Chapter 11: The Big bang and Chicken cutlets.
Summery: I may never know how it truly began, but I do know that I never truly had a choice in the events that led me here. I am in one piece now, and have unwillingly left my own world behind. That is all that matters, and all I need to know.
Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with any legal rights to one piece in any form, I do not own one piece or any part of the merchandising, gaming, manga, anime, characters, or anything of the sort. Please do not sue me as I do not have any money. The only things that I own from this fic are my own original characters.
A/N1: I KNOW ZORO IS ALSO CALLED ZOLO, I have also decided to leave the decision on the pairing up to the readers.
Please not that chapter 6 (or chapter 7 if you count the prologue) had three paragraphs added on to the end of it. I forgot all about something and had to add it in.
The massive edit that ran from 4/4/09 to 4/7/09 is finished. All the chapters from here on out are knew (unless I do another edit... but I doubt that will happen.)
Note: You can now look at artwork of the story by going to my profile and clicking on them.
'thoughts'
"Words"
(inner Kaede)
-------------
The fact that we had the oil on the right path and not the wrong one like in the anime made me feel a little better about going into battle, though I still didn't like the fact that there were going to be a bunch of men with really pointy objects trying to kill us. That wasn't exactly a happy thought.
It took us about twenty minutes and two barrels of oil to cover the whole path in the slippery stuff. When we finally finished oiling it up, we stood back and marveled at Usopp's handy work.
"Good, it's perfect." Usopp said, gloating over his own handy work. "Now they can't get up this slop! Though I was sure they would be coming up the other one. There are only two ways onto the island, and since the had the meeting at the other slope, I thought they would be coming ashore over there..."
"Yeah, well if Kaede says they'll be coming up this way, then you can bet they'll be coming up this way. " Nami said, causing me to smile.
'Yeah! I must be her new best friend.' I thought, happy that someone was finally starting to trust in the information I gave them.
"So, do you see any treasure on their ship?" Nami asked, turning to me with her knees slightly bent and her hands together in a prayer sign, money signs in her eyes as she silently begged me to say yes.
'Bitch, I'm just your treasure detector, aren't I?' I thought, glaring at her for a second as the money signs started to glow.
"... I'm a psychic, not a metal detector. " I said, rolling my eyes as the money signs in hers slowly disappeared and were replaced by a sad look.
"Damn it." She said, hanging her head in despair.
She had really been hoping that I would be able to tell her if they had any treasure. The fact that I couldn't didn't stop her from wanting to go in and steal it all anyway, but it was still annoying to find that she had a psychic just a few feet away from her, but couldn't get the information she really wanted.
The truth was, I couldn't remember if they had treasure on their ship or not. I wasn't even sure if she had ever gone in into it to steal stuff or not, it wasn't exactly a very big detail.
"But I think they do have something on their ship, though I can't be sure." I said slyly, taking pity on her and causing her to come out of her depressed state faster then you could say 'thievery'.
"But you'll have to get to it before I do, because I'm not just a Ctarl-Ctarl witch, or an engineer. I'm also a thief! Though I'm only a rookie when it comes to stealing." is said, half expecting her to give me a glare that said, quite plainly, 'Don't you dare touch my damn treasure!'.
I was disappointed though.
"You're on! First one that get's to it wins, and the looser has to give all the treasure they have to the winner!" She said, surprising me completely.
Leave it to Nami to turn a challenge into a way to get more money.
"All of it?! Oh come on! If I loose I wont be able to feed Choco!" I said, picking up the large feathery bird and holding him out to her, letting her see his cuteness in an attempt to get her to change her mind.
It worked, sort of.
"Fine, the loser has to hand over half the treasure they have. I saw the money you have, I know you have at least 300,000 beli left, so I guess half will be fine." she said, taking pity on Choco and letting me keep enough so that I could feed him with out a problem.
Zoro rolled his eyes at our antics, clearly thinking that we were both crazy for being so interested in money and treasure.
Hey, a girls got to live somehow, doesn't she?
"Is money all you two care about?" He asked, getting a glare from both of us as the words exited his mouth.
"Hay! I already told you all what I like! Money and tangerines!" Nami said defensively, still glaring at him for his comment.
"Yeah, and I like my pets, engineering, and money!" I said, giving him a glare that rivaled Nami's in destructive power. We would kill a man with those glares if it was possible.
"Hey! Aren't you guys getting a bit off topic?" Usopp said, fearing that we would still be arguing when the black cat pirates got here. "We're going to need a lot of fighting power to take those guys down, what do you guys do?" he asked, wandering what our fighting abilities were.
"I slice." Zoro said, pulling out two of his swords and holding one in either hand.
"I stretch." Luffy said, making a fist and holding out his fist.
"I steal." Nami said, assembling her poll in less then a second and holding it out in front of her in an offensive stance.
"A bash and steal." I said, pulling out my wooden mallet and holding it over my shoulder.
"I infiltrate." Lil said as she struck a pose, remembering the position I dubbed for her on the crew when I was talking Zoro back in the marine base.
"Kweh!" Choco said, jumping in the air and waving his large talons around while flapping his wings as hard as he could.
"He said that he scratches and pecks." Lil said, translating for us.
"Oh no he doesn't, he's going to be in the-" I started, stopping when I saw that a ship was heading straight for us.
Lucky for Nami, she had already moved our boats to the other shore so that they wouldn't be able to find her treasure.
While the black cat pirates were coming ashore, I was busily trying to catch Choco, who was so determined to fight that he was actively evading my lunges for him.
Now, my cat abilities made me fast, but he was still somehow able to out run me on his short, baby bird, legs.
"Get back here and get into the bag like a good little birdy!" I ordered, still chasing him after him, running around others in a circle.
I really didn't want to let him fight as I wasn't sure he would be OK. He might be growing at an alarming rate, and his talons might already be big enough to be called daggers, but he was still a baby and only came up to about half way between my knees and my thigh...
'Wait a sec... hadn't he only been a few inches taller then my knees when we got here?' I thought in horror, praying to god that his growth rate hadn't increased. At this rate, he was probably going to eat everything on the ship before we could get to Sanji.
"Heads up, their coming!" Zoro said, breaking me out of my trance and drawing my attention to hoard of people that were getting off of the huge ass ship.
"ehehehe..." Usopp laughed nervously, horrified at seeing how many people were actually coming to fight us. "That's a lot more people then I expected..." he said, backing away slightly, only to be stopped by Zoro, Luffy, Nami, and myself.
"You're fighting with!" we said, grabbing him and pulling him back to the top of the oil.
"Hay Nami?" I called, getting her attention.
"Yeah?"
"The road to the ship's been oiled, I can just jump over it and the men below it, but how do you plan to get to the treasure?" I asked evilly, knowing she hadn't thought of that yet.
"What?!" She demanded, proving that I was right. "I hadn't thought of that!" She shrieked, turning back to the large path below and staring in horror as she realized that she wouldn't be able to get down the path and over to the treasure without getting her self killed.
"Don't worry, how about we call the bet off and we just split the treasure in there fifty fifty?"
"No way! There is no way I'm loosing this bet! I'll get that treasure before you do, even if it's the last thing I do!" She said, glaring at me in a way that told me she wasn't kidding. She was going to get the black cats' treasure and mine, and I was just going to have to deal with it.
Our conversation was interrupted, however, by shouts of the black cat pirates as they realized that there were some people standing in their path.
'They must be blind, they haven't even noticed the black tar like junk all over the path.' I thought, amazed as the people continued talking about us and completely ignored the oil on the path.
"Hey! There's people up there!" One of the guys shouted, pointing at us as the rest of his crew members looked up at us.
"It's them! Two of those guys are the guys from before, and the rest of them are the brats I met on the road to the town!" Jango said, shocked that Luffy wasn't dead anymore. "How did you survive that fall?!" He demanded angrily, pissed that Luffy had tricked him.
OK, so Luffy hadn't actually meant to trick him, but Jango didn't need to know that.
"Huh?" Luffy asked stupidly before he finally recognized the guy. "Hay! You're that bastard from before! The one that was talking to that butler guy about killing that girl! I'm gonna kick your ass!" He said angrily, balling up his fists and swinging them back, preparing to attack.
"Hey Luffy, shouldn't we let them try and get up the hill first?" I asked, not wanting all the black gold to go to waist. It might be useless here, but in my world, that was a lot of money.
"Gum Gum Bazooka!" he shouted as he jumped forward and down the cliff, thrusting both his fists forward and taking out several of the pirates with his fists, heading straight for Jango.
"Great, all our hard work... down the drain..." Nami said as she hang her head in despair, annoyed that all the work we did getting the oil to the pathway up the cliff had been for nothing.
"All that black gold... down the drain..." I said, hanging my head despair as well, knowing that I probably could have used that oil in my machine building later if we hadn't used it.
"Black gold?" Nami asked, her head snapping toward me so fast that it made a cracking sound.
I guess gold was the magic word.
"Yeah, oil is called black gold in some places, because it can be used in engineering and machinery, so it tends to sell for a lot in places with a lot of engineers." I said sadly, momentarily forgetting that oil was probably only used like that in my world and probably wasn't worth much here, no matter where you went.
"Luffy! You idiot!" Nami shouted, turning her attention back to the rubber man as he continued trying to knock all the black cat pirates out as he made his way to Jango. She was pissed. If oil meant money in some places, then he had just caused her to waist a bunch of money for no reason. "You just made us waist all that money, you jerk!" She shouted angrily, wishing she would beat the crap out of him and secretly planing to throw him overboard the next chance she got.
"Well, looks like the battles started." Zoro said, pulling out his swords and putting the handle of the white one, the Wadō Ichimonji, into his mouth while holding the other two firmly in his hands.
"Going right into Santōryu?" I asked, shocked that he was doing that as he normally used just one sword for a while until he found an opponent that he needed all three for.
"Normally I wouldn't bother, but you did say that someone was going to take my swords away, so I thought I'd just get it out of the way and pull them all out now." He said, speaking around Wadō as he did so.
"What's Santōryu?" Nami asked, wandering if that was the name of one of his swords.
"It's the three swords style, and I'm a master of it." Zoro answered, not bothering to turn his head to look at her as he was about to jump over the oil and into the battle.
I seriously doubted he could actually make it over the oil, and I would have watched him as he prepared to jump if it wasn't for one small problem.
"Choco?! Lil?!" I yelled in horror, looking around and trying to see where they were.
I had turned my around to try and force Choco into the froggy bag again, only to find that they weren't there. I even went so far as to check my froggy bag and to look behind me, but they weren't anywhere to be found.
The had vanished.
At least that was what I thought, that is until Nami spoke up.
"Um, I think they're over there." She said, pointing at the large group of men that were fighting Luffy down bellow.
Looking over to where she was pointing, I saw them.
There, in the middle of the fight, was Choco and Lil. Lil was sitting on Choco's back and was continually scratching at random guys, her claws having somehow grown to three times there normal size.
While Lil was on Choco's back, Choco himself was drilling into several guys stomachs with his sharp beak, and jumping back and out of the way when one of them tried to attack him or the large fat cat on his back.
As much as I hated to admit it, they seemed to be doing OK. They were kicking several guys asses, and were managing to not get hit themselves thanks to Choco's lightning fast speed.
"Huh, I guess they can fight." I said dumbly, staring at them fore a few seconds in shock as Choco jumped into the air, grabbed a guy by his face (using his claws to do so, then slamming his beak into the guys head repeatedly, successfully knocking the large man out. "You know, that kind of makes me wander what he'll be like when he's fully grown and three of four times that size..." I said, marveling at the fact that he and Lil were actually kicking some ass.
"Hey, at this rate, we might actually win..." Usopp said, causing me to look over at him.
"Huh? Oh! Yeah, well we haven't even seen their four best fighters. Kuro's as strong as Luffy, and then there's the two idiots in the ship. They're strong to. Then there's the fact that Jango can actually hypnotize people so that they get stronger and don't know they're hurt. That will be a pain to deal with." I said, stupidly, not realizing that I was crushing his optimism.
He has so little of it, and I had just crushed it. Oops...
"Wait, there's other people in the ship?" Nami asked from her position near the top of the cliff. She had run over there while I was talking to Usopp in an attempt to get down the cliff and into the ship before I did.
"Huh?! Hay! What the hell are you doing over there?! Cheater!" I shouted at her, a little annoyed that she taken the opportunity to beat me to the treasure when I wasn't paying attention. "And yeah! There are two people in their and they are as strong as Zoro! So you might want to wait until they come out!" I shouted over to her, hoping she would listen to me.
There were two reasons why I wanted her to listen to me. The first one was simple.
I wanted to win.
If she went in before me, then I would loose some of my money, and I didn't want that. Especially since she wasn't actually gong to be using that money to buy back Cocoyashi Village and there for I would be loosing my money for no reason.
Though she didn't know that little fact yet.
The second reason was a bit more important.
I didn't want her to get killed. If she went in now, then Buchi and Sham would tare her to shreds, and that would be bad.
"Great, you mean I have to wait?" She asked as I walked over to her, giving me a glare and clearly thinking that I was lying.
"Hay, I'm not going in either. Those two guys in there are more then even I can handle, but I am going to take out some of the guys below. The more of them we take out, the sooner Buchi and Sham will come out to kill us." I said happily, causing her to look at me funny.
It must have been the fact that I said 'kill us' with a smile.
"Hey, I'm not smiling because they're strong or something, I'm smiling because the more people we take down, the sooner I can get to the treasure." I said, causing her funny look to turn into a glare.
"Fine." She said, still glaring at me in a way that told me she would kill me if I touched her treasure. Taking a deep breath, she turned her attention to Usopp, clearly wanting him to help out to. "Hey Usopp! Start shooting them down with your slingshot already!" She shouted, getting his attention and shocking him out of his fearful trance.
Yep, I should have kept my mouth shut. He was clearly shaking in his boots at the thought of four strong guys trying to kill us, especially now that he saw how strong Luffy was. If one of them were really as strong as him, then he really didn't see how we were going to survive this.
It took him a second to come out of his trance, but once he had, he instantly took his slingshot and started shooting at people, happy that none of them could get up the hill to get to him in retaliation.
"Ok, now it's my turn." I said, over the large mass of pirates and digging my hand into my bag.
I might not be able to lift the impact mallet more then a few inches off the ground, but I had a feeling that it would still do a lot of damage if I dropped it 'plus side' down on the people below.
Taking my froggy bag and setting it on the ground, I reached in and grabbed the handle of the mallet and pulled, straining my self to get it out of the bag. Once it was out of the bag, I took it and jumped over the large mass of people, letting it fall out of my hands as I reached the center of the path.
Being a cat girl had it's perks, I could easily jump over the large path up the cliff without a problem.
"Guys! Out of the way!" I shouted as I let go of the mallet, causing all four of the Strawhat pirates below to look up at me. The moment everyone saw what I was dropping, the four of them took off like bats out of hell, even Luffy did as the mallet came tumbling down on them to hopefully land on the 'plus side'.
Even Choco, who had never seen what the mallet could do before, had taken off, though that might have been because Lil had told him to get out of the way when she saw it. All of us were praying for it to land on the 'plus side' or get caught my some idiot as we knew that would be just as bad.
If my wooden one simply exploded enough for you to let go of it, then what would my supper powered one do?
The answer to that question, was nothing.
It didn't even explode. The moment one of the guys caught it, he simply fell to the ground with it, it's weight dragging him to the ground.
"... " everyone in the area stared at it in silence, including the black cat pirates.
The black cats stared at it because they couldn't understand why someone had dropped it. Maybe we dropped hoping that its wight would crush someone's head? They weren't sure and it seemed that they were a little curious to find out.
"Well that was a let down..." I said, annoyed that my plan hadn't worked.
That is until one of the idiots tried to lift it.
"BOOM!"
The blast from the explosion was so strong that it sent me and Nami flying back several feet. Even Usopp, who wasn't even standing anywhere near it, got knocked back by the blast.
Luffy, Zoro, Choco, and Lil were lucky that they had taken off when they saw it, because a good portion of the black cat pirates were now laying on the ground around it, unmoving and staring up at us with unseeing eyes.
"What the hell?" I asked, standing up and dusting myself off. "If it was going to explode like that, why didn't it explode when the guy caught it?" I demanded, pissed that it had only exploded the second time he touched it.
"Maybe it thought you were handing it to him?" Nami said, getting up as well and dusting her self off to.
"Huh?" I asked, wandering what she was talking about.
"Well, it's magic right? Maybe people can hold one of your mallets when you hand it to them." She said, causing my jaw to drop.
I hadn't known they could do that. It made perfect sense when you thought about it, but I hadn't even considered that fact. The mallet hadn't exploded when he caught it because it thought I was tossing it to him, but the moment he let go of it and then grabbed it again it had sent a huge blast out to get him to let go.
"Well, I still don't think I'll be trying that ever again. That nearly killed us." I said looking around to see if the others were OK, smiling when I saw that everyone was fine.
"Yeah, and if you do try it again, next time warn a girl first." Nami said, glaring at me for getting her clothes all dirty.
"Hehe, oops." I said, rubbing the back of my head in embarrassment.
"Hay! What the hell were you thinking?!" Usopp shouted from his position at the top of the cliff, angry that I had tried such a dangerous trick when he was around. "You nearly killed me!" He added, being a little over dramatic with his shout.
"Oh, shut up. It did what it was supposed to, didn't it?" Lil said as she and Choco came out of the forest behind him, with Lil sitting on Choco's back.
"She still could have warned us first." Zoro said, following after them as he exited the forest as well.
"That was AWESOME!" Luffy shouted, coming out of the forest as well and throwing his fists into the air, in awe at the awesomeness of the explosion.
I hadn't even seen them run past Usopp, they must have known it would be really bad or they wouldn't have taken off like that. If they were really that worried about they explosion, then they should have grabbed Usopp to.
"Gr, the suns been up for a while now, and captain Kuro will be angry if we're late." Jango growled in anger, knowing that the longer he took, the angrier his captain would get. "If I must, then I'll simply make you all stronger so that you can deal with these children." He said, pulling out his little hypnotist ring and holding it out in front of him.
"Everyone! Turn away! Zoro, cover Luffy's eyes!" I shouted, not wanting Luffy to get hypnotized like in the anime.
Everyone did as they were told, though Luffy wasn't to happy about having Zoro cover his face up as he had wanted to see what the strange man was going to do with the little ring.
Not wanting something bad to happen to him, Usopp covered his eyes to, though he did ask why looking at the ring was a bad thing.
"Because, he's a hypnotist, if you look at the right while he's using it, you'll get hypnotized to." Nami said, answering his question for me since she already knew the answer, having seen Jango hypnotize the kids before.
"By the count of Jango you'll become stronger and your wounds will heal. Are you ready? One, two, Jango!" He said, hypnotizing all the black cat pirates that were still alive.
At the end of his words all of us uncovered our eyes and saw that all the pirates that had been hurt and injured stood up and waved their weapons in the air, no longer feeling the pains for their wounds. All of them were stared at us angrily with unseeing white eyes, drool coming out the corners of their mouths as they growled at us in anger.
One of the now healed pirates took his fist and punched part of the cliff, causing it to crumble into little pieces and fall to the ground.
"No way!" Nami said in horror, and I couldn't help but agree with her.
Even with a fully functional Luffy, I wasn't sure that we could beat all of those men. They had only beaten them in the anime because Luffy had been powered up by the hypnosis as well and had ripped the front of their ship off and then collapsed with it on top of him, knocking some of them back from the force of it.
"That one guy completely destroyed the cliff." Zoro said, amazed at the sheer force of the guys punch. "Now that's what I call power."
"I always thought that hypnotizing people was a bunch of crap!" Nami said, horrified at the fact that anyone could make someone that strong just by waving a little ring around.
"And that was just one of them, imagine what the whole group could do!" Usopp said in horror, his pessimistic side coming back in full swing.
Luffy's jaw dropped in awe at the sight of the man punching the wall. "That was awesome!" He shouted, making me want to strangle him.
'If he says awesome one more time, I'm going to kill him.' I thought, wishing he would start using a different word. Hearing awesome all the time was starting to drive me completely insane.
Luck for me though, because as far as I remember, he only said it while on Syrup Village island in the anime, so he was hopefully going to stop when we left.
"Uh-oh..." I heard Lil say, causing me to freeze in place. I REALLY didn't like the way she said that.
"Uh-oh?" I asked as we all turned to look at her.
The moment all of us saw what was worrying her, we all froze. It was the worst possible scenario, one that I hadn't even thought of.
Choco hadn't closed his eyes.
"Now! Crush all those that stand in your way!" Jango ordered, causing all his men to start running up the path while also causing a rather over muscled Choco to go running down it.
"Choco!" I shouted in horror, knowing that nothing good could come of this as Choco and the pirates neared each other.
"Help! Get me off this crazy bird!" Lil screamed from her position on Choco's back as Choco headed straight down the path, only for them to hit the oil and go sliding right into the mass of pirates.
At the same time I jumped down mass of pirates below from my spot on the cliff, Luffy and Zoro took off and followed Choco, thinking that same thing I was.
Oh shit.
---------------------
OK, I might be able to update again today, but only if I get a couple reviews. :D
Note: You can now look at artwork for this story by going to my profile and clicking on the links.
read and review, ------------ (and check my profile for polls, there's always one up,)