• Abandoned by World Government •
Some of you may have heard of Sphinx Island, it is the island where the great pirate Edward Newgate was born. In the past, the World Government abandoned the island due to the poor residents' poverty and inability to pay the Heavenly Tribute. After the World Government abandoned Sphinx Island, the island became a lawless place, which in the end laid to ruins.
The World Government blamed the Islanders for being too lazy to work and earn a lot of money.
That's where the factual nature of the story ends. It wasn't because of sand, and it obviously wasn't because "Islanders are lazy". Both are convenient excuses.
For Marco the Phoenix he doubt that reason of Sphinx's downfall were legitimate. Why doesn't he buy the official story?
Because of Egghead Palace.
In the past, Marco the Phoenix was the 1st division commander of the Whitebeard Pirates. He started out as an apprentice on the crew and became Whitebeard's closest confidant and right-hand man. After his captain's death by the Blackbeard Pirates, Marco assumed leadership of the Whitebeard Pirates fought the Blackbeard Pirates, which became known as the "Payback War" in an attempt to avenge their fallen Captain, but in the end the Whitebeard Pirates suffered an overwhelming defeat. Since then they went into hiding and have not been seen in public since their defeat.
After the War, Marco went to visit Whitebeard's grave at Whitebeard's home island, Sphinx Island.
While there Marco spotted someone walking in the ruined town from a far.
He finds it odd since no one lives on the island, and pnly a few people know about Sphinx Island.
Marco walked through the ruins of the old town, where the inhabitants used to live. He spotted footprints and followed them through a valley of the mountains, and through a waterfall.
Marco came upon a giant abandoned World Givernment facility and it reads...
Egghead's Palace.
Marco was in awe when he reached the front gates of the resort. The entrance is bolted with a danger sign, hazard stripes, and the logos of the Marines and World Government.
Hanging on the gate was a sheet of metal, some random scrap, with hand-painted letters scrawled in black. "ABANDONED BY WORLD GOVERNMENT". Clearly the handiwork of some resident who wanted to make some small protest.
Marco notice that the footprints disappeared and there is no one in sight. Marco thought he could do a little exploring.
The gates were open enough to walk through, but not drive, so Marco stroll around the area.
Inside the lobby, radio wires lay dormant and encrusted with mold over what was once a fine reception desk. The power here no longer works, as evidence by the lack of Den den mushi when Marco looked around the desks. Behind the desk was the World Government technologies logo, vines slowly creeping over it. Holes in the roof above had allowed puddles of water into the room, and vines hung from the ceiling of the room. Beyond this was a hallway that, presumably, led to other unseen areas of the Embryonics Administration center. This hallway also leads to the production facility, where they produced technology by Vegapunk. Located somewhere in an "S-curve" of the hallway is a quartet of vending machines that held snacks. At least one of the machines had a glass front, and another held plastic. There is also a water dispenser in the center of the row.
The inner grounds of the place were just as overgrown as the entryway. Tall palm trees stood untended and ragged among piles of their own vines. Banana plants similarly stood in their own stinking, bug-riddled refuse. There was this sort of clash between order and chaos, as carefully planted rows of bright color flowers mixed with obnoxious tall dark green weeds and colorful mushrooms.
Marco approached the main building – the PALACE. The front doors weren't just open, they had been taken off their hinges and were stolen.
Above the front doors, or the gaping maw where they had been, someone had once again painted "ABANDONED BY WORLD GOVERNMENT".
Marco could see all sorts of awesome stuff he saw inside the Palace. Forgotten statues, abandoned registers, etc.
The inside of the building was so stark, so bare, that I actually think people had stolen the molding off the walls. Anything that was too big to steal… counters, desks, giant fake trees… they were all resting amid this empty echo chamber that amplified Marco's every step like a slow rat-a-tat of a machine gun.
Marco checked the floorplan and headed to all the locations that might seem in any way interesting.
The kitchen was as he'd imagine… an industrial food prep area with all the appliances and space, no expenses spared. Every glass surface was stained by moles, every door knocked off its hinges, every metal surface cracked and dented. The entire place smelled like very old piss.
The huge freezer, not even remotely cool now, had row upon row of empty shelf space. Hooks hung from the ceiling, probably for hanging meats, as Marco stood inside for a moment, he noticed they were swinging.
Each hook swung in a random direction, but their movements were so slow and small that it was almost impossible to see. He figured it had been caused by his footsteps, so he stopped one from swinging by clutching it in with his fist, then he carefully let go, but within a few seconds it started to swing once more.
The bathrooms were in much the same state as the rest of the place. Marco right away notice there a half inch of rancid, stinking stagnant water on the floor, so he didn't stay there very long.
What's odd to Marco, is that the toilets and the sinks (and the bidets in the ladies' room, yes Marco went in there) all dripped, leaked, or just ran freely. So to Marco he thinks they should've been shut off a very time ago.
There were plenty of rooms in the Facility, but naturally Marco didn't have time to look through them all. The few he did peer into were similarly wrecked, and he didn't expect to find anything there. He thought there was some radionor something in one of the room, as he really think he heard a quiet conversation coming out.
Marco then see some stairs at the end of the hallways and decided to go down there. The staircase was far enough away from the front of the building to be relatively clean, save for a startling accumulation of dust. Marco pulled a wedge of metal off the wall, once again painted with the "ABANDONED BY WORLD GOVERNMENT" a motto that Marco become accustomed to. Marco placed the wedge on the stairs and sat on it to keep at least somewhat clean.
The stairway led downward, below ground level. Marco could see that the stair case ended in a metal mesh door with a padlock. A sign on the door… a REAL sign by the World Government… read "SERAPHIMS ONLY! THANK YOU!"
This perked up Marco's spirits a little bit, for two reasons. One, a Seraphims-Only area would have definitely had some interesting stuff back in the day… Two, the padlock was still in place. Nobody had gone down there. Not the vandals, not the looters, nobody.
This was the one place Marco thought he could actually "explore" and perhaps find something interesting. He had come to the Palace essentially agreeing to himself that it was okay to to explore abandoned buildings because – hey – "abandoned".
It didn't take much to bust the lock. Well, actually that's wrong. It didn't take much to bust the metal plate on the wall that the padlock was hooked to. Time and decay had done most of the work for Marco, and he was able to bend the metal plate enough to pull the screws out of the wall.
The Seraphims-Only area was a startling and very welcomed change from the rest of the building Marco have seen. For one, every second or third fluorescent light overhead was illuminated, even though they flickered and faded randomly. Also, nothing had been stolen or broken, even if age and exposure were definitely taking their toll.
Tables had note pads and pens, there were clocks… even a punch-in clock on the wall complete with filled-out time cards. Chairs were scattered around and there was even a small break rooms and long rotted-out food and drink on the counters..
As Marco walked around the maze-like sub-basement hallways of the Seraphims-Only area, the sights just became more and more interesting. As Marco went further, desks and tables were knocked over, papers scattered and almost melded with the damp floor, and a large carpet of mold was slowly overtaking the real rotting crimson floor-covering.
Everything was just sort of "squishy". Anything wood disintegrated into mush when Marco applied even the least amount of force, and clothing items hanging on hooks in one of the rooms simply fell to moist threads if he tried to unhook them.
One thing that annoyed him was that the light was becoming more sparse and unreliable as he went further into the dank, suffocating depths of the place.
Eventually, he reached a black and yellow striped door with the words "SERAPHIM PREP 1" stenciled on it.
The door wouldn't open at first. Marco at first tried opening the door, but the door wouldn't budge. Marco then gave up and started walking away. That was when he heard a slight popping sound and the door creaked open very slowly.
Inside, the room was completely dark. Pitch black. Marco went to look for a light switch in the wall by the door, but there was nothing.
As Marco made his search, he was jarred out of his sense of excitement by a loud electrical buzz. Rows of lights overhead suddenly flashed to life, flickering and fading in and out like the rest he had passed.
It took a second for Marco to adjust his eyes. Marco though that the lightbulbs were going to keep getting brighter and brighter until all the bulbs explode, but just when Marco thought it would reach that critical stage, the lights dimmed a bit and steadied.
Marco looks around the entire area. The entire area is a chamber and has a long parallel row of what seem to be preservation tanks. The preservation tanks were flanked on the outside by rows of embryonic tubes. There is a pair of catwalks that intersected the area at various points over the area.
The room's entire floor had been layered in a thick covering of dust, robotic parts were uninstalled and rusted, some had fallen to the floor to lie with the leaves that cluttered there. The water inside the embryonic tubes had turned green from the lack of proper oxygen flow. Some tubes had been broken open, and their contents now empty.
What Marco found odd and disturbing, was a corpse of the little girl laying at the center of the room. She was lying on its back in the center of the floor like a murder victim. Marco took a closer look, the little girl had blushy cheeks, brown pigtails and brown eyes, brown skin, white hair, and a pair of black wings, and wears white long-sleeved dress and a round wool hat with dots on the brim. Her skin is rotten and shedding.
What was even more shocking for Marco was the coloring of the corpse. As stated before she has brown skin, white hair, and a pair of black wings. Why Marco cared about this little girl's color appearance is because Marco remembered something that his Captain will always tell him whenever he's drank, that long ago before Mary Geoise was built, there once was a Race of people from the Red Line capable of creating fire from their bodies. Their unique attributes are that they have black feathery wings, dark skin, white hair. The race is now known to be extinct to the world.
The sight was off-putting enough to Marco, when Marco took a look at one of the preservation tanks, inside every one of them contain mummified brown skin, white haired, black winged individuals which deeply freaked Marco out.
Marco decided to look at the other tanks, every one of them contain what seem to be human embryos. Looking inside every one of them closely through all that green water, Marco could see the human embryos clearly. As Marco absorbs closely at every rotten human fetuses in the tubes, he noticed all them having brown skin, and a bit of white hairs growing out of their heads on a few, and some had what appears to be a pair of wings forming out of their backs.
Marco walked around the area for a bit until he hits something round. When he looked down at his feet, at first he thought it was a white ball, but when he took a closer look, there between his shoes was a human skull. Bits of the skull's face and lower jaw shattered into pieces, it looked like the skull was staring at Marco.
Marco immediately moved away from the skull and headed for the door. As he stood in the doorway, he looked back to the skull on the floor.
Because there is a human skull, Marco speculated that, at some point, this individual was walking around this abandoned facility and must of encountered something that got them killed evident by its remain inside the facility. It is unknown who this person was and what their motivations were, and when they were alive, and what found them and killed them afterwards.
With these questions flowing around Marco's head he snapped back to reality when he thought about the last question. Marco turned around and was about to leave, not wanting to end up like the deceased individual.
That's when the little girl, that was lying in the middle of the floor, started to get up.
First she sat up, then climbed to her feet, and stood there at the center of the room, her face just starting directly at Marco as he mumbled "No! This can't be happening, this can't be happening…" over and over again.
With his shaking hands, a violently thrashing heart, and legs that had once again turned to jelly, Marco looked at the girl now quietly sizing herself up at Marco.
Marco raised his eyes once again when the girl spoke to him.
"Hey mister," she said in a hushed but perfectly executed voice, "Do you wanna see my head come off?"
She started to pull at her own head, working its clumsy, skin shredded fingers around her neck, clawing impatiently, similar to a wounded man trying to pull himself free of a predator's jaws.
As she worked her digits into her neck, so much blood spilled out of her neck.
So much thick, chunky, green blood.
Marco finally decides to run away and not stand around in fear not knowing what that girl will do, as he ran he heard a sickening tearing of cloth and flesh, followed by laughter. Above the doorway out of the room, he saw the final message burned into the metal wall with words reading…
"ABANDONED BY GOD"
Marco manage to get out of the facility alive, and Sphinx island in general. He fled away as far as he can for his sanity of his very life, he knew why the World Government didn't want anyone to know about this place.
They didn't want anyone like her getting out of the facility.
They didn't want anyone like that girl getting out to the world.