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.
Taking into his hand a tiny square of cloth, the magician threw his arm out and threw a seemingly endless mass of fabric which stretched across the broad stretch of the Main Deck's aft section. Then, taking the cloth in both strong hands, he pulled it away, and from behind and out of completely thin air appeared a fully decorated and built performance stage!!! His crew was on it as well, unjarred from whatever mystical form of travel they had just undergone. The crew stood all in a line, each hand joined to another. The men wore black tuxedos like their captain and dressy black pants with white opera masks over their faces. Half of them wore top hats. The women of the crew, which there were plenty of, wore sequined silver one-piece suits, knee-high glistening high-heel boots and elbow-length white gloves. They also wore masks over their eyes, decorated at the edges with a plumage of feathers, the same feathers they wore in crowns on top of their heads. Those without feathers wore a top that was white instead of black like the rest.
"And that" Aleister said, touching the brim of his top hat with his wide and powerful finger, "is only the first trick of the evening!!!" The Buster Pirates cheered loud and applauded. Sitting on chairs, barrels, bundles of rope and even not sitting at all, all the crew had gathered under the shade of their Grand Sail to watch this spectacle of a show. The sun was still out. It was barely afternoon, it seemed, and the only clouds to appear were insignificant wisps of white that didn't even block the sun they were laid across. The wind was still absent and both ships were anchored down to stay in their place on the sea.
At the front of the audience, closest to the stage, sat Bard on an empty barrel, Rez in a chair, Zan who stood, Araly in her loose hammock strung up between two upright pieces of furniture from dry storage, Gretta who sat in the most plush chair available and Maxwell, who slept silently out of unconscious respect for what was happening. Aleister took the stage by vanishing behind a twirling cloth and reappearing behind his line, somehow hidden by their meager forms compared to his long enough to stand up and throw his arms out above their heads.
"Thank you all!" Aleister said with a bow. His crew departed for either side of the stage and hid behind the curtains, veiled by the darkness of the stage's lighting which focused now only on Aleister. "Thank you very much. It is an honor to entertain for such a large crowd. It has been quite a long while since we last had such great patronage. I swear, on my life as a true entertainer and my honor as a pirate, you shall be entertained this day!" The crowd cheered again, awed solely by the charisma of his speech rather than by any illusion he may have conjured. The cloth he used to appear and disappear with was gone, however, a detail which Gretta noted in the pages of the journal she kept.
I must analyze this magic she thought as she wrote and find out how to utilize it myself. I must adapt to some kind of power while it is in front of me! If I could have such a power, such a mastery of demonic arts, then...possibly, more Demons would see me as I see them. She glanced across the row, her hood lowered, to Zan who was standing with a grin as he watched and waited for something to truly amaze him...
"Ahahaha!!!" Aleister laughed heartily. He took his hat from his head as his crew moved off to the sides of the stage and spun it around. "I shall present to you my first illusion by introducing my faithful assistant and First Mate! Everyone, please take a moment and look inside of my hat." He let the whole crew take a look inside the empty hat and slowly repeated the show. Once everyone agreed that it was indeed completely empty he placed it on the stage in front of him, upright. He clapped his hands together and slowly parted them with a white-tipped black wand appearing as his gloves parted. Bard immediately applauded.
"Sleight of hand" Zan said.
"It was up his sleeve" Rez began "and when he clapped it slid forward. He just took it between his fingers and-" Bard reached over and placed an iron-tough finger in front of Rez's face. Rez looked over and saw him smiling intently at the show so he backed away and pushed Bard's finger away. "Whatever...." he said. Aleister twirled the wand between his thick fingers quickly and gripped it between his thumb and index finger with a light press.
"Watch the hat, please!" he said. "Ala-Bala-Cadra-Kala!!!" At his stirring summoning chant and the constant swirling movements of his wand he suddenly smashed his top hat with the wand and the thick fabric of the apparel buckled down under the weight of his swing. The audience became boisterous with tension and anticipation. What would happen? With his top hat smashed by the seemingly flimsy wand in his fingers they did not know. Aleister took his wand up and sheathed it coolly in the breast of his suit, vanishing it from his person again. The top hat on the stage floor began to shake and expand as if it was being inflated with air like a balloon.
Then, suddenly, and exactly like a balloon, it burst with a cloud of colorful smoke and flying paper streamers. In the midst of all that noise and color stood the slender figure of a woman wearing dazzling silver with a trailing cape of transparent, ethereal, sparkling crystal quality. Her hair was done up to fit into the enormous feathered headdress she wore. Huge feathery plumage stuck out in a perfect half-circle from her head. She was a young girl and only appeared to be somewhat taller than Araly. Then the smoke cleared, and her face and skin were revealed. She was a delicate and dazzlingly fair-skinned girl with white hair flowing in thick curls into her headdress. And Red eyes. Her face was plastered with apathy despite its beauty and she wore glistening silver lipstick and mascara.
"Presenting" Aleister introduced "the wondrous, dazzling, arcane beauty, Vega Void!!!" The crowd cheered suddenly. Vega threw up her arms and back her head to reveal her dazzling body and exotically luscious curves in the sparkling silver one-piece suit. She looked out over the crowd, all men cheering with varied degrees of excited blushes, and the line of important people sitting front and center who all applauded at the marvel of the trick itself. Except one. Vega had to lower her stance and drop her jaw in honest surprise when she spotted Gretta, a girl who looked almost exactly like her. Gretta noticed as well, and once the audience died down in their cheers they seemed to notice it too.
"Oh wow" Bard said. He looked between Vega and Gretta rapidly, coming to the simplest conclusion he could conceive. "He...must've cloned her suddenly! With Magic!!!" Araly smacked him in the head passively. Gretta was deeply staring at the girl on stage, a stunning, more mature reflection of herself, and she noted the occurrence down quickly.
It is entirely unexpected she wrote that I could exist in two places at once. Therefore, this girl, must be a replica of mine made out of magic! Her naïvety was on par with Bard's for that moment, but the show went on regardless. Vega merely passed the occurrence off as strange....
"Now then" Aleister continued, "with the assistance of Miss Vega Void, we shall continue the show with a dazzling display of illusion and mystical wonderment!"
"YAAAH!!!" the crowd cheered.
"I wonder when he'll get tired of that word" Zan said with a grin. Rez snickered at his remark.
"What's he gonna do?" Rez wondered. "He'd need a big-ass cannon to shoot himself out of, wouldn't he?"
"Maybe he'll shoot Vega" Gretta said.
"Yeah, she's thin enough to be a projectile" Rez agreed.
"Oh, not like that" Gretta said. "Maybe he'll just shoot her." Rez froze up in shocked disgust at Gretta's graphic thought. He looked over and saw her flatly, passively, emotionlessly observing the performance on the stage.
What the hell? Rez thought. Is she secretly a sadist or something!?
"Miss Void" Aleister began, "if you would, please set up the next act."
"Why?" Vega asked. "You're a big enough man to carry an entire stage with you and you can't bring out a simple cart? What does that say for your power as a magician, exactly?" Yet again, the crowd was stunned into silence.
She even talks like Gretta! Everyone realized.
"Ah" Aleister began, keeping his showmanship grin and positive tone, "but is it not the job of the assistant to assist?" He leaned forward, wringing his hands together and brought his wide, smiling face down to her level. "Be a dear and get the supplies, please?"
"Fair enough" Vega said. She reached up and plucked a long hair from his beard. He winced away and stood straight up, covering his mouth and holding in any potential shouting that would result.
She's as mean as Gretta..... the crew thought.
Vega held up the hair she plucked and straightened it out. A spotlight came down on her. The hair was a thick to her as a slender, smooth rope. Even so the thickness meant little to her and she went quickly to work folding and looping and tying it to itself in many complicated knots. Once she was finished she reached behind her waist and retrieved a pair of scissors.
"I shall cut this string" she said, ignoring what it really was "in at least three places. The remaining broken knots will fall to the floor of the stage in pieces, and as I gather them up, they will reform into one continuous piece. Please observe closely." The pirates all leaned in. A timpani drum-roll sounded from both sides of the stage by the unseen crew still operating in the shadows of the magic. Zan was the only one who refused to focus where he was asked and instead watched Aleister for his movement and reaction. He was watching just the same, smiling down at his assistant as she cut the knotted hair into pieces and let them all fall down at her feet. Once it was completely cut she reached down and gathered them all up into her hands. Then, with the thin ends pinched in her fingers, she pulled it to its full length as a whole and uncut length of string with many tiny flags handing from it!
"Ta-da" she flatly announced. "It's magic, isn't it?" The crowd ignored her apathy and cheered loudly at her effort. Not only was it whole again but it was joined by tiny flags of all different colors, a whole rainbow with different hued colors between each whole color change. She wound the string up around her hand and into a neat ball. A tuxedo crewman came out wheeling a cart and took a bow to the audience. Vega placed the end of her trick on the cart and took a polite bow to the audience as well. Aleister's big, mighty hands clapped together as he applauded behind her as well.
"A wonderful trick, Vega!" he said. "You've learned well from me, but it'd be an insult to expect anything less from my very own assistant!"
"It's simply a matter of mind" Vega said. "It took you years to learn that and I days. I'm just much smarter than you." Aleister stopped applauding and puckered his lips. The audience laughed and enjoyed themselves thoroughly.
"All part of the act" Zan said. "I wasn't expecting comedy, of course. It's a pleasant sort of surprise."
"True" Rez said. "I can't help but feel like their act is a bit....familiar though."
"I don't get it" Bard said shamelessly. "I can learn all sorts of complicated year-long martial arts training in a couple days."
"Ah, there it is" Zan said as Rez glowered at Bard and grit his teeth. Both Aleister and Vega took a bow to their gracious audience. Aleister moved forward to the front of the stage and smiled wide out to his audience.
"Now" he began "with the willing aid of my assistant, we shall wow you all over again with a most powerful illusion!"
"Willing?" Vega said. "You never told me to make a choice, so am I really willing?"
"You're the assistant, so you must be" Aleister said.
"Or is this abuse of power?" Vega said. "Should I mutiny?"
"Ah, that's enough out of you!" Aleister said with greatly feigned anger. He clapped his hands twice and a cage fell down from the top of the stage, a thin veil of curtains that could in no way hide a cage so heavy, tall, broad and finely meshed with thick metal bars. Vega looked out with her hands up to her cheeks, even the apathy of her face still plainly visible as she flatly exclaimed
"Oh no!" and commenced to slowly lay herself down on the floor as if fainted.
Is this funny? The crew thought. Gretta was noting that it was, indeed, not to her. Araly was laughing lightly into her hand at the sheer antics and the intentional poor delivery of each line they spoke. Aleister clapped his hands together and as he drew them apart revealed a long and shining sort of object.
"Now then, Miss Vega Void" he spoke, unsheathing something very sharp and metal, "I shall see that this performance becomes something fantastic for you!" He wielded in his hand a narrow, long saber, complete with a rounded golden handguard over the hilt. Many pirates froze, captivated by not the blade or the danger but by Aleister's apparent honesty in the wild and threatening grin across his face. It had lost its joviality and adapted something wholly mad and twisted.... "HYAH!!!" he shouted as he trust his sword through the metal. The audience was stunned to silence. He drew the sword out and stabbed again, each time growing more rapid and random until his thick, powerful arms moved in a blur of silver and black.
"Well this is entertaining" Zan said. "How's he going to get away with murder?"
"She went under the stage" Rez said. Zan turned to him with a skeptical smirk and raise of his eyebrows. "I ain't being critical. I know most of this is some kind of legitimate mind-tricks and illusions and stuff, but don't underestimate the eyes of a true Duelist. She didn't up and disappear, it was slow. She was lowered so slowly that no one would notice until they started looking for her."
"What powerful eyes you have" Zan said. "It must be hard to stay entertained at things like this when you know everything."
"Yeah" Rez said.
"Is she okay!?" Bard exclaimed. Aleister stopped his sword, ran a finger along the flat of the blade and then sheathed it, magically, into nothing between his two palms. "IS HE OKAY!? DID HE STAB HIMSELF!?!?"
"Quiet!" Araly exclaimed, slapping him upside the head once more.
"Not to worry, ladies and gentlemen" Aleister said with a cocky fix of his bow. "Despite the dangerous situation presented, I assure you that Miss Vega Void is perfectly fine. Please, raise the cage!" The cage was indeed risen back up by chains into the impossibly thin curtains. Rez followed it up the whole time and watched it vanish from sight behind the curtains overhead, skeptically glaring at it when it went away. Then he looked back down and saw a torn-apart suit that Vega had just worn and a floor full of holes that led down into a cramped space where a bunch of columns were which kept the stage up and steady. Aleister had pierced down nearly to the Buster Pirate's own deck, and no possible means of Vega's escape were present.
"Maybe she's dead" Zan said casually.
"Don't think like that at all!" Araly scolded.
"Do you think she's dead?" a pirate whispered from behind. Araly turned and huffed at them, silencing them fast.
"She's in your hat" Gretta called. Aleister turned to Gretta and looked tense.
"A-ha!" Bard exclaimed. "It's magic, so of course she's in the magic hat! We're right, aren't we?"
"I was right before you" Gretta said casually.
"She isn't!" Aleister said. He took off his hat and shook it out before showing it to everyone. "Look! Look! It is empty! I am not the kind of magician to repeat his tricks twice in the same setting!"
"Where could she be then?" the pirates all wondered.
"That's all you thought!?" Aleister exclaimed. "Hey now, what kind of production do you think this is? You think that low of me?"
"We give up!" Bard proclaimed, standing up with his arm in the air. "Where is she?"
"Wait a sec" Zan shouted. He pointed to Aleister and grinned. "You've always got a trick up your sleeve, right? Then roll them up for us!"
"Could she really be up his sleeve?" Rez wondered. "That doesn't seem likely...or possible."
"Just go with it" Zan whispered. "We'll get him to reveal his powers after too long." Rez smirked at Zan.
"Do you really give up, Captain?" Gretta asked.
"Well, I do" Bard said. "I mean, I don't speak for everyone right now, but-"
"Yes you do!" Araly angrily exclaimed with a kick to his neck.
"Then I shall reveal it" Gretta said as she stood up. Nobody had noticed while she was sitting, but now Gretta seemed to be a bit taller and her body had more of an accent in its curves, and all around she looked more mature. Then she turned to the pirates with the flutter of her silver lashes and disrobed herself down to her sterling silver onepiece suit. "I am here!" Vega announced.
"OH MY GOOOOOOD!!!!!" the crew exclaimed.
"Then where's Gretta?" Bard wondered.
"Behind you" Gretta said with a quick poke to his back. He jumped with a start at her presence, which nobody noticed, as she had somehow wound up in the barrel he sat on. After a moment of complete silence and awe the pirate crowd stood up and cheered, applauding madly, while all three players bowed respectfully. Gretta curtsied.
Once the actors were set back into their places the show resumed. Yet more fantastic feats awaited the eager crew. Aleister showed them tricks of sleight of hand which even Rez could not follow, making swords and tables and even members of the audience appear in his closed hands. Those men simply made their way bashfully back to their seats and claimed to have no idea at all what happened. The crew of the Top Hat Pirates returned to the stage and the men all formed a human pyramid against a brightly lit curtain backdrop. Once assembled and high, Aleister summoned his powers with his incantation and snapped his fingers. The men, who at first seemed supported by the weight of the next man below, all rolled backwards in the air and stood on the back wall. By means of magic the backdrop of the stage became their floor, and they danced and spun and made a merry show by walking to the stage and standing upright once more to bow to the cheering audience.
Aleister held out a broad and opaque curtain before his body and threw it over his head. The cloth drifted down, his body gone, and everyone began looking around curiously for him, under seats and behind the mast. Vega caught their attention with a tiny sound popper and directed their eyes to a top hat she held. It was a normal, regular-human sized top hat, but she set it on the flat center of the spread-out cloth and stepped away. The cloth moved up, as if it was inflated, and then hung up just enough to show the floral-print pants of Aleister, who had reappeared lacking his original hat with the tiny one atop his head under the cloth. He removed the cloth, tossed it aside, where it seemed to vanish somehow, and began unfolding the normal top hat like a cloth until it was the right size for his own head. Once again, wild cheering and applause shook the deck as pirates were stomping their feet in amusement.
"Now for this next trick" Aleister began "we will need another participant from the audience." The pirates were mostly wary to volunteer, save of course for their eager young captain who didn't even wait to be accepted. Bard simply jumped to the stage and posed before his crew with a wide smile and a flex of his chest.
"Go Captain Bard!" the pirates cheered. Vega grabbed his ear and pinched, forcing him to wince.
"Don't be too showy" she said. "That's our job right now." She let go and Bard chuckled shyly.
"Right" he said. "Sorry about that."
"Well then, Bard" Aleister began, "you seem quite eager about participating in this. Are you at all nervous about what my happen to you if my magics go wrong?" Vega nodded for him flatly. Bard chuckled along with the audience.
"Nah" Bard said. "You're obviously an amazing magician. I shouldn't have anything to worry about, right?"
"Indeed!" Aleister proclaimed. "That's the spirit! What a fine, brave young man you are! Glad to have you here!" Aleister extended his white-gloved hand for Bard to shake. Bard nodded and took his hand, his forearm itself being grabbed in Aleister's clutch, which he curiously cocked his brow too.
His glove feels a little strange he thought. When I shook his hand earlier, it just felt like a regular, huge glove. Now.... Bard left the shake and looked at his arm, which was gone. His arm stopped just above his elbow and the rest was simply not there at all. Bard waved his arm around, hoping at first that the rest would just pop out, then felt to see if it was invisible, his hand running over the ending stump of his arm as his face sank in pale horror.
"GAAAAAAAHHH!!!!" he screamed.
"AAAAHHHH!!!!" the crew replied.
"What the hell!?" Rez shouted as he took to his feet. Zan stopped him from any advance with his arm and held him back. "What's going on, genius?"
"It could be...." Zan began. He huffed away his concern and simply bade Rez to sit back down with a push. "Let's be calm for now and wait. There's bound to be an explanation for this, just as he did with the men from the audience."
"Wha, wh-wh-w-w-whaaa" Bard stuttered mindlessly. "What'd you do to my arm!? Where is it!?" Aleister chuckled at Bard and Vega just gave a showy jazzing of her hands in front of him. "This ain't a joke, man! It's weird!" Bard looked down at his incomplete arm and could see it moving, he could feel it still there, but more than obviously it was not.
"More importantly" Zan called "where is the trick?"
"Coming right up!" Aleister exclaimed. He snapped his fingers and summoned a crewman from behind his leg, who appeared from nowhere at all. The man held out his right arm and Aleister pressed down on it with his hand, making it vanish the same as Bard's, right up to the same point, but as his hand drew away the arm had returned, Bard's arm on the body of the tuxedo man! Aleister did the same to Bard's arm, replacing it with the black sleeved arm of the crewman whose arm he had taken away. The man walked to Bard with Bard's right arm extended forth as he opened his hand in the attempt to shake with his own arm. Bard was so confused by what was happening that his fingers just started twitching as his body shook.
"I'm so confused...." Bard said with a defeated sigh. The man reached him and extended his arm out to its owner to shake. "Ah, nice to meet you" Bard said, shaking hands in the most perplexing manner possible. Zan was grinning with a villainous look of victory.
"What?" Rez said. "You've got it figure out?" Zan walked forward and mounted the stage, turning to Aleister as the crowd began their wave of applause and cheering again.
"Can I help you?" Vega asked, approaching Zan with her hands politely folded down. Zan shot a steel glance at her.
"You're not as good as him" Zan said. "I can see that thing without looking..." Vega just stared at him with a cold emotionless gaze and clutched at the blade of the small knife in her hands. She stepped back. "Oh sir?" Zan called, finally revealing his presence on the stage. "Can you tell me, and all of us, what is the worst-tasting fruit you've ever eaten?" Aleister's expression shifted from an accepting grin to the applause to one accompanied by the darkest of leers. Bard and the crewman went on shaking hands, each others hands in the other's arm, until the crewman broke away by force and held Bard's strong, disproportionately thick arm out to the side. Bard was confused. Aleister started laughing, very loudly, with no hint of real joviality at all.
"Ahahahahaha! How sharp of you!" he exclaimed. Aleister drew out a cloth from nowhere and started wiping his hands. "You are a very astute man. I'm glad we didn't call on you to be our volunteer. You might have ruined the show."
"Don't be a jerk, Zan" Marco called. "Let him do his show!"
"We don't want to know how he does it!" another aggravated, burly pirate shouted. "That's part of the magic!"
"Then what I do" Zan said "must be magic too." The pirates all joined in a confused grunting tilt of heads. Zan turned back to Aleister and held genuine surprise for what he saw. Aleister still held the cloth in plain sight, but not in plain hands, for what hands he had were invisible, almost completely. Rez stood up in shock, along with most of the crew, to see the shapes of hands invisibly rippling through the air.
"Before I set out on the Grand Line" Aleister began, showing the the whole audience his invisible hands, "I was simply a magician with nothing to my act but the prestidigitation that has impressed and astounded you all with the assistance of the agile and swift Vega Void." Vega moved out from behind Zan and bowed quickly. "I am a man who ate the Portal Portal Fruit! It turned my hands into gateways into an infinite dimension of unlimited space! I am a Portal Man!!!"
"Give me my arm back!!!" Bard shouted, pointing an arm that wasn't his at Aleister.
"Huuu" Aleister huffed. "Never before has anyone predicted my power, nor has any single man been so rude as to wreck my entire act by storming my stage!"
"I've been called tactless by lots of people" Zan said "as I stabbed them to death through the wall...I am a man who ate the Meld Meld fruit, granting me the power to pass through solid matter."
"And I'm pissed off!" Bard shouted. "I want my arm back!" A heavy air descended on the stage. Vega very quietly departed with short dragging shuffles of her feet. Zan watched her out of the corner of his eye as she seemed to be running away from the stage entirely. Aleister cracked his neck with a quick jerk of his head. The ocean shook with force. All the pirates recognized the feeling, the heavy swarming darkness before the storm, and stood up with weapons armed. From the curtains of the stage the entire crew, twice as large as it was presented, came running out armed as well, ready for war. Zan placed a cigarette in his mouth and lit it with a smirk.
"I cannot" Aleister said.
"But you're a magician" Bard said. "You can. Give it back."
"Now that you know my secrets" Aleister lowed "there is no way I can allow you to live to spread this news! I shall make you all DISAPPEAR!!!" The fight was one. What all the men of the crew truly awaited had come, not in the form of entertainment but in the form of war, their greatest source of pleasure...
