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.


The time has come! The great regal battle royal! King Rupert shall fight one of the two nefarious intruders. But who will it be? The happy blond pirate or the Demon King?

They haven't decided yet.

"DAMMIT!" Bard shouted. He drew his hand back from, yet again, another painful tie and slumped down on the ground. His eyes were pouring out tears of frustration and his teeth clenched hard as he babbled incoherently. Ramone just stood and watched him. His eye returned and flew into its socket at last, making him whole.

"Huh" Ramone grunted. "Looks like I'm up."

"What for?" Bard muttered.

"I'm going to fight the 'king'" Ramone declared. "Don't wait up."

"Hold on!" Bard demanded. He shot up and grabbed Ramone's shoulder just as he was about to depart. Bard tightened his grip, gesturing that he wouldn't let him go so easily. "We still haven't decided who's going to fight!"

"Gggg...." Ramone growled. He slapped Bard's hand away and leaned in to glare up through his greasy hair at the blond giant. "Look kid, I can appreciate a good attitude under trying circumstances but don't press yer luck! I've been waitin' to kill this guy for a year! You've barely been here a day! Just step back and let me handle my own damn business!!!"

"That's not how it works" Bard said. "I won't let you do it just because you want. You need to honestly beat me or come up with your own method of choosing!" Ramone formulated a plan at that very moment. He turned away, keeping Bard in the corner of his eyes, and threw off his coat with a shrug of his arms. Under the ragged coat was a shiny, better-than-new skin-suit that came up his back with a thin, flat piece of elastic which encircled his neck. His exposed shoulder blades were marked with horrid scars from years of torture passed.

"Race" Ramone said. "Then we draw. If you beat me there I;ll let you choose second in the draw, after me." Bard blinked. Ramone turned around and shifted his feet to run. Bard wouldn't be beat. He set himself up for a very simple and efficient Soru sprint through the brush and bramble of the deep woods they were hidden in. Ramone set himself up as well and ringed his fingers on each hand until they cracked.

"Ready" Bard said, now taking over the race. "Set..." Ramone was willing, it seemed, to play by the rules. He waited for the next word with twitching ankles. "GO!"

"Blind Beetle!" Ramone shouted. He threw his hand off of his arm and hit Bard in the face. Then he started sprinting off through the woods and into the far side of the garden.

"Hark!" a woman in the stands shouted in fear. "The Demon King approacheth!"

"We are doomed!" a man added. Gretta pulled up her binoculars and saw the evil, manic Ramone bashing away the innocent shrubs that stood in his way. He used his stumped arm to draw out a swarm of bugs that flew around him as a cloud and devoured everything that crossed his path.

"Save us, noble and great king!" a random peasant cried. Emily sat as daintily as ever. She was unphased by the events transpiring. She watched the Demon King coming and her face was just as stern as Gretta's. Although, Gretta had more admiration in her eye than anything.

"HIYAAAAAHH!!!" Bard roared through the trees. He exploded out with a hand on the giant beetle that clung to his face. He slowed down as he approached Ramone and yanked the bug off. "You forgot this!" Bard shouted. He threw the bug back at Ramone's face, but it just redirected itself with its folded wings and landed on his arm where it scurried back up to his hollow wrist and reformed into a hand. "That...is an amazing ability you have" Bard said very factually.

"Get the hell back" Ramone growled. "Mi-Go!" His left arm turned into a giant centipede which cackled and clicked before attacking Bard with its steel-ripping maw. Bard leaped away, losing ground, then decided to really crank out the speed and passed Ramone on his powerful legs without the aid of Soru.

"You're stupid arachnid can't defeat me!" Bard declared. The stupidity of Bard's comment and the audacity he said it with actually made Ramone slow down and nearly stop. Mi-Go intervened with Bard's pace with a quick jab of its head to his side. Bard was reeled back a ways, his organs taking a full brunt of an attack. Bard coughed loudly as he started to veer away out of pain, but his goal was already in sight. He raced, assumedly, for the bleachers where the villagers were seated.

"Oh no!" a man shouted in terror. "They come this way!"

"Save thyselves!" a woman screamed. Everyone started panicking and running around, trying to leave the area as soon as possible. Only Gretta and the psychologically hardened Emily stayed seated.

"What's all this ruckus?" the great, booming voice of the king called from beyond the high stone wall. All panic ceased. Ramone glared ahead to catch a glimpse of his target. Bard started catching up and pulling ahead, which prompted Ramone to go all out with his offensive tactics.

"Yi-Go!" he summoned. His right arm became an identical centipede and started wiggling around viciously in the air. Ramone suddenly made a jump through the air and turned toward Bard with his core muscles. Mi-Go swiped in a wide berth. Bard easily flipped over it. Yi-Go came just as fast under Mi-Go's shadow and hit Bard, sending him backwards with his legs whipping around freely. He had lost too much ground to catch up again

"Dammit" Bard groaned. He looked up at his now jogging foe with the long, living arms and gritted his teeth. With both legs set hard to the ground and a fist between them, Bard prepared for his fastest Soru dash that he could possibly achieve. "Soru: 1000 Mile Sprinting!!!" Bard disappeared. Ramone felt a huge wind rush past him and oculd only assume in anger that it was Bard. Fortunately for the menacing pirate, the villagers and caped king at the gates also felt a huge blast of wind. Araly saw the wind wipping up the dust and leaves from her safe area far across the courtyard with the field medics around her and Colleen.

"Bard!?" she shouted. Unfortunately, faster than the speed of sound, Bard was gone and couldn't hear her...or see anything anymore.


The wind continued to blow Bard's short hair into a bristled fire of gold. He already made his way through the country villa and the salty flat of the docks and was now a great distance out to sea in the Grand Line. He only realized it as he ran out of breath and fell up to his chest in cold sea water on the churning ocean.

"What the hell!?" Bard shouted. "How'd I get out here!?" It took a moment, but realization sunk in at last. "That's right. I must have run too fast. Hahaha! Man, I didn't think I was that powerful! Hahaha!" Then another startling revelation came to him. "Oh crap!" Bard shouted furiously. "That guy's going the beat me for sure now! I need to get back! Let's see, if I'm facing this way now, then the island must be back that way!" Bard made a full turnaround and started swimming. The more he swam the faster he got, until his arms were no longer pushing water but pumping as he made huge splashes with his feet on the surface of the water.

He continued running at full speed, forgoing the exhausting Soru, and started to think. His mind wandered back several years to the time when he was just a boy with the strength of a man. He began to remember some of the things that his adventure had already tried to make him forget, his childhood at his boring little chunk of rock that he called a homeland...


It was an early winter when this memory took place. Bard was still young, but not so young that he needed the constant supervision of his mother. He was an adolescent now. He made his way up a mountain in his bright shirt and pants with a heavy poncho catching the sharp rain as it sliced between the trees around him. Araly and her brother were behind him with their own heavier ponchos on protect their skin from the bruises this rain could give them.

"Come on!" Bard shouted above the whipping gale. "It's right up here!"

"You said that already!" Araly's brother noted. "Can you make it, Ara?"

"Oh sure" Araly said, a little girl on the precarious edge of her girlish years. She was just a day or two away from her own adolescent experiences, although she wouldn't know it until they hit her. "I'm getting hit with rain so hard that I feel like someone is trying to stab me! I'm just FINE!" Her angry voice carried over the rain and winds to pierce through her brother's ears like daggers.

"Wasn't this your idea?" he pointed out. Araly didn't care for the semantics. All she knew was that she was miserable in the choice she made and was regretting it angrily.

"I can see it!" Bard called as he crested a hilltop. "Come on! I'll meet you in there!" Bard went along on his own, walking through the storm as if it weren't there, with his companions slowly catching up form behind. Finally the fruit of their progress was revealed: a cave with Bard's name crudely carved at the arch of the entrance.

"This is it?" Araly said monotonically. Her brother smiled nervously and tried to make the best of his sister's justifiable anger.

"Well, at least we're here!" he said happily. Both children entered the cave and removed their ponchos in the windless cavern. Bard started them a fire and sat across it from his friends. He made a yawning stretch with his arms high up over his head and a smile stretching his cheeks.

"Ah!" Bard sighed in relief. "What a great place, right? I found it last summer."

"Well why didn't you invite us then!?" Araly demanded.

"Too many bears in the summer" Bard said very plainly.

"How would you know that...?" Araly asked in disbelief. This was all during the time where Bard's antics were only heard of when they pertained to what he did in town. He was well known to be unusually strong for his age, although he wasn't the brightest child, but all the tales he regaled the villagers with fell on deaf ears. No one believed that he, or anyone, could wrestle and fist-fight with the huge mountain grizzly bears under any given circumstance.

"There are only about fourteen bears on this mountain" Bard said rather calmly. "I've only fought a few of them, though. Most of them are pretty young. This is their territory in the summer."

"Shouldn't we leave then?" Dom said with shock. "I mean, what if they come back."

"Fool!" Bard said with a grin. "Bears hibernate in the winter! In the summer, they fight and forage, like animals!"

"THEY ARE ANIMALS!" Araly roared. Her teeth were as sharp and her face as menacing as a bears for that moment, forcing her brother and foolish friend to cower away in fear. She sighed her anger away and curled up closer to the fire. "Anyway, it's a nice cave Bard. I don't see the point in having it, though, unless you plan on living here."

"Well" Bard began "I had thought about that, but then who would do my laundry?"

"Good point" Dom said nodding his head. "If you leave your mother you won't have any clean clothes."

"That was the first obstacle I thought of" Bard admitted seriously. Both boys started nodding their heads in tune with each others' rhythm while Araly just watched in amazement and disgust.

"Is it really so hard to wash your own clothes?" Araly asked. The boys made a dramatic gasp at her and drew away. Time wore on. The children waited out the storm in the cave and laughed and joked. Araly found herself quite tired at that point, the march up the mountain and through the windy forest finally taking its toll on her, and she curled up on the floor to go to sleep. Bard remembered just how peaceful and happy she looked when she slept, almost like she weren't even there...

"Say Bard" Dom said, drawing the young Bard's attention away from his sister. "My mom was wondering, well actually she wanted me to ask you, but is your mom ever going to look for a new husband?"

"Hmm" Bard hummed as he thought with his tongue sticking out. "I don't know. Then again, I don't recall ever seeing her talking about that kind of stuff to other women or approaching any other men besides the storekeepers. I guess not."

"Well" Dom continued, "how would she feel about an arranged marriage?"

"Wouldn't any marriage technically be arranged?" Bard said, twisting the meaning of Dom's words. It took a moment for the young lad to recover, but Dom was finally able to piece his words together.

"No" he continued "I mean with you. Do you think she would set you up with a girl to marry when you're older?"

"I hope not" Bard said.

"Why not?" Dom asked.

"My mom would choose the wrong kind of girl for me" Bard explained. "I want a girl who knows how to land a punch, who knows how to box a bear! I want a girl that can fight!"


And now Bard returned from his pleasant memory to an infinite, empty ocean. He stopped on top of the water, not at all curious as to how he was standing on water, and looked around.

"I guess I ran past the island" Bard figured. Suddenly the water below him became menacing and dark. Two glowing orbs shone out through the deep sea and a meandering, snake-like form started to emerge from the water below Bard. He noticed just in time to make a huge jump away, as a Sea King came up with its nasty jaws clamping for food. "What the hell!?" Bard exclaimed.

Not only was he lost, but a serpentine Sea King was with him! With the battle at the island raging on and a new battle developing out at sea, what hope do the brave Buster Pirates have to win the day?

It turns out that Bard isn't the only person lost, as Marco had led his gang of bear-mounted pirates straight back to the Imperial Dragon flagship. They delivered a symbolic and unified hand-to-head slap, forcing Marco off his bear.

"IDIOT!" they all shouted, echoing their call through the woods and into the crisp perpetual-Fall air...