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.
Two years after the expedition started, a year since their abandonment. Reginald took a short walk in his torn lab coat and armor to challenge the bears to their ritual boxing. If he did not occasionally win a match the bears would continue coming at them with increasing hostility. In fighting their strongest males Reginald could regain their trust in the alliance he had built with them.
The prisoners were recently being forcefully subjected to a new string of the drug which made them restless, perfect candidates for hard and heavy labor even in their progressing age. Only one subject was spared from the trials, the Amazonian girl with soft pink hair whom Rupert had taken a professional attraction to. She was in his roughly built shack of a cabin, one right next to Reginald's laboratory, nearly everyday reminiscing on her mysterious homeland of Amazon Lily.
"I told you" she said angrily "I refuse to tell you anything! Why you continue to interview me is beyond logic!" This feisty, fiery tempered girl with the neck-length hair ending in curls, was Rose. Even in her grimy inmate shirt lined with black and white bars she had the enticing figure of a woman born on the island of all earthly-male's dreams. Rupert, with his white sideburns forming a mane of hair around his scowl-scarred face, looked at her with a neutral patience while tapping his pencil between his fingers.
"I know you will tell me eventually" Rupert said. "If you don't I'll send you out there, among the men, and let come what may."
"I am pure" she defended. "Even that hell known as 'Impel Down' could not ruin me. I fought off every man that made their intentions known to me and killed several. Whatever may come will certainly not be what you must assume. I am a warrior of the ultimate race!"
"What race?" Rupert asked. "The both of us are human, albeit we were born from very different places."
"I am a woman!" she said. "I am above your level of humanity...man!" Rupert silenced a building laugh with his hand over his mouth and turned in his seat. He wrote that Amazonian women have a displeasing temper about men. They regard women as higher than men in mainly every regard.
"Tell me" Rupert began, "about your cultures mating ritual." Rose got up and tried to attack Rupert for his bluntness in tone to the question. Rupert threw out a leg and tripped her. She fell face-forward, seeing Rupert begin to stand up through her lashes, and grabbed the floor with her hands. She rose up on her arms and choked Rupert with her shins. Then she pushed up and sat with Rupert's face between her knees, placing her fists on her hips.
"You are vulgar!" Rose growled. "I should kill you for saying such a thing to a warrior like me!" Rose raised up a fist to punch Rupert's head but something bit her from behind. Rupert had taken a device out from his concealed pockets on his regal lab coat and placed it in the thick of her lateral muscles. Her body became dangerously numb and she fell to the ground twitching.
"Do not underestimate me" Rupert lowed. He tossed the device, a syringe filled with a sedative serum, in his hand and stepped down to stare Rose in her angry eyes. "We men have time and time again conquered the world and all of its dangers. What a single woman like you could do to offset such a thing is none of my concern, because unless you simply haven't noticed, you are a prisoner in a system of holding designed by and occupied in majority by men. Most affluent pirates are men. Most of the more affluent Marines are men. I can't name any women with a high place in the World Government to save my life!"
"I don't care" she tiredly slurred "about the world. On this island, I am the strongest...because...I'm the only true..." She passed out. The sedative worked to well and her heart slowed dangerously down. Rupert stood up and walked over to the private two-way Den Den Mushi decorated with his family crest painstakingly etched by the more artistic prisoners, and picked it up.
"Kurateka" he called. "The stuff you gave me didn't work. She's totally out of it."
"Are you sure?" the young, supple voice of Kurateka Kevorkia replied. "Did you try kicking her a little?"
"She's out" Rupert said, bottom line. "Come get her and make sure she doesn't die. I'm very close to cracking her, I know it."
"Haven't you gotten any secrets out of her yet!?" Kura demanded. "If Reginald finds out you're withholding information or keeping one of the prime subjects from regular testing for your own, stupid purposes you'll be in for a lot of hurt!" Rupert looked down at the fantastically beautiful girl and sighed.
"I can deal with Drakengard" Rupert said. "He saves all his fight for the bears and blows a lot of hot air our way when he can. Nothing to worry about." He hung up the Mushi and sat back at his desk. It was elevated high enough that he didn't have to slouch to write but he slouched down anyway. It was more from his own mental exhaustion from working with her for so long rather than his usual arrogant anxiety. She was going to say warrior...wasn't she? Rupert thought. He decided to record his thoughts, that Amazonians all consider themselves pure warriors, which perpetuates their gender-bias opinions.
Walking back over the hill with a chest full of fresh, shallow cuts was Reginald. The sun was setting in the sky, right over the skull of the bear, as usual, and the grass shifted beneath his sweat-soaked bare feet. In his fight he had nearly lost an eye along with most of his armor, but thankfully his perfectly sharp beard was fully intact. He dragged behind him a bounty of fish and fresh forest fruit, a gift from the bear tribe for his persistence in combat. The men would surely be happy to see it, although in his current state he knew they'd be terrified of him first.
"I'm getting stronger" Reginald said, thinking aloud. "It used to take three bears to take me down completely. This year they needed five. They've been training as well. My presence is contributing to their increasing combative nature, and their instinctive honor system is what steers them away from raiding my camp. They are fantastic, amazing creatures!" With his thoughts expertly spoken he marched his way through the tall, thick wooden gates and carried his bounty into the storage for sorting.
"Sir!" a Marine announced, making his frightened way over to the man. "Um...unfortunately, our previous attempts at reaching the nearest Marine outpost have been unsuccessful. Our transmissions were, however, jammed by some unknown means."
"Is that so?" Reginald growled. The Marine, well over a foot shorter than the terribly large, strong man, shook in terror over what he anticipated to by a scathing, chiding response. Instead, Reginald took in a deep breath, braced his back with his hands and parted his feet to shoulder length. "KURURURURURU!!!!!" he laughed. "Someone's sure to notice this place eventually, wouldn't you say? I say it's a good sign that our transmissions got blocked! At least this way, if worse comes to worse, we'll get in some good fighting practice against some really active pirates, or better yet, some Revolutionaries!" The Marine sighed and saluted as he went away. Reginald made a straight, stomping march for the infirmary so his wounds could be treated, ignoring the unusual bustle around him.
The drugged inmates were becoming markedly more hostile in their duties but seemed intent on finishing their given individual tasks. Reginald observed an increased distance with which the inmates walked, as if their human instincts had been marred by the drug and fought off the usual want for company and camaraderie. Not that prisoners considered one another comrades, but the human condition was a faithful thing to a scientist like Reginald. Rather than stop and let himself continue bleeding he simply noted the oddness in his head and burst open the doors to the room finaley built from sterile blocks of limestone.
"Knock, why won't you!?" the younger Kurateka Kevorkia exclaimed. Her figure was just as good as it is in the present, but her appearance was slightly different. Instead of strange goggles over her eyes she let one eye exposed form her tight bandages. She still wore those, though, and her brilliant red hair curled endlessly in wavy patterns down to her neck. Upon seeing Reginald in his terrible shape she gasped and nearly dropped the clipboard she held. "Sir Reginald! Good lord, what have you done to yourself!?"
"Nothing" Reginald said flatly as he made his way over to a bed. He laid himself down, elevated his legs and even inserted his own IV before any of the nurses could get close enough to help. "Those bears have gotten stronger! Now that beings from the outside world have set up in their home they feel the need to keep up a competition with their alpha male, me."
"Since when were you a male?" Kura asked. She took out a stretch of gauze and began carefully and precisely wrapping. "I can't believe you, Reginald. Between you and the subjects I can't decide who needs more of my general care..."
"Ah, calm yourself" Reginald said with a grin. "Hmm. Now that I think of it, you're eighteen now, aren't you?" She purposely yanked one of his bandages and leaned down on the wound closest to his gut. "NGAH! No, I didn't mean anything by it!"
"Oh didn't you?" she asked skeptically. She loosened up her band at once, thankful inside that this man could withstand that kind of pain without complaint.
"It's somewhat amazing, isn't it?" Reginald asked. Kura turned to him and blinked her blue eye. "It's been two years since we found ourselves like this, forgotten and abandoned by the world. In those two years I haven't even compiled enough data to make for a good book. This island is so mysterious, so delicate and fragile in its ecosystem that it just gets harder and harder for me to keep up with all the changes taking place."
"Really?" she asked. "I thought things were going well up til now. You've gathered enough specimens to start a small farm we can keep year long, those bears have provided you with more research notes than Rupert can keep up with...and on top of that the Marines here have benefited from being away for so long in that they've become much stronger than normal. I'd say this experiment has had the most beneficial effects of any project recently performed in our history, sir! You've been able to prove that good nature can benefit the body indirectly!"
"That pause" Reginald said. Kura looked up from her handiwork and saw him rise, disregarding the pain form pressing into his toned and injured abs. "Right after you said his name you paused...why is that, Kura?" She became visibly tense all of a sudden. She clutched a piece of gauze tightly in her hand, and then resorted to the only defensive measure she knew. She popped the first two buttons of her top and skipped away, holding her chest delicately with her hands and blushing through her bandages.
"Oh, Sir!" she exclaimed. "Why, I may be eighteen, but that doesn't make your behavior appropriate! Oh my!" With her extreme girly inflection she fled into the surgical wing and slammed the door behind her. Reginald sighed and laid back.
"What could he be doing..." Reginald thought aloud.
The months continued to pass. The same old came and went. Reginald observed the bears in their more docile state and wrote article upon article about the duality of their nature in a non-conflictual setting. The chieftain bear even began taking a liking with Reginald, rather than the sporting hunter-prey relationship they developed initially. Reginald spent more and more time compiling data about the bears, season after season, all the while passing his notes and gathered information to his Marines. Without the Government tracking their motions, the Marines lived an easy, slaking life. Some got fat, others got strong, but most of them became wise.
In the absence of a totally controlling system of justice the willpower of personality was shining through. Most of the men had already abandoned their titles as Seamen, Cabin boys, Infantry and whatever else in favor of survivors. They worked at the base belonging to the Marines not out of commitment but out of the honest jot of work. Some of the Marines had even made friends with the prisoners, finding them to be more interesting men in their drug-induced docile state than they initially seemed to be. Because the drug only worked on one part of the brain, the aggression and conflict control, each man who took it remained exactly the same as he ever was but sober of rage.
Friendships were made from summer to winter, but in the darkest of seasons is when tragedy was most likely to strike. Despite the technology they had with them, dated by twenty years today, deaths were common among the working prisoners. What made them angry and mindful of their imprisonment in a system of synthetic liquids and serums wasn't the fact that some died, but that fewer Marines would die because of their better nutrition and ability to stop working long enough to stargaze. They were inmates for life, working themselves to death.
Many of the Marines and former Marines spoke against such activity and demanded a fair review of each suspected villain before the merciless slave-driving was implemented. Among the still ruling parties of the island a majority was reached that the prisoners would remain prisoners and they would continue to be subjects in the mind-manipulation experiment. Reginald was not within that majority, however.
The third year of exile, spring rolled back around in its usual way. The bears came out and greeted Reginald at the bay as he waited for a full day overlooking the sea. Rupert was set to be in charge of the base in Reginald's absence and began his usual misdeeds once more, taking Rose into his private room and binding her arms together so she couldn't attack. To keep her from standing out as a healthy specimen Rupert demanded to keep her hair cut and her belly hidden, for she was in the peak physical condition of every inmate on the island. Her hostility towards him had drained over time and now she was unconcerned with him. She just stared blankly to the side, focusing on the wall.
"Are you going to tell me" Rupert began "the law system of Amazon Lily?"
"No" she answered plainly. Rupert smile and looked down at his sheet. He had already gotten that information and so much more out of her. The only things lacking were her personal history and an explanation of mating rituals. Rupert moved down from that list with his hands balled together.
"Tell me more" Rupert sincerely began "about yourself."
"I was a warrior" she said flatly "a long time ago. Only the strongest warriors of my island can accompany the Empress out into the world as pirates. I had won many tournaments, many fights in front of her. I was one of the best with a sword or bow. Then on one of our attacks in the sea you call the Grand Line our ships were assaulted. Our Empress forced us to flee, but many of us were lost in that attack. Hideous specters struck at us from a ship of all the world's colors. The 'Rainbow Rockers' they called themselves. Their strongest warrior, a man dressed like a rainbow monster, took me down with but a single attack and I was left for dead on the island where we fought. I was left for dead by my sisters...by my Empress...because what I did wasn't enough... I wasn't strong enough......"
Rupert sighed with a grin and saw it. The moment he had been waiting for out of her for so long had finally come. The nearly invincible Amazon Lily pirate, a former member of the terrible Kuja Pirates, had died inside. Her will was shattered and her guard was down. She was vulnerable to anything, including Rupert. With his beard fully grown around his chin exactly like a white-haired lion and a terrible face to match, Rupert got up and approached her.
"So you're no longer a warrior, are you?" Rupert said, untying her restraints. "You're just a woman. Yes...." He let the ropes drop to the floor, followed by her clothes. "Just a woman..." So the evil of Rupert was released that day. The years of latent hostility and frustration at being the heel under Reginald's boot culminated in the event that led to his ultimate fall from grace and sanity, the birth of his daughter...
