Title: On the Ocean Blue
Written By: NikoArtagnan
Genre: Fantasy/Friendship/Adventure
Rating: T, will eventually go to M
Summary: An outcast from Earth is flung headfirst into a hostile, unforgiving world, and finds themselves tagging along with a very particular crew of misfit pirates, and the boy who wants to be the King of them all. But this isn't the world of One Piece you thought you knew, and there are terrible things lurking in the shadows...
Chapter-Specific Warnings: Kelly does not deal with Issues well, morbid humor
Chapter Seven:
Big Trouble in Little Garden
Little Garden was amazing.
Kelly flew through the trees, using the branches of one tree as a springboard to the next, lightly touching down only for a second before leaping to the next, smiling all the way.
She halted on a thick branch, high up in the canopy, surprising a flock of brightly colored birds screaming into the sky. Laughing, she flung up her arms.
"Look, Ma, I'm a ninja!" She crowed and collapsed into a heap of convulsive giggles.
She'd sent Gin and Shere Khan ahead, to find the wax home that Mr. 3 made, with orders to locate the Eternal Log to Arabasta and a bellyful of magic so they could easily protect themselves from the island's more…prehistoric residents.
Kelly knew full well that it was Sanji who was supposed to find the Log, but Kelly also knew that if she had the Log, if she found it before Sanji did, then…
A burst of riotous laughter startled an enormous camouflaged python who'd been coiled sleepily around the tree's trunk, making it rise up threateningly before Kelly could soothe it back into sleep, apologizing for interrupting its nap. Kelly grinned as the python rested its head on her shoulder, flicking its tongue out to brush against her cheek. She ran a single finger over its immense coils.
She could only imagine how utterly pissed off Sanji would be, if she received the grateful hug from – was it Nami or Vivi? She couldn't remember. But the thought of making the blond man even angrier than he already was sent her into yet another fit of giggles, so much so the dark brown python gave her a quizzical look. She nuzzled it.
"Just being stupid, darling. Go back to sleep," she whispered, and the python was happy to oblige.
Kelly had a definite fondness for serpents, one that had extended well back into her childhood. She'd always been good with animals (and this was before she'd become a Magus), but – then and now – she had an especial affection for serpents, who gave her unswerving loyalty, be they of the land or the sea.
All animals liked her (or at least could be persuaded into liking her, as was the case with herbivorous animals and some types of fish), but serpents liked her the most. She assumed the reason for that was a combination of her being both a Magus and a Snake herself.
She yawned and looked out over the jungle. She was high up, her perch giving her a spectacular view of the canopy of Little Garden and the volcano in the distance. She leaned back against the trunk, letting the wind cool her face.
Her clothes – being as spelled for cool and air flow as they were – had kept her nice and comfortable in the hot, humid jungle, but her face had still gained a light sheen of sweat from her race through the trees and a run-in with a particularly vicious velociraptor-esque thing.
The air shook as the volcano let loose another thunderous rumble, spewing ash and lava into the air.
"Dorry and Broggy must be starting their fight," Kelly said to herself, her attention more on the beautiful view than anything else. Her fingers itched, like worms crawling beneath the flesh, wrapping around her bones.
She wanted to draw it. She wanted to draw that view so damned bad.
The prehistoric jungle canopy, spreading out for miles, green and lush, with tiny spots of color here and there, with the volcano in the far distance, coated with lava and belching perfectly formed clouds of gas into the achingly blue sky. Her throat and fingers ached at the view.
She had her Sack with her and in it were the new art supplies she'd impulsively bought at Loguetown. So she could, if she wanted to. She had all the time in the world.
The blue and gold-threaded strap wrapped around her chest suddenly felt too tight and she sucked in a desperate breath of air -…"What are you drawing, Kel?" Kelly looks up and smiles involuntarily at her girlfriend, smudged at the edges with dirt from the garden she'd just come from working in. Her light-blonde hair was pulled back into a
"Just a picture of the view," Kelly says, gesturing at the open window and the breathtaking view Kelly's house above the valley affords her of Aratuck Island and the ocean that lies beyond, as the sun casts its crimson light in wide arcs across the water, just beginning on its daily journey across the sky.
Mina leans over her shoulder and Kelly unobtrusively takes a deep whiff, eyes closing in subtle enjoyment of the blonde woman's scent, of growing things and newly turned soil erotically edged with the lily of the valley scent she habitually wears.
"Kelly, this is amazing," Mina says in frank astonishment, and Kelly blinks, coming out of her light trance.
"What?"
"Kelly, why did you not tell me you are such a wonderful artist?" the woman asks almost reverently, running a fingertip over the edge of the paper Kelly had drawn the view on.
Kelly shrugs. "I'm not. Nothing special, I mean, and it's been so long since I had the opportunity to draw anything, I just, I mean…" Ears burning, she looks away, only to jerk reflexively when Mina kisses her neck.
"You are a wonderful artist, my love," the shorter woman says quietly, then smiles. "We'll have to get it framed, hang it somewhere where everyone can see it."
Kelly blinks in shock. "Y-You're serious."
"Of course I am." Mina straddles her lap, setting the notebook behind her on the desk. Kelly's hands go to her hips, holding the curvaceous woman in place as she rests her arms on either side of Kelly's head.
They smile at each other, and Kelly feels a soft warmth in her heart when she asks "Can I draw you?" and Mina whispers "It would be an honor."
They don't do much else for the rest of the morning (after all, Kelly has a gorgeous woman on her lap, she's not going to do much else but pay her the appropriate attention), but when the moon rises high in the sky Kelly slips out of bed and spends four hours drawing the naked Aphrodite she's somehow managed to trick into falling in love with her…- Kelly pressed a hand to her face, biting down hard on the inside of her cheek until hot, salty blood filled her mouth, and she swallowed, the coppery taste of her own blood and the pain driving away the tears that burned her eyes.
Turning away from the view, she patted the python as it began spiraling up the trunk, heading for higher territory.
She leapt to a lower tree, and continued her path through the jungle.
(Mistress.)
The word spread across one of the bands that coiled out from the immense wellspring of magic that rumbled deep within her belly, racing up the covering of power that coated her spine until it fizzled across her brain. Kelly blinked as she opened her eyes.
She ran her fingers across the soft fur of the spotted panther cub she'd been healing, then pushed the cub back to her mother, who licked her cheek.
"Be careful, kiddos," she told them, brushing a hand across their fur, feeling the mother purr under her touch. The mother scooped her child up in her mouth and took off, vanishing into the tree Kelly rested against.
Gin? She sent the question reverberating back over the coil the message had come from.
(We've found the Eternal Log, Mistress.)
Kelly grinned. Good. I'll wait here for you…How's Shere?
:Hi Mama: Accompanying the greeting was a distinct sound of enjoyment and contentment, and the faint echo of razor-sharp teeth crunching through bone, and the warmth of meat and blood resting in her belly. Kelly smiled.
Did you find something good to eat, my darling?
(She took down a pterodactyl) Gin said dryly.
It took a few moments for that to register. Come again?
(She took down a pterodactyl. Hid in a tree and waited until it came close and took it down mid-transformation. Thing had a thirty foot wing-span and it crumpled like wet paper when she got her claws in it.)
Kelly blinked, then stood up. …Did you really, Shere Khan?
:Mm! And it tastes really delicious Mama, do you want me to save you some?:
No thank you darling, I'm not hungry. It took a great deal of willpower to keep the amusement out of her reply. Good for you, Shere. I'll be waiting here after you finish.
(We'll be there soon, Mistress.)
:Om nom nom:
It was only when she was certain that her two Familiars were busy did Kelly give into the tickle in the back of her throat and roared with laughter.
Those two were ridiculous. Good grief.
She tucked the hourglass-esque device into the Sack, where it would be safe against everything but a nuclear warhead, so spelled and magicked was the infinite bag.
"Well done, my darlings," she said, as Shere Khan immediately began shrinking back down into her original size, only to stop, look around, and then begin to grow again, back to the horse-sized tiger she'd been when she'd emerged from the trees.
With a fearsome snarl, Gin began to grow as well until he was the same size as Shere, a sleek black mountain of a panther, and Kelly realized why just as a faint buzzing across her skin turned into a roaring in her ears and the scent of sickly sweet, rotting things filled her nose. Her heart dropped through her stomach, even as she quickly dropped the Sack into the roots of the tree.
'God damn it,' she thought with a snarl of her own.
Then there was a terrible noise, a screechy, twitchy, awful sort of sound that emanated through the trees as Kelly moved into the center of the clearing, Gin and Shere watching her blind spots. Kelly quickly shucked her gloves, tucking them into her pocket, and allowed a small amount of magic to fizzle through her hands, turning her nails razor-sharp and black as pitch. She usually kept her nails filed and lily white, but in a pinch, she could turn them back to the state they had been in for several weeks.
They were a pain in the ass, but made her attacks about twenty times more effective.
"Where are you, you fucking abomination of nature…?" Kelly hissed.
"sO rUdE…" The scratchy, inhuman voice cackled, making the hair on the back of her neck stand straight up. She could only sense one, which was a relief, but a Daemon who could survive in the Grand Line had to be a strong one.
"Why don't you come down and say hello, then? I can't make nice if I don't have a face to put with the voice, now can I?" Kelly said, letting her arms hang light and loose at her sides, Gin and Shere watchful, waiting in anticipation.
This would be a perfect way of gauging her own strength, because she hadn't fought a Daemon in a little over two years. Aratuck had been blissfully free of the monsters.
(Well, it had been free of the Daemons. There had been plenty of monsters on Aratuck.)
There it was. It was 'hidden' in the shadows of the trees to her left, staring at her with hundreds of eyes in places they didn't belong, all bloody-red with hunger. It was a squat thing, with eight spider legs that have too many joints in them, an enormous, football shaped, black body, and a head split down the middle to reveal a gaping maw of razor-sharp, gnashing teeth.
It whined, a low, awful sound no human could ever hope to replicate.
"So HuNgRy…" it wheezed. "BlOoD, bLoOd Of A mAgUs, FOoOoOoOd…"
It wasn't humanoid, which was a relief. Kelly had been hunted by all levels of the Daemon Hierarchy in her years, from the Animalistic to the Highborn.
The Highborn, who could masquerade as humans themselves, were the most dangerous Daemons. This one leaned more towards the Animalistic side of the spectrum, but it could talk, which mean it was packing some sort of power.
The magic rumbled through her veins, setting every nerve-ending alight with power, and Kelly gave the creature a smile that would have sent anything with half a brain screaming in the opposite direction.
The break had been good while it lasted. But now it was time to really let herself loose.
Perhaps it would even be fun.
Okay, maybe it wasn't as fun as she had thought it would be.
She trembled, body still pumping adrenaline through her veins like liquid lightning.
The oozing sack of flesh, rotting bones, and blinking eyes twitched, feebly reaching out one of the unbroken limbs that hadn't been ripped off, stripped of their flesh, or mangled beyond repair. Kelly stamped down on its head with one iron-plated hiking boot, the spells woven into the metal crushing what little life there still was in the creature.
The thing let out a horrible, gurgling groan that trailed off into a hideous whine, then finally, blessedly, to silence.
She groaned and stepped back, rolling her shoulders. Gin stepped up behind her, letting her rest her back against his broad side. Shere was already in her smaller form, resting atop Gin.
"Are you all right, Mistress?" Gin asked.
"Mm, yeah," Kelly said, taking a deep breath as her magic raced across her limbs, healing the cuts and bruises. She grunted as it stole beneath the skin under her chest, pulling her shattered ribs back into place, the free-floating fragments fusing back to the original bone.
She threw herself away from Gin as the poison that had turned her lower intestine to mush was forcibly expelled in the wake of the magic that was healing her, vomiting helplessly for several minutes. She spat black bile and mucus for several minutes more before she was certain there was no more poison left in her body, then shakily wiped the gunk from her face.
Kelly staggered back onto her feet and lurched away from the mess. But before she could fall flat on her face, Gin got his body behind hers.
The brown-haired woman draped herself ungainly over his back, pressing her face into Shere Khan's orange fur.
She groaned. "By the Gods, I'm out of practice."
"It's been two years, Mistress. It's only to be expected," Gin said, tossing her the Sack. She sat upright, and pulled a water canteen from it, taking a long drink. It was ice-cold spring water lightly flavored with lemon, perfect for getting the taste out of her mouth after a battle with Daemons.
"Let's go see if we can find the others. Everything should be finished by now," the Magus said quietly, sketching in the air the magical sign that quickly cleaned the Daemon's blood and viscera from her clothes and her Familiars' fur.
She'd underestimated the monster and it had nearly gotten her killed. She pressed a hand to her chest as the final bone fragments fused back into place and winced, the magic not bothering to chase away the dull aches and light bruising.
'Let it stay,' she thought, grinding her teeth as she remembered the fight, her face burning with shame. 'Let it be a reminder against the follies of such stupid arrogance.'
The sun burned with hideous brightness, and the very air itself seemed to warp and twist around the fuming Magus.
Perhaps it was awful of her, but seeing the ridiculous pose Zoro had struck in the wax candle thing Mr. 3 had trapped him, Vivi, and Nami in made her giggle maniacally. She took back everything she'd said before, Zoro was a dork of the highest order.
"Mistress…" Gin said with a long suffering sigh, resting beside her on the thick branch of the tree they'd hidden in to watch the fight between Luffy, Usopp, Carue and the Baroque Works' Agents.
"What?" she asked him, smirking in childish delight. "It's funny, Gin-Aido!"
"Mistress, it's not funny. At all. Have you even thought about what being encased in wax alive is like? Have you even considered the fact that those three could very well be cognizant of everything that's happening to them? That they feel every ounce of wax coating their organs, their innards, choking the very breath from their lungs inch by inch? Have you considered that? You know well what that sort of torture is like, after all. It wouldn't be past the realm of possibility for them to be completely awake and aware of what's going on." Gin asked, his silver eyes sharp and a little disappointed.
Kelly blinked, taken aback.
"Mama, I wonder if it hurts…" Shere whispered, looking down at the enormous, spinning, pumpkin candle thing and the humans trapped in it.
"But that…" Kelly trailed off.
"But what?" Gin asked, just as quietly as ever. "That's not what happens in the manga and anime? Mistress, that was a book. A story. This is not. This world is not fictional Mistress, no matter how you wish it to be, and the people in it are as real as you and I."
She stiffened at the censorious tone, fighting the urge to say something stupid. She had a hundred utterly cruel, utterly awful retorts boiling behind her teeth, but she bit her tongue. She was a vicious bitch when she was angry or embarrassed, she'd always been that way, but now it was even worse. If it had been anyone else in the world chastising her, she would have let that temper nail them just where it hurt, made them back the fuck off, but…
But to Gin?
To one of only two beings in the world that had been by her side for years? To the one who taught her, her magic and Rokushiki, who had saved her life more times than she could count?
To the man who held her when the nightmares made sleep impossible?
She breathed in and out slowly, biting back the bile until it vanished. She smoothed a hand over Gin's fur.
"It's hard," she said quietly. "It's hard to think of this world as real, that the people in it are real. That's means I," The words lodged in her throat as she remembered-
-…what comes from her mouth is a sound no human could ever make, a howl like a thousand dying animals. The bonds snap like twigs, and her magic comes roaring back into her conscious mind like a tidal wave. The man crouched over her stumbles back, a scream on his lips, but she is on him before a sound passes from his mouth. Her teeth bite down deep and she pulls, rips, tears through his flesh, sending arterial blood splattering everywhere. He dies, choking, drowning in his own blood as she stalks out into the main house, the world disappearing into a blur of colors, but the sounds and smells amplified times a thousand.
Gunpowder, smoke, metal, sweat, blood, a thumping sound that grows faster – she strikes out with her claws and the guard who's trying to kill her goes down, trying to scoop his innards back into his body even as the rapid thumping slows and stops completely.
She hears a hundred of those thumping, beating sounds approaching, and hisses with fury. She will kill them all. They are nothing. Sacks of flesh, bone, and blood, blood that will coat her hands, her mouth, her body by the time she is finished scouring this mansion of those who betrayed her.
She will find that old hag, that bitch Usana who'd trapped her in her house and saw her as nothing more than a womb, uterus, and cunt, and she will take great pleasure in wringing her wrinkled neck.
But only after she has killed every member of Usana's family first.
It is the first time she actively seeks to kill, to eradicate, and it is so very, very easy.
Later she will wonder at this, and she will wonder:
'Was I supposed to feel anything at all?'…-and she shuddered, coming back to herself.
"It means I have to accept that I'm…I'm a…murderer," she whispered. "That I'm…not who I was. That the Kelly I was died a long, long time ago. I'd rather not. If I think about that for too long, I'm not…not going to deal with it well. So I make jokes. I laugh at stupid shit like that goddamned monstrosity Mr. 3 built. It's how I deal with things. How I've always dealt with things. And I have to stay distant from them. I have to. God knows I'm already invested beyond what I thought I'd be," Kelly said with an irritated sigh.
The blush stealing across Nami's face as Kelly laid a kiss to her palm, the panic and terror in Luffy's eyes as he screamed for his nakama stuck in the belly of Laboon, the devilish grin in Zoro's eyes as he faced down the Whisky Peak bounty hunters, the red-hot fury in Sanji's eyes and voice as she flirted with Nami, and the elaborate, extravagant tales that spilled with disturbing ease from Usopp.
Kelly turned back to the battlefield, struggling for composure, just in time to see Carue and Usopp get shot in the back by one of Mr. 5's Breath Bomb Bullets as he tried to shoot something at the wax statue.
Then she stared, a little blindly, at the three figures encased in wax on the candle, vaguely noting Luffy and Mr. 3's fight-…She was choking, choking, she couldn't breathe, and the man giggled as tears slipped from her eyes, her body immobile. "A Magus Golem," he whispered, excitedly. "Finally, I'll have a Magus Golem, and you shall protect my village for years and years to come." And the stone was growing in her lung, coating her organs, and it hurt so much…-and wondered if Gin was right.
Were they awake in there?
Usopp managed to stay on his feet. She had no idea how, but he did, and grabbed the slingshot yet again. He was horribly injured, she could smell it, but he aimed once more.
"My-My friends," he whispered. "I have to save my friends-" He was cut off as another Breath Bomb crashed into him, and he spewed blood, his eyes rolling up into his head as he dropped to his knees.
Kelly couldn't breathe. 'And I called him a coward,' she thought ashamedly, even as he gestured to Carue with a huge coil of rope he pulled from his backpack. Things seemed to be heading along the proper lines, as it were. Carue would race around the candle, Luffy would use Mr. 3's lit-candle head to set the blaze, and everything would be all right.
Then there was yet another explosion, but this time it was Carue who was sent flying, to land crumpled several yards away from Usopp.
"CARUE!" Usopp and Luffy screamed, even as the Baroque Works' agents laughed.
"It's time we finished this," Mr. 5 said, and aimed the gun at Usopp again. Luffy was unable to do anything, with Mr. 3 keeping him from getting close to the marksman. Carue was unconscious. The wax was still pouring down over those too-still figures.
And Kelly knew if that bullet hit Usopp again, he would die.
'This isn't how it was supposed to go,' she thought numbly. 'Why, oh Gods, why, he's going to die, someone do something, I can't move, I shouldn't move, I'm not allowed-'
The trigger was pulled back. Luffy screamed in fury. Usopp's eyes closed, resigned, trembling.
"Super Breeze Breath Bullet," Mr. 5 said, and let it fly.
"Mistress, do something!" Gin all but screamed it.
Miss Valentine was laughing that annoying, chittering laugh.
"SORU!"