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 fight was on! The Buster Pirates, barbaric and strong as they were large with force, clashed head on with the crew of the Top Hat Pirates, captained by the mysterious and powerful man Aleister Altair. The stage was his to command as the pirates charged it, and immediately many men were sent into trap doors which they barely fit through into tunneled pits which somehow made them fall from the ceiling of the stage. The magical crew ran around the traps, knowing well where they were, armed with fencing swords and short daggers for those who chose to wield pistols. The fight was loud and chaotic and everyone joined as quickly as they could to participate. All but Araly, Gretta and Bard who angrily stomped past the fighters to try and find his own arm again.
"Where is he?" Bard wondered. He looked at his arm and could think of nothing more than getting his own back, for the weak and thin forearm of another man's was attached to his by way of Aleister's potent skill of portal handling.
"Oh no!" Aleister shouted. He charged with his short legs and large body over to Bard with his invisible hands wound back. "You won't be in this fight, young man! Close Space!" Aleister swung both his hands at Bard and missed, so far as he knew. Bard had jumped up into the air at a level with his face with his right leg wound back.
"RANKYAKUU!!!" Bard shouted. He kicked a blade of air that sped and sliced right through Aleister's tuxedo and made a gash in his arm. The rest of the blade continued past him and smashed into the stage behind him.
What was that!? Aleister paused to wonder. It was as if he threw a blade of air at me! Could this be an ability of some sort? Bard landed and started pushing through the crowd with his shoulders. He stood out and was targeted immediately by many of the enemy crew who rushed at him with straight swords with the intent to stab him full of holes. Bard backflipped standing and stepped his leg back. He was winding up a sweeping kick with an angry glower bright on his face.
"Avoid him!" Aleister shouted. "Don't rashly charge their captain! He has some unknown power!!!"
"Rankyakuu!" Bard shouted as he kicked. The blade was long and curved just so to fly into all the surrounding bodies that charged at them. Their thick armor underneath the dazzling garb they wore was pushed with the might of a battle-ax swing and they tumbled away, clearing a path for mighty Bard to rush through. He spied, at the rear of the stage, the man he sought fending off one of his own crewmen with his own arm. He blocked with Bard's arm and from that distance Bard could feel the nicking breezes of air that the swords swept. That crewman saw Bard approaching and pushed his enemy away, placing the edge of his flat, sharp blade to Bard's wrist.
"Damn!" Bard exclaimed. He stomped himself into place, rushed from behind and took in a long, quick breath. "TEKKAI!!!" His muscles tensed and his skin hardened to iron, and no amount of cutting harmed him. His arm on the other man was sliced at the wrist in vain and became to heavy for him to wield.
"Punk!" the Buster Pirate shouted. He kicked the man's face and knocked off his operatic mask, then stole his sword for his other hand and hauled the unconscious body over his back. "I've got Bard's arm! Fight without mercy!" he proclaimed. The pirates within earshot that were holding back forced themselves forward. They pushed through the guards of blades and fired into the open paths to shoot through men's arms and cut women's legs, all fighting with the equal merciless warring intent to harm and be unharmed, and some even with no care to the amount of harm they endured so long as their body continued to fight.
Bard held his breath and his stance until his crew came to fight the pirates off of him so that his Tekkai could be canceled, but even then he had his problems with it. Damn! He exclaimed. How did I cancel this!? It's too exciting right now to relax!!!
Zan was equally avoided and feared, and was targeted directly by Aleister himself. From across the expansive stage, somehow much larger and longer to walk on that it was to observe at a distance, Aleister drew out a cannon from his hand that was loaded and prepared to fire. He aimed at Zan and lit it with a spark of fire that came from his other hand, a burning ember at the end of a torch that he huffed at through his nostril into a fuming flame. Zan ran at him to gain ground and jumped just as the cannon fired. He let his leg be struck through by the ball and let it harmlessly phase through his skin and off the boat. He grinned in arrogance and landed in the midst of a battle.
"No one runs away" Zan said. He took his bladed grips and stabbed into the shoulders, arms, bellies and shins of all the men and women within his reach, then let the pirates pin them down and render them unconscious. "No one gets to escape." Zan continued to run, raising his fists to block the odd or deflected blows and control the battle around him while Aleister made his way across the stage as well.
"Gah!" A pirate shouted. "He stole my sword! Don't let him near you!"
"Fire at him if you can!" a pirate said. One near the front of the stage who held a bazooka over his shoulder, aimed at Aleister with a scowling glare.
"Eat this, Portal boy!!!" He fired his cannon and Aleister caught the ball that flew at him. It harmlessly passed into his portal hand, leaving behind a trail of smoke that Aleister absorbed as his hand passed through it, and then out the other hand when he picked a careful target, a clustered together group of Buster Pirates. The explosion scattered and weakened them, leaving them prey for the rest of his crew to pick off and work for the active Buster pirates nearby to save.
"Hahahaha!!!" Aleister chuckled. "Now this is a show! The greatest show on the seas! This is what a pirate is born to do, to plunder and pilage, all for his entertainment!"
"HEY!" Bard shouted. He was mid-flight and bound for Aleister's face with a leg drawn back and a vicious scowl on his face. "GIVE ME MY ARM BA-" and then he was gone, right into the palms of Aleister held together in a protective barrier.
"Captain!" a pirate shouted in dismay.
"Don't worry" Zan said. "It's not a death-zone in there. There's at least enough oxygen to keep a fire burning for a long time so he should be fine. Concentrate on getting that other guy in there as well! Maybe the laws of attachment only work insofar as Aleister allows them to in that dimension of his!"
"How troublesome your astuteness is!" Aleister called. He swung a fist, or what appeared as a fist, down at Zan who dodged in emergency out of the way. The stage Aleister's hand hit vanished into his portal dimension and stretched right down to the deck of the Imperial Dragon which had been dented by the immaterial knuckles of his hand. "You'd go so far as to venture a guess on that, but I've no shame in giving a dead man the truth he deserves!"
"Dead?" Zan asked. He spat his cigarette at Aleister as an act of defiance and stood in an open space where his comrades had spread away from to avoid the empowered magician. "You're late to tell a dead man tales. I died a long time ago, before you even knew what this sea could do."
"Silence!" Aleister demanded. Zan melded down through the stage and avoided Aleister's grip as he stole away more wood and steel from the stage and stored it in his dimension of parts without order. He thought, however, that he had got him and stood up grinning. "No man has lived through discovering my secrets of power! No man should! Magic can only work if it is believed to be unexplainable!" He turned his glaring eyes to the crew, who had finished fighting. The overwhelming strength of the small army of men had trumped the pomp and flare of Aleister's stage performers. They all glared at him now, and were joined finally by the stomp of Rez's heavy boots to the stage as he drew out his mighty Hell Tiger cannon-blade. All Aleister could to was smile and clap his hands together.
In the void of Aleister's controlled portal space many objects floated around, all shot into the weightless area by means of two large hand-shaped windows that viewed out into the open world which changed form as Aleister used his own hands in combat. Bard floated along, holding his breath, with his still good arm raking at the space around his strained face.
I wonder if I can breathe in here..... Bard thought. He tried and found the air stagnant yet real and breathable. He gave a great sigh of relief and wiped his brow with the hand that wasn't his. "Well, that's a relief! I wouldn't want to die in a place like this!" Bard tried swimming through space with his single arm, a task that would have proven no real difficulty in water, but his weightless state proved all too futile to move about. He saw an object drifting toward him, a rusted iron bar, and he grabbed onto it. He floated along with it as its motion carried him close to the hand portals in the middle of the wide, colorful space, more confused than anything about where he was and how he had become there.
"This guy's ability is bogus" Bard said. "Stupid magician and his awesome skill! I can't go hand-to-hand with a guy who has no hands! My attacks are almost useless against him too, since I can't get in close enough for a punch without getting swallowed up by this weird-o dimension. And for some reason I can't move around in it!" Bard sighed with a defeated grin. "I guess it's up to the guys to finish this one for me. Not that I don't have faith in them, but it suck not being able to help....." As Bard drifted hopelessly his comrades continued fighting outside, at the mercy of Aleister's amazing prestidigitation combat skills.
"Voila!" he shouted. "From up my sleeve, I pull out a cannon!!!" And so he did. Not from his hands, but from up his sleeves he aimed a cannon with his wrist and blasted a group away from him and across the stage.
"Charge in!" Rez commanded. "Break his guard and beat him up!"
"Get Bard's arm into his portal!" A pirate shouted. Behind him was the man wielding two sabers and an unconscious body across his back with Bard's arm consciously dangling on the man's body.
"You shall not upstage me!" Aleister shouted. He threw a punch and sent out a cluttered mess of iron pieces, wooden scraps and random junk all balled up into a destructive and chaotic mess. The pirates ran from it and avoided being crushed and buried as the junk spread out and hit everywhere. The pirate carrying the man who wielded Bard's arm was guarded and passed the objectified person off to another.
"Let me handle this" the bulky and strong-armed pirate said. He took the tuxedo collar in a grip and stepped back, preparing to throw the unconscious body at Aleister directly. "Get him to guard with his hands!"
"Got it" the pirates around him said. They drew out their pistols and fired in turn. Aleister blocked the bullets and saw through his transparent hands the body flying at him. He stepped to the side and dodged the bullets and the body which flew down into the arm of another pirate who was waiting behind.
"Follow-up pass!" the pirate exclaimed. He tossed the body at Aleister, right to his hands, and hit it right into his palm! But the body did not vanish. It was cradled in the soft white cloth drawn from out of Aleister's portal hand as a glove.
"I can materialize my hands at will with whatever I wish" Aleister said. The white cloth covered across his thick fingers and covered his hand immediately. He picked the man up, who was still dazed and unconscious, and put him in the hat atop his head. "Hahaha! Come and get it, you scoundrels! Your captain is trapped within my dimensional area and his arm is safely with me!"
"Is it now?" Zan asked. He was walking on Aleister's mighty shoulders, standing just tall enough to touch the brim of the magic, black hat. "Nothing is safe when an assassin is around, you know."
"Quiet, you!" Aleister shouted. He swatted at his shoulder just as Zan jumped up and through the top hat. Aleister grabbed his hat and jostled the contents within immediately. The pirates continued to converge on him from below.
"Take the hat!" Rez demanded. A pirate armed with a grappling hook and rope spun the weapon and threw it up, latching right into the thick brim of the hat.
"Got it!" he declared.
"Are you daft!?" Aleister shouted. He passed an invisible hand over a section of the rope and it vanished, leaving an incomplete string still attached to his hat. "No solid matter can harm me! Nothing short of an all-consuming fire could prevent my hands from protecting me!" Aleister wound up a backhand swing and threw out a tight gathering of rusted swords and sharp points of iron that spread across the stage. Pirates lacking armor were hurt and downed, covered by those who avoided the attacks to be carried off stage as quickly as possible. The attack reached wide and hit nearly everyone that was charging. Rez survived by blocking with his Hell Tiger. The Paladins survived the attack as well, armed with blades and harpoons and wearing suits of metal armor layered with leather and covered with cloth. On their capes was the symbol they stood for, the justice they wanted: the insignia of the Buster Pirates!
"We shall defend our honor!" the leading Paladin shouted. The others roared back "HURAHH!!!"
"More stage-hogs!" Aleister lowed. He turned his hat around to flicked the rope out of his face so that his glaring scowl went unimpeded. "I'll say this only once: This is my stage, and you are NOT WELCOME ON IT!!!" He drew out a cannon from each invisible finger and aimed them all down. From inside, Bard could see things moving around, assisted by totally arcane means, as if of their own will to the hand portals.
"What the hell?" Bard said. "That's weird. How is it all moving like that?" Bard took his feet to the iron rod he rode and pushed himself through weightless space to an ember-glowing torch that was moving to the fuses of the armed cannons. He grabbed it and rode it with his weightless body toward the portals. "Maybe I can get out like this...." The torch hit the fuse and lit it. The cannons were ready to fire, half of them within and half outside of the portals space. "Maybe....first I should...." Bard's thoughts immediately jumped from a statement of 'perhaps' to his body trying to spin itself in a way to catch all the different objects in the same attack.
"Raaaaan" he began. Something fell through the portal at the last second, just as the cannons mutely fired at his comrades outside, and hit into him, forcing him to finish up his lead into his attack improperly with a stuttered "KYKAGGKA!!!" Bard grabbed the object that hit him and saw it to be a man in a tuxedo, and extending out from that improperly ended tux sleeve was an arm, his arm, which he moved and saw move separate yet still somehow attached to his own body. "Alright! My arm! But, wait...how do I get it off?" On a whim, Bard grabbed his arm and pulled. It popped right off. "Well, that was easy. I MUST BE MAGIC!!!!" Outside, after the cannons fired and the Paladins were all but struck down and on their knees in pain, Aleister withdrew the objects back into his portal space and prepared to tip his hat in victory.
"I would commend your efforts" he said "but to such spoil-sports as you there is no greater comfort for me than to know that you have been forever silenced. Please, do not leave your seats, for I am about to prepare the greatest act of the day. I'm going to make this entire ship disappear!!!"
"Like crap you are!" Rez shouted. He drew out a gunblade and aimed to fire, not at Aleister but at the stage above him. His genius eyes calculated the trajectory his bullet would take from bounding off the metal beams to sink into the man's thick neck.
"I wouldn't try it" Aleister warned upon seeing Rez's actions. "At any moment I can summon up that fool of a boy and use his body to block whatever attack you dare plan! And if not that, I can certainly use his own arm against you from within my top hat!" At that he took off his hat and held it out before him. The top fell off, cut open like the lid of a can, and his eyes went wide and bloodshot open. His grin continued to scowl with malice but his eyes were in panic.
How!? Aleister thought. What happened!? How can this be!?
"Ta-daaah!" Zan exclaimed. "It's Magic!" He swung on the rope from the brim of the hat and made a leap for Aleister's arm. He stabbed his blade into the man's wrist, straight into a pulsing vein that vanished into his invisible hand, then pressed his feet against his hard skin and leaped back to the floor, landing on his feet with a slide into a proper fighting position with a smirk on his face.
"GAAAHH!!!" Aleister screamed. He couldn't hold his bleeding arm but with a pass over of his hand he managed to wrap it in cloth before the blood stained his sleeve. "You-you-you bastard! I will make the ocean around this ship vanish and sink you all to the depths!!!"
"Sure you will" Rez said. "Not that I don't believe or anything...."
"I am magic!" Bard said. He took his two hands, both his own and on their proper arms together in front of his face. Then, he wrapped his index finger around the thumb of his opposite hand and pulled it apart, though in reality, it was the same thumb of the same hand bent into his index finger while the other thumb was bent down. "MAGIC!!! Heehehehehee!!!" Bard twirled through the air with a gleeful grin on his face. The man who had once owned his right arm had been corrected and his right arm put back in its proper place. Bard had already detached his whole arm from his shoulder and swapped arms and hands completely, but the coordination of them together was so confusing that he nearly passed out and let himself stay corrected while he could.
Only after he had fooled around enough did it hit him.
"OOHHH!! I know Geppou! I can escape anytime I want!!!" To that end Bard forced himself to face the hand portals that he had drifted away from and curled his legs up for a powerful push. "GEPPOU!!!" He shot against the air and drifted powerfully forward, away from the distant and colorful expanse of floating, random matter and towards the shaded stage lights. He got to the hand-shaped portals and smashed into one like a hard and heavy window. Before it moved away he grabbed onto the thumb and was swung around just the same as how Aleister moved his hands from the outside.
"Wait a sec!" Bard exclaimed. "This doesn't make sense now! Shouldn't I be able to pass through it!? Isn't that how a portal should work!?" Bard remained trapped for the time being as Aleister continued to fight against the Buster Pirates star members Zan and Rez, backed by the moral safeguards of the rest of the crew off stage. They were watching with the heated interest of an audience watching the events of a play unfold live before them, ignoring the potentially fatal ramifications that any given action could have on them.
"If you guys are just gonna stand and watch" Rez roared "the least you could do is try and protect the girls!!!"
"Aren't they already safe?" Marco asked. He looked over and their empty seats, as the other pirates had before they went to sit.
"I hope the dark-haired guy gets hit" a pirate whispered. "That'd be awesome."
"When'd they leave!?" Rez demanded.
"Eyes front, pal!" Zan warned. Aleister stomped toward him and made a swipe of his hand. Rez swung his sword to the side, slashed into the stage floor and pulled himself away in a mid-air spin to avoid the sweeping invisible hand of Aleister. The wood of the stage where Rez stood had vanished in a clean scooping arc. The mad magician turned with a deep scowl and eyes of pure hatred with a cannon armed out of his invisible index finger.
"Don't try to outgun me, big man" Rez warned. "This sword isn't a prop, you know!" Rez swung up and fired a cannonball, hitting the cannon from out of Aleister's hand so that it spun and exploded in the air just close enough to force Aleister backward in a stagger. He had stepped near the front end of the stage and had to swing both his arms forward and stomp his feet down to remain standing safely. He began running forward again, both hands blocking forward as wide as they could, while Zan melded through the stage and popped up right beside him.
"Boo!" Zan shouted. He slashed into Aleister's leg and cut through his floral-printed pants. Aleister stomped his injured leg down and spun a backhand around at Zan, throwing all manner of metal and wooden scraps his way as an attack. Zan just let them fly through his body and melded down through them and back into the stage.
"Wide open!" Rez said. He had both his gunblades out and fired rapidly at Aleister's back. The bullets exploded on contact and continued relentlessly until both his clips had run out. As Rez reloaded Aleister prepared another attack, drawing out a cannon loaded with sharp objects and broken sword blades. "Oh, crap!" Rez exclaimed. He could see the wide area that such a hazardous attack would effect and made a run for it, trying to lead Aleister's aim in Rez's advantage amidst the already cluttered scenery.
"Too late, boy!" Aleister called. The cannon fired and spread sharp metal shrapnel randomly in all directions. Rez grabbed his broadsword and swung just in time to defend most of himself, but still got scratched across the leg and pierced by a shard of metal in the shoulder. He winced and immediately pulled the shard out, letting himself bleed and feeling the heat of dysfunction grip over his injured arm. "Looks like it's a curtain call for you, my friend! Hahahaha!!!" While he was involved over his pun Zan shot up from the stage floor with both his blades wound back, prepared to strike at the charred and vulnerable spots of his back. Aleister turned himself full around and smashed his elbow into Zan's body. Unable to phase through it Zan took the blow and was thrown down onto the stage floor with a smash and tumble across the dented wood. He pressed himself up to see Aleister had an attack aimed his way as well, this one from what looked to be a cannon loaded to the brim with small pellets, and he grit his teeth.
The explosion speckled the stage floor with black marks of impact and a myriad of bullet holes. Zan stood bravely with his arms over his face, his skin marked with burnt impacts and bleeding wounds made by the explosion of harsh powder and pellets. He had missed his chance to defend himself from the hail and now stood, his teeth visibly grit in defiance and his body shaking.
Damn Zan thought. I wasn't fast enough. I wasn't aware enough. My better senses failed me for a moment and it cost me all this damage....
"Looks like I have myself quite the situation here" Aleister said. "I can take my time to destroy either one of you first. The pompous young swordsman or you, the assassin who has been a heel to me for far too long....while apathy in an audience is at least tolerable to the true performer, I can never forgive you for disrupting and running my act. I shall kill you, assassin!" Zan froze up. He was still in too much pain to try and move, let alone try and use his power to escape. Aleister drew out yet another cannon, this one obviously loaded with a normal cannonball that would prove fatal at such a close range.
"Dammit!" Rez shouted. "No! Zan! Wait a sec I'll save you!!!" Rez moved forward as fast as he could and drew out his gunblades, hoping that he would have the accuracy and the time to fire a shot good enough to save Zan from being cannon fodder. Despite his Duelist Eyes working themselves to his own mental exhaustion, he could only see Aleister's invisible hand blocking his bullets and now point of impact that would reflect the force of a bullet and redirect its path in any way. He only saw Zan getting shot up close by a cannonball that extended from Aleister's gun-pointing finger. Dammit! Crap dammit! DAMN! I can't do anything!!!
Zan was prepared to die. He closed his eyes and let suffering come forth. Aleister was ready to kill, and in his eyes shone only that bright intent of murder. The audience closed their eyes rather than stand up to help, except Marco who only wondered why they weren't trying to help at all, and bemoaned his own forced seating with them in silence. Then a savior came forth. Bard pushed himself through the narrow opening of Aleister's thick finger and opened the portal in full for his body to come through. He held onto the end of the cannon that held that portal open long enough for him to fit through and aimed it with a heavy swing of his arm. Aleister's face didn't even have time to change as Bard aimed the cannon his way and the fuse burned itself down to its end.
"SURPRISE!!!!!" Bard roared. The cannon blasted and the shot exploded on Aleister's chin. He was toppled over with smoke and fire lingering in the air and his huge body fell off the edge of the stage. His eyes were white and embers burned in his thick, dark beard. His arms fell against the deck and his hands lost their portal abilities, turning back to flesh and matter once more as soon as he lost consciousness. Bard landed with a crash into the wooden floor of the stage and tossed the cannon barrel aside like a broken gun. Rez stopped in his rush and sheathed his gunblades with a sigh.
"Guess I shouldn't worry myself over nothing all the time" Rez said. "Bard's just got stupidly great timing..." Bard turned to Zan, who had fallen down, and walked over to him, completely confident not only in his own victory but in the life of his comrade. Bard leaned down and tapped Zan on the shoulder.
"You alright?" Bard asked. Zan turned his head and grinned as Bard rolled him over. "You're bleeding a lot, aren't you? You'll have to work harder on dodging stuff, right?"
"Ah, right" Zan said. "Say Bard, could you do me a favor and get me a smoke?"
"Why bother?" Bard said with a grin. "You're smoking already, aren't you? Hehehe!"
".......ah, you're funny Bard" Zan said. He closed his eyes and fell into a faint. Bard stood up and called for his crew to come at once. Half of them were already there. As he stood over the frighteningly dense battlefield across the huge area of the stage, and over the injured body of his comrade as he was picked up by his own crew to be treated down below deck, Bard couldn't help but grin.
"Greatest show I've ever seen" Bard said. Rez scoffed as he hobbled past him.
"Let's dump this ass overboard" Rez said, pointing down to Aleister's body. "While we can, why not make him disappear?"
