Attention, loyal fans. We of the Cross-Brain have a most momentous announcement: we have finally reached the top five of all One Piece fics. In celebration of this, we are doing two things. Firstly, we are releasing the preview for the third part of Strong World. Here you are:
Cross-Brain AN: For anyone who was honestly upset about the cliffhanger? Come now, we all knew that that battle would be a curb-stomp, and not in the Straw Hats' favor. This… is just the logical conclusion.
"Gum-Gum Homerun!"
"Typhoon Lash!"
"WATCH YOUR HEAD!"
"Jihahaha! Is that the best you—?!"
"LIGHTNING BOLT TEMPO!"
KEE-RACK! "—GRAH!? Urgh… ack… alright… credit where it was due. That stung a bit. And more than that, it pissed me off. So… congratulations, Straw Hats, you've made me decide to do the one thing I haven't had to do in twenty years."
"SHUT THE HELL UP, YOU SHITTY GOLDEN BASTARD! SKY WALK! MOUTON—! GAH!? WHAT THE— LET ME GO YOU PIECE OF—!?"
CRUNCH!
"GAAAAGH!"
"I... am going to give you the courtesy... of actually putting some effort into crushing you all down into the size of a pebble. Honestly now, you should all feel honored..."
A rumble, a heave, the earth itself crying out in tortured rage and agony.
"The last time I used this technique, it was to take care of a particularly stubborn member of Linlin's brood. Lion's Threat: Earth Bind."
"What the—ohfuckme EVERYONE MOVE, NOW!"
"No! Nonono! Guys! GUYS! GET OUT OF THERE!"
"DAMN IT, IT'S TOO THICK!"
"I CAN'T BREAK OUT!"
"OH NOOOO!"
"SHIKIIII! GET BACK HERE!"
"How about... NOT ON YOUR LIFE, BRAT! NOW DO THE WORLD A FAVOR, AND LET THE EARTH SWALLOW YOU AND YOUR DREAMS WITHOUT EVEN A TRACE! JIHAHAHA! JIIIIHAHAHA!"
"No... no... this... t-this can't..."
"Face reality, Miss Navigator. It has and it is. Now... I suggest you think real hard about my proposal... and about what you really want right now."'
"You... you..."
"Think. Hard."
"...whatever I want?"
"Apart from that little stunt you pulled back in my palace? Yes."
"...alright. You leave the East Blue alone… and let my friends go."
"That's two wishes, Miss Navigator."
"Yeah, well… I'm a greedy bitch. And if my skills weren't worth that much, I wouldn't still be standing here. So now, you choose. Take it. Or. Leave it."
"…You drive a hard bargain. But your skills are not impressive enough to make me abandon twenty years of preparation. I will give you my word that I will not attack your home island, and I will even be generous and extend that promise to the rest of your former crew. But the rest of the East Blue... it burned my dreams twenty years ago, and now it burns in turn. Not even you can stop that."
A grind of teeth, pure frustration and rage. "F-Fine. Fine. You have a deal. Now let's go, a-and you'll let my crew go, right?"
"Heh. Exactly right. Buuuut, I would not have my newest crewmate thinking me without mercy. Or at least, completely without mercy. Here. I trust you know what to do with this?"
"I... yeah. Yeah I do. Alright, just-just give me a second."
CLI—
SLAP! "—AKE UP, CROSS!"
"GAH!"
I sat up in response to that rude awakening, rubbing my stinging cheeks. "Ugh… Vivi, I'm not Usopp, and I'm not dying of hypothermia, what the heaaaargh?" my grumpy demand trailed off into a groan as the rest of me started to straight up throb.
"Oi, don't remind me of that, especially not now," a nasally voice—Usopp's I think, though the ringing and doppler effect in my ears made that hard to tell—grumbled from nearby.
"Under normal circumstances, I'd be interested in hearing that story, but right now we have bigger questions to handle," came a cooler female voice from beside me.
I blinked and looked towards the voice, the blur that was its source slowly coming into focus. "Robin…?"
"Namely," Robin continued, her slightly fuzzy arm pointing over my shoulder. "Can you tell us what we just pulled you out of?"
Still dizzy as all get-out, I turned my head to follow her finger, and was confronted with the awe-inspiring sight of a titanic spiral-pillar… of…
I clenched my eyes shut and clapped a hand to my throbbing forehead with a groan as it all came rushing back to me at once. "Ohdamnitalltohell…" I whispered beneath my breath.
When I reopened my eyes, I was finally able to take notice of details that had escaped me just moments before.
I became aware of the annihilated and yet-smoldering ruins that were all that were left of the village.
Of just how deep of a crater we were in the bottom of.
Of the rest of my friends being slowly, painstakingly drawn out of the pillar we'd all been entombed in…
And I became painfully, agonizingly aware of who was missing.
The last of the cobwebs faded from my mind and the jumbled pieces of being utterly flattened pieced together in my mind, and I looked at Robin in despair.
"Shiki?" I croaked. "Nami?"
"They were long gone long before we got here," Franky's voice said from a short distance away. "We found out about his plans to level the village a second after Vivi left, and by that point we couldn't catch up in time to tell her. We spent long enough there to put a plan together with Bartolomeo, but the second we saw Shiki about to face you guys, we were gone. We met Vivi halfway, and when we actually got here…"
"What the hell happened?!" Vivi cut in, gripping my shoulder and shaking me firmly. Her face was flashing with a myriad of emotions, but dizzy as I still was, I couldn't even begin to process them. "I-I thought you said, I thought—!"
"We weren't ready."
It said a damn lot that it was Luffy who growled that out in complete and utter seriousness.
"We underestimated him, we were all still tired, and we got our asses kicked because of it," Luffy bluntly summarized.
"It didn't help that he provoked us the way he did," Sanji literally fumed as he burned his way through his second cigarette since we'd woken up. "Objectifying Nami-swan and making himself seem like the victim… I want to explode just thinking about it. Grrrgh," he massaged his forehead with a growl. "Which, in retrospect is definitely what he was going for."
"An-zzt-d it sure as he-kchk-ll didn't help that he went s-bzz-traight for Soundbite first," Su provided, her voice shaky and staticky on account of the spiderweb cracks that were decorating the checkerboard shell on her back.
I momentarily glanced at my shoulder once I realized that Soundbite wasn't there anymore, but I then relaxed as I realized that if our non-human crewmates were still talking, it meant he wasn't in critical condition.
"I'll patch him up as soon as my body lets me," Chopper sighed from nearby, no doubt having noticed my confirm. "I knew I was pushing myself too hard… and if I try anything else now, I don't know if my body will be able to keep up as long as I need it to."
"If Soundbite isn't in any danger, then that's fine," Luffy said, his hat shadowing his eyes as he surveyed the mountain, the ruins, and the state of his crew. "But Shiki is going to pay for this. Guards."
"Sir!" the five Dugongs saluted immediately.
"Take Merry and go ahead of us to the Sunny. As soon as we're ready to fight, we're going to Coup de Burst straight up to Shiki's palace. Make sure he's ready."
"Aye-a-zzt!-ye!" four of them reported, Boss already moving to grab Merry.
"A-Actually..." The elder Dugong paused when Donny spoke up, his expression clearly hesitant.
"I, uh..." Donny slowly withdrew a seashell from behind his back, a gold and somewhat ornate one. "I-I was look-krcht!-ng around once I got out and found th-zzt!-is. I... think it's a Tone Dial, but... I don't remember us hav-eeng!-ing one like this. Do… do you guys think...?"
The discomfort on his face slowly transmitted to the rest of us, and we all stared at the shell with dread.
"Should… Should we listen to it?" Conis asked uncertainly.
"It could just be another attempt by Shiki to make us go out of our minds again," Vivi reasoned, slipping out one of her Cutters. "Maybe we should...?"
"Here, give it to me," Robin prompted, materializing an arm in front of Donny and gesturing invitingly. "I'll listen to it myself, and if it's not worth our time, I'll crush it immediately."
Donny glanced at Luffy, but once our captain nodded, he handed off the Dial to her and she swiftly conveyed it out of earshot.
Robin closed her eyes in concentration, and a second later, they snapped open as she became deathly pale. "It's not Shiki."
"Are you—?"
"It's not Shiki," she repeated, pure desperation etched on her face as she caught the Dial she'd tossed back at herself and played it for us all to hear.
"Please forgive me for not being able to say farewell to you all directly."
And our hearts all practically stopped as we heard Nami's voice came from the shell, sounding more defeated and downtrodden then I'd ever heard her before.
And that 'stop' turned into outright freezing for me as she continued to speak, her every word just making... everything so very, very much worse.
~o~
With a grimace, eyes closed, Nami allowed the Tone Dial to fall from her grasp and settle on the altered earth below.
"Very good," Shiki sneered. "Now, let us be going. The ceremony will begin soon."
Nami so wanted to pin the bastard to the nearest intact wall, be it with her glare or her Eisen Tempo or even a physical bolt of lightning... but at the moment, she just didn't have that option. As such, she settled for dredging up her memories of Arlong and giving the lion-bastard the least-obviously stiff nod she could manage. "Fine, let's go."
And so Nami started to march off in the direction the Shiki indicated—
"Wait."
And then froze as a very familiar voice spoke up, and both she and Shiki both turned their heads to face the source: a grim and gaunt goth, with her head bowed low and her expression shadowed by the... well, shadow of her umbrella.
"Perona?!" Nami gasped even as Shiki tilted his head curiously.
"So, you managed to survive the onslaught, hm?" the Float-human questioned. "What, are you looking for a round two or something? Fair warning," he started orbiting a trio of stones above his palm. "I won't be quite so merciful with you as I was with my navigator's old crew."
Nami was about to either protest the threat or ask Perona what the hell she was thinking... and then, that unasked question was answered in the absolute last possible way she expected.
"Will you allow me to join your crew?"
The navigator's brain stalled as the incongruent words hit her ears. "...what?" she whispered numbly.
Shiki, meanwhile, was nowhere near as phased. "Join me?" He huffed out a cloud of smoke contemplatively. "I will admit that your abilities are intriguing. But honestly now, do you really expect me to believe that you too would so easily betray your crewmates? After you helped your friend… lose her way earlier at that?"
"N-No! No!" Nami hastily protested, shaking her head at her 'captain' in denial before running to Perona's side, reaching out to her in desperation. "Perona, please, you don't have to—!"
SLAP!
Nami's words died in her throat, the cold and almost impersonal look that the Goth faced her with stunning her silent even more efficiently than the forceful strike that had knocked her hand away.
"'Have to'?" Perona repeated, her face and tone as expressionless as a statue. "Of course I do. I told you, remember? I am not, have never been, and never will be a part of your crew. The only reason I got on your ship was to find somewhere new I could live in luxury, and what do you know, I found it. Hell, I found my way on to the only hunk of rock that's not going to be burning in a week. Really, the only thing you should be asking is why I wouldn't want to join Shiki's crew, when the Straw Hats mean absolutely nothing to me."
"B-But..." Nami whispered numbly, her mind still playing catch-up. "Y-You're my friend…"
"Horo!" the ghost princess barked out a harsh laugh. "'Friend'?! Remind me, have I ever, even once, addressed you as my friend? Hm? Have I?"
The navigator tried to answer… but nothing came out.
"Thought not. And just to clarify things, let me tell you exactly why I hung out with you, even when I didn't think of you as a friend," Perona leaned in close putting her scowl an inch from Nami's face. "You. Were. Convenient. A means to an end. And it would have been too much trouble to let you die while I was travelling with that crew. But now, I don't need them anymore, so now I don't need you. So, in short?"
Perona straightened up and adopted a most pleasant and innocent expression. "Thank you ever so much for helping me find a new home where I can live the rest of my days in peace and comfort," And then, just like that, all emotion died from her face in an instant. "Now please, leave me the hell alone."
Shiki moved over to look down at Perona, the goth meeting his gaze with neither flinch nor hesitation. He stared for several seconds… and finally, his face split into a grin.
"That was cold, girly," he sneered. "And I love it. Perona, was it? Welcome to my crew. You'll excuse me if I put your wish on hold until later. Now, if that's all, let's be going."
Perona nodded curtly and followed after him, making a point of bumping into Nami in the process. The navigator flinched, clutching at the struck shoulder as she followed with a sad and sour expression.
Shiki glanced at her inquisitively, eyeing the gauze wrapping the joint. "By the way, Miss Navigator, I noticed that you've been wearing that bandage all week. Did you contract that serious of an injury? I can have one of my doctors take a look at it."
Nami flinched again, her nails biting even harder into her shoulder. "No, it's not injured. It's just… not time yet."
Shiki cocked an eyebrow at the answer, but shrugged dismissively. "Whatever you say, Miss Navigator. Aaaanyways, you both go ahead and get started on heading back, yeah? I'll be right behind you."
The women looked at him curiously for a moment, but ultimately shrugged it off and started trudging away in silence.
Once they were past the intact section of the village and out of sight, Shiki's ever-present grin gained a particularly violent sneer. "Should have thought things through a little bit longer, Miss Navigator," he whispered gleefully.
And so, with an almost dismissive flick of his hand, he smiled as he watched a blast of earth erupt from where he'd torn the doors clean off the villagers' bunker.
Shiki chuckled to himself as he took to the air. "After all," he said to himself. "Can't have a proper bloodbath without the slaughter."
A minute later, the Golden Lion landed by his new crewmates with a victorious dusting of his palms. "Alright, all good. Let's go!"
And so they went, Shiki hauling up a chunk of earth to transport them to their new home.
And as they rose to the air, Nami cast a final, mournful glance towards the monument her crew had been made into, and could only pray that everyone would understand the message she had left them.
~o~
A picture of grinding teeth, bleeding palms, and eyes reflecting every force of nature imaginable defined our crew as we heard the tape out.
Some of us had more volatile reactions than others: Chopper was twitching on his hooves, eyes flickering in and out of cyan madness, Conis had blood dripping from where her nails had pierced her palms, and where Vivi's face was dead to the world, absent of all reaction, I could see something swirling in the back of her mind, but I just didn't have it in me to parse it right now.
Because in the end, no matter how well we hid it or overtly we showed it, one fact was certain: we were suffering as we listened.
"That's why…" Nami's voice choked out. "That's why I'm begging you to forgive me for—"
"WHAT THE HELL IS THIS!?"
Everyone else flinched as Luffy let out a sudden, livid bellow, drowning out whatever the hell else Nami had been about to say.
And I... I didn't begrudge him. Because I... I just... I just couldn't. I-I literally couldn't.
For a few seconds Luffy just stood there, snorting and growling in articulately as he glared bloody murder at the offending Dial. Until finally, something just snapped behind his eyes and he spun on his heels, marching off as murderous growls clawed their way from his throat.
Franky cast a worried look after Luffy, but ultimately he just shook his head and pointed at Robin. "Hey, play that again."
And that was when I snapped. "Do it without me," I hissed, fighting to keep my tone under control.
Usopp looked at me in surprise. "But, Cross, she was saying something at the end—!"
"I've heard enough," I bit out sharply, snapping a glare around and daring anyone to dispute me.
If anybody wanted to, I didn't give them a chance. I just snatched Soundbite off of Su's back, slapped him onto my shoulder and stalked off, my teeth grinding like a chainsaw.
I just... it just... I could barely even think I was so... so...
No words. None. None.
We'd lost. Lost again. Lost so. Fucking. Badly.
And he hadn't even been trying. He ripped us apart.
Humiliated us. Laughed at us, like we were trash.
And then Nami.
Not only had he taken her...
But her voice was there. Summarizing it, emphasizing it.
Hammering. It. In.
Hammering in the fact that I had...
That we had...
That we'd...
We—!
"FUCK!"
SMASH!
I huffed and snarled as I came down from the peak of my unholy rage. My chest heaved and my throat ached from the roar I'd let loose, but I barely noticed I yanked my foot out from the chunk of wall I'd demolished.
Soundbite eyed me warily, even if he was still a bit dizzy. "That help? At all?"
I snorted derisively, my fingers twitching and jerking in my gauntlets. "No. And you know damn well the only thing that'll—!"
"GRAGH!"
S-SMASH!
I was cut off by a second roar of fury being let loose... but two smashes rang out at the same time.
One was obvious, with Luffy withdrawing his arm from the rubble he'd just created… but the other was something of a surprise.
I looked at Zoro, standing in front of a mutilated track of land with all three of his swords drawn. His fists strangling Shusui and Kitetsu, his teeth grinding into Wado, his body trembling with energy and emotion just waiting to be unleashed. Our eyes met...
And I realized that no, no this wasn't a surprise at all. Rather, it was the only possible outcome.
And as the energy slowly drained from my body, and some of the edge on my emotions dulled, I knew there was only one way this could be done.
I huffed as I took my hat off and started to wipe at the coldsweat building on my brow with my forearm. "…Captain."
Luffy snapped an immolating glare at me out the corner of his eye. A glare I met without flinching.
"…I'm the tactician," I stated seriously. "My job is to make the plans. And I can do that. I can give you a hundred and one different plans, right here, right now, but only you can tell us what direction we're headed. Only you can tell us our destination. So," I spread my arms out wide, indicating... everything around us. Everything that had happened. "What's the play?"
Luffy continued to stare at me... and without looking away, he slowly raised his hand and pointed at the island looming so high above us. "…I want," he whispered, honest to God murder in his voice. "To make him pay."
"Alright, then that's what we'll do..." I nodded slowly, the motion gaining momentum as I jammed my hat back into place, right way forwards, as I met his glare with just as much heat. "We'll make him pay."
Zoro snorted in agreement, finishing tying his bandana on with an almost whip-like crack!. "Then let's get it done."
We made to go back to the crew—
FWOOM!
And we all came to a dead halt as all of a sudden, an utterly anomalous blast of air struck us full force.
We all blinked in surprise at that, but I just as swiftly brushed it off and walked back over to our crew.
Nobody looked at us as we returned, because they were more concerned with staring at the epicenter of the wave of air pressure.
Staring at Princess Nefertari Vivi.
I gave her a once-over: hunched forwards, hand clamped against her mouth, eyes screwed shut… until they suddenly flew open, and I met the pure, merciless steel in her gaze
"…So," I asked as she straightened up and started looking at her hands in a whole new light. "How did it taste?"
Vivi clenched and unclenched her hands for a second, testing everything out as though to guarantee they still functioned properly. Until finally, she snapped them into fists with a determined nod.
"Delicious," she declared with pride.
There you have it. And now, the second part. As of now, we are announcing another contest. An art contest. The requirement: take your favorite scene from This Bites! and draw it out. Because we know that you cannot rush perfection, the deadline for this contest will be the story's third anniversary: September 19, 2018.
We will name three grand prize winners. The Freudian Trio will select the art they like best, the Neurofeedback will select the art they like best, and you our loyal fans will select their favorite.
For as momentous an occasion as this, the prizes are great. The three grand prize winners will be granted a one-year-long backstage pass to our story as well as a one-month comprehensive backstage pass. This reward is beyond anything we have given before, even to our patrons: for the duration of that time, you will have unlimited access to our plans for the future as well as the present (with one exception that the Cross-Brain is keeping to ourselves regardless of anything). Choices may not be duplicated.
Additionally, each member of the Cross-Brain will also select one runner-up who, along with the runner-up among the fans, will receive a one-month backstage pass, six questions about our future plans, and previews for the story until the time skip. Again, choices may not be duplicated.
Any other pieces of art that do not win either of the above prizes but still impress the Cross-Brain will win three chapter previews and three questions about our future plans. We of the Cross-Brain will notify anyone who publishes such art in a timely manner following their publishing of it.
Now, the rules are as follows:
*You must submit your entry to our email address, j . cross . brain -A- gmail . com. Write "Top 5 Art Contest Submission" in the subject line, and include your name/username, which site we post our story on that you follow most, and a description of which moment in the story your art submission portrays.
**If you submit a second entry, it must have the subject "Top 5 Art Contest Submission 2", and so on with each successive number.
*You may commission the art from someone else as long as you give full credit to them and, if they desire, share the prize with them.
*You may not cut and paste images from other pieces of One Piece art. Tracing is acceptable.
*You may submit as many entries as you wish, but you may not stack a runner-up prize upon a grand prize, nor may you win any of the three prizes more than once. Art commissioned by the same artist that drew another piece of art submitted by another contestant is acceptable.
*No NSFW entries. We can't stop you from commissioning such artwork, but we will not allow it as a contest entry.
*Sketches are permitted but discouraged; keep in mind that they will be considered alongside the best a person can make in the next six and a half months.
