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.
It was quite the spectacle to see that grim, rainy day. Reginald Drakengard, undoubtedly the strongest man on the island, brought down by his nefarious and underhanded assistant of pompous royal regard. Rupert Lioncrest, the new monarch of the Ookumaiwa Kingdom, stood in victory over his beaten foe with his baby, future princess, in his large arm.
"MOHOHOHOHO!!!" Rupert laughed. "Men, gather round! Come hither!" The Marines and loyalists wearing their hooded rain coats, torn and tattered with age and use, came from all directions with statue-solid faces of their duteous positions as soldiers.
"What does 'hither' mean?" one Marine asked another as he got into line.
"Just go with it" the Marine answered. "He's been doing that for a while now..."
"Behold!" Rupert announced. "This wretch here, who lies like a pile of such rancid filth, is captured and awaits his vanquish! His power can no longer free him from our mighty grasp!" Rupert leaned down to bring his face in close with its handsome smile of mockery and whispered, "Now who is the mighty one?" Reginald struggled to free himself just an inch and threw his head forward, but missed his opportune headbutt. Rupert gave him a flat kick to the head, jostling his brains a bit.
I shouldn't have done that Reginald thought. He might have dropped the child... Reginald smiled at his own foolishness and began to laugh, playing himself effortlessly into the role of the villain struggling in vain against the heroes attempts. He burst out with a sudden giggle, then heightened it into full-blown mad laughter.
"KUUURURURURURURURUUU!!!!" he roared into the sky, causing a crack of rupturing tenor lightning. The Marines all cringed in sequence as the chills transferred from spine to spine in close contact. They had honestly believed, for a moment, this man could summon up lightning as he wished. That wasn't the case, thankfully, and as the thunder rolled away Reginald calmed down, sedating himself into a low growling, heavy breathing with dangerous glares aimed up at the stiff Rupert. "A bear can smell the sweat of its prey for up to a hundred yards" Reginald said. He then took in two sharp breaths through his nose, keeping his teeth bared, and widened his grin. "I can smell all kinds of fear here..."
"You will torture us no more!" Rupert shouted, inciting cheers from the Marines around him. "Look around you, Reginald! We are abandoned! Instead of living with that you searched for help. When we were already adjusting to out lives here you came in, waving your distinguishable that mean nothing on this no-man's land, and took over what we had considered a good way to live! You demanded that we not defend ourselves against the bears or the natural creatures of this 'paradise' and each fall we had to defend against that corrosive, deadly slime of moss! You simply walked in when it benefited you, or appeased you, or somehow gave you pleasure and caused such extreme shifts in our lives! Who gave you the right to plan our paradise!? What kind of paradise is a dictatorship, a monarchy where one ill-minded man rules over the domain of his subordinates!?"
"RAAAAAAGH!!!" the Marines roared. Reginald looked at them in a hot glance then directed his gaze down in disgust.
Idiots he thought with regret. Do you think he's going to do any better? Is he really going to step up and form a democracy? Are you all so willing to believe him over me...just because I felt like we were all abandoned. I tried to make the best of this trip, hoping we hadn't been forgotten, but it seems the world will always spin in strange ways out on the Grand Line whether I am stranded, lost or simply misplaced. My world was the only one I controlled, the only one I paid attention to...They won't listen to me now, but I am sorry. I did abandon them. I ordered them at my own benefit, like he says, but I always kept their survival in mind before my own! They should know that if they are truly free men... Reginald suddenly jerked his head up, nearly throwing off the men holding him down with his sudden, powerful muscular movement.
"Wait!" Reginald pleaded. "Think about it! Who between us planned the crops, the buildings, the inmate work and coordination for all of your safety!? Who between he and I did the most to help this camp until help came, to prepare us not for a quick leave but for the lengthy stay, while the other spent his time doing inhuman deeds!?" Rupert glared down at Reginald, then switched that glare to another innocent Marine. That Marine simply stood and sweated, holding his gun tight in hand. Rupert turned around and went down the line with his pouting glower, baby in hand, and made sure his power went unrivaled.
That's right Rupert thought you little sheep. Don't you dare make any sudden bleats in this madman's favor!
"I agree" a woman said. With all eyes upon her, in entered Kevorkia, a shameful visage of her former self. She stared only at the ground with her one beautifully blue eye exposed and began walking softly forward. "It is true. Reginald did everything he could to help us in a helpless situation. We are all alive because he came in to bring us out of our despair and lift our spirits through our unity. He is the reason we are all still here...but that is just the problem..." Kura took out a syringe full of the luminescent green liquid, the fabled drug, and walked over to the pinned man. The look of gracious mercy on Reginald's face, the look of a saved sinner, was quickly washed away.
"Not you too..." he said, a dialect like a beaten dog of a man. "Not you, Kura..." Kura looked away and chocked back a sob. She wiped away a tear with her wrist and walked forward, her dry gauze wetting from within over her other eye. She tapped the needle, testing the liquid inside, and prepared herself to do the unthinkable.
"This" Kura began "is the undiluted filter of the drug. It completely removes the current personality and opens the mind one hundred percent. Traits, characteristics, self-image, world-image, entire series of thought; this Mujaki serum can wipe a person's mind completely clean of all thought, past present...and future..." Her voice had drifted off into a low, almost painful whisper, and she knelt down, removing the gauze around her mouth away from the sight of any man watching. The infant Gretta began bawling as another sweeping roll of thunder echoed through the plateau. She disengaged her kiss, planting it who knows where, and reset her gauze, leaving the needle stabbed into his neck, empty of the serum.
"I'm sorry" she said silently. That was his lost image for years, the last conscious recollection he had before his life was stolen and systematically destroyed, was her lips moving to those words as he fell forward, mind bleached clean...
The rain stopped and the living dead body of Reginald still sat on its knees in the middle of the street. Rupert had demanded all the Marines to fall back and keep a safe distance in case the animal instincts kicked in and Reginald went totally berserk. Kurateka retreated immediately to the infirmary and cried as loudly as she could. She had just killed her friend, one of the only ones she knew she had, and on top of that a father figure. She stained a pillow with her screaming sobs while the terrible events transpired outside.
"Smell" Rupert commanded, holding out his unarmored hand. Reginald took in a whiff, acting purely on the reactions his brain had to the word. Rupert withdrew his hand and held out his daughter, whom he had made sure preemptively was perfectly clean. "Smell" Rupert commanded again. Reginald had now recorded those two scents into his mind under an unknown category. "Ally" Rupert said.
And that was it. Reginald rose up to his feet, head still stupidly hanging down, and understood. Rupert and his daughter, for those long and often dark sixteen years, were his only known allies. He faded in and out as the drug in his blood diluted over the years, most of the refills replacing what was lost either in battle or in metabolism. Each time he faded back to blackness he noticed the changes around them and always kept them. The first time was immediately after an intense battle where a brief moment of lucidity granted him a glance up at the Bear Skull. No longer a head, it had been gutted and torn down to make what looked like a gigantic, lavish castle. He saw the bodies all around him, the bloodies halberd in his hand, and then he ran up the hill where the trees had been torn down to make a path all the way up to the palace.
Then, years later he assumed, he awakened in the black winter of death surrounded by fighting. He watched his body move without feeling the motions, an outside observer inside an uncontrolled mind, fighting against the crew of Dark D'Leon, a terrible name in his own time as one of the first men to succeed in the Grand Line after Roger began the Age of Piracy. His crew consisted of the twin-dragons from the East Blue, weapon masters Lance Lischer and Man O. War the Macesmiths. His vision skipped to prodding them with a rusty spear from his cage into theirs, watching them wince and succumb to the intense mental exhaustion they were put through. Dark was the last to fall, and Reginald never saw or remembered of him again.
Then, more years later he determined by the state of the still constructing castle, he fought against Sally 'Steel Rope' Morganna, a pirate notorious for her mastery of fighting with woven bands of super-thick ropes. Her ship was unsinkable, it was equally rumored, all news he learned by fighting her and recalling her brags as she blocked his blade with her super-tough ropes. She jumped away, hair at that young time in her life braided around the base of her neck in long, thin, but sturdy braids of brown. Her head was tattooed all over with dreadful skulls aflame and gnashing mouths and maws of teeth.
"You fool!" Sally shouted, throwing her ropes again, Reginald expertly leaning away at each. "You can't beat me, here! I'm the 'Steel Rope' gal! Ain't 'cha heard of me, here!? I got the im-beatable style, here!!!" Reginald saw himself bat away one of her attacks with his impressively increased muscle mass, then watched the surroundings blur as he rushed in to bash her nose to pieces. Next he awoke to see her deep in her brainless programming stage, a few days after his victory. It must have been a few days to break down her psyche for better results, and that's when he saw how Kurateka had grown out her curly, blue hair through the cracks of her gauze.
Again he awoke, this time conscious of his body and in control, but felt nothing but searing pain. A young girl of nearly six was taken in a blanket, flush in her stark-white cheeks with fever, from the wing by a nurse, Kura walking behind. Reginald tried to speak but found that he had been bound in bandages. Kura gave him a look, trying to acknowledge what she thought was a feeling he sent to her, but brushed it off with a shake of her head.
Once more Reginald saw himself fighting. Then he saw only his dark cell. Then the grim-looking food he was forced to eat. Then Gretta, ten years old, ordering him into battle against a familiar bunch of pirates who had become the castle help, town guard and some of them paladins. Then, with an overcast sky as his first vision, he caught a quick glimpse of the rage that was the warring Ramone Cervantes with his deadly Plague of Abadon activated overhead. Then blackness. Reginald heard the sounds of fighting, the deafening hum of the insects all around, the pain of many tiny bits and the impact of his fists against a brittle surface which easily broke. He felt the fight, he heard the fight, and all throughout it he only hoped that what he did was done to protect the others of the island, the people whom he abandoned so long ago. Then he saw it, Ramone's broken face and white eyes. The insects around him were all dead, as was the grass they all ate, but he was still struggling to live.
Ramone looked up at him through his milk-covered eyes, grabbed his face suddenly with one hand, then crawled up with the other, and rebuilt his face in an instant to appear as Reginald's.
WAKE UP!!!That was then. So long ago he was surprised he could remember. The castle had been built off the backs of so many men, so many women and children taken and brainwashed just the same. He remembered fighting the guards of civilians from other islands who sought refuge on this isolated place. The women and men and children were all placed within this peaceful place, an ideal world built by a mad man for his daughter. The only reason for the endless torment was to play at one man's fancy, live one man's dreams...
Now Reginald beheld the world, a rolling sky of dark clouds that carried no rain, a castle looming as if it were about to fall, rolling dry grass of that ageless Fall season, the despicable man-made roads and secret buildings, and of course the monster itself. An intertwining array of warring dragons forming an even more intricate dragon's skull. That's when reality hit him, and the hope resounding all around came to his senses!
It was no monster, technically, but Bard D. Samekawa, the young man who had come just in the day, and within only a single day revealed the demon lurking beneath the skin of this horrible, two-decade long debacle. The real monster loomed before him, a lumbering beast of grotesque, gigantic build, fueled by the efforts of science gone terribly wrong. The hope from that shimmering gold on that royally resonating black cape lifted his heart, a heart heavy with grief and compiled regret. Reginald wiped a tear from his eye and voiced his final realization.
"It's over" he said. "Finally...the nightmare...Bard, it's over..."
"Nope!" Bard cheerfully said, tapping his nose with a brush of his thumb. He turned back, eyes wild with adventurous fighting spirit, and smile. "This is just getting started!!!"
"MOHOHOHOOOOOOO!!!!!!" Rupert laughed demonically. He clenched and unclenched his fists, flexing his huge, sinuous muscles which bulged out nearly tearing his skin apart. His back was light red from the thin stretching of the old skin that covered his muscles. He was past the point of saving. Even if he was unbeatable, Reginald knew, he would die eventually from an overdose. Bard struck a pose, taking his right leg far back, bending far down into the dip of his wide-spread legs. His torso was turned to the side, a portrait stance, with his left arm flexed tight up and down and his right arm drawn back and fist knotted tight for a punch.
"Time for a Buster Beatdown!" Bard shouted. His crew cheered, standing as an audience bordering the apparent battlefield. Rez watched with a stern but trusting gaze, a look that believed in Bard to fight. He was proud to stand and watch him do what he couldn't, if that is he could. Araly tended to Zan more, not caring at all over the obvious results of the battle to be, while Ramone tried to stir. He coughed up bugs, which prompted Araly to calmly move to the other side of Zan while the little critters scurried back inside his head.
"Where's 'e at...?" Ramone groaned.
"Who, Bard?" Araly said. "He's about to fight the king." Ramone closed his left eye and let the right one wiggle out of its socket and form into the Tengufly to fly over the bleachers and on top of the princess' throne. Gretta was at the top of stands, watching between the metal bars, hand on the cheek where she'd been slapped. She watched her father's hideous form, Bard's fearless opposition, Reginald's gracious smile, the pirates and their cheerful charisma, their belief in their optimistic captain. She watched it all with a flood of overwhelming feelings. Anger, sadness, happiness, regret, empathy, sympathy, grief, pride; all things she had never known to exist over her flat sarcasm and apathy. She fell to her feet and hid her face in her hands, ashamed of her weakness in showing emotions.
Oh, father she bemoaned, what have you become...what have you made me...? Who should I believe? Who should I trust? Where can I go now, who can protect me...or...who must I protect now? Gretta found a renewed purpose. She would see this battle through with one last royal decree.
"BARD!" Gretta shouted from the gate. She pushed herself up onto the iron bars and leaned out over the wall with her legs dangling behind her. "I have a royal command to bestow upon you!"
"Eh!?" Bard shouted back in confusion.
"Defeat my father" Gretta commanded, tears still in her eyes, "and see that this land becomes what it was, not what he wanted it to be! I hereby order a full-scale rebellion, now dethrone the KING!!!" A rush of panic went through the villagers. A wave of pride crashed into the pirates. Bard just shrugged.
"Order or not" Bard said "that's what I'm doing!" With purpose in mind and honor in heart, Bard began the battle and Soru'd forth, into the storm with his mighty fists of change!!!
