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 bricks continued to fall from the hole in the wall as the pirates waited on strained, bated breath for their monstrous foe to come charging in once more. Bard felt the first twinge that sent a chilling reaction down his spine. As he drew the sword out of the stone and bore it across his wide shoulder the rest of his crew took notice of the coming danger and prepared themselves. Gretta took the hint on her own instinct and took out an arrow to draw back into her bow. Reginald's warrior senses felt the panicked shock of danger coming from a set of sealed doors that hadn't yet been busted or opened.
"Bard" he whispered, stepping away from and facing towards those doors. Bard turned his head and switched hands of his sword, taking a deep step toward the doors Reginald motioned at.
"Yeah" Bard said. "There..." Rez turned around as well, spinning his gunblades around his fingers, twirling them up and down from his hip to his chest, sheathing and unsheathing them over and over.
"Feeling ready, captain?" Rez asked. Bard grinned and gave a deep breath out.
"HHHYeaaaaahh!!!" Bard growled. His personality had shifted, however minor, and Rez caught it with a glance. The enemy was inbound now, however, and that took the priority of his attention. The Buster Pirates all armed themselves and steeled their nerves for the monster that would erupt from those doors. Gretta followed the action through the holes in her mask, making careful notice of all the objects in the ballroom and their distance from her and the others down below. In a sense her inner Amazon Lily Warrior had awoken and in the throes of combat she found an enlightened sense of awareness. Even the most minute of details rang resoundingly clear to her, such as the folds of the tapestry cloth or the cracks in the stones that made the walls. Her sniper eyes saw through everything.
A banging bass started pounding in Bard's head. A migraine headache overcame him that he quelled with a wide smile and a deeply furrowed brow. His legs were parted wide and his stance was deeply dipped down. He slid his feet apart until the frayed, battle-damaged edge of his coattail hit the ground and then leaned forward and planted his fist on the floor, keeping the sword poised across his back. Rez kept his gunblades sheathed, his eyes masked by the shadows offered by his bandanna, and his eyes glinting with the perfect concentration of a duelist. Reginald took his halberd spear in both hands and pointed it forward at the doors.
"Is he here yet?" a burly pirate asked. Marco looked back and scowled at him. He was ready. He felt that the crew was ready too, but ready for what? Suddenly, with only the split-second twinge of danger to warn them, the doors were thrown out and flew straight past the front-line three, smashing against the floor as the pirates danced around the pieces that continued to roll and slide across the gala marble flooring. Gretta aimed with her bow drawn fully back and her hair flying out like a cape at the open door, but her hand refused to release the arrow. The sight she saw stunned her.
What the hell...? she thought. There's no way I could have seen this coming! Rupert emerged, cracking the floor with each step he took, more hideous and terrifying than ever. Reginald's guard was lowered to the point where his spear was dropped with a clang to the floor. His eyes widened and his mouth drifted open with fear. The pirates, Bard included, had a mixture of curiosity and wonderment.
"...What don't you guys have here?" Rez asked. Rupert, now glowing green, reemerged with a mane of white hair around his evilly twisted face and shadowed, round, glowing eyes. His body had shrunk down to Reginald's size and his muscles had all compacted together giving him an unholy amount of definition. The green glow came from the exposed clear tubes protruding form his shoulders that led back to a machine behind him, one he had implanted into his back to feed his body constantly with more and more of the steroids and mental stimulants. His face was dead, just like his whited eyes, but his body was flaring with life.
"No..." Reginald whispered. "He's killed himself..."
"He looks alive to me" Rez said. "What's the big deal here?"
"He's combined every stimulant that's been produced on this island in the last twenty years" Reginald explained. "His body can't compensate for all that artificial stimulation, so now he has to depend on that machine in his back to act as an external organ to circulate his tainted blood and fuel his body with the medicine."
"So..." Bard began thoughtfully, "break the thingy on his back?"
"Yes Bard" Rez flatly answered. "Break the thingy on his-" Rez was blown away and Rupert replaced him in space. Rez flew through the pirate crowd and slammed against the wall, cushioned by the bulky bodies of three of his crew mates. Still, the shock that he received to propel him so far had paralyzed his body.
I couldn't see him move Bard realized. He looked over his arched shoulder and saw the hair of Rupert's mane moving to its own whim. Gretta fired her arrow at last, letting it sail just over Reginald's head and over Bard's back, aimed right at Rupert's eye. The arrow, a split moment later, was shattered and the tip was stabbed at Bard's back. Bard dove forward when the arrow had sailed over his back and blocked the arrow tip with Rez's sword. As soon as he stopped he swung the sword and stomped forward for a consecutive chop.
Rupert seemed to slide away, a blur of movement following him, and then he warped back in along the blunt line of the sword to punch Bard in the face. Bard threw his head and body back, throwing the sword straight up and forcing Rupert off. In the air his movement was reduced to pure reaction-ism. All he could do was lean. With this advantage Bard back-flipped and planted the tip of the sword into the floor, holding the handle over his head, and kicked his legs up.
"Rankyakuu!" Two ax blades sliced through the air at Rupert who, knowing he couldn't move as well, simply slapped the attacks into nothing. Bard landed and made a deep swing that seemed to contact something. It was Rupert landing on the tip as it swung down and slammed into the ground. He used the foothold to leap away, right into the middle of the pirate group with fists tensed and a blood-thirsty grin.
Another futile arrow flew for his head. He stopped it with a single finger and shattered it with a quick tap of that same finger. Gretta was so startled that she stumbled backwards.
"We're fighting a real monster now" Reginald said, slowly retrieving his halberd. Even as his arm moved slowly to toss the broken arrow aside, an echo of shaky movement followed his sleek, vein-pulsing arm. "It's out of our league. We just need to pray that he'll die before he can kill too many of us..."
A calm world met Colleen as she finally awoke to see the mixed company of friendly and unconscious faces. Sally, the bald and burly woman that Araly was fighting previous to Colleen getting knocked out, and some strange woman wrapped up in bandages were laid very carefully apart from each other while Zan was painfully clutching his arm and Araly was sprawled out with her stomach against the bleachers. Ignoring her heavy body Colleen got to her feet and staggared over. Zan noticed her first and made a move to catch her as she began to fall to the heavier side.
"Maybe you should lie down" Zan said, straining to get the words out properly. Colleen sat down and in doing so sat Zan down from his painful standing position. He panted and continued to rub his leg, wincing every so often. "Damn, that's a fracture. I underestimated him. He's got nasty methods of attack."
"My Captain?" she hopefully asked. Zan looked at her, a bit curious as to how she knew by the limited context that he gave. "Where is he? Is he alright? Is he..."
"Oh he's not dead" Zan said. He set his leg down carefully and sighed. "He's not dead until I decide he's not worth keeping alive, that is."
"No!" Colleen exclaimed. She leaned forward and lightly pounded her fist into his chest. "Don't you dare try to hurt my Captain! He saved us! He...he..." Colleen went lightheaded. Suddenly her brain was swimming and her body was limp. She clutched onto what consciousness she could while Zan kept her propped up. Araly finally recovered with a groan and rubbed the back of her head where Ramone had hit her to knock her out.
"That jerk" she said, lightly clutching a fist in anger. "After all I did to help him, this is how he thanks me?"
"He's a loner" Zan said. "Incidentally, this one woke up." Araly gasped and hurried over to make sure Colleen was alright. She was her friend, after all, crew affiliation or not. "She seems fine, if a bit woozy. I still can't believe how quickly he kicked our asses, though."
"He's a pirate" Araly said. "I suppose it's to be expected from him. Then again, I'm a pirate, so I should have thought of it first and tied his hands and feet together." Araly took Colleen's pulse through her throat just as the blond girl came back to her senses and lurched forward in a warm, friendly embrace.
"Araly!" she exclaimed. "I'm so glad you're alright! You must have won after I got knocked out!"
"Yup" Araly said. She pushed Colleen away and flexed an arm with a wink and a grin, just to look as proud as she felt when she had won before. "It was nothing. She couldn't keep up with me if she wanted to!" Araly unwrapped Colleen's arm of the moisturizing, cooling wrap and looked at the result of her handiwork. Colleen followed her eyes and looked at her own arm. While the color was certainly not right, seeming warped brown and still retaining the creases from her scars, the redness and the boils were all gone and her skin was smooth. Colleen gaped at the results and looked all over her arm, admiring the beauty that had been restored.
"Nicely done, doc" Zan said, taking out a cigarette worn and darkened by ages. He had stolen it from Ramone's pocket during their struggle and only hoped that he hadn't actually escalated the incident in the first place. It was unlikely, but Ramone Cervantes wasn't known to be a passive guy when things were stolen from him.
"Thanks" Araly said with a proud smile. Zan noticed her tattoo once again glowing as he lit up his cigarette and decided, once and for all, to make her aware of it.
"Thank you" Colleen said, getting chocked up with tears. Zan saw her expression and Araly's revel in hearing her happy sobs and decided, all things considered, he'd better keep his mouth shut lest she turn his fracture into a shatter. "Araly...thank you so much..." Colleen broke down and began sobbing into both her hands, both feeling of the same silken skin she had been born with. Araly smiled and leaned in to wrap a comforting arm around the girl's back. Colleen leaned her crying head into Araly's stomach and continued to let the revelation to her years of torment come to an end before her very eyes.
As this scene transpired, Kurateka awoke and pushed herself off the ground with a start. She took a syringe and aimed to stab Araly in the back but a quick-acting Zan hopped up and sliced the syringe away with a quick punch and twist of his wrist. He stayed on one foot, keeping the other leg in the air so he didn't push any further injury. He winked at her and placed his blade at her throat threateningly. Araly turned around and scooted away from the unfolding battle, noticing Zan's leg shaking in pain.
"Nice try" Zan said. "You're pretty damn quick on the uptake, but still all around late."
"What are you talking about?" Kura asked. "I was having a bad dream that I woke up from too fast."
"That happened to me once" Araly admitted. "I ended up punching my mom by mistake."
"Same thing" Kura said, trying to coax Zan back to his defensive sitting position. "I was just having a bad dream! I swear it."
"Sit down, Zan" Araly said. "If she's going to make another move I can defend myself just as well." Zan smirked, sheathed his blade behind his back with a twirl and sat down. He let out a drag of smoke in a sigh that clouded up in front of Harriet's face. She revealed herself with a cough that parted the cloud of smoke. Colleen and Araly leaped into each other's arms and shrieked with fear while Kura reeled back on one leg, her arms thrown up in the air, and her only unbandanged eye bulging out beyond her face. Once Araly was done screaming she took a more analytic face and blinked until she realized who it was. Zan just looked at her and blinked, not surprised at all.
"Harriet?" Araly asked. "What are you doing here!?"
"You know her, I take it?" Zan said, pointing to her. Harriet paced along, walking with a long and gnarled staff with a handful of bandages in hand. She knelt down in front of Zan, rolled up his pant-leg and patched him up quickly. Then, with a quick splash of sea water from a pouch she carried, his bone was set and perfectly healed. "Holy hell" Zan said, so speechless his cigarette fell out of his mouth.
"It ain't quite fixed yet" she said. "It may feel like it, but all it's doing is pressing your bone together and sealing the crack in it while numbing the actual pain. I know you're a fruit user too, so that leg won't work if you use your power."
"Lame" Zan said as he went back to smoking. Harriet walked over with a grin to Araly who stood up to greet her.
"My, my deary" Harriet began. "What a day you've been through, eh? I've been watching on my monitors from all over the island. It looks like your friend is in there fighting a right-awful monster."
"Bard?" Araly asked. "Is he alright? Is he winning?"
"Last time I watched he was" Harriet said. She looked to Kurateka and just sneered to keep her frozen in place. Colleen, seeing that she was friends with Araly, timidly moved forward and shied behind Araly for the time being. "And you must be the beautiful young Colleen, the girl from those Ghost Killer pirates, eh?" Colleen was uninhibited by shyness and posed beautifully stretching her arms behind her back with batting lashes.
"Me? Beautiful?" she began modestly, switching poses to a mid-step runway style. "Oh, I'm not any prettier than any other girl." Araly watched her with a raised eyebrow and a pursed mouth. Harriet cackled jovially to herself and turned to Araly.
"And you, Araly!" Harriet exclaimed. "already you've mastered an intermediate understanding of alchemy! You should be proud! Not even a prodigy in chemical arts like these could achieve what you've done already, and in the course of less than a single day!"
"Thank you, Harriet" Araly said with a gracious bow. The witch had only one final matter of business to address and reached within her dirt-colored robes to retrieve a thick book of brown, frayed-edged pages. It was three-volumes thick and bound by tough tree bark and tight preserved leather.
"Here, deary" Harriet said, handing the book up to the grateful girl. "This is a compendium of all my knowledge on alchemy. Everything I was ever taught and everything I ever knew, all the secrets passed down since the books from the Blank Century, all the most prized treasures of the natural world's scientific miracles, it's all in there. You just need to master it all." A book! Araly was breathless, taken so far aback that even her nerve-calming tattoo was unable to fully withhold her grateful and overflowing feelings. "I knew you'd like it" Harriet said. "I see you've also grown attached to that tattoo on your back!" Zan slapped his forehead.
"It's a nice design, alright" Kura said, standing with her arms crossed and hips cocked. "Where did you get it? Do you remember?" Araly's brow was twitching. Her tattoo, with its infinitely calming attributes, simply shut off. She tried to look at her own back in a panic but couldn't move her head with enough flexibility to do so. Kurateka took out a hand-sized mirror from her outfit and handed it to her. Araly pulled down her dress from the back and looked at the golden, shining dragon face on her back, the very insignia of her pirate crew, and all the sedative force on the island couldn't stop her from screaming...
"You hear that?" a muscular Buster pirate asked. Just as his attention was momentarily drawn away Rupert made his instant move and slammed the back of hiss fist into his chest, propelling him across the floor while he drew his tightly wound arm slowly down to his side. Another pirate came up from behind with a cutlass drawn overhead. Rupert broke the blade off, crushed it in his palm and punched the pirate in the gut with the gathered metal shrapnel. Then he kicked him off the ground with a quick little stab of his toes and kicked him away with such speed that no one could follow the exact motion.
"What the hell is he!?" a pirate exclaimed.
"Just go for that machine on his back!" Marco called. Little did he know but the lion was eying him down through his glowing orbs. "If we take that out he should be decomiss-" Marco was silenced by a leaning uppercut to his gut. Rupert's lean fist sank so far into his stomach that Marco coughed up blood and bile from his own guts before being shot across the room with the incredible force. When the dust from the wall around him settled the black-and-blue indentation from Rupert's fist was imprinted into his skin. Rupert slowly rose his head up, his hair moving energetically all over the place like a white savannah fire, and turned slowly to Reginald and Bard.
Bard, however, wasn't on the ground. He was in the air, silently descending with Rez's sword wound up over his shoulder and gripped tight with both hands. He slashed down and slammed the blade into the ground. Rupert dodged back a step in a flash of a second just in time. Bard just used it as an opportunity to deliver a straight-kick and wrench the sword from the ground. Rupert dodged away yet again. Bard wielded the broadsword in one hand, swinging it wildly and forcing his crew to flee from his effective range. Rupert dodged and ducked each slice that Bard made. He wound up several powerful blows and spun into a few attacks to build momentum, but it all built up in a miss. After so much failed combat Rupert placed his fingertips on Bard's sternum and leaned his whole body in while extending his palm forward.
"TEKKAI!" Bard roared, blocking the shot just in time. He still slid far back before recovering and spinning the sword around to get it into position at his side. "That could've broken something if it connected! Is he really that strong!?"
"He is!" Reginald shouted. "However, strong as he is, his muscles aren't impossible to cut anymore! We can win if we can sever a nerve or blood vessel in the right spot!" Rupert caught his advice and dashed over as a pale blur. A stream of arrows followed him, catching his attention, and then one broke the floor at his feet. He glanced up at Gretta, who fired arrow after arrow, hoping one would do a proper job of either taking him out or distracting him in as timely a manner as possible.
"I know my father" she muttered. "He will slip up eventually, reminiscing over some stupid memory of his wife or brothers that left or sister who died or some other white-faced lie he's told me! He has to!" Gretta, on that logic, continued firing, effectively distracting him while Reginald made an attack. Rupert caught his motion too late and stepped to the side, hoping to avoid the overhead swing that Reginald made for his head. The blade hit the ground and Reginald recovered it, spinning the polearm around his broad abdomen rapidly, making short stabs with one arm and then winding it back up for larger lunges and slices with both hands controlling it.
"Kururu!" Reginald laughed. "I know you, Rupert! You wouldn't want me dicing up that precious little box of yours. You'll defend it with your life better than you will your own mane of hair!" Rupert finally noticed the imbalance of weight on his head. His mane had been cut and the hair still drifted down to the ground behind the advancing Reginald. Bard, meanwhile, came from behind with Rez's sword held high overhead, preparing for a helm-splitter attack at the mechanical box.
"ORYAHH!!!" Bard roared. Rupert pressed himself down and made an explosive leap up to the balcony, leaving a crater for Bard to swing into and Reginald to stop at with a skid. They both cast their gazes up, got their weapons ready once more and proceeded to the wall to ascend and attack. Gretta was left alone with her bow and arrows to defend herself from her manic father. Fear overcame her.
The monster before her was not her father at all but some strange and beastly, animistic thing that hungered for blood. The blood that coursed in her very veins. The blood of his lost 'love'. Rupert's face was cast in darkness and his eyes and bone-white grin were the only things to shine forth. Gretta fearfully moved back, keeping an arrow tense in the bowstring, and kept her aim as true to his heart as possible. She fired and missed, scraping the plastic of one of the tubes that was bore into his shoulder.
"Stay away from me" Gretta demanded, shooting another arrow. This one sailed through his hair and came out crooked and broken. "I...I don't know you" she said again, reaching a wall. She fired in reaction and had her arrow caught in his very fanged teeth. He bit the tip and spit the frail wooden shaft to the ground. Gretta pressed herself against the ground just as Bard landed with his sword at his side. He roared and made a Soru dash only to be caught by the same fingertips and leaning body.
"TEKKAI!!!" he roared once more, absorbing the blow with a grunt and flying away as Rupert leaned his entire body into pushing his palm forward. Gretta sank down to the floor as Rupert turned back to her and began quivering in fear. Rupert first took her mask, made of metal, and crushed it in his hands. Gretta's flat face sank with incredible fear, her eyes teared and her mouth widened to shout the devil down with her commanding voice.
"STOP IT FAAATHEEERRR!!!!" Rupert was stopped. His hair ceased its constant motion. Something within him, some arcane feeling was awakened and his humanity returned. It was a brief moment of clarity, one he could only stand and admire in the shock of being so swiftly overcome with it, made all the more brief by Bard's fully-wound up leg striking his face and driving full to throw him off into the air while Bard's body made a full barrel roll in the air before landing. His coattail cape blew up from the whipping force of his circular motion and his arms were fully flexed against his torso. Gretta gaped at him in wonder and awe. Bard turned around and extended a hand to her.
"Come on" he said. "We still need your help." Gretta stared at his hand, her eyes still tearing up and her mouth half open. She looked between his determined face and his hand, finally deciding to take it gently, only to get swept up onto her feet. She dizzily stumbled into his chest only to get pushed away and faced down with the adamant face of a pirate captain. "I know he's your dad, but if you want to help us you need to stop thinking like you're his daughter and think like you're one of us, alright? Can you at least try to be one of us for now?" Gretta stared into his eyes and became lost for a moment.
"Yes" she answered. "Yes...I can." Bard nodded and walked backwards to retrieve the sword he had stuck in the floor to better do his powerful kick. He made a running jump off the edge of the balcony and Geppou-jumped near the crater where Rupert had landed, giving himself a soft, running landing. Gretta clutched at her chest, feeling a swell of great romance, and watched him go before she took up her bow and arrow once again...
One of you she thought. Yes. She drew the string back and aimed carefully at her recovering target. His eyes shone brightly. His mouth clacked open and shut with a quick roaring bark of rage and then a roar of power. I will be one of you! She fired her arrow and let it spin through the air, a sharp and deadly missile inbound for the monster's eye!
