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.
Far off the coast of the island Okumaiwa where the Buster Crew was currently docked, the whales breached the water and sang into the open air. The swirling aura of revolution hung over the distant island like a cloud that was ready to drop down and engulf the people. Those whales were very promptly devoured by an enormous whale-like Sea King that dove back down with barely a sound. Inside the castle of the island, the huge fortress of royalty where the corrupt king and the anachronistic servants of the Government lived. IN here, in the medical wing, Reginald has awoken with his original conscience thanks to the beat down Rez gave him! Now he and Rez are preparing to talk with Zan.
"You see" Reginald began, lighting up a cigarette stolen from the nurses quarters where Kura was tied up, "I am to blame for the state of this island. It was a folly I made twenty years ago, when I was but a reckless young man like you."
"I'm a pirate, guy" Rez argued. "The 'like you' thing doesn't quite work for Government agents."
"Kururu" Reginald laughed softly. The evil and blood-lust had effectively left his voice now and he spoke like a normal, if jaded, man. "I was as rambunctious and lawless a scientist as they would allow. The whole reason I chose this island to test my drugs was because of its uninhabited state. I took some men I felt similarity to, men who had fallen from grace and abandoned their honor for personal ambition, and I watched them die here. The people you have seen are only a slim percentage of the survivors and their children. Most of the convicts responded negatively to the drug, went mad, and tried to wrestle the giant bears in the woods."
"From screw up to screw up" Rez said. "So why not call it off and run away?"
"I would have" Reginald said, "if not for my treacherous assistant, Rupert Lioncrest!"
"What!?" Rez exclaimed.
"He's behind this crap?" Zan groaned.
"Yes" Reginald said. "The project was going along swimmingly until he decided to butt in. He grew some annoying complex after having a child with one of the female prisoners, a convicted murder he manipulated with the mind-control drug, and decided he wanted to be a king. He used the drug to break down the people's minds and mold them into something what you've already seen."
"That rat bastard!" Rez shouted, shooting up to his feet. He took a moment to read Reginald's surprised expression for an affirmative sign. "Right? He's a rat bastard?"
"Yes, he is" Reginald said. "That's less of a problem now, though. He's made irreversible setbacks in my plan, something I refuse to forgive. Thankfully, I already had a partial tolerance to the drug, so my state of drug-driven madness hasn't left me defenseless. Over the years he treated me like a monster, a secret weapon that knows only pure destruction. Now, I have become that weapon, and I will use the power he force-fed me to crush him between my fingers! If you and your crews could help me, I'd be obliged, and the whole incident of your arival on Government-sanctioned land will be...lost in the paperwork."
"That'd be pretty nice of you to do" Rez said. "Alright, not like we want a full armada taking us out this early in our venture. Deal." Rez extended his hand and the much stronger Reginald nearly crushed it with a shake.
"That's nice" Zan said, bringing attention to the crushing wounds that Reginald had caused earlier.
"Oh right" Reginald shamefully said with a sigh. "Sorry about that, sir. I couldn't do anything about it."
"No, I know" Zan said "but I still want to know how you circulated and are still circulating a drug this potent. Where is it?"
"It" Reginald began "is in the wa---" That's when Reginald took notice of Zan's IV bags. There were several of them inside him through his casts, holding him down and filling him with the medical liquid. "Oh, crap! Rez, sever those IV bags, quickly!"
"You mean..." Rez said, realizing the truth. Zan's eyes started shaking out of shock.
"It's in the water" Zan whispered.
"DAMN!" Rez cursed. He sliced all the IV tubes off and let the fluids spill out to the floor. "What now?"
"He may have taken" Reginald darkly started "a bit too much."
"Oh it was in the IV bags, eh?" Zan very casually said.
"Be more serious!" Rez demanded. "You could be under the effects already, dammit! Quick, criticize me!"
"You're a moron" Zan said "and of course I'm not under the effects. Why else am I still conscious, exhausted an in pain?"
"You didn't...?" Reginald said. "Why would you?"
"Do what?" Rez asked. "Who? Where? Huh!?" He darted his head back and forth until it stopped to look at Zan.
"I never trusted these people" Zan admitted. "The anachronistic nurses and technology in this room was enough to shatter my trust. Those IV tubes were never inserted in me. Rather, they went through me." Rez blinked in disbelief a few times, then ducked his head and saw the huge, dripping wet spots under the bed. "Now I need some help phasing my way out of these bandages!"
"Can you walk without the casts?" Reginald asked, offering a hand while Rez sulked off with a grimace of total disbelief.
"I've suffered worse, actually" Zan admitted. He brought his hand up from the dry, solid bandages and was lifted out from the casts and onto the floor. He landed on his feet with a loud groan, stumbled forward, and then regained his balance. "I'm not in fighting shape per say."
"Pity" Reginald growled. "I thought you could help make this part easy..."
"What part?" Rez asked, snapping back to the present. Reginald walked over to the huge wooden and steel-bound door, cracked his knuckles and stomped into place. With one well-wound punch he shattered the door against the opposite hallway wall and flexed his miraculously defined body.
"The escape" Reginald growled, facing back into the room.
In the garden, Araly continued fighting Morgan. Her strategy to noose her with an electric lasso was progressing without much actual progress. So far she had gotten the heavy woman to sweat form constantly moving around with a heavy loom tied around her back, but Araly's actual, damaging attacks weren't doing that much. On the other side of the shrub and bush wall Araly could hear the hissing of steam and the explosive blasts of Colleen's arm cannon.
"Right, here!" Morgan shouted, avoiding some exploding pieces of paper. "You're getting quite a bugger, ain't ya?"
"What!?" Araly shouted, not understanding any part of what she had said.
"I ain't playing, here!" Morgan announced. She finally found some solid cover behind a statue and threw the loom from her back to the ground. She worked quickly, with ridiculous speed and amazing dexterity, to make some immensely thick ropes of steely blue. Morgan made two ropes of indefinite length attached to the loom and stepped out from cover. Araly standing with her hands behind her back and smiling innocently. Once she saw Morgan, she winked and stuck out her tongue.
"You wench!" Morgan shouted. "You dare stick out your tongue to me!?" Morgan took a step forward, felt some paper crinkle under her feet, and looked sharply down. Four ropes forming a box around her ankle started converging until they snapped and wrapped all the way up around her huge legs, binding them both together and forcing her off balance to the ground.
"You fell for it" Araly said in a sing-song voice. "I set a trap while you weren't looking. In fact, I set up a few!"
"Tricky, aren't ye?" Morgan growled. Despite the magical cement-grade binding properties of the cloth and alchemic ink, Morgan was able to not only part her legs but with some extra straining effort broke the ropes! Araly wasn't too surprised, she anticipated that happening, and that's why she merely lowered her smile and turned cautiously to the side. The wind caught her hair and her long, silken scarf that hung from her arms.
"You can't beat me, here" Morgan warned. "I tell you twitty, you'd be bet'er off runnin' 'way an' beggin' fa mercy!" Unseen by Morgan, the broken bits of rope at her feet were reforming with the frayed edges of the torn cloth adapting very pointed edges.
I used the freezing ink Araly thought combined with a healing ink. Once broken, it will become frozen and frigid, then reform magnetically. Now that she's torn up the ropes she's essentially made her own Iron...!!! Finally, divine inspiration struck Araly! She had a name for the attack she had just used, and decided to flaunt her new-found technique by snapping her fingers and crossing her arms. She pointed down at Morgan and shouted to get her attention.
"Hey!" Araly called. "You've been trapped! Again! By my Icy Iron Maiden!" Morgan looked confused, but once the biting, ripping pain started at her legs she realized just what had happened. The sharp-pointed ropes were digging into her skin trying to reform through her skin, and now they were too deep to yank out without damage. Morgan growled and made a desperate act. She reeled back as she fell down and tossed one of her giant ropes at Araly. Araly was forced out of her cocky position and fled. The rope impacted hard into the ground, making a small crater, and the audience cheered.
"Make her flee!" a male shouted from the stands. "She deserveth it!" Gretta stared analytically at the fight, waiting for the next brilliant play.
"Ouch!" Morgan grunted. She began slowly pulling the ropes out so they would assemble as soon as they were out of her leg. She had some small holes and they were bleeding, but after some painless flexing of her foot she decided she was alright. Araly looked at the huge pillar sticking out of the ground and the shaking strands that came from the loom. "You wench! I'll end you right now!"
"No you won't!" Araly shouted. Then she started running away. She ran past the bleachers and the citizens gasped in fear. Morgan started running forward so she could keep her eye on Araly without risking hitting the villagers, but lost her as she ran into the garden. Morgan started running back, but a fast flurry of inked cards came at her. She took the pillar of rope like a loge and batted the cards away. They didn't do anything, decoys. Araly burst out from a hedge and threw some real cards. Morgan had to throw her pillar down into the ground to block the explosions. Now her main weapon was lodged in the ground and Araly was at her side with her silk scarf billowing behind her like a mystical shawl.
"Ha!" Araly shouted, pulling out a hand of cards. "I win now!" Araly threw the cards at an angle, hoping to trap Morgan's feet again by hitting the ground around her or her legs. Morgan didn't want either to happen so she made a rash decision and leaped powerfully back. While in the air, she took out some sharp-brimmed hats from the tailor's quarters in the castle and threw them at Araly. Araly didn't expect another attack and panicked to block. She got cut on her arm and both legs, but she could still stand. "Ow! No! Now what!?"
"Ha!" Morgan shouted as she landed. "Now we're even, here!" Araly crouched down to grab her legs in pain...and smiled. Morgan stood under a tree, a tree she hadn't noticed before, and wasn't able to notice in time.
"No!" a villager shouted. "Run!"
"Flee!" a woman called.
"That duplicitous knave!" Rupert growled with a slam of his fist. Gretta, the undoubtedly smartest of all the royalty in the land, smiled. She had gotten to see something wonderfully complex in this fight. An electric noose swooped down and wrapped around Morgan's neck, startling and electrocuting her.
"AHHH!!!" Morgan screamed in pain. "Ah! What? Wha' is dis, here!?!?"
"I told you" Araly said, waving her hand "I set up some traps. That one's the Lightning Gallows trap, and you fell for it perfectly." Morgan continued groaning and growling with her hands around the noose while Araly moved over to the huge loom with several explosive cards. "Now, to get rid of this thing just in case..."
"NO!" Morgan shouted suddenly. Araly looked over and saw the buff woman tear apart her noose and drop loudly to the ground. Her cowl hood was singed off revealing her bald and, anachronistic as it may be, tattooed head. "Don't you touch that, here!!!" Morgan demanded. Araly started backing away form it, but a sudden and huge boom startled her off her balance. The tree Morgan escaped from was now coming at her and falling toward her. Morgan looked up in dire distress and watched the tree crash down on her. She had lost the fight, debilitated by tree to the face. Araly had taken cover behind the loom out of fear and saw a huge smoldering hole in the shrub wall.
"Colleen?" Araly asked. Gretta looked over and saw a huge pluming cloud of smoke, and within that she saw the two glowing eyes of the murderous Demon that Edmund fought. The white-knight's shield was dented and the elegantly painted Lioncrest symbol was melted and distorted beyond recognition. His sword was fine as he hadn't yet gotten the chance to use it, and his stance showed that he remained adamant to his righteous cause. He had the highest hope despite the obvious overwhelming force of evil that was the smoke-engulfed Colleen.
What impressive force! He thought in his effeminate voice. She truly is beautiful when she fights...
