Disclaimer: One Piece is the property of Eiichiro Oda. Many of the characters in this story are property of me. Do not use this story or its characters without my permission. Thank you.
Bard was lazily laying on the bowsprit of the ship, snoring and drooling instead of doing his job.
"Bard!" Rez shouted. He threw something and knocked Bard's face into the wood.
"What!?" Bard roared back.
"You're supposed to keep watch for the island!" Rez yelled. "Max can't do everything!" Although, he was steering in a way.
"Meh, there's nothing out there" Bard nearly whined. "It's a waste of energy to keep watching all this nothing, it makes me sleepy..."
"You're a moron" Rez insulted.
"What!?" Bard said, gritting his teeth in Rez's face. "Well then, you're a monkey!"
"I'd rather be a monkey!" Rez shot back. "At least then the ladies will like me!"
"WHAT'S THAT MEAN!?" Bard shouted. Rez broke his crazy-angry stare down and looked past Bard, who noticed and tried to re-engage him. "Now what, ass-hat!?" Rez took his face and pushed him away. He stomped over to the end of the deck and took out a telescope. In the distance, closing in from the horizon, was a ship.
"Crap" Rez lowed.
"Carp?" Bard repeated, mishearing Rez. "You saw a carp!?"
"There's a ship incoming!" Rez alerted. He ran down to the deck and headed for the stairs. "Everyone! Battle stations!" he shouted. All the pirates looked up from their card games and their rum, and said nothing. They just gazed at him like partially startled animals.
"Dude" Zan said, melding out from the wall behind, "calm down. We're in our battle stations." Rez gave him a stupid look, and Zan eventually gave in to it. "Well...I am anyway" he joked.
"Wha-but..." Rez stuttered, shaking off his shock. "You're all just sitting on you fat, useless asses! How is this battle ready!?"
"HEY GUYS!" Bard shouted, charging downstairs and straight into Rez. "There's a ship coming! What should we do?" Now the pirates were paying attention.
"That depends" Marco said, walking over. "Was it a Marine ship?" Bard shrugged.
"Not...likely" Rez muttered from under Bard's boot. Bard lifted up his fot and stepped off his comrade as he began to talk again.
"The sails weren't standard Marine issue" Res said. "They were triangular."
"Isosceles or Right triangle?" Bard asked.
"It was right" Rez answered, then snapped. "Wait, WHAT KIND OF SHIP HAS AN ISOSCELESE SAIL!?"
"I was just making sure..." Bard said. Zan took a drag from his cigarette and set foot on the floor once more.
"Could be pirates" he said. "Could also be merchants. Either way, we should lull them into a trap. Everyone hide!" Zan's order sent them all running about. The crew ducked themselves into crates and barrels, closets and nooks, every space where any given man could fit without being obvious.
"Won't we be exposing ourselves?" Rez asked, getting up.
"If they're pirates" Zan said, "they'll want to loot the ship before they blow it up. They'll come over if they really want to, and then they'll get it."
"Get what?" Bard asked. Zan lit a new cigarette so the shadow of the flame would make his face even more terribly dramatic.
"Death..." he growled.
"Oh!" a gruff man shouted, looking through a rusty, broken spy glass. "Captain, there's a ship sailing with no sailors!"
"Easy pickings!" the apparent captain, ugly and scarred from years of fighting exclaimed. "Let's get ready to board and haul that ship away! Lord knows we can fetch a fine price for it on the market!"
"Aye aye, sir!" his crew saluted. The ship they sailed on, much smaller than the one they aimed to capture, was in terrible shape. The fact they didn't have immediate plans to just take the Imperial Dragon for themselves was astonishing. Whether it was a devotion to their tattered ship that had sailed with them for so long or a mind for money, they all charged up the ship with rope and bridges to loot and plunder. However, the deck was completely barren. The pirates looked around, the blood lust fading from their faces quickly, and started walking in a daze. Down below, the crew steered the ship in their designated heading.
"We should raise the sails" Marco noted "on the starboard side. That ship is weighing us down a bit."
"The sails are up" one of his fellow crewmen noted. "All of them are."
"Ah, then we have a problem" Marco said.
"No we don't" Bard said, leaning against the wall and smiling. "Just let me up there and there won't be a problem anymore. Shishishi!"
"That's a frightening confidence" Marco noted, smiling back at Bard unconsciously.
"Don't try it, Bard" Rez growled. "You may be strong and inhumanly tough but they could still outnumber you."
"Yeah" Bard said thoughtfully, "but numbers only count for so much."
"And in war, they count" Zan added, melding back into the room again.
"How's it look?" Marco asked, cranking a lever as quietly as possible.
"Their ship is nearly deserted" Zan reported. "And above that, it's in pretty crappy condition. We could sink it with one cannon."
"Maybe" Bard added. "Or, one kick!" Everyone looked at him oddly, except Zan who glared at him not to get any ideas.
"What?" Rez unbelievingly. The thugs up top dismissed whatever they had heard, convincing themselves that they heard nothing.
"Give me a shot" Bard offered. "Besides, what can their captain do against me? I have combat training!"
"Living in the wilderness isn't exactly training..." Rez said. Bard snarled at him as they heard the stomping just overhead. Bard put a finger to his mouth and darted off to the cannon deck. Rez wanted to shout him out of the idea, but decided it wouldn't work.
"You know" Zan whispered to Rez, "You and me can definitely take them on alone..." Rez pursed his lips and thought about it for a second. Meanwhile, in the port cannon deck, Bard was moving a cannon out of the way so he could jump out and crash onto the ship below.
"Okay" Bard began, cracking his knuckles. "The weak point of the ship should be at it's center. That's how it works in martial arts...right? Well, I'll figure it out." He extended his leg and crouched into the hole. No one was on the deck that he could see, but the captain was still there somewhere. Bard kept his one leg out, flipped down, and kicked off the side of his ship.
"Okay!" Bard shouted, repositioning in mid air. He rolled to face the ship and cocked his legs in. He crunched his whole body inward, like a ball, and let himself fly to the last second. At once, he extended his body and activated his Soru kicking speed. The combined force of his whip-motion strength and the rapid, light-speed kicking resulted in a force that literally ripped the ship's deck apart.
"RANKYAKU!!!" Bard shouted, and although it wasn't exact, the ship exploded with a blue light of the stormy power from Bard's legs.
"What the hell was that!?" one of the looting pirates asked. Then, he grunted painfully and fell to the floor. The pirates turned to him, then armed themselves and took a step back. From out of nowhere, a man wearing dagger-tipped shoes appeared, his leg extended with blood dripping from his blade.
"Man" he mocked, "you guys aren't good pirate's, are ya?"
"They aren't man" Rez called from the deck door. Half the pirates faced him while half concentrated on Zan. "They don't even know a trap when they see one!"
"Arr" they all growled. Rez drew out his gunblades, holding them close to his head, and walked forward. Zan sheathed his footblade and took out his handblades, marching forward. The offending pirates circled themselves defensively, forming a tight, fearful guard, as both men came down upon them.
"Boom" both Rez and Zan lowed...
Down in the water, Bard floated on a piece of driftwood that had once been an aged pirate ship. Debris of all kinds floated around, including fragmented wood and furniture. Barrels leaked their contents and already rotten food crumbled in the ocean.
"Huh" Bard huffed. "That was cool." He stood triumphantly on some of the more sturdy debris, floating in the gentle waves away from his ship.
"Puagh!" gasped a voice. Bard looked over and saw the captain of the ship he just leveled with one kick breaking the water again. "What happened?" he asked. "Am I dead?"
"Hehehe!" Bard chuckled. "You're not dead! Your ship is, though!" The weary captain looked around at the scrap floating about and fainted into the water. Bard looked at him for a while before realizing that he was in need of help. Up on deck, the invading pirates were getting quickly trashed.
"The art of Dueling" Rez lectured, twirling his gunblades "is a serious matter." Five pirates, not caring what he had to say, charged at him. Rez took one of his arms, twirled the gunblade horizontally instead of vertically, and fired five shots at once. Each bullet went through a different pirate's body and stopped within another far behind them. "For example, never interrupt a duelist when he needs to line up a shot, or he won't care where he hits you!" Across the deck, Zan was nearly finished with his dispatching.
"Come on now" he patronized. "You can do it!" The pirates he taunted snapped and charged him. He stepped on the face of the first one to reach him, the used it to jump up and kick tow heads down to the deck with one motion. Then, he bent his knees upon landing, and kicked two more pirates in the face from his crouched position. Still not done, he placed a hand on the deck for balance and drew out his footblades. Then he whirled around with his hands and cut down everyone. Feeling satisfied, Zan pushed down to jump up with his hands and landed closer to the middle where no bodies were gently on his feet. "You can all die. No one can stand up to me..."
"Nice fight" Rez complimented. What pirates had survived were feigning death to get them to go away and not try and kill them. "You get them all?"
"Most of them" Zan said. "Some of them are faking it, but I'll let it slide..." The ones who heard him became afraid and started to shake.
"Hey!" Bard's voice called. He jumped up over the side of the ship with a body over his shoulder. "I blew up the ship!"
"..." Rez gapped in astonishment. "Bullcrap!" he protested. He stomped over as Bard casually walked over to add the captain's body to the pile.
"You were right" Bard admitted to Zan. "These guys were pirates!"
"Yeah" Zan remarked, blowing smoke into the air. "And now they're not..."
Quite a while later, when all the pirates living and barely living were gathered up below, the crew decided immediately on a course of action.
"We'd say we're sorry but we aren't!" Marco taunted. The captain, with his freshly puffed-up mouth and eyelids, weeped pathetically at them.
"Good luck out there!" Bard said, their line. "Try not to attract a Sea King!" All the pirates that were crammed onto the tiny, scrap-wood dinghy moaned and whined in fear as they drifted off far behind the speeding Imperial Dragon.
"So long, numb-nuts!" one pirate yelled, starting up a cacophonous cheer of the others. "Don't ever mes with the Buster Pirates!!!" The defeated crew drifted out, holding back their tears of sadness and desperate fear as their tiny ship bobbed about in the waves left behind by the monster ship.
"Hey! Let's celebrate!" Bard said in his 'captain voice'. "Fire up some fish!"
"Okay" Marco replied with equal enthusiasm. "Go get some then!" The rest of the pirates went marching down to the lower deck, shouting their own praises and taunting their captain to get them fish.
"Ah..." Bard groaned. "You guys are jackasses!" Regardless, Bard removed his jacket, stowed it under a crate and dove into the water...again.
