Flames of the Sun God
A One Piece Fanfic by GreyNimbus
Author's Note:
I made a little mistake in the last chapter.
I originally wrote Hancock using "Love-Love Beam" to stop World's "More-More Fiftyfold Cannon", but later realized that that move only works on living targets, so I switched to "Slave Arrow", which CAN petrify non-living objects. So, I corrected that mistake and changed it.
I'll also come up with some new moves for Luffy related to his existing canon moves.
And thanks again for all your attention, readers! I really appreciate it! I never thought my fanfic would do so well.
GreyNimbus out!
OP/Luffy, Mature/Luffy, EarlyDFAwaken/Luffy, NoPairing
Disclaimer:
One Piece is owned by Eiichiro Oda. I do NOT own anything One Piece related. Obviously(!)
Chapter 5 — All I Need Is Guts
Wasting no time, Hancock pressed on with her retaliation against the Wotan (half-fish-man, half-giant), but Sebastian was able to intercept her powerful kicks with his immense size and the strength that went with his build.
After realizing that she wasn't getting anywhere with her assault, she jumped back to gain some distance. Standing straight, she held up her hands, shaping them into the shape of a heart.
"Step aside, if you know what's good for you! Or…" she yelled, "perhaps you'd rather be turned into stone?! Love-Love Beam!"
The pink, heart-shaped beam enveloped her target…
…It had no effect.
"Shishishi," Sebastian chuckled, sneering down at her.
"Why isn't it working?!" Hancock yelled, trying to figure out what was wrong, "Surely, no one's taste in women could be that bad!"
"So sorry," Sebastian said, lifting his sunglasses, revealing his squinting eyes with milky-white pupils, "Turns out that I'm blind, so your power means nothing to me. Don't take it personally."
Hancock gasped, shocked that she would encounter an opponent with such a defense to her powers.
"How about you sharpen your teeth on something harder, then?!" Luffy shouted from behind Sebastian.
Quickly turning around, he saw the black-haired youth suddenly appear right in front of his face, causing him to flinch.
"Hawk Bullet!"
Using the basic principles of Finger Pistol that he knew, and applying it to his entire Haki-coated fist, Luffy decked Sebastian across the cheek with blinding speed (no pun intended), causing him to drop his weapons, his sunglasses to fall off, and sending him crashing to the deck, stopping on his back.
In the wake of Luffy's attack was a smoking, deeply-bruised, knuckle-shaped dent branded into the Wotan's face.
Sebastian lay defeated on the deck, groaning in pain with blood leaking from his mouth and nostrils.
"Damn…" he struggled to say in a broken voice, "You really… got me good, kid… And with just… one punch… uhh…"
He fainted.
"Wait, that's it?" Luffy said disappointingly while tilting his head to the side. Deactivating his Haki, he looked down at his hands and repeatedly clenched them, "I mean, I didn't hold anything back, but now I don't know my own strength. Looks like I've got Rayleigh to thank for that."
"Nice work!" Hancock cheered for her beloved as she ran to his side.
"Thanks," Luffy said, pouting, "but I'm a little disappointed. I thought I was finally gonna get a decent fight."
Putting a hand on his shoulder, Hancock tries to cheer Luffy up, "And you will, once we find World."
Luffy was then reminded of how easily World beat him the first time with little effort. Now that he knew how his More-More powers worked, he was ready for a real challenge.
Appreciating the kind gesture from the Pirate Empress, he nodded and went running off across the deck around the ship.
"Let's go, Hancock!" he said.
Hancock smiled, blushing innocently at the sound of her name.
"Oh! Why, yes, dear!" she giggled and happily followed him.
(Meanwhile…)
Before the three-way fight began, World and Byojack stepped down a ladder to the inside of their ship, in a room that appeared to be the bridge, which was located just above the room where they held their hostages.
Looking out the window, the pair barely saw the fight's conclusion.
"Oh, Sebastian," World said, "This is a disappointment."
Seeing the two victors running off to another part of their ship, World growled, "I can't believe it…"
He opened his large hand towards Byojack, who was still sitting on his shoulder. Understanding the gesture, the old man rummaged through his coat before pulling out another Transponder Snail and placing it in World's hand.
"Come in, Gairam," World spoke into the snail, "Lead me to the intruders, and be quick about it!"
"Roger, Captain!" another man's voice replied from the snail.
World grabbed Byojack with his free hand, and dropped him roughly onto the floor, landing on his rear. The old man wasn't hurt but was still shocked by the harsh treatment.
"Keep an eye on the hostages, will ya?" World said as he walked down the spiral staircase.
Despite what just happened, Byojack crawled to the edge of the staircase.
"Be careful, World," he said worriedly.
(Back on the deck…)
As Luffy and Hancock were running off, Sebastian was able to quickly gain consciousness but was unable to move.
"Come back here," he said in a voice too quiet for his targets to hear, "If you think this fight is over, your dead wrong…"
"Look at that sad little fishy face!"
Sebastian flinched at the new voice. He couldn't see who it was, but he knew someone else was there.
Floating above him was a young woman with unusually big, round eyes, red lipstick, black eyeliner, and long, light-pink hair that was tied into pigtails with black and white flower hairpins. She wore a red crown with a black cross on top, a short, long-sleeved, shirt that was short enough to expose her abdomen and had three different black heart shapes on it, a red mini cape with a pink ribbon on the front, black and white striped tights that were completely covering her legs, a mini-skirt, a red and gold belt with a heart-shaped buckle, and a pair of red buckled boots. She was also carrying a cute, red devil-shaped parasol.
Floating next to her were what appeared to be a couple of silly-looking ghosts with black round eyes, and thick lips, with their tongues sticking out.
This ghost-accompanying girl was Perona.
"You might make a cute slave," she said playfully, pointing to the downed Wotan before crying out,
"Negative Extra Big Hollow! Go get 'im!"
She produced a couple more ghosts and sent them flying right at Sebastian's bleeding form. The ghosts passed right through his body, and just like that, his spirit was even more broken than his body as he muttered miserably, "If… If only I had been born as a little amoeba, then life would be so simple and free of all this violence…"
"Horohorohorohoro!" Perona giggled, "Nevermind, I don't want you anymore."
This ghastly power of hers was granted by the Hollow-Hollow Fruit, a Paramecia-type Devil Fruit which allows the user to produce ghosts known as Hollows with a variety of abilities and grants the user the properties of a ghost, like flying and phasing through solid matter. Negative Hollows have the power to rob their victims of their will to fight or live, by phasing through them.
Noticing the commotion, Hancock looked behind her as she kept running, and spotted Perona.
"Who's that?" she asked.
"Hm?" Luffy also turned around, noticing Perona, "What the hell…?"
"Huh?!" Perona yelled, taken by surprise, "Is that Straw Hat?!"
"Hold on," Hancock turned toward Luffy and asked, "Do you know her from somewhere?"
"Maybe, but not at the top of my head," he answered before calling out to Perona, "Hey, thanks a lot for slowing down that fish dude for us!"
At his words of gratitude, Perona's cheeks blushed faintly.
"Hey, my actions were independent of whatever mess you've gotten yourself in! Chalk it up to coincidence, okay?!" she turned before ranting bashfully, "Besides, my friend said he needed to go somewhere, so I just came along to pass the time! I had no idea the likes of you would be here, otherwise, I would've stayed at home!"
At the moment she finished her dialogue, the floor beneath Luffy, Hancock, and Salome suddenly opened up to form a square-shaped hole, causing them to fall below the deck of the island-sized ship.
"Oh, nooo~!" Perona screamed, watching them fall through the darkness.
From the bridge above, Byojack witnessed the whole scene unfold.
"That flying girl just called him 'Straw Hat'," the old man said to himself, "I see, so it's true…"
(Meanwhile, below the deck of the Groseade…)
"Geez, what's wrong with this ship?!" Luffy complained, rubbing the back of his head, as a sign that he was still getting used to his relatively fragile body, "Floors aren't supposed to do that!"
He and Hancock were recovering from the fall they had after landing on a stone floor. Wherever they were, it was one of the most bizarre places either of them have been to.
They were in a long corridor with the walls and floor all made up of cubes, which were made up of every substance and texture imaginable, resembling a small child who had stacked up his wooden building blocks to make a pretend city. The architecture looked completely messed up and unstable.
Hancock was still on the floor, facing away from Luffy, her body started shaking as if she were cold.
"Luffy," she called out, sounding a little panicked, "Are you certain you don't know that girl?!"
"Huh?" Luffy turned to her in confusion.
"That cute flying girl following us!" she added, finally showing her worried face.
"Oh, yeah! Let me think…" Luffy pondered while scratching his cheek, "I think I saw her back on Thriller Bark. Pretty sure she was our enemy then, but I don't remember her name."
Hancock turned around and gasped, putting her fingers over her mouth.
"He's playing dumb!" she thought, then asked herself, "Infidelity… This is infidelity, isn't it?!"
A now grumpy Luffy had his hands on his hips as he looked back and forth between both directions of the strange corridor.
"Dammit, where are we supposed to go now?" he growled in annoyance.
(Meanwhile, back on the Perfume Yuda…)
Rayleigh, who was watching from the sidelines, was impressed that Luffy was able to defeat such a large opponent with just a single move. If he was fighting alone, not that Hancock contributed much, he would have yielded the same results without even trying and without his Devil Fruit powers. He could only imagine what his pupil was capable of after he gets his powers back.
His inaction in this situation was because he promised Luffy that he would not intervene in his fights, and only step in if his student was about to die, since he couldn't afford to let Luffy kick the bucket.
But that didn't mean he couldn't have a little fun of his own.
After Luffy and Hancock fell through the floors, Rayleigh made himself scarce and jumped overboard, gently landing on the deck of the Groseade, and casually sifting through the downed bodies of World's grumps. He remembered seeing one of them holding an unbroken pair of Sea-Prism Stone Handcuffs, and decided to take them as a souvenir.
Once he found what he was looking for, he went back to the Perfume Yuda, staying out of sight of any interlopers that might show up at the scene.
There wasn't much he could do for Luffy now, not without the risk of being discovered, except wait for him and Hancock to return.
(Back below the deck of the Groseade…)
As they continued running through random corridors for what felt like hours, Luffy and Hancock couldn't find a way out of the accursed maze that they had fallen into. It was like a giant puzzle made up of cubes, leading them this way and that way. There were so many corridors that it was impossible for them to get their bearings.
"What kind of place is this?" Luffy asked, panting as he ran, "Why's it like a maze?"
Not expecting an answer, they continued to run until, after turning another corner, they spotted a bright light at the end of the next corridor. Running toward it, they ended up in a large, open space, with several pathways and unmarked corridors to choose from.
"Finally!" Luffy said, relieved, "I thought we'd be stuck forever. Wait, now where are we?"
Hancock glanced around the room, frowning.
"At this point, any direction will do." she said before pointing to a random pathway, "Come on, let's try this path."
"Gotcha!" Luffy agreed.
With Hancock and Salome being the first to make it through the entrance, a large block of solid stone fell from above, blocking the entrance, and Luffy's path was cut off between them.
"Luffy!" Hancock's stifled voice called out from the other side, "You're not hurt, are you? What happened?"
Luffy looked up at the top of the cube that blocked his path. Standing on top of the block was none other than Byrnndi World, this time, without Byojack. The man was looking down, smirking darkly at Luffy at the sight of it all.
"Balolololololololo!" he chuckled, "I could kill the Empress, but I think I'll have some fun with you first."
"Hancock, don't worry about me, go find your sisters!" Luffy called out, hoping Hancock can hear him.
"But, Luffy–!"
"Hurry!" he insisted.
"...Alright, then. I'll go," she said hesitantly, "Please be careful, my love, we shall meet again!"
"Yeah… I got this," Luffy said, glaring up at World.
"World, watch out for that kid!" said Byojack's voice.
"Hmm?" World pulled out a Transponder Snail, to which Byojack continued,
"He's no normal boy, so don't underestimate him!"
"Huh?" World was in slight disbelief.
"You remember the story, right? He's that upstart, the one who raided Marineford to rescue his brother, Portgas D. Ace, from execution! He's the leader of the Straw Hat Pirates! You're facing Monkey D. Luffy!"
"I'm sorry, who?" World asked, still unconvinced that Luffy was a threat.
"Oh, you know him! The Navy Vice-Admiral, Garp, is his grandfather!"
That seemed to have tipped the scale for World.
"Wha?! You mean the one who throws cannonballs?!" he shouted in shock before looking back at Luffy, "Are you telling me, this twerp is the reason that Navy Headquarters has fallen into ruin? I don't believe it.
Luffy continued leering at him, anger boiling up inside him.
World went back to his usual, dark smirk.
"So… you save that brother of yours, or not?"
Luffy's eyes widen in horror, as the memory of Ace dying in his arms flashed back, haunting his mind.
"That's what I thought! A wimp like you isn't strong enough to save anybody!" World taunted Luffy, who fell for it.
"SHUT THE HELL UP!" Luffy yelled in fury as he jumped up at World, pulling his fist back.
With anger clouding his better judgment, he forgot to use Haki. He just wanted to make World pay for disrespecting Ace's death.
World vanished, causing Luffy's punch to miss. He reappeared above Luffy before kicking him to the floor with a heavy thud. Luffy winced painfully, trying to get up. He didn't feel World using Haki in that kick, but it still hurt like hell. He forgot how fragile his body was now, but that made him realize how important that was to his training. His anger then died down to moderate levels.
Finally managing to get back up, Luffy spotted World standing behind him with his back turned.
Luffy shut his eyes tightly, trying to activate his Observation Haki. When a heavy fist came charging at him from behind, Luffy was able to avoid it by a hair by crouching.
"Shave!" Luffy called out.
Giving him an opening, Luffy came back around World and wrapped his arms around the larger man's neck, taking him by surprise in a strangling hold.
"Get off me!" World grumbled angrily, trying to shake him off.
Before he realized it, his energy was rapidly starting to leave his body. His hands were now too weak to break Luffy's grasp.
"What… the hell… have you done?!" World demanded, his struggle starting to die down, bringing him to his knees.
"Sea-Prism Stone," Luffy answered with a grin, "It's part of my training! I gave myself a handicap to make myself stronger by getting used to how they feel!"
"What?!" World screamed in shock, barely seeing the Sea-Prism Stone cuffs on Luffy's wrists "'Handicap'?! So you have Devil Fruit powers! I thought those were just weights!"
"They're not weights, they're the real deal!" Luffy answered, still keeping his arms in a firm grip around World's neck.
"You cocky little bastard!"
Filled with undying rage, overshadowing the Sea-Prism Stones draining effects, World pulled himself off the ground and charged at one of the name cubes that made up the wall, on a collision course. At the last moment, World's body made a quick 180° and slammed Luffy into the cube.
Luffy let out an agonizingly painful scream at the impact, which loosened his grip on World. The black-haired young man slowly slid off World's back. But before he could hit the floor, World punched him square in the gut, pushing him into the same cube.
Luffy coughed up a fistful of blood, his body now lazily inlaid into the cracked cube, now with a large, knuckle-shaped dent imprinted below his ribs.
Not giving him time to recover, World delivered a swift kick into Luffy's X-shaped scar, sending him crashing through the cube, shattering it, and revealing another room on the other side.
Luffy winced heavily at the impact, his body still not used to the sensitivity of blunt-force trauma.
"You're not dead yet?" World asked in annoyance, walking into the dark room, "That was a pretty sneaky move you pulled off, brat. But you're not the only one who uses underhanded tools."
The room they were in was filled with shelves stacked with every kind of weapon you could think of. Everything from bladed weapons to projectile weapons was sorted neatly in piles and shelves.
"This is my weapons storage," World said, "Feel free to use whatever you want."
World walks over to a stack of double-edged swords and picks one up before tossing it on the floor next to Luffy.
"Swords."
Going to another shelf, he reaches out for a spear and tosses it,
"Spears."
Luffy was starting to get pissed off at the display of mockery World was flaunting in front of him.
World continued throwing random weapons at Luffy, "Guns, hammers… You can take what you like, then maybe this'll get fun."
Getting himself back up, Luffy pushes the weapons away before finally getting back on his feet.
"I don't need any of that crap!"
"That pride'll getcha killed," World said in annoyance, picking up some shuriken.
"I don't need… any weapon!"
Unfortunately for World, he unintentionally gave Luffy plenty of time to recover and focus all of his senses. He realized too late the folly he had insured when he saw Luffy undergoing some sort of transformation.
Luffy's arms, legs, and much of his chest flashed with Armament Haki. The edges of the black coating resembled wispy ends of flames, giving it a tattoo-like appearance. This shading of Armament extended across his face, which reached around from ear to ear and over his eyes, resembling a bandit mask. His pupils flared red with the concentration and perceptions of Observation Haki, which also released a chilling shockwave with flashes of black lightning — Conqueror's Haki.
World didn't notice his hands trembling at the shockwave until he dropped all the weapons and tools he collected, making a loud clattering sound.
"All I need… is GUTS!" he shouted, flexing his hardened muscles and getting into his typical fighting stance.
This was the new form that Luffy discovered during his intense training with Rayleigh. This astonishing transformation was the culmination of Observation, Armament, and Conqueror's Haki, all combined into one form!
And most notable of all…
…no Devil Fruit powers required.
"Fourth Gear: Stick-Man!"