadly and more inclined to murder than Bob. And Bob was neither a slouch or a pacifist.
He had also tried to fight Honey, but the girl was surprisingly fast when turned into jelly, and after Senju stopped laughing inappropriately at the mass of jelly running away screaming from the angry, giant three armed gorilla, he stopped Bob before the threerilla could test his developing Armament on the infant logia.
Senju had tried to comfort the kid after it, but apparently he wasn't very good at it, as the blond hadn't left the village since, and only left her cube in the presence of either Baccarat or, for some reason, Kisame.
Probably because the fishman was the only one that had stood up to Senju so far. He had failed, but still, it was something.
The fishman didn't appreciate the brat following him around, but for all that he disliked the kid and humans in general, he still wouldn't hit the scared kid… too hard, he did hit her once or twice when she started talking too much, but not too hard and she kept following him out of her own will.
All that Bob knew and cared about that relationship was that when he managed to ambush the fishman, if Kisame was with Honey, the ape couldn't attack the little blonde or else the plants would stop him.
Considering Baccarat's, Kimimaro's and Honey's protection as a win, in his mind Bob went from the second strongest being in the world -which in his mind consisted of just the Island-, to an unstable third.
He did not know or was able to understand that the spar with Kimimaro was stopped mostly for the ape's sake. Or that with Baccarat's powers she had a fair chance against anyone if she had time to prepare.
He constantly lost in his spars against the fishman, with Senju having to heal the shredded skin on his friend multiple times, despite said friend's protest. Being helped was a sign of weakness after all.
Spars with Dice were anyone's bet. The last had ended in Dice's victory, making the blonde the third strongest of the island and Bob the fourth, while today's ended in the threrilla's victory, making Bob once again the third. And on and on like this since they had met.
Their strength and fighting style was similar enough, with the human having a slight edge strength, but one that was counterbalanced by Bob's extra appendage and Dice's idiotic tendency of letting himself be hit.
So, instead of second place to the familiar furless monkey -or living plant, Bob was never quite sure-, the ape was now either third or fourth place to a tank of a furless monkey and a walking fish, both who practically mocked him with their beatableness.
He couldn't accept that.
Having gathered his breath, the threerilla stood on its two legs and roared his newest victory to the world.
After the shrill shriek that marked his reassurance as the third strongest of the Island finished echoing through the jungle, the old threerilla fell on his fours and started to limp his way back to his troop's territory.
He would beat the fishman one day too and retake his spot as second strongest, he would make sure of it. But for now it was time to rest and "heal" with the various females that he had taken as mates.
At the same type, at the Marines' prison cube.
"Hurgh..." an abnormally tall brown haired man groaned as he was forced to lean far too much back to avoid the haki covered blade aimed at his neck, all while bringing up a haki and armored covered hand to catch a shigan finger aimed at his left axillary artery.
Grabbing hold of the hand behind the finger shaped bullet, Senju lifted the CP-0 operative that had tried rushing from his left off the ground and used him as a club against his swordswoman companion.
Said swordswoman jumped back before being hit by her fellow operative, who was thrown to the side by the forest-man after his short act as an impromptu club.
The forest-man used the short interruption of their attacks to throw himself towards the retreating swordswoman, who retreated further back even as the male agent managed to turn mid-air and once again launch himself at the tree-man the moment his feet touched the ground.
The swordswoman dodged a quick sequence of two punches and a sweeping kick, then reacted the moment that she saw her approaching ally.
Seeing the human missile coming from the right, instead of dodging again, the swordswoman parried the next punch, the armored hand being forced to slide to the side, scrapping harmlessly against the top of the line sword.
With one of their opponent's hands busy, the swordswoman lowered her sword from the parry and thrust it in a piercing motion aimed towards the forest-man's eyes, even as the other agent approached, flying forward close to the ground with a low aimed shigan, likely to aiming to pierce Senju's femoral artery.
The two once again attacked together flawlessly, both at difficult positions to defend at the same time -for normal people- and aimed at kill spots. As his heart pumped, Senju's grin widened.
The forest-man responded with an armored kick towards the man, who barrel-rolled mid-air to barely dodge the punch while continuing to fly forward, and a sweep of his right arm towards the woman, who brought her sword to remove the offending arm.
The operatives reaction was quick and the right course of action, it was still futile.
The haki covered sword bit into the equally haki covered hardwood-armored arm, but it barely managed to cut through muscle skin before being stopped, the sword -now stuck in the armored arm- was then forced to the side with the sweeping arm, its owner following the blade to the side, dragged by the taller man's arm.
And despite the male agent doing Peppy Hare proud in dodging the original kick, the world's greatest gardener had quick enough reflexes to push his whole leg upwards, kicking the flying operative further up and away.
The raised leg was then turned as Senju brough the agent still hanging onto the sword stuck into his arm in front of him and kicked the operative in her abdomen, before stomping towards the ground, indenting the swordswoman into the hardwood floor.
Before he could follow through with anything at the downed operative, he was forced to jump back as his Observation warned him of the rain of rankyaku blades that came from the airborne male operative.
The male operative, the source of said blades, slowed his descent with soft geppos while keeping at eye on the enemy still smirking at him.
Before either could react, a blur exploded from the cloud of dust raised by the rankyaku shower, the agent had been sure not to hit his comrade, so an unharmed swordswoman burst from the cloud towards her sword.
Before she could reach it, Senju rushed towards the disarmed swordswoman, who managed to lean to the side to dodge a grabbing hand towards her face, but not the following back-hand, being sent flying.
The male operative, who had launched himself at Senju the moment the forest-man's attention wasn't on him, was forced to twist to avoid the punch thrown towards him as Senju's Observation warned him of the attempted sneak attack. Forced to dodge mid-air and at high-speed, the agent fell to the ground in a mess of limbs, before readjusting himself in less than a second and trying to geppo away once again.
Unfortunately, it was too late, as a hand as large as his torso grabbed hold of his leg and pulled him down before the agent could take off once again, who then hit the ground hard with his back, knocking the air out of him.
There was half a second between his vision swimming into colours and his training kicking, where an use of basic Life Return forced away his concussion temporarily and-
The agent's vision returned just in time to see an Armament covered fist, which he barely managed to twist his head to soften the blow of, though it still rattled his head once again.
Dazed again, he wasn't able to avoid the coming left handed jab that hit his ribs like a truck and he didn't even see the right hand punch that sent him flying away into unconsciousness.
Looking at the airborne form of one of his opponents, Senju was barely able to bring an armored and Armament covered arm to block the blade that would've cut his head in half, said blade still hitting with enough strength to cut through his protections and the skin underneath, stopping just short of hitting bone.
If Senju wasn't on more different types of painkillers than one could count with all of their fingers, that would've probably hurt. It probably will tomorrow.
Still, for now he only locked his muscles and grew his armor over the blade almost reaching his ulna, imprisoning the sword, once again.
Twisting his arm, he forced the smaller woman to twist along it as she refused to let go of the blade, once again.
Leaned to the side and with both hands on the stuck blade's handle the female agent was barely able to turn before a large fist met her left cheek and sent her to bounce off the ground once, before falling immobile on the ground. If not unconscious then on the way to being so.
"Ah~" The brown haired man and last person standing of the quick confrontation sighed in contentment before he started some after-action stretches.
Truly, there was no better way to start the day than a fight.
Senju could beat them pretty easily if he used his DF powers, but the two were a challenging fight in purely physical combat, and the forest-man did love a challenging fight, it was so much better than talking.
He held both hands above his head in a stretch, the cuts that he had suffered through the fight visibly healing as he did so, before shaking off the remaining tension in his muscles and grabbing the wooden bowl of water and the plant-made towel that were thrusted towards him.
"Thanks." He expressed his gratitude towards the albino kid who held said bowl and towel. It wasn't needed, as Senju could've created both with a thought, but the thought behind it was appreciated.
The kid only nodded seriously in response, leading Senju to ruffle the kid's white hair, mostly to see any movement in his face. Even if it was only a slight frown as Kimimaro re-adjusted his hair.
Senju had learned to pay a lot of attention to body language, as it made up a large part of the communication of the animals that had kept him company these last four years.
So it was very disturbing for him that the kid had the body language of a statue. The poneglyph was more expressive.
The man finished the water brought to him by the far too emotionless kid, stretched once again, returned the towel and bowl to said kid and walked to stand in front of a large blond man seated in a meditative stance, then he leaned towards the Vice-Admiral.
Kimimaro dutifully followed him, stopping stock still a few steps behind him.
"They had me distracted for a moment there, if you had jumped in y'all might've had a chance." The forest-man told his guest with an expectant smile. Said guest only sighed.
"You say that after almost every spar, yet we both know that your Observation would stop you from being caught off guard." The blond Vice-Admiral replied in a deadpan tone. "I would rather not risk the current arrangements on such an unsafe bet." He finished without opening his eyes from the meditative stance.
"Bah, you're no fun." Senju replied while dropping to sit cross legged in front of the Marine, Kimimaro kept standing stock still slightly to his left, the large plantperson still standing a head taller than the kid, even hunched and seated as he was. A cube rose between the two seated men. "So, black or white?" He asked, pointing towards the by now familiar checkers board.
"White." Comil answered, having been alternating between pieces in their almost daily games. Finally opening his eyes and leaving his meditative stance to sit cross-legged in front of the board.
Staring at his opponent, the Vice-Admiral was greeted by a clean-shaven face with a disturbing smile, the unkept beard gone and the hair both straightened out and cleaned from vegetation.
Compared to the first time he met the man, he almost looked sane. If not for the still vague eyes and the far too wide smile.
The clothes remained the same, furry green pants seemingly made of blades of grass and a white shirt that occasionally rippled as if alive, with an eldritch coat of ever-shifting tentacle-like vines covering most of it.
"Ho-ho, today's the day Comil, I'm feeling it." His opponent taunted with a far too excited grin for a common game of checkers. "Today's the day that your sequence of victories comes to an end, today you shall cry rivers of blood as you finally taste the bitte-" He stopped mid unnecessary taunting before what likely would've been his thirtieth consecutive loss.
A quietness stretched as the treeman remained looking at apparently nothing. Which Comil had learned likely meant that he was paying proper attention to something over the island. The Vice-Admiral was just still not sure if it was through his Devil Fruit or Observation. Likely both.
"Finally!" Senju roared suddenly, catching both the albino and the blonde off guard. "We'll have to do this some other time, let's go!" He said and turned around without any explanation, leaving towards the edge of the prison and quickly getting out of sight.
The white-haired child-soldier quickly got over his mild surprise and once again followed behind.
…
The Vice-Admiral blinked once, stared at the untouched checkers board, blinked again, stared at the wall that remained open behind the strange pair of lunacy and nihilism, blinked once more and stared at the marines, who were glued to the walls on the other side of prison to avoid the fight that had been going on mere minutes ago.
Then blinked again towards the door-shaped opening in the section of the prison's wall in front of him, the wall besides said door reshaping itself to write "Let's go!" with an arrow pointed towards the opening.
"I... I'll be right back?" The Marine told his confuscared subordinates as he slowly moved to follow after plant-person and bone-boy.
The man was… eccentric, but Comil had come to trust that he wasn't unnecessarily violent -despite seemingly enjoying the violence-, so he followed his captor into the unknown without resistance.
Most of the Marines had already learned first hand both what lived on the forests beyond the walls of their prison and the fact that their strange captor seemed to always be watching, so none took the seemingly chance to escape that the opening on the wall provided.
Some minutes later. At a cliff edge, Island's western coast.
Standing over a rocky cliff on a coast of the Island, overlooking the sea-covered horizon with Kimimaro's ever-quiet presence and Comil's confused one behind him, Senju sighed in satisfaction.
All things considered, and despite their rocky start, the forest-man was happy with his circumstances.
He was on the move, which at the pace he had been going at would've still taken at least another year if not for the Celestial Dragon encounter, he had many new sparring partners with varying fighting styles to pass the time with and most of his guests were over their fear of him by now. Things were looking good.
Of course, some of the freed-slaves remained wary, the fishman foremost of them. And then there were those weirdos sprinkling leaves in their hair and calling themselves Followers of the Forest-God.
But life was mostly good, and definitely more interesting than when it had been only him, Bob and the rest of the deathworld fauna and flora that occupied this small piece of the world.
And no offense to Bob, but even if he didn't remember having them before, something in Senju missed actual conversations… all the new fighting styles also made things more fun, he wouldn't tell the primate, but their spars had been getting kind of boring.
He was sure that it would be even more fun soon enough, as even as he stared at the seemingly empty ocean, his connection to the Great Tree allowed him to see the approaching mass of dirt and rock that constituted the first other island that he has seen in living memory.
Seeing the landmass on the horizon and turning the Island towards it, Senju went to the edge of the root covered coast and waited for the arrival of the rest of his impromptu council.
The eye-like plant which allowed him to see the island thanks to its vantage point on top of the Great Tree was part of a large network of eye-like structures that allowed him to get a black and white picture of everything in the island, besides the various other sensory information that Senju could normally gather from the plants.
Though it helped give him a literal constant surveillance, it did not provide him with any greater vision or telescope-like abilities, his attempts at creating greater eye-like structures haven't had much success so far. He was still working on getting colors, that part was surprisingly hard.
Despite the various eye "donations" of creatures from around the Island, he hasn't had any great breakthrough there in a while.
It was unfortunate that he was trying to avoid unnecessary murder, the Marines eyeballs would've been useful there… 'But if it's for science, is it really unnecessarily?...'
"Aaaaaaaah!" The shrill scream removed Senju from his increasingly dangerous train of thoughts.
'Ah, there they are.' He thought to himself watching the large vines that went down from the all-encompassing canopy of the Tree and held various of the newest inhabitants of the Island.
The one screaming and flailing was Baccarat, who had been taking a nap in her improvised office, in the process of once again shirking her unwanted duties as administrator of the budding village, only to be awakened by being suddenly dragged away from her bed to thousands of feet up in the air towards an unknown destination.
Really no idea what the panic was about, it was the third time that Senju had done something like this to her. One would think that she would've been used to it by now.
Close to her, a group of five truck thick vines fought to keep the fishman imprisoned as he fought tooth and nail for his freedom mid-air, breaking out of the vines and being recaptured repeatedly.
The fishman had spent these last weeks mostly avoiding pretty much everyone in the island, hiding in the nooks between the mountain sized roots that pulled the Island along the Blue.
Bob had only managed to fight the swordsfishman because he occasionally left said roots to scout the place and to try to spy on the forest-man, and didn't mind throwing down with the threerilla after being ambushed by it.
Senju had no idea if Kisame thought that he was being sneaky when he traveled around the Island, the tree-man had never told him about his omnipresence within the place, so he probably didn't know that he was Seen pretty much the whole time.
He didn't bother telling the fishman about it, but he did pop up to throw down with Kisame once or twice for variety's sake, during the first meeting, after its subsequent fight, the two even ended up having an actual, proper conversation. A serious one. It was weird.
They had a few other conversations since, but they were mostly shouting matches. What mattered to Senju was that the fishman likes fighting as well, so he doesn't complain too much when Senju emerges from the underground sea of roots and attacks him outta nowhere.
Besides the two screaming and kicking against the vines, a tiny old man quietly let himself be dragged mid-air, a strangely serene smile in his face.
He was Kotatsu, an oldman from Paradise who was apparently quite the administrator. Enough of one to get the Celestial Dragon's attention*, who had the man enslaved many years prior, after the Dragon worked his last steward to death.
Since the breakout, he had been the one actually responsive for most of the administration of the village, solving what few disputes there were and helping along the distribution of resources as Baccarat threw whatever work that Senju threw at her at him.
In a moment, the vines dragged the trio through the whole Island and then unceremoniously dropped them in front of their creator before returning to the canopy they came from.
Baccarat landed panting and on shaking feet before hugging the ground… Senju resisted the urge to point out that most of his creations were under there.
Kisame did a completely unnecessary backflip -seriously, he was released a foot off the ground- and landed pointing his sword-thing at Senju's direction once again.
Kotatsu just landed as calmly as he was dragged and nodded towards me.
Facing the rattled trio, a stoic kid and one confused Vice-Admiral, Senju delivered the day's big news.
"Aaaaaaas you can see" He said stretching the "as" till the island that he could only see thanks to the sight connected to the eye-fruit at the vantage point above the Great Tree became visible to all on the horizon, upon which he pointed towards it with a thumb. "We're finally arriving at a new land." He said with a wide smile.
Despite the silence of the five, Senju could hear the anxiety, tension, happiness and relief in the Voices of his audience.
"So... any of y'all have an idea of both where this might be and what's the best way to unload a bunch of recently freed-slaves into an island?" He asked his make-shift council after a moment of dramatic silence.
…
"Kill them?" Answered/Asked Kimimaro, seeing the need to answer his self-imposed master as the silence stretched.
"... Okay, that might solve the issue of how to unload a bunch of freed-slaves, as there would be none to unload, but what about discovering where we are?" He entertained the murderous kid as no one else was giving any other ideas.
"Kill the place?" Kimimaro continued undaunted.
Senju opened his mouth to ask "how?" and/or "what?", then he realised that he actually could do that.
"Eh, I would rather not." He answered instead to hopefully get away from all these genocidal proposals.
"Kill the doubt?" Kimimaro continued, refusing to be useless.
Senju blinked at the Shounen-classic answer.
"Well, that's completely useless objectively speaking." the tree-person replied scratching at his chin 'damn, I miss my beard'. "But it's much less murderous than normal for ya, so points for that." He continued with a thumbs up towards the kid.
The brat needed more positive reinforcement in his life.
Kimimaro stayed quiet. It seemed that his liege had taken a non-violent outlook on his answer and had preferred it that way, so he wouldn't correct him and explain that the albino warrior had meant it as in "kill both the freed-slaves and the island", the sources of the doubts.
"Can we… move on to completely non-murderous options?" Baccarat answered tiredly from the side. Already tired from having dealt with way too much of the overly-violent everything around her.
"Please do. My only plan so far is going "Yo! Y'all want two thousand traumatized people in there", and catapulting the village into the Island. There are probably better ways to go about it." The source of most of her headaches answered with a far too carefree smile towards her.
She chose not to ask if he literally meant to catapult the village, her sanity was safer if she didn't ask.
"Of course there are better ways to go about it." Baccarat murmured, rubbing her forehead with a tired sigh. "How about calmly explaining the situation, seeing how many refugees the island might be able to take, leave those that want there and then get directions for another island?" She finished explaining the simple plan based on common sense.
"Sounds boring and slow though." Was the forest-man's quick reply.
"It would avoid the outrage, fear and likely death of catapulting people from one island to the other." Interjected the smallest person there as Kotatsu actually put forth his opinion without it being asked for once.
"I meant the whole village though, they can keep the houses." Senju corrected with a proud smile, as if catapulting houses was a magnanimous idea instead of the far more dangerous and idiotic option.
Baccarat blinked at him, he continued to smile back.
"You can't be serious." She deadpanned at his proud expression. "Did you hit your head during today's unnecessary death match?" She continued to his now offended expression.
Senju tried to scratch at his beard again, then subsequently felt naked by the lack of said beard. "Just once, but it has nothing to do with it. I could make the houses some parachutes and literally throw them at plots of land. Safety almost guaranteed!" He finished with a thumbs up.
"'Almost guaranteed' soothes no one!" She screamed the common sense into his face.
"Well, I never tried it before, so it's not like I can say for sure it's gonna work." He said with a frown as if the question had been stupid.
"So why the hell do want to risk lives on your first try!?" She said, frustrated by the entire situation. "Why-" And she took a deep breath to calm down. "Instead of such a risky approach, why not just stop near the island, talk with whoever is in charge and see if you can work something out? I'm sure th-" She tried to explain calmly, until she was interrupted.
"Fine, fine. Fine." He cut in with his hands raised in the universal gesture of surrender. "I was gonna warn everyone first, make seat belts and parachutes for their houses. It would be awesome. But if y'all care so much about taking the boring route instead, ya can deal with that whole 'talking calmly' shtick." He concluded with a wave at Kotetsu and Baccarat's general direction. "I ain't very good at it."
A snort interrupted Baccarat's coming complaint about the newest duty thrown at her. One which she would then throw at Kotatsu.
"Understatement of the year." The fishman mumbled to himself, but loud enough for all to hear.
"I'm sorry, I couldn't hear ya over your hypocrisy. Mind repeating it?" Senju replied to the equally bad at diplomacy fish, a hand cupping his ear in said fish's direction.
"Oh, I'm surprised that you know big words like hypocrisy, did you learn it in those anime of yours?" He said, putting emphasis on anime to mock the forest-man's ridiculous backstory.
"Yep, like most of my words and human interactions." Senju replied easily enough, not caring about the barb and doubt over his backstory. "And how about ya? Did ya learn to give lip to your savior in your time as slave or while frothing and spasming after meeting a deathtoad?" He counter-posted, throwing in the fish's face how he was saved from both slavery and death by the man he was currently insulting.
"Oh, you t-"
Whatever the fishman was about to say in reply -probably nothing pacifying considering the way he gripped Samehada's handle- was interrupted by a loud clap of Comil's hand.
The Vice Admiral had been quiet so far, both confused on why Senju called him here and not wanting to draw attention to himself. He was a soldier amongst freed-slaves that he guarded the cages of after all.
But considering that his captor and the ex-terrorist that had almost killed the CP-0 agents seemed about to fight and that they were previously talking about rather unnecessarily dangerous ways of releasing the freed slaves, he felt the need to try to calm things down before people ended up dead.
"I believe we are deviating from the rather immediate issue." He said with his hands raised in an attempt to look harmless, as he knew none besides maybe Senju cared much for the Marines right now. "Perhaps we-"
His raised hands were soon covered in Armament and used to parry a large spiked blade to the side, an equally Armament covered knee raised to block a fishman karate palm strike to his ribs a blink later.
Comil jumped back, hoping that one of the others would intervene and stop the fight, he both did not wish to further hurt the ex-slaves and he had no illusions of his chances against his captor. Definitely not in the forest covered island.*
His hope was proven right, as before the fishman could follow with the Marine with a charging slash, another pair of haki covered hands grabbed the shark-blade-club and used it to lift the fishman off the ground and thow him back.
Who did a mid-air cartwheel and landed on his feet behind Senju, the interloper now between the Vice-Admiral and the ex-Sun Pirate.
"And the fuck is he doing here?!" The fishman snarled at the brown-haired palmtree in front of him, refusing to even direct word to the Marine.
"Well, he's one of the most experienced people around, might as well get his opinion." Senju answered with a shrug.
"You are taking a slaver's opinions now?!" The still tense swordsman snarled again, though now looking at the Marine even as he talked with Senju, the slaver statement clearly meant to be taken as an insult.
One that was effective, considering Comil's visible flinch.
"I'm listening to someone who I know to be intelligent and experienced before making decisions that will affect the lives of a couple thousands of people and my own. Yes." Was the forest-man's surprisingly rational response. "Now, can we-"
"A man that's probably working to bring us all in to be the Celestial Dragons' pets!" The fishmans interrupted with a roar.
Senju wanted to sigh, but he did expect this. He might suck at human stuff, but even he knew bringing a soldier from the guys that enslaved the people that he was talking with wouldn't exactly make for a peaceful conversation.
It was still annoying to deal with it.
The human-garden opened his mouth to defend both the impossibility, as he was always watching and had a pretty developed Observation, which made lying and plotting against him pretty hard, but then stopped to analyse the situation.
Kisame remained in a fighting stance, sword pointed at Comil, who had his hands down but muscles visibly tense and ready to react.
Baccarat kept switching between glaring at him or at the Vice-Admiral, and Kimimaro stepped in front of the forest-man with twin bone blades growing from his wrists, the prepubescent bodyguard barely reaching past Senju's knee caps.
Kotatsu was both the least and most worrying one, as he just looked at everything with the same calm smile that he always wore, ignoring both the potential battle and the Marine presence behind him.
'Ah, how troublesome.' Senju thought to himself as he Heard Kisame's anger spike and saw as his muscles tensed in order to throw himself at the Vice-Admiral again.
Realizing that words wouldn't work, he gave up on explaining and calmed the situation the only way that he knew how.
Instead of charging towards the Marine, the swordsfishman was forced to turn and hastily bring Samehada up to block a large armored, Armament covered hand, being sent back from the strength of the punch.
"Whoever throws the first punch is getting beaten up. Just so ya know." He said while staring seriously at the fishman, though the warning was also for Baccarat, who hadn't stopped glaring at the Vice-Admiral.
The entire Island shook menacingly to drive the threat home.
He looked at everyone around the coast with a raised brow and hand, waiting to see if anyone would take his challenge. None did, so he lowered his hand and smiled once again.
Truly, he was a master of diplomacy.
"Now that that's dealt with." 'Dealt with my ass' thought two thirds of his audience. "I think we can all agree on letting Baccarat handle separating the freed-slaves who want to leave and talking with whoever lives at the island to take them in. All in agreement?" He continued, decided on going with his great plan of 'throw the problem at someone else'. It almost always worked.
"What?!" The 'someone else' complained, finally stopping glaring at Comil in order to glare at Senju to defend her free time and peace of mind. "No way, nope, no, noooooo. You are not throwing more work at me, do it yourself!"
"... I don't wanna." Was the forest-man's well thought out and reasonable response when the silence stretched and he realized that it wasn't a rhetorical question. "So, all in agreement?" He continued as if he hadn't just been interrupted.
"No!" Was Baccarat's loud reply. She had literally all the luck in the world, she refused to do hard work damn it! That was for unlucky people!
"Yes." Was Kimimaro's monotone one. He did not care about what was discussed, but if asked if he agreed with Senju, of course he would answer yes.
They were the only ones to answer. Comil didn't believe himself apt to vote, Kisame was too busy glaring and baring teeth at the Vice-Admiral and Kotetsu just stared blankly at nothing with the constant smile on his face.
"Perfect, Baccarat will handle it." Senju continued as if the vote had gone through, ignoring Baccarat glaring harder at him than she had been the Vice-Admiral. "I don't know why you act like it's a big deal, you will dump almost all the work on Kotastu."
"Most, most! I would still have to do some of the work, damnit!" She did not even bother to combat that accusation. "Which I won't!" She added, stomping rather childishly on the ground.
The smiling old man still didn't react, despite the confirmation that the work would be mostly his.
"And how about you, old man?" Senju decided to ignore the red-head to ask the opinion of the one who will likely actually do most of the work. "Whatcha think?"
"Whatever my lord demands, I shall supply." The oldman automatically replied in a voice that sounded happy and preppy, despite his Voice being hollow. The calm smile covering his face.
"GAH!" Senju sounded out before giving the oldman a weak chop to the forehead. "Just call me Senju and answer normally!" He roared at the ex-slave.
"I apologize for my failure, I shall strive to do better in the future, Lord Senju." Said Senju -no Lord- just let out a rasping breath of frustration, ignoring Kimimaro nodding in approval of the deference behind him.
"Just-" He opened his mouth to try -once more- to convince the far too indoctrinated freed slave to just treat him more casually, but then decided it wasn't worth the headache. "Just go to the village and gather whoever wants to bail here. We should be arriving in… pretty soon actually, hurry."
Kotatsu just nodded, muttered a "by your leave" and left with his constant smile still plastered on his face. Baccarat stomped after the old after a few more moments of glaring at Senju.
Another hard day of work for Senju, delegator extraordinary.
With one problem solved -or at least not his anymore-, he turned towards the glaring fishman and the cautious Marine.
He smiled at them, the fishmans' glaring face suddenly became as cautious as the Marine's and the Marine was now cautious for a different reason.
Then they both stumbled as the ground beneath them suddenly shot upwards at high speed.
Each got up ready to defend themselves, only to almost be sent flying as the ground stopped as suddenly as it had shot up.
Kisame managed to remain grounded because of Samehada's spikes pierced into the pillar, while Comil managed to hold onto the pillar with haki covered toes.
The Vice-admiral and ex-Sun Pirate looked at their new surroundings, standing on a wooden pillar that stopped just below the beginning of the Great Tree's canopy, a couple thousand feet high.
After a glance at the aerial view of the Island that their vantage point gave them, one of uneven hills covered in vegetation shadowed by both the Tree's canopy and its giant, open air roots, the two focused onto the approaching dot of more gray than green that grew ever larger on the horizon.
"So, you two are most traveled around, any idea which island is that?" Senju asked the two
"I'm afraid that not only it would've been hard to keep a chart of our position without the needed instruments, the prison and the canopy that covered my view removed any chance of that." The Vice-Admiral answered diplomatically before Kisame could chime with his "Of course not, dumbass".
"Huh, that's disappointing." The lanky man said before plopping down at the edge of the pillar of wood, with his legs dangling out.
…
There was a moment of silence as the two watched the pillar's top they rested on grow horizontally, making a platform above the thin base that had been the original pillar.
"…you brought us here for just that?" Comil said when the silence stretched. Kisame busy glaring at him and Senju busy staring at the approaching island.
"Hm?" The tree-man asked back unfocused. "Oh, no. It was for that and so you could fight without risking breaking anything or anyone important." He answered without turning back towards them.
Kisame clearly needed it, and fighting was always a good way to get over one's issues and patch things up. Just look at all the Shounen animes and Senju's own friendship with Bob.
It hasn't worked as well with actual humans as he hoped so far, but it's still an ongoing process. He needs to beat some more people up, so he can be sure.
"Wha-" Comil didn't have time to finish his question as he was forced to dodge to the side of a mass of haki covered spikes, then jump back when said spikes stretched.
"I'LL JUMP IN IF YA LOOK LIKE YOU'LL KILL HIM!" He did not specify for who the warning was, he did not need to. Kisame frowned and tched at it, Comil just focused on dodging.
Almost an hour later Baccarat and… a surprisingly little amount of people showed up.
Then again, it's only surprising until it's considered that Senju offered free food, board and a feeling of security against the Government that had wronged each of the freed slaves. Even if he brought about a whole other bunch of dangers with him.
Still, seeing that a much smaller amount of the freed-slaves would be leaving of their volition then he expected, the plant-person now had to think of what to do with the remaining few.
… He didn't really need people, some were nice, but there were a bunch of them on the island and they do take some resources. Should he keep them?
'Eh, I'll figure it out after I dump the ones that want to leave and see my first other island.' He was surprisingly excited about that.
He hadn't been in a rush to leave the Island, his project was to cover it completely in armor before setting sail, top to sea-floor. It would've taken some two more years of work for it to be ready if not for the Celestial Dragon forcing him to rush the mobilization and finish the armoring as he goes.
But now that a new goal was in reach he felt… excited? Curious? Happy? Hungry? All of the four.
The last one he solved with a bite of the fruit in his hand, before turning towards the gathered 'soon to no longer be his problems'.
"As y'all can see, we're arriving at the next island, that… is on fire." Senju started, before turning to stare at the burning bright island in the distance.
Staring in confusion at the town that rested on the island's coast as with their approach it became visible that the beacon of light they had begun to see half an hour or so ago wasn't the result of a well illuminated town*, but of a burning one.
Kisame, the observant and poetic fishman that he was, enlightened the staring crowd. "Shit's on fire."
He was there for a lack of anything better to do, supposedly not intent on leaving. But it was thankful that he was here to provide such intellectual commentary.
"Ah, yes. Thanks, wonderful observation." I answered sarcastically and automatically, keeping my eyes at the approaching burning island while scratching my head. 'Well, at least there will probably be a fight there. That should be fun. If I find people still alive though, am I supposed to bring them along? No way I'm spending my mass on rebuilding this place… Maybe just take place? With the Island's preexisting bulk, I should be able to eat that one up in a couple of months. I think I lost the Marines already, so I probably could sit here for a couple of months.'
"Senju, what are we supposed to do now? Are we still going to the island?" Baccarat asked as she saw that none of the others would. Most were either too nervous around the half-giant* madman or too broken. Or just didn't care, in Kimimaro's and Kisame's cases.
"Hm?" He asked, having been lost in his thoughts on if the risk of being found by the government was worth taking the time to take the island and on the best and fastest way to take an island. He had his own planned out nice and slowly, so he was now figuring out the best way to rush it.
"What. Do. We. Do?" She asked slowly while gesticulating at herself and the freed-slaves.
"Ah, unless one of y'all wants to fight whatever is in there you can go back to the village. I'll see about the whole releasing y'all thingy after I deal with this." He said waving at the frightened ex-slaves while still focused at the approaching island. "And I have no idea why you included yourself in that us Baccarat. Take part of their luck, I'll keep them safe on the way back, you're staying."
She spluttered. "Wh-Wha-!" She stopped herself mid-scream, and took a breath. But before she could rationally and calmly defend her not having any interest in risking her life in here, their attention was taken by a sharp sound and a cloud of dirt rising from the now almost visible harbour.
As they had been conversing, the Island approached the island to the point it's burning buildings were now visible and the sounds of fighting started to ring through the air, even if they were still too far away to properly see most of the fighting.
But even from afar, they could see the harbour that they were currently approaching. There the people were visible, even if ant-sized, and they could see a particularly fast ant speeding from one side of the port to the other, taking out any in its path as it did so.
Baccarat, too busy staring at the high-velocity murder going on, didn't argue in time as the Island sped up at the sign of battle, throwing all but Kisame and Kimimaro on their backs.
Before she could get up and snap out of it, the Island was already encircling the port and trapping the ships in there on an artificial lake created when the two islands collided, mountain sized thick roots burrowing into the new island as the Island's vegetation started growing unto it.
"Let's go!" Senju roared as he jumped off the cliff towards what would've been open water, if a mountain thick root didn't surge from the cliff, caught him and dragging him, Kimimaro and Kisame who -respectively obviously and surprisingly- followed the half-insane forest-man to the war field of a port.
Watching the mountain root growing ever distant as it approached the port, Baccarat stared at it, stared at the villagers that followed her here and stared at the burning port.
She calmly walked towards the nervous villagers, who looked at her with expectant eyes, and then she started stealing their luck. She still had no intention of going there, but no way she wouldn't be prepared for if and when whatever insanity Senju did spilled over her.
None fought her off or even complained about the luck theft, the villagers just looked confused and expectantly at her, as they didn't know about her powers. She made a point to not let many people know of her powers, it was harder to steal their luck when they do.
So, just as Baccarat finished stealing a bit of the luck of the almost a hundred people gathered on the coast and prepared to leave with them back to the village, she noticed the vine-man staring at her more intensively than the apathetic plant creations tended to.
Knowing of the forest-man's ability to connect with his creations, she had an idea of what that was about it. "No." She whispered/demanded of the plant-construct in front of her.* For a moment she thought it looked like it was smiling.
Her mixture of plead, prayer and demand was for nothing as a second later a smaller root shot from the ground and dragged her towards the island either way.
"YOOOOUUUU AAAASSSSHOOOOOLEEEE!"
At the unknown burning island.
For the first time in quite a while, Roland Rarhan was happy.
After being forced into that oldman's crew before his pirate career could even properly begin, the speedster currently wrecking the port's defenders had gone through a... depressed and bitter period.
He became a pirate to experience the freedom that was so romanticized about, the whole 'go whenever he wanted, take whatever he wanted, unrestricted by anything or anyone' shebang.
Instead, he terrorized the West Blue for barely two months, then met a monster as soon as he entered the Grandline.
A monster that had him caged, shackled and broken, until he was more of a servant than a pirate. One who then offered the broken man to one of his better subordinates as if he was a toy.
And so, instead of a grand career of blood and adventure, the speedster had spent his days training and serving in the shadows, then going back to his gilded cage of a room. Until now that is.
After so many days that he lost count, Roland was finally given something interesting to do, he was given command of one of the three forces tasked with invading the home island of that red-haired upstart.
The speedster didn't really care about what the glutton or the oldman wanted with the upcoming West Blue sensation, he only cared that he would once again be able to experience the ultimate freedom of sailing a ship under your command and the joy of crushing your enemies.
Only they weren't really his ship or his enemies.
The thought made him frown and stop his constant, murderous rush around the battlefield for a second. And as he came down from Mach 4 speeds, he finally realised that it was oddly quiet for a battlefield.
He didn't have to look around for the reason, for as soon as he turned his head sideways he saw the densely forested island that surrounded his small fleet at the port and covered the horizon. The thing seemed to be even larger than the island they were currently attacking.
'When the fuck did this get here?!' The man thought to himself in shock, having not been paying much -any- attention to anything but his immediate surroundings while he was fighting around the port. "And what the fuck is that?!" He continued asking himself while staring at the living island warily.
He had seen enough Grandline monstrosities to know that a dense, living and walking jungle was probably gonna try to murder you. That anything strange is likely to try to murder you really.
So he was tense and ready to react even before a mountain-size root snaked its way through the air out of the island and into the port.
A tall man jumped out of it even as it moved to lower his companions to the ground, his straight, long brown hair and green… tentacles? Waving in the air behind him.
Both of his companions also jumped after him, so the root instead lowered itself to burrow into the ground, vegetation quickly growing around the area it burrowed itself into. There were already a few trees popping up amongst the burning houses and visibly growing grass covering the port.
The brown-haired man fell on bended knees, then stretched up to reveal that he was wearing a white shirt, furry green pants and a living, green and brown coat of writhing tentacles over all of it.
Roland barely noticed the albino looking kid and the fishman besides him.
The new arrival took a look at the myriad of warriors, pirates and desperate citizens looking at him in either apprehension, fear or hope. And ignored all of it to smile straight at the speedster.
Instead of trying to talk with the new arrival, the speedster struck before any could react, taking advantage of the small pause in their action, he rushed forward at an inhuman velocity and used his momentum to throw a devastating haki enhanced punch at the taller brown-haired man.
A punch that he knew from past experience could destroy a cranium with ease.
Roland skidded to a halt behind the three, then was forced to speed away again to avoid a large bone-white spike that surged from the ground beneath him.
Stopping in front of the trio, -the albino kid now kneeled and the likely source of the spike-, Roland felt his eyes widen as instead of a headless corpse, he found the brown-man looking at him with a face that looked more like a cracked porcelain mask, a purple welt barely noticeable beneath the broken fungi armor.
The porcelain mask reforged itself into a seemingly uninjured face, the previously mentioned welt quickly healing beneath it. The man opened and closed his mouth a few times and ran his tongue over the inside of his cheek where the welt was, and the remains of his injury were gone.
Healed from the minor damage, the new arrival turned to smile at Roland again as if nothing had happened.
"Ah, so you're the bad guy, right?" the lanky man asked, smile stretching too wide to be normal. Especially considering that his jawbone had been fractured a few seconds ago. "Please say yes, I was wanting a Devil Fruit user to experiment with." he finished as one of the coat's vines pierced through the floor for gods knows what reason.
Roland felt a shiver run down his back, he wanted to go back to his cage now.
Probably unnecessary explanations:
1 - "He was Kotatsu, an oldman from Paradise who was apparently quite the administrator. Enough of one to get the Celestial Dragon's attention*..."
Just a minor OC character, he will be mentioned in the background as a councillor/right-hand of Baccarat, the one who does all the administrative work that Senju throws at her. Might show up in a meeting or two further on.
He definitely won't be anything major, but I was bored, so here's a summary of his backstory:
A commoner from a small kingdom at Paradise, Kotatsu excelled at business and administration, making his family a fortune and setting all of his children for life.
He was close to retiring when the Celestial Dragon's marched into town and demanded his service in managing a propriety of the Dragon's at the island (after the Dragon had the previous steward killed for inane reason #88).He unfortunately did too good of a job, and two years into the forced work he had the "honor" of being part of the Dragon's personal retinue. Basically he was taken as a slave to work for the Dragon at Mary Geoise.
Never the bravest person and with plenty to lose, he went without resistance for his family's safety. A slave for 12 years now, Kotatsu has a tendency to have a small smile constantly present on his face, as apparently the Celestial Dragons found it dreary when the slaves looked sour.
2 - "Comil jumped back, hoping that one of the others would intervene and stop the fight, he both did not wish to further hurt the ex-slaves and he had no illusions of his chances against his captor. Definitely not in the forest covered island.*"
Considering that he was part of the slaver fleet, he sounds hypocritical. And maybe kinda cowardly.
On the possible cowardice, I was mostly trying to portrait him as someone who believes he deserves to have been captured -considering said participation in the slaver fleet- and is logical enough to realise both that his chances against the MC are pretty steep and that he is the only thing keeping the collection of frightened captured Marines and reckless Cipher Pol agents from doing something stupid and commiting suicide by plant.
On the hypocrisy, yeah… That's pretty much every good Marine's problem for me. During the whole Levely arc I was staring at Issho talking about the dangers of government-allowed pirates while completely ignoring the slavers' den that he was debating on.
3 - " with their approach it became visible that the beacon of light they had begun to see an hour or so ago wasn't the result of a well illuminated town*"
Is it too much of a coincidence that they approached a proper seeing range just as the slaves arrived? No, Senju slowed down the Island to time it that way for dramatic purposes. Is it too much of a coincidence that they arrived at the same time of an attack in general?… Yes… I needed to push the plot along.
4 - "... around the half-giant* madman"
It's a manner of speech, the MC is not half-giant, even half-giants are far larger than him (there was one in the anime, none in the manga that I remember).
Some people in One Piece are just mad tall for no reason. Doflamingo is 10ft, Whitebeard is 21ft, Moria and Kuma are 22ft, Enel 8ft, etc. The MC will be 14ft. Why? Well, why not? His is the result of the ultra-vitamin shakes he takes daily and One Piece insane biology.
