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.
In the morning a single pirate stirred amidst the painful chaos and panic that the previous day had brought. He was the first to see the calm ruins of the ruined castle, the rising sun veiled by thin layers of clouds over the distant sea, and he was the first to make the shocking discovery of his own slumbering captain near the edge of the wrecked stone fortress. His mouth fell down and wide, his eyes bulged, and an uncontrolled sliver of snot escaped from his nose.
"C--" he began in a loud stutter that stirred several others. "Captain Bard!?" His shout signaled other to wake in a creaky stir. While one man's lips were pursed and all his fingers wiggling in unprecedented excitement the rest of the crew lazily rose to their feet, rubbed their eyes and stretched away the aching groans and pains of their recovered bodies. Then they saw the man, looked his direction and joined him, and entire crew of imbeciles looking at the far distant billowing black cape on the ground that was their captain.
"CAPTAIN!!!!" Their eager shouting awoke the rest of the resting pirates and stirred up a commotion from the newly waking villagers. One stood up and shook his fist, but the years of intentional degradation of health that weakened all the villagers and brainwashed prisoners came over him, and he quickly went back down to sleep in a deep daze with a weary smile.
"Shut up....." Rez groaned on the ground. "Just go charge him, or whatever...." Rez was too out of it to watch his words. He forgot that he was in their path, and at his acting-command order the crew stampeded. Once the footfalls started pounding around him Rez was instantly awake and dodging by squirming between legs and anticipating the stamping of feet all around him, breathless after a minute and safe for once when the last pirate charged over him, the whole fleet kicking up dust as they stormed along for their beloved captain. Rez crawled up to his hands and knees and looked at them in their mad procession with shocked eyes. He looked around and checked himself for any bruises or injuries. Just the pains he expected, all the soreness from the previous day of fighting. Nothing new or unexpected was around him but the weight of his accomplishment measured in pain and fatigue.
He also saw Reginald, whose body had been ignored and paraded on by the pirates, but he seemed unfazed and was snoring pleasantly. Rez stood up with an audible groan and quick gasp of pain as he wavered. He breathed in hard and nearly fell over, but stood up and pressed through the pain with a quick readjustment of his stiff, aching back.
"God, you're a weird old man" Rez said, shaking his head. He looked towards the rising sun in the sky, his face full of hope and wonder, his mind set on a much further goal in the endless horizon. That place, a mystical place that he'd only ever heard of, that lied beyond an impassible wall. Looking over the ruins of the castle it felt like that wall was already halfway torn apart, like the way was truly cleared! That's when he saw it. Rez, after a long youth of hope and dreams, all of them falling under the title of profession and duty, had seen the pathway to the place of dreams and nightmares, the New World. The beaten path laid by the strong heels and soles of few mighty men laid before him, and in the dirt he could see the footprints of the man who opened that impossible path for him, boots that were black and worn from constant combat use.
Just follow me he said, a vision in Rez's eyes. We'll be in battles a hundred times bigger and fight guys a thousand times stronger! But we'll never lose! I'll never lose!!! Rez scoffed and leaned to the side with his hands in his pockets. The sweat from the intensity of fighting was still there and his pockets were moist from the remnant of fatigue. "He would say something like that, wouldn't he? That reckless idiot...." Rez turned and made a brisk walk for the bleachers. Many more people were there, sleeping off all the battle-worn tiredness and stress of the previous day's fighting. Meanwhile the Buster crew continued to rush the sleeping Bard jacket on the ground. Their noses were trailing with snot and their eyes with tears, some more than others, but a jubilant joy resounded all around as they charged forward.
"Captain BAAAARD!!!" They cried. Once they got close enough to rumble the ground the jacket moved and a cloudy head of white hair rose up. Gretta clutched the jacket close to her shoulders and got up on her knees, looking at the band of pirates ll shock-white and frozen in their tracks.
"What?" she asked. "You were expecting that boy, weren't you?" The crew fell, very slowly, and began a muffled sob. The bigger, oafish men were biting their lips and quivering while the jaded men just rubbed their eyes in aggravation.
"Dooohhh...." one burly man moaned. "Our poor captain fought himself to death, didn't he?"
"Now he's been reincarnated" another oafish man began "as a weak-framed little girl!" Gretta just stared, flat-faced as usual, letting a cool breeze flutter her hair.
This kind of stupidity isn't even realistic she thought as she heard a group of grown men sobbing.
"He's still our captain...." one said through his tears, "even if he's now a girl!"
"That's right!" another proclaimed. "We'll all pull together and raise him to be our charismatic leader once again!" Marco jammed his foot into a meaty head and his fellow older crew mates just groaned and looked down with aggressive pity on the stupid brutes.
"You're making us look bad!" Marco roared. He turned to Gretta and saw that she had already stood up and was looking away, towards the ruins. "Girl, where's our captain at?" Gretta barely acknowledged him. She was too busy staring into the horizon, at the back of the courageous man who freed her from a prison of life. Marco looked her way, followed by his wiser crew mates, and then finally the stupidest man looked ahead and saw, against the shine of the rising sun, the wide back of Bard D. Samekawa who stood atop the tallest of the ruins.
"BAAAARD!!!!!" the pirates called. They began their rush anew, except the wise and tired pirates who stayed behind and watched Gretta. Marco had his arms crossed and wore an arrogant smile on his face. He saw Gretta with a fawning shine around her, her hands clasped to her chest and the wind finally blowing the mighty cape of Bard's off her thin, pale shoulders.
"He seems like a good leader" she said.
"Believe it or not" Marco said "he's shaping up to be one. We'll get him there..." Gretta continued looking on in a dreamy daze.
"How much help would one person need...?" she asked, very quietly, to herself. Marco caught it though. His sharp ears for information didn't let slip such a vital little remark. He smiled at her knowing she wouldn't see him and made a light chuckle. The men had reached Bard at last and clamored around the wreckage and debris to get to him. He stood tall on top of a pillar of stone that hadn't crumbled and fallen apart like the rest of the castle around it, like a statue on a pedestal.
"Captain Bard!" an overly eager pirate called. "Captain Bard! Thank goodness! We thought you were dead for a while there!"
"Not me!" another said, shoving the first away. "I always knew you were alive!" The men gathered around Bard, who stood in utter silence, waiting for him to reply, and suddenly a sharp breeze knocked the sleeping boy down where he grunted briefly and went promptly to snoring.
"HE'S DEAD!!!!" one called out in shock.
"No!" another remarked. "He's asleep!"
"Damn!" one called as he took Bard up in his arm to elevate his body from the hard, sharp ruins. "Now we have two comatose captains! What will become of us on the Grand Line!?"
"We're screwed!" one frantic man shouted. "Cursed and screwed!!!!"
It took a while for the panic to die down. In the end Kurateka took to caring for Bard in his unconscious state and lectured the rowdy pirates about the effects of fatigue and over-energetic output of stress on the human body, although she admitted that Bard's body wasn't entirely human by her standards.
"He's incredibly fit" Kura mentioned as she checked his arms. They were rubbery and loose and smooth with the layer of sweat that hadn't yet dripped away. "He must have something born into him, a natural athleticism in his genetics. Add onto that the fact that he spent most of his youth practicing martial arts and doing weight training and he would naturally have a body strong as steel and tough as iron."
"Isn't iron weaker than steel?" Araly asked. Kura shot her a hot glare under her bandages that somehow found its way out. Araly just looked away and sipped some tea nonchalantly.
"In any case" Kura continued "this is all wonderful in the contemporary, but I emphasize temporary. This is terrible for his longevity and overall health, of course."
"How so?" Araly asked.
"It's obvious" Zan said. He was up and walking, using a branch from a strong tree in the garden, one that had fallen over during the fighting, as a crutch to speed up his hobbling. "His body overworks itself and drains from the reserves of energy. Care to continue, Doctor?"
"When the stomach growls" Kurateka began "it means that the gastric acids inside are slowly digesting the tissue and substance of the organs around them, meaning the the body is in effect eating itself to sustain itself. That's why people who rarely eat are so skinny, not because of diet but because starving themselves leads to a self-cannibalism. This is a similar process. The nutrients and proteins in Bard's body are only optimal for a limited time when he fights. He exerts so much energy, so quickly, that his body can barely keep up. After the amount of fighting he had to go through just now his body would have run out of natural resources a long time ago. His muscles were receiving no acids or energies after a certain point but they worked regardless and drew from the emergency reserves of energy, kicking his internal organs into overdirve, exhausting his body past a safe limit."
"That sounds like him, alright" Araly said. "I'm surprised he didn't die, honestly. We hadn't eaten very much yesterday."
"I doub tsimply eating will fix what's wrong with him right now" Kura said. "He needs medical attention at this point. Supplements are a mandatory, a slow-drip IV is a possibility."
"What about surgery?" Zan asked.
"Unethical" Kura said. "Unless I had an extra adrenal gland to put in his body so he could fight unimpeded for an extra half hour in an emergency over-limit case, operating would do nothing for him at all."
"So" Araly said, a slight somberness in her voice, "we have to wait?"
"Yes" Kura said, looking over to her row blanket-covered patients. "Unfortunately, that's all we can do right now..."
"So what about food?" Zan asked.
"The garden isn't just for show" Kura said. "There are plenty of vegetables and fruits and herbs to eat. Protein-wise, well, I suppose we could eat the bears if we get desperate but getting them without encountering resistance from the plebeians will be difficult."
"Irrelevant" Reginald said with a growl as he sat up from a matted mattress of grass and shrubs that Kura had prepared for him as a bed. His body was in the worst shape of anyone's as his constant constrain as a demented psychotic warrior in a dark dungeon had deteriorated the health of his joints. Only through the drugs that addled his sanity given to him in his meals could he function at full capacity, and now the withdrawal was revealing the truth of his age behind his youthful cloak. "We aren't eating the bears.....at all!"
"Fair enough" Kura said with a sigh. "I suppose we could try and salvage what was in the medical wing if we can get some volunteers to go digging." She turned to the bleachers currently covered with pirates and castle staff. The strongest pirates raised their hands without a moment of extra thought. Some of the stronger-looking guards in tattered armor and beaten faces raised their arms as well. Zan's arm was up, and it was the only arm that Kura turned her whole attention to. "Hey, no! You're still recovering!" Zan pulled a cigarette hidden in his leather-soled boot out and lit it up with a match he struck on the ground. "No smoking! Do you know what it does to your insides!?" Zan took a drag and blew it out, ignoring her harping speech.
"Just chill out a bit" Zan said, acting cool and composed. "I can phase through solid matter, so long as it doesn't contain a lot of salt. Those walls in the castle are almost completely pure of salt. It's a breeze for me to pass through them. I'm the best guy here for going through ruins to find treasure because there aren't any obstacles for me to have to move or power through. It's all completely smooth for me." Zan waited for her rebuttal, sure of himself that there would be one, but she just sighed in defeat and cradled her arms across her stomach.
"Alright" she said "but I'm not counting on you to carry back the boxes and crates worth of supplies buried under who knows how much solid stone all the way back here. Take some strong men with you for that."
"We'll follow you, Zan!" a Buster pirate called. Zan got up and started a cane-assisted walk over to the ruins, a loyal gathering in tow. Rez passed them and gave Zan a proper, cool nod of greeting. Zan nodded back, tilting his head upwards, while the pirates waved and pumped their fists for Rez. He marched all the way back, sat on the bleachers and gave a heavy sigh.
"How're things over here?" he asked.
"That depends" Kura said. "Everyone is alive, which is good, but I doubt most of them will wake up in 24 hours, which is bad without the proper equipment. Rez sighed and laid down across the rows of seats. Araly finished her tea and stood over him.
"What about the rioting?" she asked. Rez had been staking out on duty, watching the patterns of the people outside, ready and willing to prevent an attack with the threat of immediate violence from his guns. He didn't have the power in him to actually fight, but he knew the people would be more inclined to retreat against such a threat once it came up, rather than face it head on despite their advantageous numbers. Rez sat up with his arms rested on the seating and grinned.
"They left already" he said. "They all went back to the village, it seems. Some kid was shouting at them earlier, and the next thing I knew they were marching right back. They must be on the down slope for their town by now..."
"That's odd" Kura said. "They may be weak but the people always show up in droves and legions when the time is appropriate. It's an unlikely event for them to abandon the castle so helplessly."
"Don't believe me?" Rez asked. "Just climb the stairs and take a look, sister."
"How dare you insinuate my disbelief!?" she shouted suddenly. "I believe you and I'll prove it by staying right here and doing nothing!" With that she turned on her heel and huffed loudly.
"What about all the people?" Araly asked. Kura's protest had been effortlessly broken and her bandages dropped along with her distending jaw as she gaped widely in embarrassed shock.
"Leave it to me" she said, turning around with one eye revealed, sparkling and crystalline with a wink and a blow kiss on her index and middle fingers. She made a frenzied skipping along the row of resting patients and began a light-speed check of temperatures and vital statistics with only her hands and the archaic devices at her immediate disposal. Araly sighed in the grief of watching such a grown woman fly off in such panic while Rez just chuckled and coughed a bit.
"You alright?" Araly asked. Rez nodded and coughed into his fist. "Just checking." Araly went back to her relaxed pose, leaving Rez to cough and glare at her through the sides of his eyes, waiting for her to actually help.
"Dammit!" Rez shouted. "Get me some water!" Araly smiled and skipped off, fetching a ladle full of water for him. Rez cleared his throat and drank the gardening water quickly, cringing at its staleness. "Thank you" he said. Araly nodded at him and sat. "So, about the tattoo. You're okay with it now?"
"Nothing worth worrying about" Araly said, patting the height of her back. "Harriet said it's temporary anyway. After a while the ink will pass through my system and I'll be the regular Araly you all knew before."
"Damn" Rez said. "And here I was looking forward to an adventure sans-bitching."
"What was that?" Araly said, getting angry. Though, under the subduing effects of her alchemical tattoo her anger was much less aggressive and consisted of only a pouting lip and furrowed brow. Rez, however, still felt his back getting hot as he turned away and nervously cleared his throat. "I'll be waiting for an apology in the garden!"
"Huh?" Rez said. Araly was already up and walking, right past the 'infirmary' and into the garden that hadn't been blasted by battle, lush and vibrant with a sullen dark-hued beauty. "Wait a sec, what?" Rez abandoned his worry and avoided confusion by prompting himself to rest. He laid straight on the bleachers and shut his eyes, his tired and overworked eyes, so he could rest under the fleeting cloud cover shade...
Araly walked through the garden, minding her head of low-lying branches, and took in all the tranquility that it had to offer. Most of the plants were over fed and limp, their soggy leafs drooping down sadly towards the ground. A lifetime of regal care in a foreign soil with the mountainous shadow of a castle always blocking the light at some point in the year made the garden unhealthy and forlorn. The plants could be crisper and the greens all brighter, but thanks to the now clumpy pile of brick rubble, those plants would never get such a chance. One of the towers had already fallen on a section of the garden where a birdbath was set up, even though there were very few birds to visit it.
Araly continued her walk regardless, calming her mind of all its worries, and eventually ran into the silken-skinned Gretta sitting on a stone bench grown over with moss, gazing at the fruitless trees in what was once her yard. Araly was apprehensive to engage her but did so nonetheless, sitting beside her only to have the regal princess inch away very suddenly.
"How are you doing?" Araly asked. Gretta sighed.
"I came back here to avoid those questions..." she said.
"I'm sorry" Araly said, recovering herself from a bad intent. "I'll ask you something different then."
"....?" Gretta looked over. She hadn't thought about giving the girl serious acknowledgment until just now, when she tapped her chin to think of a question that would honestly lighten the burden of thought that was on her head. Araly suddenly had it and turned to her with two fingers up.
"Bananas or oranges?" she asked. Gretta blinked, wondering for a moment of this was a question or a spontaneous and incidental statement. "Well? Which to you prefer?"
"Uh...bananas" Gretta said. Araly leaned back and sat straight, occupying the opposite side of the bench that Gretta was using. She nodded with her arms crossed and her eyebrows cocked.
"Ah, I see" she said.
"What?" Gretta asked. "You know, princess or not now, I still have the command of my staff and a very steady bow hand. You'd better think very carefully about whatever you're going to say..." Araly took a moment and raised her head. Gretta couldn't see the diligence in her face as she thought over her words exactly, but she was curious about what Araly was taking such a long pause for. Finally, with her hand raised and finger pointed up, Araly spoke.
"You're just a kid after all" Araly said. Gretta's flat face had fallen into desperate curiosity, and she leaned forward to catch her inquisitor's attention.
"What do you mean?" Gretta asked. "How is my preference a judgmental statement on what kind of person I am? Tell me." Araly hopped up to her feet and turned with her hands held together behind her back.
"You like sweet things" Araly said "more than bitter things. That means you only like what you like, and that's all you're willing to try!"
"I can eat other things" Gretta said, trying to defend herself. "But, what's wrong with that? Surely, you prefer sweet things some times as well!" Araly laughed and moved around, walking in front of Gretta, keeping herself loosely tied to her attention.
"Me?" Araly began. "I can eat anything. Whatever taste it has, I can eat and enjoy it. That's what separates me from a lot of other girls. I can even eat things that most people can't tolerate, and some people say I can eat poison too." Gretta's eyes started to sparkle.
"Are you...a demon too?" she asked. Araly looked down at her, curiously, then waved it off with a scoff.
"Of course not" Araly said in dejection. "I'm just a strong eater. But I also have adult tastes. It doesn't matter to me if something is bitter or too gooey. If I know it's good for me I can eat it. I doubt that's how you are. Just think back a bit and you'll see just how much growing up you have to do." Gretta stood up. She felt abused, even beaten by her words, and she made her feelings apparent with a hot glare through her red eyes.
"Why are you bothering me with this?" Gretta asked. Araly tapped a finger to her mouth and gave Gretta a sweet smile.
"You know where there's a lot of really good, diverse food, right?" Araly asked. Gretta was blank faced. Araly just smiled at her and continued her walk around the perimeter of the ruined castle, looking at the scenery, marveling at the view of the sea she had. She left Gretta in that hidden grove with a shadow of doubt cast over her bright form from the clouds in the sky, and she looked to the sea for an answer.
"Diverse...food...?" As Gretta's mind pieced together the cryptic puzzle a smile came to her face, and that smile led itself to a scoff and a walk back through the garden. "How boringly predictable of her, lecturing me about my taste. I'm a princess. I can request any food I want and shove it to the side if I don't favor it. That's the point....but I wonder what class gets to taste the most diverse foods?" Gretta started swaying her pace a bit, clasping her hands at her lap and swinging her arms. "Perhaps, that boy can tell me where I can go..." Gretta continued to walk through the brush of her once gallant and regal garden, looking in all directions at the bland similarity of color and structure, and she became bored very quickly.
"I want to experience such things..." she said, letting her mind drift off and away to better places with better climes, or worse climbs. Places where even the weather was different, where the rain was thicker, slower, and white that coated the ground by the inches and feet in a chilly, powdery bliss...
I want to go there she thought. And as she walked she thought more and more with her eyes at a steely squint and her finger lightly brushing her chin in her deep stage of thinking...
