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 duel was on! The fate of the kingdom not-yet-to-be was on the line as Reginald Drakengard charged to fight in his Sea King armor. The man who wears the skin of monsters absorbed the memories of his previous life with the tribe and became a monster who simply wore the skin of a man, throwing thrashing punch after punch into the ground where Rupert retreated from.

"KURURU!!!!" Reginald growled. "Come on, Rupert! You're a man! You should be able to face me!!! I thought nobles respected honor and the faith in their name when it came to dueling men below them! Am I so far below you that you can't see?" Rupert stopped and turned around, barely dodging a sweeping jump-kick from the ranting Reginald. "Or am I simply above you now?"

"Nonsense!" Rupert shouted. He grabbed Reginald's leg and whipped him around before throwing him over shoulder into the ground. Reginald felt no pain through the thick scale-mail armor he wore and rolled backwards onto his feet. He rose up, brought his fists up before his body and charged in with a roar. Rupert sidestepped him and gave him a chop to the neck with his metal gauntlet. The one unarmored area received the whole hit and sent a shivering shock through Reginald's body. He nearly fell over just as Rupert came up from behind with a hidden blade brandished form within his armor. Thankfully Reginald fell forward, grabbed the ground with his hands and made a spinning kick to deflect Rupert's arm and break the blade it held. The noble didn't relent and came back with two more blades held down in his hands.

"Give up!" Reginald shouted. He grabbed one arm in tight clutch with his body and snared the other at the wrist. He headbutted Rupert into a daze and let him step back to regain his balance before drop-kicking his face. Reginald hit the ground with his armored chest then pushed himself up to his feet with a single huge motion of his arms. Rupert was reeling and writhing on the ground, clutching his face as the blood oozed down from his broken nose. "You know I'm stronger than you." Rupert glared through his parted fingers and sneered. Reginald sensed danger and dodged to the side just as a bullet flew from Reginald's gauntlet.

A hidden arsenal? Reginald noted. He's gone to such lengths to kill me! How long has he been planning this!?

"I bet you're thinking" Rupert said as he got up "that I've been planning this for quite a while. Oh, on the contrary. This plan has only come to fruition in the last two months! This season passed by so quickly that you barely noticed all the changes. Soon the perpetual fall and deadly winter will come around and all the civilization you've built up will be washed away in the wake of my new kingdom!"

"What madness are you babbling?" Reginald demanded. "Kingdom? What kingdom? This land belongs to its natives! We are merely here to observe!" Reginald tried to kick Rupert's face but the reawakened noble dodged. Rupert continued jabbing his leg and hopping forward, then stomped the ground and threw himself forward with a punch. Rupert absorbed it with his chest, coughed from the force, then got a stiff uppercut to the jaw. Reginald grabbed at his white bangs before he flew away and yanked him forward into a headlock.

"You think I'm alone in this?" Rupert asked. "Take a guess...how did I convince them to follow me?"

"Who?" Reginald demanded. He heard a dull gunshot from far away and felt the dangerous blunt force hit his armor and bounce off harmlessly. He ducked his head down and flipped over Rupert, holding him hostage now against what seemed to be a distant assailing force. "The Killers? You made the Crimson Killers take arms against me?"

"Those fools" Rupert said "have all gone mad. They keep talking about unfulfilled duties and morals and merit, they can't be reasoned with anymore. No, not them...them." Reginald suddenly realized just who they were. He saw Marines and survivalist ex-Marines come from the brush armed with guns and swords. He felt the sights aimed so carefully at him and the glaring light from the swords reflecting his way and he panicked. He threw Rupert away, towards the nearest group, and ran for the sea. He made a flying leap into the water, letting his fingertips split the waves before him as his body went steadily down into the salty body.

This is the only way Reginald thought. I need to get out of here as fast as I can! Somehow I need to find the bears and stay with them! He saw, in the distant darkness, the glaring eyes of a Sea King swimming in the shallows. This caught his attention as the beast slithered away and bullets impacted his super-tough armor. He looked down and saw Marines with custom-made scuba gear and air tanks on their backs with water-proof guns. What!? How did they make such weapons? How is the powder staying dry!? Reginald's worry was ill placed as those fantastic guns were shooting at him, their wielders trying to kill him. He used his superior strength and ripped through the water straight down, meeting the Marines as they slowly came up.

He spun around, pulling the currents of water with him, and grabbed two Marines who drifted too close by the legs. He slammed their air-tanks together and let go as the dents he made propelled them up at lethal velocity. Two more Marines were left and they aimed for his face. He flipped over in the water as they fired, avoiding fatal headshots and retaliating with straight kicks to their individual faces. They let go of their breathing apparatuses and drifted away with the water. Reginald looked up and saw bullets flying at him from above the water. He measured the coastline and swam in a wide circle to reemerge somewhere in the cover of the woods.


The swampy marshes of the island, the area right behind the head of the bear he and his people had so viciously desecrated for their own thankless want. He had swum too far and circled halfway around the island, emerging in fetid, nearly toxic waters that ran off his armor like ooze.

"Oh no" Reginald said with great worry. "Monsters live here. Perhaps I was better of dodging bullets underwater..." Reginald began walking regardless and entered the darkness. He could barely see around him, guiding himself on the reflection his light armor gave to the pools of marsh water all around. He felt his way through the woods, making sure what he gripped was either a tree or one of the carniverous molds that lived within the foliage. If he felt the later he would quickly squeeze it and kill it so it didn't eat away at his precious armor, not that it could. He continued marching along, being as sure of his footing as he could, until he found a clearing where a swarm of glowing bugs swarmed around the bony remains of one monstrous black bear.

"What is this?" Reginald asked himself. The stench of the swamps and their terrible waters masked the stench of an age-old corpse and the flies gave him enough light to see the claw marks on the beast's skull which had surely ended its life. "A ritual burial? No, not these creatures. I would expect an exile like this from my friends but the swamp bears are monsters. They have no more wit than the molds and fungi they must eat." Reginald paced around the bony structure several times, killing what time he had, and listened to the dark woods around him. Nothing.

"Perhaps" he began to the open air "it would be best if I worked my way back to the fortress. At least there, if they aren't already expecting me, I can set up a defense and last them out. I'm the strongest one here, Rupert knows that, and even with the support of the Marines behind him I doubt he was able to coax the prisoners into helping him...not that he needed to. The drug. He's been working on that with Kura and her staff all this time while I researched the bears. They've probably perfected it by now. Those prisoners are bound to be as vicious as these bears if they find me..." A lowing growl came from far off in the dark swamp. Reginald silenced himself and remained perfectly still, standing just in front of the skull of the monster's corpse in the swamp, his rugged and anger-carved face illuminated in the dim orange glow of the fireflies.

Back at the bay and shoreline, Rupert gathered his turn-coat Marines, a force somewhere near fifty strong, and stood before them like a king with his cape billowing in the cool, damp wind.

"Men!" Rupert began, "Heed me!"

"Heed?" a Marine whispered to a companion.

"He's been talking weird" the other responded "for a while now. Not sure why."

"We must consider Drakengard" Rupert continued "to be as dangerous as the vile creatures he nursed for so very long, those detestable beasts whom he abandoned us for over these past four years!"

"That bastard" a Marine growled, his hands shaking the gun he held. "He went off on his own selfish adventures, day after day, while we suffered famine after famine, drought after drought! Plague after plague of that killer mold and fungus! He cared more about those beasts than he did us!"

"And through it all" Rupert added to the rest of the force "he excused himself, saying that it was simply an 'expedition' and that it was all for 'science'. What was he really doing? I have seen, not too long ago, a ship sail out of here made from the trees he forbid us all to harvest from the bear's woods!"

"What!?" the Marines shouted.

"He built them a ship" Rupert said, swaying the anger in his favor "without telling us! He wanted us to remain here forever!"

"Then why didn't he go with them?" a Marine asked.

"They left too fast" Rupert said. "While he distracted all of us with the scandal of my daughter he let the bears prepare his transport in secret, the greedy bastard he is!"

"He is a greedy bastard!" a Marine shouted. "We should kill him!"

"Nay!" Rupert declared, holding up a hand. "We shan't kill him!"

"'Shan't'?" a Marine whispered in confusion.

"We shall give him" Rupert said "a taste of our human efforts, we shall remind him who among this island is truly a superior race! We will sway him by force to our side...using this!" Rupert held up a vial of serum, bright green with smoky blue lines rippling through the glass tube. "This is the triumph of all our hard work here, where the real science was happening, not down in the dirt with those detestable creatures!!!"

"That's...!" a Marine exclaimed.

"It is" Kura said, coming from behind the tall and wide Rupert's cloak, "the end of all our means. Ultimate mental manipulation in a liquid form. Mujaki Viral Injection Hormones. They sedate the regular functions of the brain controlling individuality and personality to the point where they become locked away into unknown and uncontrolled parts of the brain. Once the victim is in this state they are open to any and all suggestive hypnosis which will continue until the drug is flushed from their system."

"How long will that be?" a Marine asked.

"Until they bleed it all out" Kura flatly replied.

It's so ruthless! The Marines all thought.

"So now you see" Rupert said "what needs to be done. We will take Drakengard by force and submit him to the triumph of our human ingenuity. Then we will see what silly bear-like things he attempts to conjure up to free himself!"

"YEAH!!!!!" the Marine brigade shouted. The hunt was now on, and Reginald's time wore thin...


The time he spent in stagnant air had made him sick, so now Reginald moved from the swamp and into the rain. He couldn't tell how many hours had passed hovering around that ancient corpse with the cloud of flies, not could he initially tell it was raining through the iron-hard tree canopy. Only after he broke through those tightly-woven leaves and began his ascent up the steep face of the plateau did he realize that the rains of spring had come to signal the beginning of fall. He clawed his way up, piercing the rock effortlessly with his Sea King gauntlets.

"Unbelievable" Reginald growled. "How Rupert coaxed them all to turn on me is completely unbelievable! Even the survivalists who abandoned their duty to the Marines, they were there as well! I can only hope Kurateka hasn't turned on me as well. She holds all the keys to the medicines they manufactured. And the prisoners...God help us if he let out the prisoners..." Reginald's climb lasted for what seemed to be far too long, but his mind wandered so much that the trip seemed short. His arms burned when they stopped moving as he emerged right at the border of the main vegetable garden.

"At least" he said "they haven't stopped planting. This means they still intend to stay, at least for now." Reginald leaned down and took a handful of the wet soil, peering at it and its crumbled white dots of rock and other drained salty minerals found in all the dirt of the island. The rain hadn't blocked his senses as much as one Marine had hoped and the soil wasn't as captivating to the scientist as he would have otherwise thought. A lone Marine, aiming his gun down at Reginald's exposed head, came into the garden with the lightest of footfalls, but Reginald still caught him. He clutched the dirt hard in his hand and glared up. He threw the was of mud and blinded the Marine, rushing over and grabbing his mouth before he could scream.

"Hi there" Reginald said. "Say, you're a Marine, right. Can you take me to your commanding officer?"

"Hark!" Rupert shouted from a nearby rooftop. "I am already upon thee!" Rupert aimed his own gun down and nearly hit his berserk prey but Reginald dashed away and slid hard in the mud, kicking up the premature buds of greens that were so meticulously planted. He glowered up at Rupert, stunning him with his hard gaze, then fled as the windows of the house he stood on became filled with gun fire, all aimed at him. He took to the same roofs as his enemy and began running and jumping across them at amazing speed. His armor didn't weight him down in the slightest. If anything, wearing it made him want to run faster and fight harder.

"I can get to the armory" Reginald planned "and lock myself inside!" He made a break for the heavily guarded, iron-bolted doors across the streets, keeping a careful eye on his pursuers. They were far off but still firing at him. He saw another squad run in his way and set themselves up as a wall. He jumped down from the roofs, losing no speed, and ran straight at them.

"Aim!" the apparent captain of the squad commanded. They saw Reginald crash into the street and then dash madly at them, his body just barely above the ground. Then he tackled them, all five of them, with his long, strong arms and threw his body forward, heaving all five into and through the armory doors. He prepared to go inside as well but saw yet more turncoat Marines aiming him down with much stronger weapons inside. He fled, keeping his head down, and endured the dull thuds of cannon fire against his immortal organic armor.

"Fools!" Reginald yelled. "If you can't hurt a Sea King with those peashooters what makes you think you can pierce my armor!? This is the effort not of a superior species but of superior tribal well-being!"

"So you say" Rupert shouted from the streets where he ran, "but what do you truly think?"

"That our efforts" Reginald replied "helped change a species into one capable of nautical travel! We taught bears how to sail! How is that nothing short of amazing!?"

"So you admit to it!" Rupert exclaimed. "You helped them build that boat!"

"NO!!!!" Reginald shouted, stopping even the rain for a moment. He stopped at the gates of the fortress and allowed Rupert the chance to catch up. Then he turned and faced him down. "They left without me, dammit. I had no idea what the were capable of and now...I've been abandoned. All of us have. Without them the Swamp Bears will overrun us in no time, knowing that we're unprepared and waging senseless civil wars!"

"Senseless?" Rupert repeated. "Was it senseless or thoughtless how you abandoned your own men to fend for their lives in this harsh, unforgiving environment? Face it Reginald, you failed us all and now you will pay for it fully! You underestimated the importance of our research here and got wrapped up with those furry monsters! Seize him!" From the shadows behind the houses an army of soldiers rushed out. Reginald whipped his head around, trying to track all of their motions, but lost himself in the panic and began fighting in all directions.

He threw long punches and powerful kicks to shake them away but they kept coming as hard as they could, smashing against his armor and slamming guns into his exposed head. They finally overcame him, swarming over him while Rupert moved in with his head held high, and stripped away the breastplate of his armor. His arms were locked at both sides by five men each and he was held down by two heavy men pressing on his shoulders. He was defeated.

Rupert grinned from crooked ear to ear with his animistic fangs glaring in the stormy rain, and he took something from within the folds of his cape. The pieces fell into place in Reginald's mind and the ground of his brain sundered under the weight. Rupert drew out the child, a baby with pure-white skin wrapped in a regal red velvet.

"You..." Reginald growled, "...you bastard."

"A bit late" Rupert said, holding his daughter carefully in one cradling arm, "on the draw...aren't we?" The words bit Reginald like the iron-trap jaws of a bear, an ironic sting in his final lucid moments...