Birth of a King

Under the asleep guard of Zoro, Usopp, Franky and Chopper had not stopped working: the only way for every member of the crew to make it, was to be faster than the marines' answer once they realized that Eines Lobby was under attack. Even Luffy didn't think that they could fight against a vice-admiral: somehow, only the mention of that particular rank on Coby's part had been enough to establish just the kind of hot mess they'd be in once they were done with the 'shopping trip' into one of the most guarded places of the entire world.

The entire plan hinged on two facts: one, if there was any hope of finding a Zoan Devil Fruit with its description, it would be in Eines Lobby: two, it was likely that the big base would have a Power User or two. There was a chance that one could have eaten a Zoan, and Coby had shown that the powers blossomed again into the closest compatible fruit, both with the fruit that had been of Mr. Five, and the one which had then been eaten by Usopp.

All in all, the chances were remote. But they weren't zero, and that was all that mattered to the crew.

Luffy was doing his part perfectly, fighting against the one that Coby had seen was the strongest, the one who was guaranteed to push the captain to his limits, and beyond them.

Usopp sighed as he kept working: there were a thousand and one things to complete, even with Franky's insane skills and unique set of cyborg-bullshittery that the sniper was already thinking of a way to replicate. Chopper helped as he could, moving what needed to be moved in his muscle point, calculating the impossible things that even with the knowledge required the user of the Munch Munch fruit could only guess at.

They were still going to build an entire ship: with only three people. It was insane, it was impossible. Usopp grinned madly, his expression reminiscent of Coby's: it was exhilarating. He could almost feel himself constantly growing stronger in virtue of the cleverer and cleverer uses he made of his power. Never in his life he would have believed himself capable of this much.

"Hattori wasn't lying then." the new voice was an unwelcome addition to the white noise composed by the scraping of wood, the hammering of metal, and the constant rumble of the sea.

Turning his head, the sharp eyes of the Straw Hats' sniper immediately found the origin of the disturbance: coming out of a strange distortion in the very air shaped like a door that gave on a landscape of truly vibrant, weird colours, were three people.

There was a is a slim, pretty woman with blue eyes and glasses, her strawberry-blonde hair was about shoulder-length, and it fell free over her shoulders as she impassively stared at her targets, while on her left there was a man with a white baseball cap and a truly oddly shaped, squared and long nose. He had an orange, high-collared shirt with blue sleeves, jeans, and white sneakers.

Closing the door with a soft thump, there was a tall man with big lips, a black beard, and black hair styled after the horns of a bull. His shoulders were large, and his expression matched perfectly the one of his companions: "To find someone capable of keeping him busy, this is truly unprecedented."

Their arrival, however, hadn't gone unnoticed by the sleeping Zoro, who already was tying his bandana in place, bloodlust rising from him as if steam. Sandai Kitetsu, the cursed blade which had been tested against the swordsman's own luck, was already cutting the air before Chopper could truly realize what was going on.

The square, long-nosed stranger was the first to react, a cross guard was realized with two straight, short swords, only for him to be flung back as he hadn't been expecting the flying slash to push him so hard. A split second later, the same joyfully bloodthirsty weapon was plunged into the eye of the tall, dark-haired man, who fell to the ground, dead.

The transition had been so smooth, so natural, so unexpected, that the one responsible for transporting the assassins had been felled while he was still reeling from the first attack. Then, as if to spite her, Zoro didn't even glance as he stepped by. Khalifa's own instincts, refined by years of missions, warred against the training that had been hammered into her: attack, attack, attack. She was indecisive for a split second, and that fraction of time cost her the faint opportunity that the swordsman provided.

It was because of the years spent undercover, which had dulled the reactivity her training should have left her with, because the green-haired man had struck as if he had been waiting for their arrival, because of a thousand other reasons... because the mere idea of attacking Zoro in that moment had summoned a single, daunting answer to the back, unconscious part of her mind: a certainty that in the ends meets everyone. Had she attacked...

She would have died.

Usopp on his part was hardly still while Zoro casually created that opening.

A sweeping motion of his arms, and a table holding a large number of items were dumped into his awaiting, open, steel-like mouth. Springs were dumped alongside scraps of metal, and a second later, the dial-modified, three-wheeled motorcycle that had been once of Smoker joined them. The merging happened in a matter of microseconds, Usopp's power stretched in a familiar manner, and combust pipes appeared out of his calves, thick wheels sprouted not unlike spurs.

In a moment, Usopp had fired off three blows with his slingshot, each pellet different and uniquely dangerous.

The first impacted a few meters from the woman, who, at the sound of the casing breaking, returned fully in possess of her skills. A thick cloud of barely visible smoke erupted immediately, only fr the sparks caused by the shell against the ground igniting the smoke, which blew up in a fiery blaze.

Khalifa rocketed not backward, where the fight was going on between Kaku and Zoro, but to the left, exactly where one of the other two pellets was striking. Once more, she couldn't stop to engage, and was forced to move, only for the pellet to reveal itself as a common lead bullet, which buried itself uncaringly into the ground.

Her eyes darted about with speed unheard of, seeking for the attacker, only to spot the still-at-work Franky and the muscled, furry form of a horned creature. Kami-e allowed her to fold around the meter-long, iron-cast harpoon which almost took away her liver, which was followed up by other two other leaden bullets.

Having had the time to recognize the bullet, Khalifa hardened her flesh with Tekkai, batting aside the blow while her eyes finally zeroed in on the enemy sniper: Usopp was standing without trying to hide atop one of the wooden towers built in the small shipyard. The second bullet impacted without effect on her skin... only to release the same, transparent, alcohol-based mixture that had been ignited before.

A third one went up in sparks immediately after, setting everything aflame.

She moved with Soru, her left leg rising up sharply as she created a highly compressed slash of air with Ryankaku that blasted the flames back in an angry arc towards the shipyard. Another explosion went off in front of it, releasing a pillar of sand that smothered the flames, and as Khalifa darted towards the position of the Sniper... she noticed that he was no longer there.

The buzzing of a shaped bullet rang by her ear, making her flinch to the side, and use kami-e once more to avoid three separate harpoons that had been prepped while she dealt with the sudden fire. Her eyes darted around, analyzing all the places that could be most advantageous for what clearly was a clever, long-ranged fighter, only to stop, and arch an eyebrow at the sudden red-herring that was placed in front of her.

Twirling a slender, hollow, blue-tinted staff, was an orange-haired, slender girl. Smirking tauntingly, she spoke with false bravado: "You ever heard of not sticking your head into the lion's mouth?"

The eyes of Khalifa landed on what clearly was going to be the figure-head of the ship that was being built: it was a realistic-looking, snarling lion's head. Realized into the unique, reddish tint of Adam's Wood, it held cleverly hidden hinges that looked like they had been plated with gold. The inlaid noble metal ran from along the snout of the creature and into the much larger, mane-like structure of flat pieces that weren't unlike a propeller when taken togehter.

Still, Kahlifa raised an unimpressed eyebrow at the woman in front of her: "Taunting those capable of killing you won't make you any favours, on this sea, pirate... although, it won't be a problem for you any longer."

Faster than ever, the assassin darted forward, the Shigan piercing into the woman... who dissolved into mist, only to be replaced by another, her voice casually thrown about as if by a clever ventriloquist: "Can't believe to what you see? You should know better than to attack a target that looks just too good to be true."

"Stalling tactics won't help you." Khalifa barely held herself back from snarling, and charged forward once more, stumbling through illusion after illusion, avoiding bullets only to be tripped by wires that sprang suddenly from the ground. She nimbly avoided the fiery explosions set up by the sniper, only to walk face full into a mixture of stinky traps, glue that slowed her down significantly, and impossibly sharp, thin blades.

She tried to use Geppou exactly once: while she was airborne, without any obstacle obscuring the impossibly mobile sniper, Usopp had a field day. It cost him no effort to rain hit of every kind on her then. For all that she was fast, and very mobile, the long-nosed, long-ranged attacker could create a wide field of effects without even needing to try.

The long-nosed sniper's heart was thundering in his chest, and not only with the usual, known fear of failure. Fear of death, fear of pain: they were all there, like old friends. He knew them all: but no pain his opponent could inflict even remotely approached the hurt that the mere idea of having to abandon the Going Merry had caused. And while his heart seemed to be willing to run out of his chest in fright, the sniper's hands were absolutely still.

The countless, minor and irrational fears were shored up behind a wall of possible uses of his Devil Fruit's power, and they'd have to climb taller than the veritable mountain of tricks he had prepared to face every danger his mind was capable of summoning.

The battle dragged itself away from the shipyard proper, where Franky kept up his incredible work, as Nami and Usopp acted in tandem to corral and harass their enemy. Khalifa, for all that she could flatten them both in a fraction of a second if she managed to close the distance, simply couldn't break the illusions that the orange-haired witch set up while the assassin was harried by the sniper, and she couldn't approach that long-nosed bastard before he relocated, moving at speeds that should be prerogative of Chyper Pol agents.

One minute turned into another, and eventually, the battle between the two 'cowards' stretched to the point that the other two main clashes came to an end.

Khalifa was turning towards yet another mirage when she saw the impossible: the straw hat boy that had been keeping up with Lucci had actually walked back on his own two legs. He was bloodied, his wounds seeped constantly, and his breath was ragged to the point that it was a wheezing, broken sound. Hold by one ankle, the broken form of the most dangerous member of the CP-9 drew a wet spread of blood on the ground.

His eyes burned fiercely despite his battered body, and as he drew near the beached, harmless-looking caravel, he dragged his straw hat back in place: "He's..." he wheezed while the muscle-covered, the large shape of the fur-covered man that had been by the side of Franky until that moment came running, "A fast cat-man."

He breathed deeply a couple of time before shouting: "Merry!"

Khalifa took a step towards the clearly distracted, exhausted man, only for her instinct to force her to size up once more: the feeling of annoyance that had been mounting during the fight was erased once more by the cold, unforgiving presence of before, of that ephemeral moment in which the world had stilled.

And sure enough, there was the flat of a blade resting on her shoulder, accompanied by the heavy breathing of the green-haired man: "Don't." The command was given flatly, unforgivingly, and it stopped her breath for a moment. When she still tried to move, she felt a hit at the base of her skull, and everything went black.

Zoro sheathed his drawn weapon once more, untying his bandana and walking towards the Going Merry while Chopper began to flutter around The unbowing shape of Luffy, Nami reappeared out of mist, and Usopp came to a rumbling stop, the trail of smoke rising from his calves disappearing as he spat into a large bag several pieces, only for his jaw to open wide as he returned to a fully human shape and finally returned Smoker's three-wheeled motorcycle into a single piece.

Everyone felt how important the moment was, and not only because of the potential consequences. One thing was killing in the heat of battle... this, this was going to be deliberate, decided and carried out because it might give a chance to live to one of their nakama.

Nami was used to hard choices: she made them each day under Arlong's yoke, and even this rang terrifyingly close to unacceptable to be carried out. The only thing that kept her from protesting was the very real chance of losing their most reliable companion, the Caravel from East Blue who had braved the Grand Line for their sake.

Usopp swallowed harshly, but other than that, he didn't give any sign of hesitation. He loved the Merry more than anyone, and he'd see her safe and hale: if he had to burn the whole world for it, so be it.

Zoro breathed quietly, his hand resting on the hilt of Wado Ichimonji, and his thoughts far away, to memories that he rarely allowed himself the luxury of relieving: of just another friend that he once had, who vanished from his life without him being able to do anything about it. It wouldn't happen again, he couldn't allow that any more than he could allow himself to be defeated.

Chopper was a doctor: he wanted to find the cure to everything. The human-reindeer would one day be the greatest medic in the world, and... he had been shunned all of his life because he was a monster. A blue-nose that denied him the comfort of his natural family, and the unique nature of not being born human keeping a wall between him and those that he felt could be like him, but who called him monster. Usopp had been the first to show that 'monstrous' was something that meant very little, with his unnaturally long nose and metal-like jaw. Just like Chopper, his appearance was weird because of his Devil Fruit's power. For the first time, he came to realize that the title 'monster' meant something very different for him than what it actually meant: because there was no doubt, that what Luffy was about to do counted as monstrous. The life of one of the crew was in danger, and the captain would deliberately take another life to guarantee not the Merry's sure salvation, but a chance, a single chance to make it.

The emotions of the crew, now that the moment was here might have been different, their reasonings, diverse. But surprisingly for some, they all found themselves thinking the same, exact thing: that they would kill hundreds if it meant that they could save the Merry. Thet they would poison food to keep the crew safe. That they would lie and manipulate to assure that the chances for their nakamas were as good as possible. For a single moment, they all felt like Coby had since his very first day sailing with Luffy.

To Luffy, the world was simple: he was going to become King of Pirates, he was going to make up a crew as he went, and they were going to have a lot of adventures and meat together. He was the captain, so he was meant to be strong, and his crew was meant to be cool and do the stuff he couldn't so, like navigating, or cooking, or carrying him on the sea, like the Merry had done.

Now, she couldn't carry him to the One Piece anymore, but Coby, who could think and plan and prepare like Luffy couldn't, had found a way to let her sail with her instead. One possibility for that to happen, was to kill this guy that he didn't like at all, as he lied to those he called friend as a means of living. Luffy just had the fight of his life, he was tired, heavily wounded, and just three steps away from death's door. He almost died several times before, and each time, he had been ready to do so with a smile, as he'd die on the path to the One Piece.

So, with the unique brand of foolhardy determination of the truly faithful, or the truly stupid, Luffy smiled widely, completely uncaring of the life at his feet, and stomped on the head of his downed opponent, making it explode against the unforgiving ground.

He didn't notice the wet crunch of bone, or the splatter against his calves. He barely realized that Chopper was treating him while he was still standing: the only thing he could focus on, was the beached form of the Going Merry, and the possibility that she could be saved from a moment to the next, cutting away the need for the new ship that Franky was building in the close-by shipyard to have to sail to Eines Lobby, back to Water Seven, and forward again.

That was the only thing that mattered,

"It's here!" a childish, female voice rang from the beached Going Merry, and the members of the crew could make out the small shape of a raincoat-covered girl dancing up and down the deck, holding the by now known shape of a reincarnating Devil Fruit high over her head, "This is it!"

"Good." Luffy barely managed to see the little girl bite into the Devil Fruit before his body gave out, and he fell into the awaiting arms of their human-reindeer doctor, who kept working without missing a beat.


AN

I'm having an inordinate amount of fun with this fic, I don't know why. Anyway, given recent developments, I confirm that I'll write this fic up to Marineford's timeline. In particular, I'm enjoying the parallels that I'm drawing with the other. And there is something inordinately easy in not having to waste time to describe who is who beyond bits of description here and there.

I barely spent 40 words describing Jabra, another 80 for Sanji's mindset, and everyone knew what was going on without any fuss at all. I mean, the fact that I've written all of this stuff in less than a week speaks for itself: is this what fanfiction is meant to be? I get now why everyone does it! (It would have been nice to know it before I began more than 30 other fics, but whatever).

This chapter is mostly focused on the changed 'character' underlining the whole crew: I hope I managed to give the moment the weight and gravitas it deserved. Originally, this chapter was meant to be all for the fights, but there is just so much I can do to make interesting Usopp's harrying or Nami's illusions, while I didn't feel the need to replicate the already seen and sung dance of Zoro and Luffy.

Anyway, as always, opinions and hopes? Let me know what you think!