-Water-7-
-Late Evening-
Tobi tottered along the streets after dark, still working off his earlier drinking binge. Intoxication was just one of the many dubious pleasures of owning a human body that Tobi subscribed to from time to time. Of course, he could metabolize the alcohol by force if he wanted to, but somehow doing so never seemed like a good idea whenever he was drunk.
The late evening was still fairly busy here, and Tobi kept apologizing as he bumped into person after person, wandering and bonking his way through the streets until he got sick of all the obstacles. He meandered his way off the main thoroughfares and resumed his journey through nearly empty squares and alleyways to the house that he and his friends had rented for their stay on the island.
No… wait, that was the wrong word, wasn't it? Friends? If Naruto was right, then he had gotten that ALL wrong. But... maybe some of them were still his friends? Kisame still seemed to enjoy this trip, and he hadn't tried to kill him yet, so maybe that was something?
Oh well. Even if they weren't his friends, they were still his unwitting patsies. They'd help him get to the Divine Tree, and then they'd all die when he revived Madara using the power of the Rinnegan. Of course, reviving Madara meant that he'd have to sacrifice his own life in the process, but… Lord Madara would be so happy when he found out that Tobi had got him the real Fruit of the Divine Tree.
For some reason, this thought also made him feel a bit sad.
This was too much to be thinking about while heavily inebriated.
"Hey, you there…" spoke a deep voice from a dark alley to his side.
Blearily, Tobi looked around. No one else was visible in the gloom. Tobi pointed to himself and then glanced into the darkness. "Who, me?"
"Yeah, you…" said the menacing voice from the shadows, "I'm lookin' for someone."
That was strange. Despite the fact that the Rinnegan had no trouble seeing in low-light situations, the shadows around this man seemed a bit… darker than usual. He couldn't see whoever it was, but they seemed very large.
"Well, I guess I'm someone… but I dunno if I'm who you're lookin' for?" slurred Tobi.
"I heard you say your name was Tobington," continued the man. "Is that right?"
"Pshhh… No!" scoffed Tobi, continuing to wobble drunkenly in place. "Oh, no, wait… yes! Yes, tha's right!"
The man stepped forward into the moonlight. Almost twelve feet tall, tanned skin, obese, and with a patchy black beard that matched his curly black hair. He was grinning, exposing a smile that was missing several teeth.
"Pretty odd that you're wearing sunglasses at night, Tobington," he said.
"Hey! They makes me look cool, I think!"
The man's hand wreathed itself in darkness, and suddenly the sunglasses whipped off of Tobi's face, flying into the outstretched hand with a clatter of metal.
"Hey! Wha- Give those back!" shouted Tobi, his distinctive eyes now exposed to the world.
"Oh… you're a naive fool, Tobi," laughed the man, his broken grin widening. "And here I thought the title of 'Good-boy' was a joke."
Tobi was flabbergasted. "Wha?! How'd you know my name?!"
A moment later, Tobi was pulled off of his feet by the same force that had taken his sunglasses. He flew across the street to slam into the man's meaty palm. The man grasped his entire chest entirely in just one hand, holding him more than six feet off the ground as if he weighed nothing at all.
"Oh, woooow," said Tobi, poking curiously at the man's hand and the tendrils of darkness that were coiling around him. "You can pull things too?! Tha's amazing! So can I!"
The man ignored him, pulling out a pistol with his other hand and pressing it to his temple.
"The name's Marshall D. Teach," he said, "but I think I'm gonna start going by the name Blackbeard after I get through with you, little guy. You need respect to pull off a name like that, but I'll have earned it once I'm done with you and Fire-fist Ace."
Tobi's head lolled slightly to the side as Blackbeard's grip increased. "Why would you… Ohhh, 'cause your beard is black, I get it. What are we doing, huh?"
"You're coming with me, bucko, but you're not gonna be alive to see where we're going. The government wants you dead, and bringing in a big-shot like you will cement me as a real contender in the world. Sorry, it ain't nothing personal."
Tobi boggled. "Wha? Big-shot? Me? What're you talking about?! We haven't even done anything important yet!"
Blackbeard pressed the gun more firmly to his temple.
"That's funny," he chuckled. "The guy with the four-hundred-million bounty says he hasn't done anything important yet. What a laugh, huh? See, most people don't know the ins and outs of how the Marines issue bounties, but the truth is they never start you off with something huge right off the bat. No matter how horrible what you did was, there's always the chance you were just a fluke, and the bounty hunters will take you out for cut-price. From zero to four hundred big ones in one go? Hooo-whee! I ain't never seen that before!"
Blackbeard brought his immense grin closer. "I ain't never heard about you in the news either, so that's even better. Whatever you did, they want you dead and they want it done real fast and reaaal hush-hush. I reckon you're a better catch than anyone else this side of the Red-Line."
Blackbeard's hand continued oozing darkness, and as it curled around him Tobi could feel his strength draining away. For the first time in this conversation it occurred to him that he probably should be a bit worried about this.
"Ze-hahahahah!" The man laughed. "The rumors say you can do some pretty crazy stuff, Tobi, but all that means nothing in the face of the all-absorbing power of the Yami-Yami Fruit."
"Whoaaa…" exclaimed Tobi, circle-patterned eyes wide in shock, "Tha's so totally awesome! You can absorb stuff too?! I can do that! It's like we're brothers… or somethin'!"
Tobi's eyes began flaring with power, and suddenly the darkness began to recoil, fighting and tangling with the field that sprung up around him. Blackbeard's grin fell from his face.
"Huh… I dunno what you're doing, but I'm gonna stop that right now."
Blackbeard pulled the trigger, but it locked in place, stopped by a number of white fleshy tentacles that had stuffed themselves into the trigger-guard. Shouting in surprise as tentacles continued wiggling out of his victim's ears, Blackbeard ripped the gun away and tossed it aside.
"Okay, pal," he growled, scowling down at his captive, "It's nothing personal, but if it's any consolation you were gonna die anyway!"
Saying this, the twelve-foot tall man grabbed Tobi with both hands, raised him above his head, and snapped his spine like a twig.
"Hahah! Ow!" exclaimed Tobi, as more tentacles began wriggling their way from his ears. Disgusted, Blackbeard dropped him, and the instant Tobi left his grip the large man was shoved backwards by an unknown force that sent him crashing into the stones of a nearby building. The wall collapsed, revealing a family of five in the middle of dinner, eyes wide and forks to their mouths.
Blackbeard stood up, completely unharmed by the attack. Brushing himself off, he looked up and then he saw something he wished to never see again.
A demon. That's what it was. A demonic head rose up from the ground in front of Tobi, picking his body up with a grasping tongue and swallowing him into its gaping maw. Blackbeard's jaw dropped as the frightening creation stared him down from across the road, chewing and gnashing, as if daring him to interrupt its meal. There were a few wet clunking sounds, and then Tobi was spat out again, rolling along the ground to stop in a disgusting puddle of saliva.
Carefully, Tobi stood up, no longer paralyzed from his broken back.
"Huh," he remarked, suddenly much more lucid than he had been, "I didn't know Tonguey cured hangovers as well. Weird, huh?"
"What?! What in nine hells is that thing?!" shouted Blackbeard.
"Oh, this?" Tobi asked, pointing to the demon. "This is Tonguey! Well, I think he's actually named the 'Demon Prince of Hell' or something like that, but this name suits him better, don't you think?"
Behind Tobi, the demon's mouth opened again, exposing its lolling tongue. Behind Blackbeard, the family evacuated the dinner table to run screaming into the night.
"Your Devil Fruit summons SATAN?!" Blackbeard yelled.
Tobi gasped. "What?! No! Noo-no-no-no! No… Well, maybe. I don't actually know who that is."
"This is impossible! I've looked at the records of every Devil Fruit in existence, and there is no such Fruit! New Fruits stopped being created ages ago!"
"It's not a Devil Fruit, actually. It's just something my eyeballs can do. You know, like summoning sharks, or looking at things, or making a demon put my body back together..." After that, Tobi paused, processing what he had just heard Blackbeard say. "Also, what? What was that you just said now? About 'fruits not being created?' Could you say that part again, please?"
Breathing in, Blackbeard began covering himself in darkness. As he did, it spilled from his body, spreading along the ground like ink. If Tobi was going to give him the chance to monologue as his power expanded to cover the area, he would take it.
"Once a Devil Fruit appears," he said, "it will appear again and again from that day forth. I searched far and wide for information on all of them, and in my travels I found books thought long lost to the world. There are thousands of fruits out there including the one that I hunted down… but one thing the hidden books revealed to me was that there are Devil Fruits in existence today that weren't around two thousand years ago."
As Tobi took this in, Blackbeard laughed, forming a ball of consummate void in his left hand that pulled in all light around. "But all that stopped centuries ago! There's not a single Fruit in existence today that wasn't here one thousand years ago. And that means I've still got a trump card. I fought and killed for this Fruit- the most powerful Devil Fruit in the world! Feel the might of pure darkness and gravity!"
[DARK MATTER]
Winding up like a pitcher, Blackbeard hurled the black hole straight for his target, and Tobi reacted by preparing to absorb the attack, relying on the Rinnegan's unbeatable power to dispel whatever this was. At the last moment the spinning ball curved wildly to the right, shooting past Tobi's shoulder and impacting the demonic head straight in the nose. The ball expanded violently, warping and twisting the creature's features as it gnashed, screamed, and was sucked into the dark wormhole as if it had never been there in the first place.
Tobi looked back in shock at the disappearing demon, then he was lifted off his feet in an almighty pull as Blackbeard sought to bring his opponent back to short-range with one darkness-wreathed hand.
"Ze-hahaha!" laughed Blackbeard. "Even if we both nullify each other's powers, I can still break you into little pieces, Tobi! I'll shatter each bone in your body!"
Winding up for a massive strike, Blackbeard was ready for the moment Tobi came in range, but it never happened. At the last second a swarm of tangled roots burst from underneath the cobblestones, wrapping themselves around Tobi's lower half and suspending him sideways, stopping his wild fall. Whipping his head up towards Blackbeard, Tobi focused, and two spears of wood erupted from the ground, stabbing the massive man deep in the side. Blackbeard winced, then snapped the spears with a negligent swipe of his hand, dropping a swathe of darkness to coat the ground around him and absorb any wood before it arose.
The massive man laughed off the spear wound.
"Oh, Tobi, I don't care who you think you are. Nobody's tougher than me! These are just pinpricks!"
Tobi took advantage of the distraction to free himself. He melted through the wood as if it wasn't even there, and then raised his hands to the sky. As the Rinnegan pulsed with power, a feeling of pressure filled the air followed by an immense cloud of white smoke. Moments later, several nearby buildings were crushed into rubble with a crashing roar. When the smoke cleared, a tremendous armored crab stood over the battlefield, brutally spiked and nearly a hundred feet wide.
Tobi laughed gleefully, pointing a vengeful finger towards his opponent.
"Go, Mister Crabby! Teach him the true meaning of fear!"
The crustacean swept a massive clawed limb down into the street below, tearing the roads and buildings alike into pieces. As the claw approached Tobi, he gave a yelp of surprise and melted into the ground, disappearing from sight completely before he could become collateral damage.
Now alone with the enemy crab, Blackbeard cursed. He raised both hands to stop the incoming beast, taking the multi-ton impact with a grunt of effort as the ground cracked beneath him. Finally, he and the claw skidded to a halt.
"Ah, goddamnit, what the hell's going on with this guy!" growled Blackbeard. "I wanted to play this quiet, but he has to summon a giant goddamn crab?!"
Roaring with effort, Blackbeard wrenched the claw with all his might, pulling until the exoskeleton cracked. With the horrible noise of ripping flesh, the limb tore from its socket. Despite the terrible wound, the crab didn't make a sound, just stumbling backward with neither a roar of anger nor scream of pain.
Blackbeard flung the arm to the side, and it landed on the stones with a sickening thump.
"Alright, come on you ugly monster, lets finish this!"
The crab reared up, foam developing at its mandibles. A moment later, it expelled a frothing torrent of bubbles that washed across the rubble-strewn battlefield. It hit him like a crashing wave, and to his surprise each of the bubbles exploded like miniature grenades all over his body.
"Son of a bitch!" cursed the man, guarding his face from the painful onslaught that would have killed a lesser man. Gathering his concentration, he summoned forth a cloud of darkness ahead of him, swallowing the bubbles as fast as they could be created. The crab continued to spew its attack until the wave stopped, seeming not to realize anything was wrong. At that moment, Blackbeard jumped forward, one fist raised to attack. The punch struck the beast like the end of the world, blasting a hole straight through its armored carapace to obliterate the flesh underneath.
The crab's legs collapsed underneath it, and then the beast disappeared in a cloud of smoke.
"Holy shit!" yelled Tobi, as his head emerged from the stones further down the street. "You killed Mister Crabby!"
Coating his hands in darkness to remove the blood and crab gore, Blackbeard wound up and pitched another ball of darkness Tobi's way. The crab summoner disappeared back into the ground with another surprised yelp.
Growling, Blackbeard placed both hands to the ground, spreading darkness across it.
"You had to make this hard," he said. "You had to keep struggling until I pulled out the big guns, huh? Well, you asked for this one, Tobi..."
[BLACK HOLE]
The shadows crawled wildly across the ground, swallowing rubble, carts, and the remains of houses alike as Blackbeard expanded his zone of control without care for damage to the city. The very sky around them darkened as his power flowed without end. He pushed and pushed, coating the entire block as he watched the landscape carefully. Off in the distance Tobi clawed hurriedly from the ground as the absorbing darkness began to interfere with his ground-melding technique, forcing him to use the Rinnegan to protect himself from the gravity attack.
Now, Tobi stood alone at the center of a twisting whirlpool of darkness, and Blackbeard grinned like a gambler about to reveal a royal flush.
"Game over, Good-Boy," he said, and then he released his stored power.
[LIBERATION]
From all around his target, the darkness disgorged everything it had absorbed up to this point, starting with the stones of the many nearby buildings and followed up by every last one of the explosive bubbles that the crab had thrown at him. The explosions propelled the non-absorbable rubble like a claymore mine, and every angle of the landscape surrounding the Akatsuki leader became a weapon aimed directly inwards.
The stone-shattering assault was utterly unavoidable and the rumble was audible across the entire island. Seconds later, the screaming of people surprised by the sudden onslaught echoed in the distance.
Then, amazingly, a figure stood back up amidst the clearing dust, staggering forward as if on its last legs. Blackbeard wasted no time. He reached out his hand and pulled, tearing the wounded figure off its feet and bringing him in close to finish the job.
What arrived in his grip a moment later was little more than the remnants of a wooden sapling, branches grown out in every direction to resemble human appendages. It was broken and twisted by the attack, but it definitely wasn't Tobi. Blackbeard had just a moment to stare down at the wooden doll in shock before he felt a hand on his head.
"Sorry," said Tobi, having leapt down from a collapsed building to land on Blackbeard's shoulders, "I won this one, but don't think of it as dying. Think of it as living on inside me, okay?"
[NINGENDO: KYOKON NO JUTSU]
[HUMAN PATH: ABSORPTION SOUL TECHNIQUE]
Blackbeard didn't have time to scream. There was a horrible tugging sensation, and then the bounty-hunter's soul was ripped from his body in a single instant. Everything went black.
-Meanwhile-
-Isle of Banaro-
Barely fifty miles away from Water-7, Fire-Fist Ace sneezed.
"Huh," the man mused, sniffing to clear his nose. "Wonder if someone's talking about me."
Ace walked confidently down the main street of the single town on the Isle of Banaro. The natives here seemed overly fond of leather, spurs, and ten-gallon hats, and they gave him uneasy glares as he moved through. No one bothered him, though. His picture had been in the papers recently enough to make avoiding him the best option.
But he was disappointed. Everything he had learned on his hunt over the last week told him that Teach had been planning to come straight here. In fact, it was as if the man had been deliberately planting clues leading him to this place. Every instinct that Ace had told him that this was the island where Teach was planning to set a trap and make his stand.
Looks like it was just another trick to shake pursuit.
Ace shook his head and yawned. Well, time to move on and see if any news had sprung up elsewhere.
Let's see… where to next...
-Water-7-
-Akatsuki Hideout-
Their makeshift lab was silent as Orochimaru worked over the body of their newest victim. The rest of Akatsuki had been summoned to exterminate the darkness-generator's crew, but he had more important things to worry about. Though the body and chakra system of their target was still alive with power, he knew from recent experience that it wouldn't remain that way for long without its soul. Why in the world had Tobi gone out of the way to make his job more difficult, Orochimaru couldn't quite say. It meant he could waste no time before getting to work.
From what he had seen and heard of it so far, this fruit was fascinating. It seemed to generate wisps of 'darkness' that were fundamentally different from anything Orochimaru had ever seen regarding shadow-manipulation. For that matter, the so-called 'darkness' had apparently been called an expression of gravity by its wielder. This was, of course, ludicrous, but it was hardly Orochimaru's first time encountering a rube who wrongly claimed to understand the science behind chakra and ninjutsu. Darkness and gravity were not related at all except in the minds of simpletons who conflated everything mysterious. He was certain that this was some other effect that was simply being misinterpreted.
If only he had had time to properly experiment.
Orochimaru began the incisions using a shadow clone, letting a proxy do the work of the surgery while he watched from a makeshift observation bay. This would be the same procedure he had used for dissecting Enel, and he would continue to use it for any other dangerous Fruit-User lest he be harmed by an unexpected exertion of power. Still, compared to the last operation this would be simplicity itself. It was even better that he was performing the delicate task on land, away from rocking waves and an easily-damaged hull.
As his shadow clone cut into flesh, the tendrils of darkness poked and prodded curiously at the scalpel. His real body, meanwhile, was reviewing some of the books he had acquired on the Devil Fruits from the local archives. So many powers with such interesting possibilities. As he skimmed through the pages a word jumped out at him, causing him to turn back a page.
Oh?
Apparently the Ope-Ope Fruit granted one the power to make freeform surgical incisions and replacements to anything and anyone in areas designated by the Fruit's controller. Not only that, but apparently it could be exploited to give another person eternal life by sacrificing the life of the Fruit User.
Hmm…
Well, now, that certainly dovetailed nicely with his interests.
He could already see it now. If he could acquire such a Fruit out here, he could use it until he returned to the Elemental Kingdoms, at which point he was certain he would have perfected the art of Devil Fruit surgery to the point he could transfer it to another. He was rather certain he already had half a dozen followers who would gladly volunteer to take the Fruit and use its power to grant him eternal life. Eternal youth would be something he would still need even if he were to acquire the power of a god. Danzou might be content to change the world to his whim and die with his life's work complete, but Orochimaru would play the long game. He never intended to die at all.
He shook his head. All this was nice to imagine, but the world was a very large place. It was ridiculously unlikely he'd ever meet the owner of this Fruit during their journey. Perhaps, though, an expedition of sorts would be in order after he'd attained godhood?
Smiling, he memorized every detail written on the subject then proceeded onward.
It was very nice to be back in civilization for a change. He really had acquired some interesting knowledge during their stay... not to mention the... other treasure he had taken that he wished not to speak to the rest of the group about. Keeping secrets like the one he had just acquired gave him an atavistic thrill, and it always served handy to keep a few around as trump cards.
After a moment he returned to focus on the surgery. The more and more time he spent out here, the more certain he grew that no outlander understood even the basic theory of the Devil Fruits. The only hints he had seen of any serious experimentation was by a scientist known as Dr. Vegapunk. Orochimaru's real body chuckled as it lurked in the observation bay. This Vegapunk was unlikely to get very far without an understanding of the scientific principles of chakra. Still, he found himself wishing he could meet the man.
Swiftly yet carefully, the clone extracted an immense heart the size of a coconut, seals burning into existence on its muscle tissue that would lock it into a biological stasis. With this, they would have another Logia Fruit to sacrifice at the Divine Tree, which should be just enough for their purposes, even at his most conservative calculations of relative power levels and years remaining in the fruiting schedule.
Hold on a moment.
The real Orochimaru blinked in surprise as something odd happened in the surgery room. A cloud of darkness began seeping from the heart. The clone backed away from the body, making a few hand seals to suppress the unknown chakra, but a tendril of darkness shot out and expanded to engulf the clone. There was a brief struggle and then the clone disappeared, completely drained of its chakra. Orochimaru was surprised to note that not even the normal transfer of memories from the shadow clone took place.
He narrowed his eyes, watching the heart rest quietly on the operating table. Slowly, as if experimenting, the darkness expanded to coil itself around the still-beating heart. It covered the heart entirely, and when it finally receded every sigil and marking that had kept the heart alive had disappeared. Seconds later, the heart stopped beating entirely, and he could almost feel the power leaving the room.
Hmmm...
Well, that was interesting.
The Fruit had killed its host, which would mean it would return to the normal cycle of rebirth that characterized these strange items. This behavior was starkly different from Enel's Fruit, which had fought to keep his heart alive regardless of the condition it had been kept in.
Did the Fruits have some manner of awareness or understanding? Or even personality? Perhaps it was related to how long its owner had possessed the Fruit, or perhaps it differed for each Fruit depending on its powers or preferences. He'd never heard of Fruits activating without their user's will, but was this a function of Blackbeard's lack of a soul, or was it because the Fruit had no interest in remaining in captivity?
That was concerning if so, and not only because it meant they would have to be careful with any new captures. Frowning, he gathered his materials and prepared to tell Tobi the bad news.
One thing was clear. Any new sacrifices would have to be kept well and truly alive until they reached their destination, lest this scenario repeat itself.