(A/N)

THIS IS ABSOLUTELY NOT LATE OR ANYTHING

This chapter probably has several awkward moments or seems to move too quickly; my excuse is rushed writing.

(End A/N)

As he pushed the crystal into the partially molten Arcanium, it occurred to the Overlord that it may not have been entirely necessary to broil his appendage.

Putting the depressing thought aside, he dunked his scalding arm into the pool water to cool the metal. As the steam filled the air, Steve glanced at the animate suit of armor- it hadn't been holding its own very well, and its movements were rapidly becoming more dodges than attacks. Vonvarr had caught on to this, and was putting all he could into attacking rather than splitting it across defensive maneuvers.

Withdrawing his hand back from the water, the Great and Mighty Overlord tested the malleability of the metal using a finger on his other hand. He discovered it wasn't quite cooled, and pressed half-molten Arcanium against his wrist.

"I hope the Master doesn't try something silly."

"Like what?"

Leaning against a wall, the elderly Minion scratched his chin. "Such as getting into his head that he should melt his armor to join with the crystal. It's just effective just to hold, or even tie it to a portion of his armor- attempting to haphazardly forge it into his gear is quite risky because of the uncontrolled manner in which he'd be forced to do so. Plus, he needs to have the entire set on to use magic, so he'd have to wear whatever he'd trying to bond it to."

"That would suck," Giblet commented with a nod.

"Indeed it would, Giblet. Indeed it would..."

As he grit his teeth, two thoughts rolled through the Overlord's mind: this sucks and ow hot hot ow ow hot. Delicacy with magic wasn't his strong point, yet there he was trying to form a miniature Shield between his gauntlet and his skin in order to push the hot metal back away.

Still dodging ever-nearing strikes, the armor's possessor was getting slightly impatient. "Will you just help me out already! I can't do this for very long!"

"Tax collectors! You're all a bunch of lowly, low-down, low tax collectors!"

"Shut up!"

With at least three splitting headaches and a body that felt unfairly sore after being asleep, an archaeologist slowly and painfully opened her eyes. Even more painfully, she shut her eyelids to wait for either the migraine to pass or the light to fade.

Wishing many deaths upon whatever created headaches, Robin prioritized her awareness: she was still alive, though the intensity of the migraine was almost making her desire otherwise. Curiously, she was laying on what felt like a wood floor and could vaguely hear the sound of the ocean, meaning she'd probably been moved back onto the Sunny.

Not recognizing any immediate danger, she recollected: old chamber. Steve. Blurry. Red crystal. Blurry. Fear of suffocation. Also a nightmare of sorts, but the contents were eluding her via migraine.

Switching back to the present, the archaeologist began focusing on sounds and feeling around her immediate vicinity. To one side, she felt the wrist and Log Pose of the navigator who seemed unconscious. On the other, some wooden construction.

Using the upturned desk pull herself off the floor, Robin listened to the voices coming from outside the room as she worked on recovering balance and restoring at least some strength.

"Don't move!"

"He's going to- AKHAW!"

"Stop! We have your crew hostage! Stand d- HOKHA!"

"Fire a warning shot across his nose!" A short moment later, the penetrating sound of a gunshot drove Robin to her knees. "I said across his nose, not up it!"

"Sorry s- WAKKHERGH!"

Thoroughly pained by the noise, the archaeologist unsteadily stumbled towards the door, clutching the wall and anything she passed for support as the sounds of panicked men filled the air.

"Do not shoot to kill! Prepare to fire Seastone bullets on my signal!" Raising one hand where the snipers could see, Baldrick backed rapidly away from the berserking pirate.

As he was about to drop his arm to give the signal, a door on the forecastle opened by the hand of a dark-haired woman whose other hand was held to her head.

Seemingly barely stable, she slowly descended from the forecastle and carefully crossed the grass deck, under the surprised eyes of the Marines- the rampaging pirate had also stopped, though he seemed more confused than surprised.

"R- Robin? Why-"

"Quiet. Headache. Please, no noise for a few moments." Saying this to both Baldrick and the vested pirate, she crossed the ship at a stagger, still clutching her head, and climbed the stairs to the aftcastle to disappear through another door.

Getting a hold of himself, the Marine in charge holstered his pistol and took a roll of papers out of his pocket. Murmuring to himself, Baldrick shuffled through them: "Roronoa, Chopper, Franky- aha! I knew I'd seen her face somewhere recently..." Putting the posters back, he withdrew his handgun once more and turned back to the snipers in the Bucket -which, he noticed, was slowly sinking- "Paramecia, no known invulnerability as far as intel suggests!"

Nodding to a pair of sneaky Marines, the sergeant checked his pistol's ammunition as the duo tackled and handcuffed the pirate captain.

Ignoring the Seastone-weakened protests of the pirate, Baldrick waited on the woman to return.

And waited.

And waited.

As he was about to go after her, the door she passed through re-opened. Looking slightly more collected, Nico Robin looked around the deck.

"It appears our doctor relocated the painkillers recently, sorry for the wait." Carrying a mobile medical kit, she descended the stairs and approached the nearest crewmate, the blond chef.

"N-now wait a minute! Don't move, or we'll shoot!"

As soon as he called out, she grimaced and put a hand to her head and kept walking. "Please keep it down."

"Like hell I'll-" Discarding words, Baldrick raised his pistol, aligning it for a nonlethal wound. Once his ideal location was targeted, he pulled the trigger.

Or, at least, tried to. Despite his attempts to the contrary, the trigger failed to move. Shaking the gun and trying again in vane, the Marine growled and looked at his weapon.

"What the...?" Blocking the movement of the trigger was a seemingly disembodied finger. Judging by the rest of the Marines that were looking at their guns in confusion, they were also having problems with appendages sprouting and blocking the trigger mechanisms.

"Sorry, but I'm in no mood to listen to gunshots right now." With a simultaneously apologetic and smug smile, the female pirate began bandaging the legs of a suddenly euphoric blond man.

Pulling his arm from the pool once more, the Overlord tapped his gauntlet- this time, he got a satisfactory clink instead of searing pain. Appreciative of this, he experimentally pointed his right palm at the far corner of the room, and tried casting a minor and simple spell he knew: Light Speck.

What he got instead of a fingernail-sized softly glowing orb was a room-wide flash of great color that seared his eyes and frightened the lunch out of a family of rats that were living in an old robe.

Making a mental note to concentrate on output, Steve blinked rapidly and looked for Vonvarr, who was also blinking at a quick rate. Nearby, the glowing orbs in the helmet of the animate armor were flickering as well.

"Vonvarr! Where are you? Too many white splotches..."

"Ditto, Jujuer."

"Why did you have to do a damned light signal spell as your test?"

"Simplest thing I know. Vonvarr! I challenge you to a duel as soon as we get our eyesight back!"

"I accept, you collecting dirt bag!"

Staring down piles of gold until they realized it wasn't the enemy, the Marine and Overlord turned to face one another once more; one with a bayonet, the other with his Arcanium-clad semi-bare hands.

"I can see you now, Marine man!"

"Same here, uh, tax collecting magic man!"

"Are you two seriously about to have a showd-"

"Quit the commentary and start the duel."

"Since when do I have to- oh, fine. You two going to trash-talk each other, or can I-"

"Certainly!" Narrowing his eyes, Vonvarr put on his best manic grin. "I'm gonna impale you so hard, your brains will be a return to your victims!"

Flaring his eyes extra-menacingly, Steve adopted an arrogant pose and clenched his right fist at the Marine. "Bring it, ninny boy. I'll torch your rear so much, the lord of the Abyss will surrender his throne to me in the afterlife!"

"Done? Yes? Good, because that was some of the worst trash talk I've heard, ever."

"Commentate not, talking armor!"

"Fine. Go."

Fortunately for Steve, magic moved faster than bullets. Raising an extra-dense Sanctuary, the Great and Mighty Overlord deflected several of the rounds that had previously torn through his armor- though unfortunately, even the increased density was not nearly enough to quell the excess mana. The Sanctuary, which normally only extended a few feet away, had been created wide enough to cover three-fourths of the distance to Vonvarr.

Seeing that his gun was doing squat, the Marine charged and attacked the shield directly with his anti-magic dagger-bayonet. Granted with the dispersion of the JuJu shield instead of the expected slight opening, Vonvarr continued his sprint.

Backpedaling and casting, Steve tried to slow Vonvarr down- double Sanctuaries, four layers of Shield, even upturning a loose stone did nothing to help.

Thoroughly hating himself, the Overlord stopped retreating and braced for impact.

He got stabbed in the chest.

All according to plan.

Dammit, he thought to himself.

At the other end of the gun, the Marine displayed a slightly delirious smirk. "What's this? You giving in already, 'Steve'?"

"If you die, I am going to make sure you become a ghost so that I can kick your ass."

Not feeling like talking while a dagger was stuck in his torso, Steve grunted in pain and raised a hand, grabbing the barrel of Vonvarr's rifle. Seeing that his enemy resisted yet, the Marine's smirk fell to be replaced by a suspicious glare.

Thoroughly wishing he'd thought of a different way to carry out his plan, Steve cast Fireball with the hand holding the rifle.

Under previous circumstances, the ensuing ball of heat was roughly about the size of his head.

Now, half the non-magical treasure in the room melted as an inferno five times taller than Steve soared across the room and dissipated against the stone wall.

Though his plan worked, the Overlord couldn't help but gape with his enemy at the sizzling stone and steaming gold. After a few seconds, the rest of his plan came back and he flicked his hand to get the molten metal off.

Brought back to his senses by the movement, Vonvarr leaped backwards a short distance and brought the rifle back to bear- and then noticed that his weapon was about half its previous length. "Ah..."

Pulling the dagger from his chest, Steve put on his best villainous grin of victory, even though his face was hidden by the helmet and cloth wrap. "Can't do much with a melted boom-stick and no fancy knife, can you?"

"N-no, not particularly, now that you mention it." Slowly stepping backward, Vonvarr's confidence visibly collapsed.

Raising one hand palm-out and compressing his new stab wound with the other, Steve did his best to put extra finesse into his spellwork as Vonvarr backpedaled more rapidly. Because he was also doing the spell a different way than normal, Steve couldn't think of a better one-liner because his concentration was devoted more to controlling the mana. "I guess you..."

"..."

With the final step completed, an inverted Sanctuary bubble appeared around Vonvarr's head; with a furrowed brow, the Marine glanced about his spherical helmet.

"... are a bit hot-headed." With a snap of his fingers, Steve set off a Combustion within the confines of the defensive spell; he was thankful that only the fire was visible, as the Marine didn't even have time to scream.

"Yeeeaaaaahhh that was lame."

"Quiet." Canceling the Combustion and Sanctuary, Steve turned to the remaining items in the room as the Marine's burned skull cracked against the stone floor. "Is there something here I can use to repair my armor?"

"That low-grade stuff? Yeah, to your left- no, more to your right- ugh, over here." Ending its possession of the armor, the entity formerly known as the Leaderess hovered over to a dark object near the base of one pile. "I think it was called a 'monkey wrench'. Recovered from the same place as a device called a 'Sasha' and a 'Sentry', if memory serves."

"How does it... work?" Cautiously, Steve hefted the object and turned it over, examining its shape.

"Hold a magic item in one hand -that sword there should work, all it does is turn into a bunch of pink flowers- and, with the 'monkey wrench' in the other, whack the item you wish to repair. Really whack it, though."

Skeptical, the Overlord smacked the wider end of the object against the Arcanium on his torso. To his surprise, the holes in the armor shrank, and the armor itself even recovered some of its sheen. After several more whacks and half of another item after the first deteriorated, the Arcanium armor seemed as good as when the Impenetrable One had first commissioned it from Giblet- even his sword lost its chips and regained some chunks.

With his armor no longer in tatters, Steve knelt by the corpse of Vonvarr and flipped him onto his back, and began checking his pockets.

"What are you looking for?"

"The guy was as bad off as I was, on the surface. I want to know if he has some healing object that allowed him to recover." After a few moments, he grunted and leaned back.

"There's nothing else on him."

"What's that on his clothing?"

"What's what?"

"There seems to be dark specks across his chest and arms."

Lifting one of the former Marine's limbs, Steve inspected closer. "They don't seem to follow a pattern, but... that color... hrgh!" Irritated, he threw the arm back down and rose.

"What are they?"

"Bastard had particles of my Arcanium on him. When you blasted my armor, the regenerative effect must have carried over to those small pieces."

"That seems highly unlikely- then again, I once saw a man turn into a gigantic beetle."

The Overlord's head tilted slightly. "A... beetle?"

"Something called a 'Zoan' in this world. Speaking of worlds, we should get the rest of the runes activated."

"I've a better idea than walking across this accursed gigantic place." The Overlord raised his right arm and tapped the new installation. "What if I blast the entire structure with mana?"

"... It's lazy, but it will most likely work."

Encouraged, the armored man knelt and placed both hands upon the floor. Taking a deep breath, he channeled the contents of the multiple Hearts into the building.

With half of First Squad injured and he himself sporting a broken arm, Baldrick raised his sword to the woman's neck; she lay on the ground, clutching her arms after the Marines had started attacking the limbs and appendages that were growing everywhere.

Raising one leg to kick and further subdue the woman, Baldrick growled "Damn, I hate Devil Fruits." and began to swing his foot forward.

Before he could get good force going, the ship began to tremble and forced him to use both legs to remain steady. "What's going on?"

In response, the ship became more turbulent and threw the Marines to the deck. Pulling himself to the nearby starboard railing, the Sergeant looked around the nearby waters for what could be causing the unsteady waters.

After a moment of seeing nothing, he realized that there were growths along the base of the nearby island. Following his confused stare, he realized that the island was rising out of the water- and calling it an island was probably not correct.

Crawling away from the railing on his back, Sergeant Baldrick of Second Squad, subdivision of the Anti-JuJu Unit, stared in shock as the legendary Black Fortress' central tower rose from the waters of the Grand Line.

Although its splendor was slightly diminished by algae, barnacles, a few humongous squid and erosion, the sheer size was something to behold- many Marines came close to wetting themselves as the object of the captain's late-night stories ascended from the depths and, after a few moments, disappeared into the clouds.

Looking in all directions, Baldrick got an better impression of how truly large the structure was- the Fortress' wall was rising from the opposite side of the ship, a fair distance away. It rose, and kept rising until the brig-sloop shuddered onto the soil brought from the deep.

Lodged upright from the scattered debris of a crumbled section of the wall and a sub-tower, the Thousand Sunny and conscious occupants gaped at the now colorful Black Fortress that blocked most of the sky in all directions but up.

"So, either Knot installed way more carvings than I anticipated, you put more juju than necessary into the task, or the Black Fortress just rose way faster than it should have had any right to."

Pushing himself off the floor, Steve barely heard the Leaderess after having had his ears pop several times in a row. "Ow."

"You'll get over it. So where is the Mystic Shifter?"

"Aboard the Sunny."

"Sunny?"

"Thousand Sunny. Pirate vessel."

"Ah. I presume it's nearby?"

"It should be; is there a way to get to it?" Holding one gauntlet to his ear, the Overlord tried to clear his head by shaking it slightly.

"There's magic hereabouts; of course there's a way."

Steve thought the Fortress' swift rising was bad on his ears.

Then he went directly to sea level without the luxury of traveling through the elevations in between.

Only his sheer appreciation of a good entrance kept him from cradling his head and cursing loudly. As it was, he couldn't hear any of his surroundings for several seconds.

Taking stock through his luminescent and watering eyes, Steve noticed that things were not quite as they were when he left. Most noticeably, there were Marines staring in shocked horror at both him and the soggy Fortress.

Feeling that attention needed to be more focused on his person since he had just appeared out of nowhere and all, the Overlord took his newly repaired Arcanium sword from its loop, making a point to scrape the flat of the blade against his cuisse.

The noise got a majority of the present capable attention spans, and accordingly, the expressions turned into confusion.

"I bet most of you are wondering: where'd he come from? Well, to tell you the truth, in all the excitement I've kinda lost track myself. But seeing as this is a ship, traditionally sailed on water, and I wasn't here a moment ago, you've got to ask yourself: 'did he teleport?'. Well, did I, Marine?"

"Y-yes?"

"Damn right." Stabbing the man who spoke, the teleporting armored Overlord turned to the rest of the present company. "I take it you're the Marines who worked under the late Captain Vonvarr?"

An individual bearing slightly more elaborate garb than the rest raised his pistol. "'Late'? You killed him?"

"Unless he could survive having the fleshy parts of his head incinerated, yes, I killed him."

"And- and what about First Squad?"

"Bunch of fellows with boom-sticks? Yeah, they're nice and toasty way up there. One might be alive, but seemed mindless from what saw."

"Captain's... dead..." The man looked to the sky for a moment, before focusing back on Steve and correcting his aim from where his arm had drooped. The expression of grief lasted mere seconds before it was replaced by a more composed, albeit vengeful, demeanor. "Fire at will on the Jujuer!"

Though he raised a shielding spell as quickly as he could, the Overlord did not get away unscathed; a few gouges found their place on his armor, marring the shiny look he'd just gotten back into it. Once the blasts stopped and the smoke cleared, he glared at the man and raised his left arm.

"I just got this damned thing repaired." With the use of a limited Flamethrower, Steve blasted the Marine off the ship with a pillar of fire roughly his arm's length across. As the railing on the far side of the ship smoked and the fires across the grass deck slowly went out, he turned to the rest of the present Marine personnel standing around the Straw Hat pirates.

"Anybody else want to worsen my day?"

Some moments later, the last living non-pirate person aboard the Thousand Sunny wiped his blade on the garments of a dead man before clipping it back on its loop.

Finally getting a good look at the crew, he sighed. "Either you were all taken by surprise, or I severely underestimated most of you."

None of the conscious present responded. The captain looked barely awake, the skeleton was struggling to help Usopp stop the bleeding from Chopper while the archaeologist unsteadily rose, holding several hands over a bleeding arm.

"That the Fortress?"

"Yup."

"It's a bit... large."

"I was just noticing that."

"Many... items?"

"Quite a few, actually."

"Any good for-" With a grimace, Robin shifted her arm. "-for healing?"

"I'll ask." Tapping a button on a circular band around his wrist, Steve disappeared in a brief pillar of light. After a short while and another pillar of light, he returned holding a box which had "PILLS HERE" written upon it in large, blocky letters.

"Apparently, chug all the contents of one bottle and one should feel better for a decent amount of time."

Skeptical, Robin took a bottle out of the container and looked at it with a raised eyebrow.

Some minutes and many bottles of capsules later the Straw Hat Pirates were either unconscious, in a drug-induced daze, or tending to those who were.

After some time probing the deck, Steve located the bag of items he had left there earlier; in the commotion, it had moved across the deck and had gotten itself lodged in between the banisters next to a stairway.

"You're leaving, I take it?"

"Yes- though it's not what I came here for originally, the Black Fortress is a good find. Will most likely sink again if it's not taken back to where it used to be, though."

Glancing at the ocean that was visible through a whole in an old wall, the archaeologist frowned. "Would you mind terribly if you could get the Sunny back in the water before you try taking the Fortress?"

"Ah, certainly." Clonking over to the railing, Steve raised a hand in farewell. "I thank you and the rest of the crew for the whole 'not leaving me to drown in the ocean' thing."

"We prob- wait!" Before she could finish her sentence, Robin had noticed something and tried to stop the Overlord- but he had already leaped from the side of the ship and had begun concentrating on his magic.

Despite her attempts to address the issue she saw, Robin could not do so before the ship levitated and flew back over the water.

With a quick glance at the hole he'd thrown the Sunny through, the Overlord pressed the button on his wrist once more. Following some concentration and a blur of the scenery, he found himself back in the treasury and core Heart room of the Black Fortress.

"Do you have the Shifter?"

"Indeed I do." Opening his makeshift sack, Steve withdrew the chunks of the Mystic Shifter. "That 'wrench', will it fix it?"

"Possibly. Try."

Following some whacks with the peculiar item, the Shifter was indeed mostly whole once more- however, the break line was still visible. "Will this be... stable?"

"You want to try waiting any more? I don't think the Fortress can fly for much longer."

"Fine, fine." Taking the sphere in hand, the Overlord concentrated on expanding its coverage. Even the massive reserves contained within the Hearts was half depleted as the sphere grew to encompass the entire gargantuan fortification.

"I just looked, you should have the entire place now."

With a grunt, Steve braced himself for much chaos and began activating the Shifter. "Here we go."

Gnarl was just minding his own business, using a piece of glass to burn small insects alive with the sun, when suddenly the sun was blocked by brief cloud of smoke.

Squinting at it, the elderly Minion beheld the cloud swiftly dissipating, revealing what looked like a massive clod of dirt.

Then it occurred to him that the clod was directly over the Blood Crater, half a day of hiking away.

Then the chunk of dirt began falling.

Before he threw himself to the ground, Gnarl saw a great stone wall and a massive spire atop the dirt clod; once it struck the earth, clouds of airborne dirt obscured any further detail of what they were.

Several moments later, an immense shockwave knocked half the contents of the Tower across their respective rooms.

"Ahh, it's been such a long time since I beheld that maroon terrain!"

Pulling himself out of the pile of gold and other items that were thrown to the wall, Steve shook his head and knocked the fragments of a broken mug out of his hair.

"I will admit, I strongly doubted you most of the way- but hoo boy, you actually pulled this off!" With a slightly more animate aura, the dead Leaderess hovered back near Steve.

"Agh. Now that you're no longer in a rush and impatient, I've a question."

"You've earned many more now, shoot."

"Sources mentioned nothing about a spouse, or of the body in the sarcophagus. Why?"

"Sources? Ah, that false logbook he wrote."

"False?"

"Well, not entirely. He just... didn't include whole truths. Because he suspected the Marines would try to breach the Fortress after his inevitable death, the old Leader wrote an only mostly true recount of his experiences, from the discovery of that Shifter to the causes of his death. He omitted certain details, such as who he was married to, in order to 'protect them'. And you know what? He sought to protect me, and I'm the one who kept on eye on things when he went off on his skirmishes against that armada... anyway, the book that was with the control crystal is the true logbook."

"Are you going to... dissipate now?"

"Aw, heck no. I'm going to stick around and make sure you and your adviser don't waste the resources of the Leader needlessly."

"Joy." Yanking his legs out of the mound of treasure, Steve dumped the coins out of his helmet and plonked it back on. "Gnarl most likely knows of my return by now. This new crystal may interfere with the reception, so it's likely he can't communicate directly- but I'm certain he'll send search crews..."

"What's that on your leg?"

With a frown, the Overlord glanced down to see that a straw hat with a red ribbon was caught on one of his greaves.

Most of the crew had returned to consciousness by the time a ball of light crashed into the water not far off.

After they stared towards that area for a few moments, the sphere surfaced; following a quick glance into a telescope, Usopp declared it to be Steve.

Pulled aboard the Sunny as it sailed by, the Overlord dissipated the Shield he'd used to remain buoyant and tossed Luffy his hat back.

"Oh- you had it?"

"By accident. Ta!" Not allowing anybody to bid their farewell, the Overlord reactivated the Orb of Inter-Reality Transportation. Seeing only the agonized expression of one woman and the confused one of a young captain, he did not terribly regret his choice of a swift exit. He did, however, notice that the Orb suddenly cracked in his hands as the scenery disappeared.

As the haziness from the use of magic faded, Luffy sagged his shoulders and complained, "I didn't even get to wear his armor..."

Nearby, Robin cradled her head while in the fetal position.

It took Gnarl three and a half days of walking until he found something other than Minions to talk to. The first half-day after the appearance of the structure was dedicated to putting the contents of the Tower back together; the next day was spent organizing and moving a group of Minions over to explore the Fortress; the last two days were spent staring in wonder at the Fortress from a hole in a wall, marveling at the damp stone and the somewhat confused squids, and actually trying to find the central area of the building.

After having half the present Minions die from floods of water behind closed doors and several guesses and moments of being lost, Gnarl found something to aid his attempts to find the Master and the great number of Hearts that were in the Fortress.

Unfortunately, that 'something' was a dead woman who seemed quite disappointed that the 'Mins' had become relatively pitiful in recent years.

"I don't care that the Reds can no longer blast fire out their ears! Where is the Master!"

"Big guy? Used a sword? Big prongs on his helmet? Reddish smoke coming from a crystal on his left forearm?"

"YES!"

"He went to return a hat a few days ago. Haven't seen him since."

On his back between two seemingly endless shelves, Steve stared at the ridiculously high ceiling. He hurt in a few places, and the dust-sized particles of the Mystic Shifter lay scattered around him, disintegrated fragments of his only known way home.

Not feeling like moving, he didn't bother to immediately respond to the people that started to surround him with a combination of curious, confused and awed faces.

"Arty, since when did we have such a... cool set of armor here?"

"We don't- we didn't." With an agitated glance at the younger male, the elder, spectacled and short-bearded man looked at the Arcanium armor with a contemplative confusion.

A young-looking girl quirked an eyebrow from near Steve's head. "Kind of looks like Sauron."

The younger man tilted his head. "It does, doesn't it? Oh, look- it's got two swords-"

"Pete, Don't touch anything! We don't know where this came from, or if its an artifact with dangerous effects!"

"I hate my luck."

"Holy crap there's a guy in there!"

Following a short time of panic from the other persons, Steve found himself covered in purple goo, still highly unappreciative of recent events.

~~ End ~~

(A/N)

Yes, end. Save for an eventual chapter chronicling the three and a half days of dimension-hopping, this story has reached its sorta-conclusion, with 'Steve' being mistaken for an artifact by the Warehouse 13 staff.

He never did get a Devil Fruit, did he?

(End ending A/N for the end of the chapter ending the story)