(Beginning A/N)
Maybe it's just me, but this story seems to be getting more serious and less comedic; this may be a pattern, since the farther along a story goes, the more I plan ahead, and the more I think about the story, I'll be less likely to throw in small jokes. Hopefully though, I'll be able to avoid letting it get too sincere. And if that fails, I might write a parody of my own story.
They who watch nor read One Piece: An Eternal Pose is a compass that always points to one location.
Those who play not Overlord: The Green Minion is the stealth class that specializes in literal backstabbing.
This chapter may not be quite on par with the rest; it was written in much less time than the others, since I had an "oh crap" moment when I realized I had a week left in my self-imposed monthly deadline.
(End beginning A/N)
"Captain!"
The Marine officer ceased concentrations on his gut pull. "What is it?"
"The JJD has been receiving data, sir!"
"That old thing? Are you sure it's not just malfunctioning with age?"
"No, captain- it is doing exactly what the manual says it should be doing."
Smiling to himself, the captain dismissed the Marine, his mind occupied with possibilities: If the JJD is working fine, and going off… if that sword was truly flying…if my gut isn't just hungry...
His smile exploding into a nigh maniacal grin, Vonvarr took an Eternal Pose out of his coat pocket and adjusted the helm to match its heading.
Utterly befuddled, Steve flipped the thing over once more. It was about the length of his hand, and close to a fourth as wide; it had a gentle curve, fourteen buttons with different symbols, and at the two ends it widened slightly, but facing the inside of the curve on each of the widened sections were a bunch of small holes.
The Overlord had absolutely no idea what the heck the thing was supposed to do, and glanced at his fellow tomb raider.
Robin was also having little luck with the item she had selected from the pile at the foot of the ancient armor; it was some sort of orange ball, with a few darker orange stars below the surface- she was currently tapping the areas directly over the star marks, to no effect.
Turning his attention back to the thing in his hand, Steve randomly pressed a button- and the item gave off a single short buzz, and was then silent. Curious, he pressed a different button- a slightly different tone of buzz, but equally short. Intrigued, Steve pressed several more buttons- each one had its own unique noise. Lastly, he pressed one of the two larger buttons, the green one that had a symbol in a shape similar to the item.
The green button also had a short tone, but it was quickly followed by more noise. Removing his helmet to hear it better, Steve held the noise-making end of the object to his ear.
Coming from the item was a tone similar to those before- however, this one was oscillating, stopping, then oscillating once more in a loop. In varying levels, there was also the rough noise similar to what Steve heard in the link between his armor and the Tower, whenever there was an interference with the connection.
After several seconds the oscillation stopped, but the interference remained. Confused, the Overlord looked at it- and as soon as he did so, a voice came from the noise-making end.
"-help line, how-"
Quickly returning it to his ear, Steve listened to the feminine voice.
"- I help you?"
"… could you repeat that?" Looking up from the ball, Robin looked at him with a quizzical glance.
"You've –buzz- goddess help line, how may I help you?"
He blinked a few times. "The what help line?"
"Goddess help -buzz- you have a–buzz- request -buzz- take?"
"Uh… no, not necessary. Bye." Taking a wild guess, he pressed the red button opposite the green one, and the item went silent.
"Was that a voice?"
"Of the 'goddess help line'." Making sure not to press any more buttons, Steve set the item carefully back into the tomb, and withdrew a new one from the pile.
Near the far end of the other room, the Straw-Hats minus two gathered.
The first to speak was Usopp. "Luffy! Where'd you come from?"
His captain grinned mischievously; "I found a doorway on a ledge, and found Nami down some stairs!"
Brook walked out of the darkness, the shadows across his lifeless face startling the softer members of the crew. "More 'made' than 'found', Luffy."
Stopping the discussion of technicalities before it could begin, Nami spoke. "Did any of you guys find anything?"
Their shipwright shook his head, and gestured towards the swordsman "Nothing about Robin, but Zoro found Steve's sword under some rocks."
Sitting on a rock amidst the pile from the ceiling, the green-haired male in question was staring intently at the aforementioned weapon, which was leaning against another rock. After few seconds, he took the weapon by its hilt, held it for a few moments- and then dropped it, breathing heavily.
Confused, the captain spoke. "Is something wrong, Zoro? It doesn't look that heavy…"
Without responding, the swordsman took several deep breaths, gripped the weapon once more- and let go.
"What… is he doing…?" This time, 'twas Nami that asked.
Franky shrugged. "Apparently, it gives off some strong feeling to the touch- but he won't let any of us try." Once again, Zoro attempted to lift the weapon, and failed.
"Is this... a cloak...?" Withdrawing the shimmering cloth from the collection, Steve unfolded part of it.
"Looks like one."
"Seems... flashy..." He let the rest of the cloth unfold, holding it from one of the sides.
Glancing up from the pointy hat with sequins spelling out 'WIZZARD', Robin looking at Steve- but then frowned. "... Steve?"
Grunt.
"All I can see of you is the fingers of your gauntlets."
"... eh?"
Experimentally, she reached out- and felt cloth. Then, moved her hand behind it, and raised her eyebrows when her forearm disappeared.
"This... may make its wearer invisible..."
"How? I can see you through it."
"But I can't see you."
After a moment of thought, Steve flipped the cloth around, and beheld... nothing. Robin had seemingly vanished. "So... it's a cloth of invisibility..."
Meanwhile, aboard the Thousand Sunny, Sanji felt a feeling of hope rise in his chest. He figured it had to do with the fishing rod.
"Message! Message from Mistress!"
"What is it?"
Unfurling the scroll, the Green cleared his throat (much to the dismay of Gnarl, who then had to inhale more of the trademark Green stench), and slowly read off the message. "'Deem'- wait, no, that 'dear'... 'To Gnarl- I... have... not... rek... rekeeved-'"
Snatching the message unceremoniously, Gnarl read it to Jab. "'To Gnarl: I have not received our Master's weekly message, so I fear the worst. I request that you inform me regularly of the Master's notable actions, most importantly whether or not he's gotten himself killed. That is all.'"
Looking pleased with himself, the Green saluted, nearly sending the Malevolent Messenger satchel flying.
"Yes, yes, message received, continue doing a good job and all that." Tapping the scroll, the elderly Minion pondered how to best explain the situation to the vacationing Mistress, and how he never noticed that that the Overlord had written weekly.
"It just occurred to me- do you think we should let the others see these?"
The target of the question, Steve, didn't move his eyes from the small cylinder for his counter-question. "Would you want them recklessly rummaging through these?" After removing the slightly wider part, the cylinder swiftly expanded into a small sword, which narrowly missed his forearm.
"You may have a point there."
Tapping the blade a few times, the Overlord verified the weapon was corporeal before pressing the open end of the wider tube onto the tip of the blade- as his guess anticipated, it shrank back into the shape of a small cylinder. After repeating the process a few times, Steve placed the item on top of the shimmering cloak which rested on he edge of the sarcophagus.
As he set it atop the cloth, his fellow grave robber set the pointy hat (the only strange thing about it being the hidden flask) in the 'discard' pile, which sat next to the original. After Robin withdrew a red gem, Steve took a black box from the small mound.
Similar to the other items, he couldn't notice anything terribly abnormal- though he wasn't trusting those senses, seeing as he was taking objects out of a whole pile of theoretical magic items. The box had some strange white markings on a few sides, a square button in the center of one, and two prongs set apart from one another on a side that faced perpendicular to the button.
Of course, the Overlord pressed the button.
With a -krshzt-, a bright white light appeared between the prongs. After more experimentation, Steve discovered that it stayed active as long as the button was depressed. Curious, he stuck a finger of his burned hand into the light- and immediately regretted it.
Examining the red stone while ignoring Steve's pacing and muttering, Robin pondered. The oval gem had a mild feeling, similar to but nowhere near as stifling as Steve's aura; instead of feeling like she was being suffocated, Robin's hand felt tingly in a painful way.
"What do you make of this jewel?"
"Constipated-tree-fondling- huh? That little red thing?"
"Yeah." She tossed it over, in case he began his dangerous pacing again.
Catching it in his unburned, non-tingly, gauntlet encased hand, Steve immediately made something of the jewel: the sucker had magic up so many wazoos that the god of wazoos probably cried twin waterfalls for a week. Probing the gem with a small amount of mana, he could feel a lot of raw power that could easily be converted into the mana he utilized.
Not only that, it was one of the best kinds of raw power: "Souls..."
"What was that?"
"This jewel has the essence of thousands- no, maybe millions of human sacrifices."
"As in... millions of souls were put into that small thing?"
"No, maybe... the deaths created the gem..." Rolling the red object to the center of his gauntlet's palm, Steve pushed his other hand into the Arcanium gauntlet at his waist (with a strong wince as the slightly burned flesh rubbed the materials within), and held it over the other, encompassing the jewel in his grasp.
Not liking the look of what he was doing, Robin cautiously edged away.
Oblivious to her relocation, Steve attempted converting the energy of the sacrifices into mana.
-KSHZRFOOM-
Amidst the pieces of the ship raining down, Vonvarr stumbled back to his feet; a quick look around showed no sign an attacker that would have caused the explosion.
"What the hell was THAT?"
Through the hole in the deck, the Marine captain saw one of his underlings, the one assigned to monitoring the JJD, stumbled into view. "S-sir, the, the JJD, it, it-"
"Explain faster!"
"Th-the JJD! Sir! It... it gave off a massive reading! Sir! A-and then exploded!"
The captain blinked. "It... exploded? The JuJu Detector... exploded?"
Pulling himself out of the water once more, Sanji spewed a few curses; he'd been minding his own business, fishing to pass the time, when all of the sudden some sort of super powerful mind-punch sent him tumbling over the rail.
Clutching his head and wishing his cigarettes weren't damp, Sanji muttered to himself: "What... the hell..."
"... was that?" Trying to think around the migraine, Franky struggled to get off the floor. Around him, all but Luffy were strewn across the ground, unconscious or close to it, with their captain unsteadily rising back to his feet.
A certain swordsman away from the group was also trying to push himself off the stone surface- rather, off the weapon that he had been unable to hold yet was perfectly able to fall on top of.
Once the fog over his vision cleared, Steve assessed the situation: he was lodged in a crater in the wall; Robin was crumpled in a corner; the red gem sat innocently on the floor, not far from where he had been standing just seconds before; his mana reserves seemed to be full; the Arcanium armor's magic levels were overloaded- the regeneration infusion that was normally only able to help him recover slightly faster was working in overdrive: he could feel shattered bones moving back into their rightful locations, and several organs resuming their previous tasks.
Waiting for his innards to stop shifting, the Most Overconfident One tried turning his head to see if Robin was visibly injured. Unfortunately, his neck was most definitely injured.
Content with sitting still for few moments, he mulled over the different ways he could have done things with a bit more caution.
"What in the blazes...?" Sweeping the freshly fallen stone chunks off the ink, the elderly Minion looked around the trembling room. And then fell out of his chair when the door to his cave slammed open.
"HEART! MAGIC! LOTS! TOO LOTS!"
"WORDS! MORE! USE!"
"Tower Heart! Magic surge! Unstable! Lots unstable!"
"... that's a start." Climbing to his feet, Gnarl staggered past Quaver and headed towards the throne room.
The shaking got worse the closer to the Tower Heart he got; at times, he was nearly knocked off his feet. Although, the Minions' small stature did give him an advantage; the relatively high center of gravity on the servants had them staggering left and right- and Gnarl's day got slightly better after one of them fell on him.
"So, Giblet, what seems to be the prob- ah, I imagine that would be your worry." Leaning backward, Gnarl narrowly avoided a stream of the water that exploded from the Tower Heart's pool.
"Been this way for minutes! Sudden mana overload, from link!" With absolutely no idea how to handle the situation, the other Minion paced and gnawed his fingers.
"Link... the one with the Master?"
"Yes! Yes! Sudden! No warning, shakey shakey!"
Gnarl grinned; if it came from the Master's end, that means he has found magic- and if it could overload the Tower Heart of all things, it must have immense power... "The Master must have found something extraordinary in that realm of water! He must be ecstatic!"
Grunting heavily, the Duke of Domination dominated the protests of his body and yanked an arm out of the wall, then used the newly freed limb to pull the other three out of the stone.
Once free from the rock, the Impenetrable One limped towards the sarcophagus, taking the red stone from the floor as he went. Unfolding the half invisible cloak, Steve took the items from his secondary pile as well as a large portion of the mound still inside the tomb, and placed in on the cloth.
When he reached the bottom layer, the Apprehender of Thieves stopped, stared, smiled and extricated. In his gauntleted hand, he now held pieces of a cloudy amber crystal that resembled the shard that he had previously been in possession of.
Placing the original Gem of Inter-Reality Transportation AKA Mystic Shifter on top of his new pile, Steve tied the corners of the cloak to make an invisible bag, and attached that to the ring at his waist before placing the rest of the items back on their pile in the tomb.
His health nigh fully recovered at this point, Steve hauled the stone lid back onto the sarcophagus, once again encasing his predecessor in his grave. Checking to make sure the Ancient Minion translation guide and Sources were still with him, the Wench Bane then -clunk-ed over to the unconscious archaeologist.
Kneeling in front of Robin, the Rude Awakener gently shook her by the shoulder. Then dropped the 'gently'. After that, he tried talking loudly. With a sigh, the Rescuer of the Distressed Damsel unceremoniously placed the unconscious woman over his shoulder and left the room.
After he was several feet away, the torches within self-extinguished and the stone door rumbled shut. Not pausing, Steve trudged towards the light in the far distance.
In the darkness of the old Overlord's chambers, the vibrations of the door knock loose several stones in a newly formed crater. Unseen and unheard, ocean water flows through the cracks and into the former dwelling.
With a heavy shove, the swordsman managed to roll himself off the enchanted weapon, which he'd been stuck on top of for the last several minutes. Gasping for air and lightly glaring at the rest of his seemingly oblivious crew, Zoro decided to stay on the ground for a few more minutes.
"C'mon, guys- the mystery blast wasn't that bad..." Thoroughly confused, Luffy continued trying to rouse the unconscious crew. Sitting on a rock a few feet away, Franky tried to pass time by tinkering with another item and muttering about headaches.
Distantly, a metallic noise sounded from much farther within the darkness. As Zoro was the only one not concentrating on something, he was the first to notice- though he didn't bother getting off his back. Instead, he focused on listening.
The noises continued rhythmically, although every other -clink- sounded different. Forcing himself to stand, the swordsman scanned the darkness, trying to determine which direction the noise emanated from.
At this point, Luffy also heard the distant noises, and also squinted into the dark. Franky, on the other hand, couldn't hear much over the clinks and scrapes coming from the item he worked on.
-Clank-... -clunk-... -clank... -clunk... -clank-...
"That doesn't sound quite like Steve." Still searching, the swordsman cautiously laid a hand on the handles of his three swords.
"D'you think it's... a cave monster? Or... mystery sounds? Or a meat salesman?"
"Don't know, but it's headed this way. And now I'm hungry, dammit..."
As it turned out, the bag of items was heavier than he first anticipated. With it hanging off his belt loop on one side and Robin on the shoulder of his other, as well as the residual stiffness from his encounter with the wall, Steve's gait was quite uneven.
On top of that, he was taking a different path than before through the vast room. With very little light to illuminate the area, the Overlord often found himself staggering over rough ground and walking into the occasional column.
After much time of near-archaeologist-squishing experiences, Steve eventually walked into the area lit by the holed ceiling, and found himself standing across from the captain and swordsman.
"Oh, Steve! It was y- ... hey, is Robin also sleeping?"
"They aren't sleeping, they're unconscious." Seeing no imminent danger, the swordsman walked back to the problematic weapon. "Oh, Steve- catch."
Not questioning why Zoro tossed the Arcanium weapon using his scabbards, the Overlord caught the blade and, relaxed by its familiar weight and slight tingle, clipped it to his waist-loop.
"Gonna go to the surface. You guys going to do anything else down here?"
"We were waiting for Robin and you to return; after that, I was thinking we'd head back to the Sunny." Ceasing his tinkering, Franky winced as he rose from where he sat.
"So... you guys going to carry them," Steve gestured towards the unconscious Straw Hats, "or wait until they wake?"
Judging by the decrepit look of the swordsman, the hungry look of the captain, and the pained look of the shipwright (whose headache got worse whenever the the armored man spoke), he guessed they weren't in favor of staying in the dark and somewhat damp cave.
Each of them took one of the unconscious crew- Steve already carried Robin, Zoro took Chopper and Luffy hauled Usopp off the ground. With Franky carrying Brook over a shoulder, this left the navigator on the ground.
"Anybody volunteering?"
"I'm too exhausted, and she'd probably give me an 'potentially inappropriate touching' fee." Tiredly, the swordsman ascended the dark stairs.
"Can you imagine if the cook saw a speedo-clad man carrying one of his 'beloveds'?" With that, the shipwright followed the swordsman.
This left Luffy and Steve. After a moment of staring at each other, they raised their fists.
As he -clunk-ed up the stairs, only one woman and an invisible bag weighing him down quite a bit, the Servant Snatcher did not regret his decision of 'paper', nor did he regret removing his helmet before entered the low-ceilinged stairway.
(Begin end A/N)
Y'know how Steve's aura causes problems when other people get too close? And how he carried Robin through the cave/hall, right after his mana stores were filled (obscenely far) beyond their limits?
Maybe I secretly hate the characters I work with, or something. They rarely ever have a good day, in any of my stories.
References/items to/in other canon: a direct connection to the Goddess Help Line, from Ah! My Goddess; a dragonball from Dragonball; Harry Potter's invisibility cloak; Rincewind's hat (from Discworld); the pen-sword Anaklusmos from Percy Jackson and the Olympians; a Philosopher's Stone from Fullmetal Alchemist, and whatever else Steve put into his cloak-bag O' magic that may or may not be used in later chapters, depending on whether- {the rest of this sentence has been removed due to run-on}. But only if the pink unicorn violates Sanji on top of the taffy tower.
(End end A/N)