(Beginning A/N)
Re-Uploaded: FanFiction hates my techniques. I took this chapter down because FF took out my extra spacing.
Um, wow. Nearly a month since I uploaded chapter three. VERY SORRY!
Non-Overlorders: A Blue Minion is the only one capable of resurrecting another Minion, and it is the only one capable of attacking with magic, and I can't think of anything else to put here.
Also, Gnarl picks the best moments to activate the link.
(End beginning A/N)
The elderly minion yawned out of boredom. Without the Dark One around, there was little Evil to do; the Minions had been trying to occupy their time with board games. Monopoly? Bad math. Risk? They kept eating the pieces. Scrabble? The minions' average vocabulary was laughable.
And so, for the last few days, Gnarl had tried to entertain himself by having things in the dungeon fight each other, and by keeping an eye on the servants cleaning the tower (although the latter resulted with Gnarl being hit with a poker). It got boring fairly fast; nothing quite compared to the thrill of knowing your Master was off pillaging.
But, if all went according to schedule, the Tower Heart should be nearly done recharging- and Gnarl couldn't wait to see the terrors his Master had inflicted upon the untainted Realm B. He could see it now: men screaming their puny burning heads off, women begging for mercy from the Dark Lord, children experimenting with drugs, villages burning like the wood they were made from, endangered species spontaneously combusting- Gnarl got giddy just thinking about the disorder his Master could be causing.
Narrowing his glowing eye-slits, the Dark One contemplated his opposition. They were numerous, shifty, and likely packed much more punch than they looked like they could. Checking his armor and weapon, the Overlord raised his hand.
It would be a tough fight, undoubtedly- he would lose a considerable amount of health. Nevertheless, he had to find the kidnapped maiden and rescue her before the village was overrun by zombified giants. With a final glance at his enemies, the Overlord prepared to roll the dice in his hand.
"I'll go for the troll." -Rattle-
The marksman eyed the resulting roll and nodded. "You've hit him, now go for damage."
-Clatter-
"Oooh, you've severely injured the troll. However,-"
-Rattle, clatter-
"Two of the orc knights have hit you, both for five damage."
"Crud."
"I'll sing a lively ballad to the beautiful magic-user to liven her spirits!" Sanji, his heart a-flutter in the presence of Robin, declared.
"That would be nice, I have a poor chance of managing to stab them."
High above them, in the crows' nest, Zoro's eye twitched. It bothered him enough that they had even asked him to participate in Dungeons & Demons, but now he had to listen to them play it. And he couldn't even believe the turnout they'd had- on top of Luffy and Chopper, the regulars, Usopp had managed to get Steve and Robin interested enough to join in- and since Robin was doing it, Sanji had jumped at the opportunity to get closer to her.
Scowling at nothing in particular, the swordsman tried his best to ignore them and continued watching the oceans.
The Dark One yawned; there was little to nothing for him to do aboard the Thousand Sunny. They had determined that, while he was accompanying them, he could be a decoy in fights and an assistant negotiator whenever they needed to... well, negotiate.
But, those were jobs only useful in a fight or when there were other people to talk to; not so much when they were in the middle of the ocean. He'd occupied his days with trying to replenish some mana by collecting ambient energy (didn't work), meditating (didn't work), sucking the energy out of various living things (it didn't work, and now the fish in the tank were terrified of him), and even Luffy's suggestion, "eat more" (didn't work, and the stomach ache wasn't going away easily).
He didn't even want to try helping in the kitchen, as he had accidentally burned down Spree the last time he tried to cook. Helping with navigating was also out of the question, he'd gotten lost in his own Dark Tower several times. He was better at breaking things than fixing or making them, so carpentry was not an option, and music wasn't something he was any good at.
So, he spent a majority of his time off to the side, thinking about how he could find a Devil Fruit and get back home to the familiar land of Evility and terror.
Unfortunately, he didn't have the damnedest clue as to how to do either task.
On the bright side, he had at least gotten the crew to stop running for cover whenever he walked by. Usopp had even invited him to a game of Dungeons & Demons, which was very similar to something Steve had played back home; participating made him feel nostalgic.
Hah... here I am, the Lord of Evil, feeling homesick. Smiling to himself, Steve leaned against the railing and continued to watch the ocean.
Across the ship and in the dining room, Sanji looked out the window; the armored man was at the forward deck, watching the seas. At the dining table sat Nami and Zoro, the former reading a newspaper and the latter performing maintenance on his katana.
"I still don't think we should be trusting him."
The navigator raised her gaze from the paper, looking at the chef. "Oh?"
"He feels... I don't know, evil. Like Robin had said, when he first got here."
Zoro glanced at Sanji. "Yes, you're right. He's a demon, Hell incarnate, who has wrought havoc upon the world and made it worse. He should be eradicated at all costs, oh yes."
"Are you mocking me?"
"Just saying, this crew has been branded as evil many times now. Are you doing the same to him?"
Sanji glanced back out the window; Steve was now watching Luffy, Usopp and Chopper fishing. "No, but... well... he's... different. He says he can use magic, but he has not demonstrated any since the day of the flying-sword incident. Then, there's that creepy distortion around him, and his eyes... he fits half the stereotypes of being evil, you know?"
"You scared of strangers now, Pervanji?"
"Wanna say that to my face, Greenhead?"
Before they could leap at one another, Nami stood with an air of agitation. "Can I not even read a newspaper in peace? You dolts are both right. He is unsettling, and definitely a suspicious person. But, that is not enough to brand him as a villain." With that, the navigator stormed out of the kitchen.
The chef hung his head in shame, realizing that he had indeed interrupted his beloved Nami's newspaper reading. Zoro smirked, and continued working on his blades.
In the sanctum of his workshop, Franky was at a loss. For several days, he had been sitting in his work area, examining one of the planks that had 'magically' repaired itself; for those several days, the best he had figured out was that the plank was perfectly normal. Yet, as far as Franky knew, Adam Wood lacked the capabilities to suddenly fix itself.
For the third time that day, the shipwright opened one of the books that held the story of the legendary Adam Wood, searching for any reference t self-repair.
-Later...-
Frowning, Robin closed yet another heavy volume. Another failure- she could not find any reference to this 'Arcanium' substance. Not in any legend, no myth, not even a fairy tale.
The large man slowly ran the whetstone across the edge of his blade. He'd managed to buy the stone off Zoro for about ten gold coins; the man had gladly accepted it, saying something about using the gold to lower a debt from the 'sea-devil-witch-demon', or something along those lines. Steve didn't ask any questions.
That morning had been, as usual, uneventful. Back in his home realm, Steve went and slaughtered sheep or perused the dungeon to entertain himself. Unsurprisingly, the Thousand Sunny lacked a dungeon, so Steve had joined a game of Dungeons & Demons to pass the time.
Looking at his blade, the Dark One once again felt that he deserved a nice, peaceful retirement; not completely, mind you, as Gnarl continuously told gruesome stories about how the other Overlords 'retired'.
Placing his whetstone in his belt pouch, Steve leaned his blade against the railing. It was a rather nice change of pace, not killing everything he came across.
Hearing footsteps, he turned his head slightly; Robin, the woman who seemed to always be slightly suspicious of him, had ascended the steps to the forward deck and seemed to be headed in Steve's direction.
Looking to the ocean, Steve wondered what strange question she can conjured for this afternoon.
"May I see a piece of your Arcanium?"
Steve blinked; he hadn't quite expected that. Most questions regarding his armor seemed to consist of 'can I have it?'. "Uh, sure."
The Duke of Domination removed his helmet, passing it to the curious woman.
"Tower Heart ready!"
"Splendid!" Shuffling his ancient self once again, Gnarl left the servants to what they were doing, rubbing several bruises from pokers.
The pool once again shimmered with its normal glistening magicity, making Gnarl feel elated once again. The Master should have recovered, meaning that there should be carnage.
Gnarl sneered to himself; Sweet, delicious carnage.
"Start the connection!"
Quaver pressed a small button next to the pool, and the liquid sparkled even more. Gnarl leaned forward, once again expecting a meadow of burning peasants.
He was once again pleasantly surprised, when he got a rather spectacular view down the shirt of a rather well endowed woman.
Laying on his back on the floor next to the pool, Gnarl sighed a happy, yet irritated, sigh.
Steve furrowed his brow; he thought he had heard a soft noise. Glancing at his helmet, which Robin was still examining, it seemed like he could hear the light buzz of the Tower Heart's connection.
"May I have that back for a moment?" Plonking his helmet back on his head, Steve's suspicions were confirmed.
"Master? Master! Sire, I really must protest. You should be off destroying villages and burning landscapes, not gallivanting around with all the pretty ladies!"
"Mana."
"You require a refill, sire?
"Yes."
"You should have said that faster! Quaver, shut down the communications line and blast him with the Tower Heart's energy!"
The buzzing ceased, but began again a few seconds later. Absorbing the energy contently, the Overlord felt relieved- being able to cast spells made him feel safer. Once the flow stopped, Steve estimated he was roughly three-fourths full- not as much as he'd like, but probably enough for fight or two.
Removing his helmet, he passed it back to Robin, who had a strange look on her face.
"So... you gallivant often?"
"No; Not my style."
"Ah." The woman resumed her inspection of the helmet, trying to seem as if nothing had happened.
A few minutes later, the archaeologist closed the door of the women's quarters, and tried to catch her breath. She felt like someone had just tried to suffocate her, and it was not that great of a feeling.
Seeing that she was alone, Robin checked her temperature- nothing too bad, but maybe I should visit Chopper later...
Sitting on her bed, she felt quite... derailed. After the man had put on his helmet for a few seconds, his strange aura had returned- and became even stronger. Instead of just making someone's eyes hurt, it seemed to drastically increase the air pressure, making it much more difficult to breathe; it had taken nearly all of her concentration to keep her composure.
And then, it receded again, returning to being a plain eyesore. Steve had handed back his helmet, as if nothing had happened, and after the aura incident, she couldn't focus enough to examine the helmet enough.
And just when I thought he might just be a little bit normal...
Grumbling to himself, Gnarl whacked Quaver over the head with his staff.
"Ow! What that for?"
"I'm irritated! The Master should be off wreaking havoc and carnage, and he's philandering about!"
"Maybe... Master need break?"
"Evil can never take a breather! We need to endlessly push forward, killing mercilessly and destroying those self-righteous hypocrites that call themselves heroes and knights of good!"
"Maybe he unable to destroy right now?..."
Gnarl waddled over to and sat on one of the steps in front of the Dark Throne, in the Dark Hall of the Dark Tower. "Just from the little I've seen of his surroundings, he could have wrought havoc already; there were men there he could have killed, women he could have turned into servants... even the ship is still in pristine condition! Ooohhh, I'm going to have a severe talking-to with our Master when he returns from his vacation!" The short and elderly Minion stormed off, in the direction of the Minion Hives.
The megaphone below the crow's nest boomed, "Island ahead."
The report was was met with a chorus of cheering, and the crew gathered onto the various decks to look towards the next land mass- Steve among them, still on the foredeck, looking towards their current heading.
What he saw was a bunch of rocks in the middle of the ocean; more like a giant pile of rubble than an island. Nevertheless, the Thousand Sunny sailed onward, accompanied by the energetic excitement that Luffy carried.
Several minutes later, Steve had to say that the island was rather... misleading. At first, it seemed that the 'island' was a decent size; however, once they got there, it was about the size of Spree, maybe even smaller; the Sunny was about a fifth of the size of the outcropping.
This did little to diminish the eagerness of the captain, though. As soon as they had docked, he had jumped off and begun searching for anything interesting, followed by Chopper and an eager Brook. Everyone else, except for Sanji and Franky, followed.
Steve was at the back of the group, looking grimly across the rocks. The last time he'd been in a landscape that was barren before he got there, he had giant sand worms trying to eat him and exploding territorial bugs. It wasn't a fun experience.
Unfortunately, the island was not flat; there were large spurs of stone all over the place, making it feel like someone had dumped a pile of rocks in the middle of the ocean, for no apparent reason; and given Steve's luck, that probably meant that either A, there was a family of rock golems, or B, the island itself was one big damned rock golem.
Shaking his paranoia, the Prince of Persecution followed the crew in their exploration of the giant rubble pile.
To each their own, it seemed; Zoro hunted for a place to nap (although he kept circling one spur of rock, for no apparent reason), Luffy, Chopper and Brook continued their quest for excitement or anything of interest, Franky looked for anything he could turn into carpentry materials, Robin began examining 'peculiar' rocks, and Nami looked for any sign of how long it would take their compass to reset, and Steve himself began looking for Gems of Inter-Reality Transportation and a Devil Fruit.
He realized that the chances of the first island having either of those items would be next to nil, but he was bored.
After nearly an hour of searching, Steve reached several conclusions. Firstly, rocks were boring. Secondly, his armor was getting hot. Thirdly, Zoro probably went insane, because he was still circling one of the big rocks, and lastly, he wanted something to drink.
He had just reached the far end of the island, in any case; there had been pretty much nothing of interest. With a disappointed grunt, he turned and began trudging back towards the ship.
He didn't make it all the way there; about halfway to the vessel, his eyes opened wide and he froze in his tracks, not believing what he was feeling.
Somewhere below him, inside the island of rock, a strong magic pulse reverberated.
Steve stood there, in a shocked silence, trying to verify the regular beating of magical energy.
Other than what he had brought with him, nothing magical was seen on the Detector of All Mannerisms of Magic and Interesting Things that was infused into Steve's armor; other than this island, most of Realm B was bland and magicless. The most non-natural energy that had been detected was in the Adam Wood that the ship was made of, and that was about as magical as a Blue's toenail.
Ditching his plan of going back to the Sunny, the Purger of the Perverted Paladin began searching for any type of entrance that would lead into the island.
"There's nothing here that indicates when the Log will reset! It's annoying!"
"Not only that, there's nothing here I could turn into nails, or patching material. All I've found are rocks, rocks and rocks!"
Carefully ignoring the complaining of the shipwright and navigator, Robin traced her finger lightly over the small, worn mark on the side of the boulder. It looked as old, if not older, than the writing on the Poneglyphs; of course, it could have just been a mark from another stone rubbing against it. Frustrated, the dark-haired woman stood and gave a soft, disappointed sigh.
"Robin? Is something wrong?" The navigator stopped glaring at her Log Pose log enough to notice the archaeologist's frustrations.
"No; this looked like it might be an ancient letter, but it's too worn down to tell. It's probably nothing, but..."
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Steve trudge by, scanning the rocks for something.
"But?"
"If it is the remnant of ancient writing, then it looks like it's half of the word 'Door'."
The armored man froze, and slowly turned his head to stare at the trio.
"Door? Like what, 'door' as in 'entrance'?" Franky asked, taking a minor interest.
"How many types of door-" Robin's question was cut off as Steve gently pushed her and the rest of the present crew away from the boulder with the mark on it. Before they could react, their stowaway knelt in front of the rock and set his gauntlet on it.
"What are you-" Her sentence was again cut off as Steve rose and pushed them farther back from the rock, before turning to face it.
Steve narrowed his eyes at the boulder. His plan would take a considerable amount of mana- he'd probably only be able to do this once or twice with his current level.
The shipwright approached him, from behind. "Oi, what the hell-"
"Take cover."
The two women and the blue-haired man blinked at Steve in confusion.
"Quickly." Steve activated Sanctuary, his absolute strongest Shield magic.
He had taken the time to explain a few of his spells, when the days were going slowly. They knew what most of them looked like, from his descriptions; they seemed to catch on, and immediately moved behind the armored man and his orb.
Giving them two seconds to relocate, Steve took careful aim and snapped his fingers four times, in quick succession.
Nothing happened immediately; the three behind him crouched tensely, covering their heads while the tall tin can stared intently at a rock.
After several seconds, the rock began to glow a soft red, and steam; small cracking noises were audible, and they could feel the waves of heat from more than twenty feet away.
With a satisfied smile, the Overlord hurled his sword into the rock.
Explosively shattering with an ear-wrenching shock wave, shrapnel pinged off Sanctuary and the surrounding rocks, filling the area with smoke, sparks, and flashes of light.
Once the big chunks had stopped raining, Steve lowered Sanctuary and turned to the people who had been behind him. Franky was on his back, with a large lump on his head and a big rock next to him, Robin was staring in horrified shock at the debris, and Nami... she was still hiding behind Steve.
The Dark Lord was about to pull his sword out of the ground, when Robin turned to him; the dust and the angle of her head made it difficult to see her face, but Steve could tell she wasn't happy.
"That... might have... had writing on it..."
"You said yourself; it looked like 'door'. I opened it."
She raised her head, and Steve could tell she was definitely not happy. "There might have been more! It could have been an artifact!"
"Ah... sorry. But, it looks like it was actually a door."
Robin stared at him for a second, before turning towards where the rock had been; sure enough, slightly obscured by the smoke and airborne debris, there was a cavern. Undeterred, the Overlord walked to the entrance.
His pace halted, as he saw something just behind where the rock had been; however, it then accelerated drastically, and he covered the short distance swiftly, stopping before a small pile of some sort.
Approaching more slowly and covering her nose and mouth from the dust, Robin followed. The man was kneeling in front of something she couldn't quite see, and he was more still than usual.
"Did you find something?"
Steve could not answer her; all his senses were frozen as he looked at a skull that was wider than a human's, but shorter with a triangular jawline and several sharp teeth, setting on top of a pile of bones that was just under half the size of a human.
Steve stared in shock, at the skeleton of a Minion.
(Ending A/N)
So! Excuse for being so late? Minor writer's block, and schoolwork. Seriously, I still have a lot of schoolwork to do. It sucks when you fall stupidly far behind.
Since nobody has figured out what Realm A is, I'll reveal it: Warehouse 13. It's a TV show. I like it.
How do you people FIND this crossover? Someone added it to their Alerts, when I hadn't done anything to it for a month. A MONTH.
Finally, you get three points if you realized that the abbreviation was DAMMIT, and expect another stupidly long delay on chapter 5.
(End)