Enel si

by Dextrode

S

don't understand, I went to bed as I did every other day. In my normal, everyday bed, alone in my own home, SO WH-

"Enel-sama, is everything okay?"

I closed my eyes to recompose myself. As I was saying before being so rudely interrupted, WHY AM I IN A GOLDEN HAMMOCK?! WHY IS A MANGOAT WAKING ME UP?! AND WHY IS HE KNEELING?!

"Enel-sama, are you okay?" said mangoat asked in a shaky voice, as if afraid -no, I know he's afraid- "You've being staring at me for the last 10 minutes" it mumbled.

Focusing on it, I managed to see that it wasn't as goat like as I first believed.

There was no hoofs or fur, just normal feet and tanned skin. The small and straight up horns in his forehead, the long, downward nose and large buckle teeth didn't helped him though.

It seemed to be just a guy that looked like a goat, had weird goat like ears and some strange horns... Wait, are those wings? What the hell is that?

And, most importantly, the real reason that I was desperately trying to distract myself from with this inner "what is this goat-like being?" monologue: WHY THE HELL CAN I TASTE THIS GUY'S THOUGHTS?! AND WHY IS IT SO LOUD?!

Much scarier and confusing than this strange creature waking me up in an unknown place, was the fact that I could currently feel/see/hear/taste a bunch of people "talking", their voices/emotions/intents hitting my head like a jackhammer. I wasn't sure how to accurately describe it, but it was definitely overwhelming.

Sure hope that I'm not hearing voices. Seeing strange angel like goatmen and hearing voices in my head doesn't say much good about my sanity.

And for some reason I was just sure about the meaning of the voices/feelings/smells.

I could feel the goat-being strange mixture of love (liking?adoration?) and terror (that one was easier to recognize) as he looked up at me, who was still stared wordlessly at him.

And then there was the raging rainbow of differing emotions and thoughts drilling into my head from what felt like a whole damn city. Which was so overwhelming I couldn't make head or tails out of it.

The Voices of those closest to me rang far stronger, and its roar of anxiety, fear and excitement blurred the rest of my perception. It was a shifting, violent sea, battering into my head and I couldn't see further than the closest waves.

The relentless, incoherent chorus giving me a headache that I desperately tried to wipe away massaging my temple.

It took a whole 2 minutes of physical silence for me to get somewhat used to the immaterial roars and gather myself. The still kneeling goatman thankfully not interrupting.

'Okay, okay... I think I managed to get a handle at this.' The voices in my head aren't telling me to burn everyone anymore, I can almost ignore the background noise/feeling/taste of them murmuring. Despite how disturbing the... tingling in the back of my brain was.

Being able to properly hear my own thoughts for the first time since waking up, I did a quick recap: went to bed as usual and then was suddenly woken up by this strange goatguy bursting into this tent that I did not go to sleep on while screaming something about some village elder delivering his answer about whatever.

More importantly, this weird guy -whom I was now kinda recognizing the character design of- called me Enel.

Now to check just one last thing.

Getting up, I moved past the still kneeling goatman to the entrance of the strange, overly golden decorated tent.

Sticking my head outside of the surprisingly smooth leather of the entry flap I was greeted by a sight that while I was kinda of expecting still took the air out from my lungs, smooth white fluffy clouds spread like an endless ocean before me. A smaller sea of tanned and light blue tents doting said ocean.

I probably would've been stuck in awe of it for hours, walking among the clouds and seeing sights no human should be able to without an airplane.

Unfortunately, a crowd of goat and normal people screaming your name as they stampede in your direction was enough to snap anyone out of cloud watching mood.

I ducked back behind the tents flap, hoping that running from the problem would solve it for a change. From the sudden quietening outside, it worked, at least as long as I forcibly ignored the feelings that blared at me from the crowd that I could still hear -normal hear this time- outside of the tent.

Made mostly of anxiety, fear and some excitement, an unknown part of me automatically translated despite my attempts of ignoring the Voices.

I stood there for a second, facing the tent's entrance, and did the only thing I could think of, pinched myself real hard... Yeah, still here.

My strangely long ears made a lot more sense. I really was Enel, the character from One Piece, the asshole with a god complex and one of the most powerful Devil Fruits in the series.

Taking a deep breath, I realize that what I needed the most right now was information, might as well try get what I can from the guy that barged in and woke me into my new life.

Quietly clearing my throat-

"HRKGNF!"

I addressed the goatman.

"So, why have you awoken me so suddenly?" There, rude and higher-than-thou enough to be Enel(ish) like, while not being assholy enough to make me want to barf.

My voice was a bit deeper than normal, but I don't remember if it was Enel's voice in the show. Probably.

The goatman turned to face me while still kneeling -was I supposed to tell him to stand up?-.

"Your Holiness, an emissary from Birka has finally arrived with an answer to your demands."

It was amazing the goatman managed to say that as clearly as he had. He was shaking from head to toe and I could literally taste his fear in the air.

"Oh? And might you remind me, what were the demands?" That's it, put a tone of mystery about it and no one will bat an eye at the strange questions. Well, the worship like adoration and bone chilling fear that I could feel from the guy probably helped.

Thankfully, it's not like One Piece characters were known for their perception and wit.

"Your Holiness made the most reasonable demand that the tribes of Birka accept you as their rightful overlord, outlaw the worship of the old Birkan Sky Father, destroy their old temples and build new ones in your holy image on the old sacred grounds. That, along with the measly tribute of 2 tons of gold."

...Wow, yeah, completely reasonable.

What scared me the most was that I could feel/taste/smell the sincerity on the kneeli- oh, wait, he's full on kowtowing now- goatman. He really believed those demands were reasonable and just.

Okay, okay. I got this, I'm just suddenly in a world that I always believed to be just a story, at an island amongst the clouds, surrounded by fanatics that believe me to be god and just got asked how to deal with a major political situation.

And if what I remembered from Skypiea's arc about Enel destroying his home island was right, then I'm pretty sure what is the Birkan response and how Enel solved that denial in canon...

Okay, maybe I don't got this! I wasn't planning for this, today was supposed to be a lazy sunday with nothing to do! I was planning to watch a dumb movie and then take a nap at 16h dammit!

I'm just surprised that I managed to maintain a poker face during this whole inner tantrum. Not that it made any difference, the goatman was still kowtowing.

…

…

Screw it, I don't understand what's happening, no idea how I got here, but I want to deal with this as soon as possible so I can properly panic and take my damn 16h nap.

Worst case scenario, since I'm Enel, I should be able to fry anyone not made of rubber.

Turning back from the kowtowing tutorial mission giver, I move to the entrance flap, take one deep breath and I'm past it. Outside my small zone of peace.

Hope the guy takes the clue that he can get up after I leave. The fear/adoration I still feel from him made me doubt it.

As soon as I stepped outside, I was surrounded.

While fleeing to my tent had stopped the stampede, it didn't stop its members -a gallery of goatmen, goatwomen and a few normal eared people, all winged- from surrounding my tent. And, as soon as I left it, surrounding me.

It was packed of people and, consequently, emotions.

I could feel the ocean of thoughts pressing down on me. Luckily, the same overwhelming fear present on my old friend -kneeling goatguy wake-up alarm-, was present amongst almost everyone on the crowd. Luckily, as it stops them from both crowding me too much or actually asking the varying questions I could hear on the back of their heads, curious, anxious and fearful of Enel's, mine decision about Birka.

Oh, they were now imitating my first goatman experience, the crowd suddenly dropped to their knees. The more enthusiastic few kowtowing like my buddy back at the tent.

Considering they made a single path as they knelt, and that I forgot to ask my tutorial mission giver for directions, I decided to head through the path made at my right and hope that's around where said emissary's at. This all still felt way too much like a dream.

Now, where-

I was going to ask where the emissary could be, but he has to be the gigantic man that I could see from here and was the only person still standing. Also the one I could sense to be the strongest around. Besides me... probably.

And that sudden rush of information, lead me to discovering that this sense for emotion apparently also serves as a sonar and power level scouter. Being able to know the position and strength of those around me.

No, gigantic emissary first, panic and making sense of what has to be mantra/observation haki later.

Besides, it was hard to ignore the gigantic emissary to begin with, not just for his size, but mostly because of the hate filled glare I could sense as I moved towards him along the path made from kneeling people.

I could hear/see/taste/know what he wanted to do, and it was not pretty.

As I moved closer, working to keep my calm under the steady stream of hatred and silent death threats, I got close enough that I stopped just sensing the glare and could see it.

A familiar face set in a heavy frown looked back at me as future Supernova, Urouge, the Mad Monk, stared down his mortal enemy. Me. Wonderful.

He had come alone, another sign of the rather obvious answer from the Birkans to Enel's outrageous ultimatum. But there were visible signs of recent, hurriedly treated injuries all over his body. Considering the setting, I was probably the cause.

I suppose it should have been obvious, there was the whole fan-theory on him being from Birka, which would imply a vendetta against Enel, who destroyed said Birka in canon.

I stopped in front of the younger possible Supernova, forcibly ignoring the obviously eavesdropping still kneeling spectators and the rage radiating from Urouge.

"I hear your people have come to a decision?" I said in a disinterested tone. That's it, keep it fear free and assholy...

Wow, I could hear his muscles crunching from how hard Urouge is frowning right now. Could swear he was always smiling in the show.

"We have." he said in a gravely voice "Birka will never bow the demand of demented tyrants. We refuse your insulting terms!"

I could feel the tensions spiking in the air right now. Literally, I could feel as Urouge and all the spectators around me tensed in a mix of fear, anxiety, anger and anticipation. Even the Monk radiating fear despite his clear will to fight.

"Hm, I see." No, I don't. "In any other occasion I would punish you for such disrespect." No, I wouldn't.

Now I could see Urouge's muscles tensing, they were visibly bulging in preparation for a fight.

I let the silence stir for a minute, the tension growing with every second. It wasn't anything voluntary or dramatic, I just had no idea what to say.

"I have a dream." Yeah, go all Martin Luther King on their asses "In it, all of the White Sea is united, Birka, Skypiea and Shandia work together to better this Cloud of ours, instead of this civil war we have been fighting for as far as any of us can remember." Skypiea was at war for some four/five hundred years, right?

I could feel the confusion of the crowd, doubt Enel was ever the "let's save the people" type of guy. Hope it was that, and not that I remembered it all wrong and it has actually been thousands of years of peace and I was sounding insane with this whole civil war talk.

Just roll with it, so far no one called me out so far at least. Most likely because of the fear present in all of them, even if Urouge tries to hide it. Buy hey, it benefits me, so I'm not questioning it.

"This White Sea of ours is vast, it is beautiful, but it's also covered in blood..."

They probably thought it was a dramatic pause, it's just hard to make up a bullshit speech as you go. Seriously, what the hell am I talking about? What the hell is going on? I looked at the sky for a second, hoping for respite, instead I saw a balloon octopus floating by and waving at me. Fuck all of this so hard.

Continuing before it went from dramatic pause to "he's having a stroke".

"With great power comes an equally great responsibility." Now I'm just throwing quotes at them and hoping it makes sense. "And I've been blessed with the greatest of powers in this sky of ours, or does anyone disagrees?"

Really no idea where I'm going with this. Thankfully, no one interrupts and disagrees, not even Urouge.

"So, with an unquestionable power such as this one, comes an equally great reach. And when peace in our time is within my grasp, isn't it my responsibility reach for it?" I asked Urouge and the audience, still having no idea where I'm taking this or what to do if they answer.

The silence remains and grow stifling as every winged human kneeling looks amongst themselves, seeing if anyone is going to answer so they could remain quiet. Urouge, the only one besides me still standing, just looks at me with his still frowning face, unchanged since the start of my monologue.

He couldn't hide his heart from me though. There was still a lot of anger, but some curiosity now to. By far mostly anger, but it was a start.

I don't know where to take this now... 400 years of war, great power, great responsibility, stop the violence... Now, what?! I needed to give them a plan on how I'm going to do what I just said I should do it... Come on brain, don't disappoint me now!

As the silence stretched for minutes, the kneeling people all shifting uncomfortable in their positions, Urouge decides to be an asshole and not give me more time to think.

"And how do you intend to stop four centuries of war? Many have attempted, but it just exchanged one type of violence for another."

He stared fearlessly into my eyes, I stared back -hopefully as fearlessly- into his.

Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap, oh crap... One of the benefits of a brain made solely of lightning is that while I panicked internally for what felt like 30 minutes, just half a minute passed with me saying nothing.

It was also what gave me the time to stop panicking, reaching around and trying to gather an answer from the thoughts flowing around me. With such a heavy question on talks deciding the fate of what was the home nation of a large part of the audience, many should be thinking about ways to foster the peace between the people and develop the three nations...

"If I scurry away quietly enough, maybe they won't notice and I can get that last piece of cake in the kitchen tent."

"Man, the ass on this girl kowtowing in front of me. Gotta catch her face later."

"Hmm, I shouldn't have wore these pants today. They are nice pants, now their knees will be ruined from all this kneeling."

"Bet I could take on this Urouge guy, asshole thinks just cause he's the strongest of the warrior monks he's all that. I could take him..."

"Tuturutu, tururutu, tuturututuuuturu, turururu..."

"Hmm, the main point of contention is the intrinsic value of the Upper Yard as the main agricultural producer on the White-Sea. If one could force an armistice, the first thing to do would be working out on alternative food sources to remove the principal reason for every non Shandians wanting that piece of Vearth so much. I read that-"

Okay, finally, a voice that didn't made me lose hope in mankind.

I mean, if most of them believe me to be God -and, unfortunately, I can sense enough to be sure that they do- you imagine they would be curious or at least attentive when said God is talking about world changing plans.

Moving towards the Voice that kept mumbling increasingly more complicated plans on sky fish farming, cloud island fertilization and the Speedy Shrimps' cargo carrying potential, ignoring the thoughts and mumbling of others. I eventually stopped in front of a kneeling ball of hair, the kneeling crowd having shuffled around to make a path as I walked.

Closer to the origin of the only Voice around thinking some sound sounding ideas, I ordered the mumbling ball of hair to stand up. The hair ball froze for a second, not having noticed my approach, immersed as he was in his own thoughts, before complying.

Taking a moment to look at him, the ball of hair analogy turned out to be very correct, as when he stood up, it revealed a head covered by full puffy jet black hair and an equally puffy but even more full beard. Even the forehead was somewhat covered by thick eyebrows. What little of his face was visible, showed hard lines on a serious face.

But even if his face was impassive, his Voice revealed how nervous he was on suddenly being the focus of Enel's attention.

I opened my mouth to ask his name, but I knew the name of the Voice I was focusing on. I closed my mouth for a second, then opened and continued as if nothing had gone on.

"Come along, Gode." Ignoring the magnified confusion I felt from the hairy man, I turned around, making my way back through the clear path made by the shuffling of the still kneeling people.

Didn't need to turn to sense him following me, and didn't need to be able to sense to see the confusion growing in the crowd.

"It's true that I have been blessed with great power, power that could make or break the White Sea as we know it. But I won't lie that I have all the answers."

I said loudly as I walked back to the clearing, stopping in front of a curious Urouge, a reluctant Gode behind me.

"I have enough power to take a stand and bring both factions to a stop. After this temporary peace is arranged though, how can lightning feed a family? How can an all knowing Mantra heal the sick?"

There are was a murmur of Voices, I could hear mentally as the zealots were confused when confronted by their God saying he wasn't omnipotent.

"That's why I shall not do those things."

Once more the murmur heightened, most tensed and got anxious, some tensed and got excited, Urouge tensed and was currently thinking if he could crush my face before I could turn into lightning.

He couldn't.

"Thankfully, I won't need to." I continued, before Urouge thought I was just saying I will just subjugate everyone and screw it. The previous Enel probably gave that vibe.

Taking a step back, I clapped the back of the hairy creature named Gode, the smaller man stumbling forward from the clap as I went on.

"Though I might be the most powerful above the clouds, I can't say I'm the most knowledgeable about farming, diplomacy and economics. That is why, after I force the violence to stop with my power, I shall make use of Gode, and others like him."

Now when I went quiet, there was an actual quiet murmur, people curious enough to talk out loud and risk a smiting. I mean, I wouldn't actually smite them, but I could hear that they believed Enel would.

Though I couldn't understand what they were talking about in their actual whispers, I could always hear their Voices.

The surprise was divided between two facts. Me, Enel, admitting that I couldn't do something. And Gode being put so in the spotlight, apparently he wasn't that popular.

"This war started because of an agricultural problem." Hey, no idea, but going from Hairball's thoughts, apparently so. "Gode here has some interesting ideas on fish farming and mass Sky Island fertilization."

I didn't need my mantra to see the Hairball lock in nervousness, and my mantra told me he was currently thinking almost as fast as my own lightning made brain on the various issues with his ideas.

Still, they seemed sound, guess Hairball has a confidence issue, or just worries a lot. Hopefully the later, cause so far I intend to throw him at anything I can't solve with "more lightning".

There was a tense silence, even their Voices were quiet for a change. Apparently, Enel saying someone else could maybe do something better than himself was shocking.

…

Now I didn't know what to say, I never had to deal with populist politics. Much less anime sky kingdoms religious populist policies.

…

As the silence stretched one more, I got ready to push through, when Urouge thankfully helped out.

"That is it? You should be the new God because you have that barely developed plan, if you can even call it that?" The large monk asked.

I was just impressed that One Piece natives actually cared about proper planning, they never seemed that cautious/thoughtful to me during the anime and manga. Probably a result of seeing things with Luffy as the main character. Still, that was at least an easy issue to solve.

"No. I'm the strongest and I will be God of Skypiea, that I have a reasonable economic plan is just a bonus." Okay, that sounded a bit more threatening than I wanted to, but that was basically the argument.

Apparently Enel had already attacked the island, so it's not like I can just say it was all a joke and call it a day.

The tense silence came back and stretched as me and the Mad Monk had a staring contest. I could feel his doubt, curiosity, wish to punch my face in and, fortunately, some interest. Mostly wishing to cave my face though.

Time to get this over with, so I can finally panic in peace.

"You-" I started, before being interrupted.

"You're strong. Stronger than any other enemy I faced so far. That is true." The large monk started, audible gasps heard from the crowd, probably not used to me -Enel- being interrupted and lightning not smiting whoever did it.

Still, I decided to hear the possible Supernova, despite the urge to throw millions of volts at him. No idea if it was a remnant from Enel or due to my own lack of patience at this entire bizarre situation.

"But do you expect me and every other Birkan to forget about yesterday's attack? You destroyed most of the city! We're still counting the casualties..." The monk said with a serious face, the interest dimming and anger rising as he remembered what apparently were yesterday's big events.

… Well, crap.

Okay, okay. Apparently the not me Enel had just finished a murder spree before I hijacked this body... I mean, I knew he had attacked Birka. I don't know what I expected. But how the hell am I suppose to deal with that?! What do I say to the greatest warrior of a nation that I apparently just burned the hometown of?

The tense silence settled in once again. With no idea on how to proceed, I stared at the Mad Monk's enraged eyes, thankfully able to keep eye contact with the mad martial artist. Hopefully keeping a good poker face, not showing my internal panic and cluelessness at the situation.

In the tense silence of the stare down, I desperately tried to feel around with my new sixth sense in hope to find something, anything that could help me out.

Not sure if it was a panic induced hallucination or if it was my mantra answering. But I saw- no, I knew a scene. I watched through flashes as the other Enel flew above a colorful small city, full of goatpeople. A thunder like voice booming through the city... Mostly talking about how great he was, then a casual request/order of full subservience and declaring him their God.

Then came the expected scream of denial, from the mouth of my point of view, beneath the floating God Complex. Then flashes of violence. And then the image crumbled and a massive headache came in its place.

Okay, apparently I can also see/live memories? Was that through mantra or my Devil Fruit's ability to read electric pulses?

Lightly shaking my head to get rid of the unnecessary thoughts and the headache, I made sure to make it slow enough to look like I was just nodding disapprovingly.

Regardless of how I could do this mind reading thing, it gave me one important piece of information. One I could make an argument of it. A crappy one, but hey, better than the nothing I had before it.

"I did give all of you a chance. I arrived peacefully, informed you of my intentions, and made more reasonable demands, did I not?" I asked in a surprisingly calm voice.

Hopefully so calm because of my own apparently amazing acting skills, not because of any remaining sociopathy and overwhelming arrogance from Enel.

As a surprise to no one, the weak and arrogant answer did not help the guy who had probably been digging corpses and innocents out of the dirt and debris mere minutes ago. The teeth grinding, heavy frown and bulging neck veins were signs of anger that one didn't need mantra to perceive.

"You went in a spiel about your supposed divinity and demanded our complete obedience! How are those reasonable demands?!" The Monk roared, clearly out of patience.

The gigantic monk came closer to me, towering over my own superhuman height. As I froze with what I thought it was my first death threatening situation, I wasn't able to stop the warrior from grabbing my neck.

In the end I froze for nothing.

When the larger man attempted to close his hand around my windpipe, instead of me slowly asphyxiating to death, my neck turned into lightning, the electricity traveling over the monk's giant arm and bringing the warrior to his knees, all without me moving a finger.

I looked on as Urouge kneeled, hand still held closed on the visible electric current where my neck should be. I could be thinking about the impressive show of will and strength as the Monk managed to keep his hold on to... what was technically my neck, despite who knows how many million volts were running through him at the moment.

Instead, I was trying to figure out how the hell I was breathing. Ignoring the Monk, I focused on my breathing, seeing my chest rise and fall with every breath, despite the fact that my neck was pure energy at the moment.

Then I stopped breathing... and it made no difference, the chest rising had been just a reflex, I wasn't really breathing to begin with.

Before I could get over the newest addition to today's growing mountain impossibilities, I was removed from my thoughts by the loud thud of Urouge passing out, letting go of the space where my neck should be and falling face first to the ground.

…

The by now familiar tense silence stretched as the kowtowing worshipers squirmed, unsure of what to do about the Monk's assassination attempt. If one could call it that.

As I took a deep -unnecessary- breath, my neck returned to its normal shape, there was feeling of lightness in my chest and I suddenly wanted to laugh. I just knocked out the strongest warrior of Birka and a future Supernova by doing nothing while he tried to kill me.

Though I held it in to not sound insane, I suddenly understood a bit of Enel's character. And that scared me less than it probably should. No one in the White-White Sea knew Armament Haki, only mantra. And there was no rubber or Sea-Stone here too. I was virtually invincible in my little pond.

And even out of the pond there wasn't much that could face me.

Closing my eyes I could briefly feel the millions upon millions of volts that made up my very body, even if I couldn't control it properly, I knew I could just unleash it. It would probably be enough to kill all my thousands of followers. All of this with no training.

This really isn't the kind of power a person should have, least of all at Skypiea. At least at the Blue Seas there are other monsters to counter balance each other.

Looking at my right hand, I briefly willed my power to focus there. It took a while to get a proper feel on what was the power, but the moment I reached into what felt like a new phantom arm that was spread all over my body, -it was hard to properly explain- it was there.

My hand lightened up in a shower of blue sparks as thousands- no, millions of volts passed through it, and I marveled over my own new power, turning around the arm made up of enough energy to light up a town.

The wave of tension that hit me from the Voices of the knelt crowd took me out of my power induced boner. The sparks disappearing from my arm.

I looked at the crowd, still on their knees, but now also looking in awe at my shining arm trick. Seriously? I knew Devil Fruits were also a thing up here, they shouldn't be this impressed. Gan Fall had a bird that ate the Horse-Zoan fruit... or a horse that ate the Bird-Zoan fruit. One of the two.

Still, out of my trance, the wish to not have to deal with all of this settled in once again, so I took charge of the situation before this could get even more complicated.

"Take him to a tent so he may rest." I boomed out at the crowd, my voice surprisingly loud. And walked away before the kneeling crowd could questi-

"Your Holiness..." One of the actual normal looking men stood from the crowd and spoke before I could escape. Damn him.

The guy looked vaguely familiar, a head of short, shaved dark hair on a rough but common face. When I reached with my mantra, to grasp his name, much like I did Gode, it told me why he seemed so familiar. It was one of Enel's lieutenants in canon.

"What is it Ohm?" I said, keeping my voice as aloof as I could.

This guy was one of canon Enel's lieutenants. Even if the God of Skypiea never seemed that close to anybody, it would be better to keep some guard around a guy that might properly know this body's former owner.

"I know that it is not my place to question your magnificence. But your holiness told us just yesterday how you knew the Birkans would not accept the demands, and how the example in freeing them would pave the way to the subjugation of the entirety of the White-White Sea." The man said, an impassive look in his face.

But his Voice told me his true feelings. Confusion, disappointment, betrayal. And he wasn't the only one feeling it. It seems some did want the destruction of their old homeland. And the freeing part, what?... I think that he had some emo "life is pain, death is freedom" mentality in canon. Barely remembered the guy to be honest.

Still he was waiting for an answer, and I could feel/hear/sense the crowd around me eavesdropping, oozing anxiety, excitement, hope, tiredness.

I think a worryingly amount of them were excited about the prospect of annihilating their former home-island. Hopefully it was more about me not knowing how to properly identify feeling through mantra and not that I'm surrounded by a personality cult made up of psychopaths.

Considering this body's former owner was a huge megalomaniac psychopath, the odds of the second option are dangerously high.

Avoiding the sudden worry about being eaten alive by my own followers in an attempt gain my power, or whatever it was that psychopathic personality cults do, I once again tried to store my panic to deal with this situation as fast as possible, without just frying everyone in my vicinity.

All this inner monologue would normally cause a far too much a delay in the conversation, thankfully, my lightning brain made it so I was looking as he finished his second slow-mo blink when I decided on what to say.

"The attack yesterday should already be enough of a warning. I shall give Birka one more chance, as I showed them the stick yesterday, I shall try the carrot tomorrow." It wasn't the best excuse, but I think they would take to it better than: "Hey, I don't really understand what's going on and would just rather not to destroy Birka."

There was a quiet murmur, from what I got most didn't understand my carrot/stick analogy, there are no carrots on the White-White Sea apparently. Crap. Should've kept quiet, not like I actually needed to explain myself, Enel didn't seem like the type to.

Well, bailing before someone asks another question.

I was sure Enel could fly, both from canon and Urouge's flashes of memories. Closing my eyes and ignoring the crowd around me to focus on the feeling I channeled to my arm minutes earlier, I stood still for about a full a minute.

First the sparks started covering my entire body, I think someone said something on the crowd, but I was too focused. Then, once I was unseeable under the shining blue sparks, I attempted to force the energy upwards.

Unfortunately, instead of me flying upwards, a tower of lighting rose up, blinding everyone around me in a flash of blue.

I looked at the cleared sky, the previously there clouds pushed away by million's of volts. But I remained on the ground cloud. Clouds above clouds were confusing, but considering everything else about the situation, there were far more confusing things to worry about.

The crowd was almost complete panic about now. Reaching around the crowd I saw that most believed I was going to smite Ohm for the whole questioning me thing, and believed that I would so with wide area attacks that would very likely kill the surrounding worshipers. Still they stood rooted in place, wanting to run but not wanting to attract my attention.

Seriously, how arbitrary was OG Enel that his followers had this image of him?

Shaking off the waves of emotions and thoughts from the crowd and my subconscious attempt of properly remembering the Skypiea Arc, I once more focused on my powers. Deciding to ignore my cult for now.

Instead of trying to throw it up, I attempted to focus the energy into my legs, making them transform into pure energy. After almost a minute of focus, I managed something Enel probably did on reflex, turning everything below the belt to pure energy.

Ignoring the instinctual panic of "where is my dick?!" I attempted to jump, and... I zapped some hundred feet into the air. There was a brief panic at the unknown feeling of lightness, before the calm came back and I managed to hold myself in the air.

It was an awkward thing, I attempted to stay still in the air and automatically returned to my more humane shape, falling, before turning myself into energy and jumping up again. It was much harder to stay still than moving through the air.

Zapping around the sky, I lost myself in the freedom of flying through the skies at faster than mach speed.

Before I realized I was already far from the camp of my followers, not able to see or sense the mass of people that apparently believe this body's previously completely sociopathic owner to be God.

Letting myself fall from my high above the clouds' clouds height, my accelerated brain let my look around somewhat calmly while enjoying that free-dive that I had never really been curious about.

Being able to fly was awesome, but now that it's immediate high passed, the realization I was in a place that shouldn't exist and in a body that wasn't mine hit once again.

Seeing a small island in the cloud sea (or what I hope was an island, the difference between ground cloud and sea ground was subtle) on the distance, I decided to head to it.

Turning mid-air, I transformed my lower half into energy and jumped again, aimed at the island.

I stopped myself before I touched the ground, keeping myself still in the air for one second before turning back into physical matter, falling feet first to the ground, that was now a couple of centimeters beneath me.

Still, just by getting close to the ground as the mass of burning energy I was a second ago had scorched the surface and disintegrated the vegetation closest to my landing zone.

Walking away from the ground-zero of my landing, I crossed to the other -unburnt- side of the tiny island. Sitting on the fluffy ground, I did a quick summary of my situation.

I'm in a world that's supposed to be fiction, in the middle of the clouds and apparently took over the body of the place's most overpowered asshole just after he started his sky domination plans, and now have to deal with whatever that entails. And I have a personality cult around me.

I let out a heavy sigh as I looked up. I could run from my cult and the Birkan situation, not only they couldn't catch up to me, if they somehow did, they couldn't beat me... I probably wouldn't bail out though, with no rubber or Sea-Stone, I'm even more overpowered here than normal.

Way better than going down and having to deal with the Government and the Yonko. I'm probably too strong to be ignored in any place not as isolated as here.

I looked at the majesty of the sun shinning over a vast cloud sea, a strange sky sea-serpent jumping out to complete the picturesque scene.

Finally alone with my thoughts and with such a beautiful scenario in front of me, there was only one thing I could do.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!"

Yes, he failed pretty hard at negotiations, if someone woke you up in the middle of the sky and told you to deal with diplomatically subjugating people that hate you and that you know nothing about, you would to. Probably, or you have some Usopp level lying/luck.

As Enel's side story has he space traveling to the moon with no protection, him not needing to breath is canon. There is a whole discussion if Logia user's need to breath, I'm going with "if the element doesn't need air to survive, the user doesn't need it to." Pure energy doesn't.

Probably unnecessary explanation about the speed: The build up of a lightning strike is actually about mach-1 speed, but it's made up of various smaller and faster jumps, in a step ladder like construct. Enel would supposedly travel at the speed of said smaller jumps, thus "faster than mach speed". The speed of the jumps themselves vary a lot, so I kept vague. Probably unnecessary, cause if One Piece took speed seriously Kizaru would just murder everyone.

Last edited: Mar 13, 2021

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CrowKrowQrow

Aug 29, 2020

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Threadmarks Chapter 2

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CrowKrowQrow

CrowKrowQrow

Sep 5, 2020

#139

There is now a more detailed explanation on the Emperor Cloud and its three nations (Skypiea, Birka and Shandia) threadmarked as informational.

Filler(ish) chapter. Mostly setting up for the Birka confrontation next chapter.

"Thoughts" Other people's thoughts read by mantra.

Thoughts MC's own thoughts.

I watched as the Cloud's sea water rushed in to fill the sizzling and smoking empty corridor that was created in front of me. The sparkling arm that had caused said corridor lowering from its punching position, an overwhelming smell of ozone hitting me from the latest electric discharge.

After properly panicking for most of yesterday's afternoon, I calmed down enough to think properly, looking at the situation more calmly.

I was now apparently in the world of freedom, adventure, tyrannical governments and nonsensical, deadly nature that was One Piece.

A world that I, until now, believed to be just fiction... so far, my best guess on how I'm here is that I'm actually in a coma, and this is all my imagination. But I'm not about to jump into the sea while being unable to swim just to test that theory. Or the movie theory of how if you die in your dreams you die in real life.

If I was at a random nobody's body, I would've probably panicked more about all of it. One Piece had one scary world for the average Joe after all. But, after I had calmed down, I realized that I had hit the rebirth jackpot hard.

I'm the strongest asshole in the most isolated place possible.

Meaning that this body's previous owner was enough of an ass that he shouldn't have any true friends and/or family, that I was powerful enough to not have to fear about 99% of this world's many terrors and that I was far away enough from it to not have to care about the 1% that I would still have to fear.

I mean, nothing in the White-Sea could hurt Enel, and what are the chances of a Yonko or an Admiral coming up here?... I really shouldn't have thought that, hope I didn't jinx anything.

Either way, after rationalizing my fears away, I spent most of the night experimenting.

First, I attempted something I had discovered during my small -completely reasonable- panic. During my screaming matches with the horizon, I had accidently found out that I can project my voice to an inhumanly high volume. Guess Rumble-Rumble is about both the thunder and the lightning.

I didn't need to train much to learn how use it. Really, I just needed to try to scream as hard as I could... It was surprisingly simple. There might be more to it that I haven't discovered, I had no idea how to control its volume yet for example, but at least I could project my voice as if through a very powerful megaphone.

Super yell unlocked, I focused the rest of my training time on flying, zapping around the sky as I had done yesterday while making sure to remain close to the little deserted sky island I was in. I kept busy training how to change directions and react mid-air and, specially, how to slow down my flight speed.

Though I still couldn't stay still mid-air without falling, I could now slowly float around instead of necessarily zapping from place to place faster than sound.

The secret for that was figuring out how to become (be?) a lower voltage, doing so also helped not burn everything around me. Still not close to canon-Enel's level of control though, I remember that he could go through solid objects without burning or melting anything.

But I would get there. This single day had already been a surprisingly useful training session.

Using the Fruit wasn't that difficult, now I kinda understood how Sabo started using the Mera-Mera so easily, moving as and being lightning was pretty much instinctual. Knowing what I should be able to do from seeing canon Enel do it before probably helped.

After figuring out how to fly at an adequate enough level, at least enough to be confident that I wouldn't burn everything around me or fly head first into the Sea Cloud and drown myself, I went on to practice actively trying to fry someone.

Without Enel's lack of human empathy to use random people as target practice, I decided to attempt to throw my lightning punches, or El Thors, at the sea. It wasn't very successful at first.

I had managed to gather the energy in my arm easily enough, but whenever I tried to make the beam of pure destruction that the original Enel threw around like no-one's business, I ended up with a Sith lightning kind of thing instead, streams of lightning leaving my arm and branching in front of me, burning the sea and one unfortunate sky shark.

On the bright side, I had figured out how to use a Sith lightning like move.

Still, after many tries, I was finally able to do my own El Thor. I just had to gather enough energy that it felt my arm was going to burst, then release it all at the same time through a single point, the stream of energy erupting from the release point -my fist in this case- and disintegrating everything on its path before dissipating.

It took some effort and training to not have my arm just burst into arcs of lightning before I gathered enough energy for a proper El Thor, but nothing too difficult.

And it only took me till close to- Holy crap it's already afternoon?- okay, it took me all of dawn and morning apparently.

The sun wasn't even out when I started practicing, didn't notice this much time passing by, not as easy as it felt it then. And more fun too, didn't even notice the time go by.

I sighed and sat down at the somewhat bouncy cloud beach floor.

Now that I have a decent enough grasp of my powers to be able to both fly away and annihilate everything I point my hand at, I have no excuses left to not deal with my cult.

Well, not exactly true. It being a personality cult built up around a me that isn't really me and mostly made out of either psychopaths or people terrified of me, should be enough of a reason to avoid dealing with it.

Unfortunately, I was likely already Birka's most wanted, so I couldn't go there. And I had no idea where in the pocket world that was the White-Sea, the massive Emperor Cloud floating around Jaya, was Skypiea and Shandia.

I thought about flying around, it shouldn't take too long to find the other islands while moving at the speed of lightning.

But I'm sure it would have it's own problems, and going there would mean leaving my current problems, my cult and Birka, behind me, to plot and grow while I'm not looking. So might as well deal with it.

Not like they could hurt me, even if they decided to sacrifice me to... myself? I'm not sure on how personality cults work, never had one before.

I thought about just taking a nap. It was kinda the purpose of my escape in the first place, escape from the over-bearing cultists and their loud-ass emotions to relax. Instead, I pulled an all nighter trying out my new powers. No regrets, the powers are awesome.

But even with no sleep since I went to bed in the real world, more than twenty four hours ago, I wasn't tired at all. I somewhat wanted to take a nap, but wasn't really tired, just lazy.

I looked at my hand, seeing it slowly disappear beneath glowing blue sparkles, disintegrating into hand shaped lightning. Taking stock of the fact I've been consciously "holding" my breath since the start of the training session, with no signs of discomfort or trouble.

What the hell is this? What the hell am I?

Might spend some more time awake to try and find out if it's just that I'm more... energized or if I really don't need to sleep as well as breathing.

I sighed again, before taking a deep -unneeded- breath and getting up. Screw all of this, I can't do anything about whatever I am, the cultists and Birkans literally can't touch me and I probably could murder the entire island, I'm just going to bulldoze this into a solution.

That's a very dangerous mentality to have. A small part of me said. Screw it, this is all way too troublesome. A larger part answered.

Shoving the internal moral struggle in the back of my head, I got up to face the light, to get up on the stage, to be the god my followers need me to be.

Oh crap, hope Urouge didn't wake up and kill everybody.

With that uplifting though, I turned into energy, zapping in the general direction I had come from... I hadn't exactly gotten a map.

Still, some zaps later, I felt a murmur in the back of my head, like ants whispering directly to my brain. Resolute on facing at least my cult before today's end, I zapped towards the murmur's origin.

Two zaps later, I was floating above the city of tents that rested on a deserted sky island close to Birka, my lower body glowing from being half turned into lightning.

Floating above my cult, I closed my eyes to focus on the murmurs I managed to push back so far. A raging wave of fear, betrayal, zeal, tiredness and hope hitting me in the head like a sledgehammer.

"Where did God go? How could he have put that madman, Gode, as an advisor..."

"Oh, Sky Father I hope that psychopath didn't go destroy Birka..."

"Oh, I can't wait for God's glorious purge of the heathens..."

"Oh, Enel, our Holy Father, thou who resides above the Heavens..."

Okay. All of what I just heard was worrying.

Some faithful were having a crisis over me admitting maybe I couldn't do something (that something being guarantee economic and political stability after solving the issues that started a 400 years civil war), some of the more rational people -who followed OG Enel solely out of fear- were terrified I had gone to blow up their home island and, worst of all, a group of fanatics remained as faithful as ever and hoped for the purging of heretics.

And apparently my religion does have a standard prayer, good to know.

Shaking my head to try and clear away the wish of just zapping away and never dealing with any of this. And consciously ignoring the option of raining down lightning on everyone. I turned to energy and zapped down, landing on a clearing far away enough from the main camp that there was no risk of me burning anyone.

Standing to my full height, I was surrounded by cultist before even my lightning brain could process it.

They surrounded me, and I could hear from their Voices that they didn't know what to do for a second. Before they fell back to habit and knelt around me.

And now even if I wanted, I couldn't escape, as they hadn't made a path for me to walk through and I don't have enough control to not kill those closest to me if I tried to fly. Wonderful.

Well, I wanted to deal with this. Now I have to deal with this.

Forcing back what would be the third sigh of the day. I turned to my followers, none meeting my eyes, faces facing the ground in the kneeling position.

God... Gan Fall... Me... Whoever, damn all of this.

Ignoring my own sudden curiosity on if people used "God" as an expression of exasperation here. I addressed the crowd.

"Rise." I said with my thunderous voice. A bit louder than I wanted, learning how to regulate its volume is on my growing list of things to do.

My followers obeyed, confusion clear on their faces and Voices. I found the confusion over the simple command strange, but a quick deeper check into the mind of John Doe follower #33, told me that Enel tended to keep people on their knees. Not that surprising for the guy.

Random fact about Jonh Doe follower #33, he was part of the "Enel's the true Sky Father, purge the heretics" type of follower. The images I got from that brief jump into his mind are seared into my brain, and now, not releasing an electric discharge strong enough to kill everything in a 20 meters radius is turning into a true exercise of restraint.

Closing my newest sense as much as I could, the screams painfully digging into my head and the flashes of memories that were definitely not mine, were muted back into the quiet murmur that I heard when I was far from the camp.

Once again capable of hearing my own thoughts, the first one I had was regretting my earlier words. Now I'm disappointed that Urouge hadn't woken up and murdered everybody.

Ah, yes. The Supernova, that is a good place to get the ball rolling.

"So, where is the messenger monk?" I asked the general public while trying to keep my voice as aloof as possible.

There was a tense silence. Even with my mantra muted as it was, I could still feel as pretty much every follower squirmed and looked around hoping someone besides them said something.

…

The silence stretched out more. I could probably get the memory of what happened from one of them, but I both didn't want to open up my mantra again and I did want to see if someone would say something.

"The First Fist woke while you were gone, your Holiness!" A man finally said from the crowd. Louder than strictly necessary. "The Three Priests tried stop him, meh, but even wounded he managed to escape back to Birka." He finished.

By then the crowd had parted, making a corridor to their apparent spokesperson.

Not that they needed to. I could look into the eyes of the man even with the 10-something people standing between us. The man who answered stood at twice the size of most of my followers, far larger even than my new body's inhuman height. About on size with Urouge.

He might've have actually looked intimidating with a size like that, if only he wasn't looking like a giant, three chinned egg with curly hair.

Though I still had to use mantra to get the guy's name, I did recognize Humpty Dumpty over there from canon, even if I didn't remember his name.

It was the fat guy that acted tough, but started crying for forgiveness and begging for mercy after he lost to Robin. Like a bitch. After a quick reach with my muted mantra, I found out he was called Yama apparently.

And he was a fanatic. The man was keeping a stoic, serious face, but I could hear his Voice panicking about his manner of speech with "Enel-sama~" and if he was showing the right angle of his second chin... what?

I momentarily closed my eyes and forced back the negative side effects of being able to read the inner thoughts of those around me, cutting myself from the increasingly more worrying thoughts that Humpty was emanating.

When I opened my eyes, it was to see the walking egg finish crossing the human corridor to kneel in front of me, still ending up on size with me, thanks to his overly large size.

Thankfully, I had properly muted my mantra again, and whatever was hidden behind Three-Chins poker face, would now remain hidden. Currently, said face is serious and sorrowful as he delivered the news of Urouge's escape. Or what I think was Urouge's escape at least, First Fist brought him to mind.

And canon-Enel did have four priest. Apparently one of them wasn't a Priest yet.

Still, hope they don't start throwing titles around. I have no idea on Birkan culture, and I've push forward on trying to learn about it until after I subjugated them, partly from lack or interest and partly because it won't change my approach... That really isn't a healthy attitude, for me or the Birkans.

"And the Priests, are they alive?" I asked to try to forget about my worrying lack of empathy for the people I'll probably violently subjugate soon enough.

By the shocked silence and the surprise I could feel even with my muted mantra, they really weren't expecting Enel to ask after anyone.

Or- crap, yeah, a quick check into Yama's mind, now thankfully free of the disturbing thoughts on how to serve God that he had earlier, told me that part of the surprise was: why wouldn't I know?

After all, the priests are alive and within the range of Enel's mantra, the original would never be overwhelmed by the mantra he spent years getting used to and would always know those within the range of his Observation.

Opening my mantra to its full potential once again, I ignored the ocean of thoughts and emotions battering against my head and dove into Yama's mind, thankfully he was thinking about the priests, so I didn't need to try to search for a memory.

Taking the general directions for the medical tent from the overweight fanatic, I ignored the growing murmur of thoughts as the surrounding adoring worshipers and terrified followers tried to understand why God wouldn't know about the priests, who within the range of his divination.

"Hm, forget it." I continued with a voice thankfully aloof enough to not show my annoyance at my mistake and my increasing irritation from the headache from everyone's thoughts screaming at my brain since I opened up my mantra. "I shall see them myself."

As I walked in the direction Yama's memories told me the medical tent and the Priests should be, the crowd mercifully parted without me having to interact with them.

Yama, the Egg, remained knelt where he was for a moment, confused on how the conversation went, before he decided to walk behind me to the tent. I made a conscious effort to avoid his mind, I'm not sure why he was following me, but considering his obsession with Enel, I'm sure knowing why would only disturb me more.

After 5 minutes of walking in blessed silence, the giant egg keeping everyone away and being professional enough to not talk and me being barely proficient enough with mantra to forcefully not see whatever aberration is going through his head, we arrived at the medical tent.

It was a inconspicuous tent, made of the same brown hide as the others, just slightly larger and with a blue wing stitched above the entrance flap.

Crossing the entry flap, I was faced with 2 rows of 6 beds on each side. An older woman with short blond hair and small downward pointing angel wings greeted me and Yama with a bow at the waist. Surprisingly calm and reasonable after his more frantic worshipers.

A quick mantra check gave her away as Menra, she wasn't a character I remembered from canon. A quick mantra check gave me the general information that she was currently thinking about the cases of the various patients -apparently Gedatsu's face was... restructured in some places- and that she was terrified and a quite angry with me.

So, she was a healer and part of the "if you can't beat him, join him" type of follower. Hope I don't need a doctor any time soon then, as the camp's main physician hates me.

Passing her by without a word while she rose from her bow to check one of the patient's bed, I stood in the middle of the tent.

Nine out of the twelve beds in the tent were occupied. Mostly by unrecognized cannon fodder. But on the three beds farthest from the entry, rested the men I barely remembered from One Piece's Skypiea arc. Three of the then Four Priests of Enel.

Ohm, the only one with whom I had a previous interaction with, was also the only one awake, his right arm and left leg held in casts. His sunglasses nowhere to be seen for once.

The next one I hadn't recognized it at first, but a quick mantra check told me was it Shura. His face was unseeable under a mixture of bandages and healing ointments.

The last one was a complete mummy, face and most of his body being covered in bandages. I didn't need to check his identity with mantra, as the spider shaped hair gave him away as Gedatsu. Both him and Shura were still out cold.

Guess Satori is not a Priest yet.

Ohm, the only priest awake, quickly noticed me on the tent, standing up despite his broken leg and immediately landing in a very awkward kneeling position by his bed.

"God, there is no excuse for my failure." The bald man said seriously, voice resigned, eyes closed and head down. "It's only fitting that I die a failure. At least and at last, I shall be free." His Voice finished for him.

Seriously man, lighten up a little.

There was a moment of awkward silence, the priest waiting for his execution, me having no idea how to deal with the suicidal worshiper and Yama just sounding out quiets "meh"s in the background.

While I pushed down the headache from the overly depressing train of thought from my elite priest, I used the lull in the conversation as an opportunity to confirm what I noticed yesterday about mantra also giving a vague idea of strength.

Urouge's Voice was louder than any of my followers, Ohm's is a bit louder than his fellow Priests and Shura's and Gedatsu's are louder than Yama's. Seems to check out. So the strongest of my followers is an emo, wonderful.

"Just get up, Ohm." I said, the aloof voice I'm getting pretty good at covering most of my annoyance at having no idea how to deal with the overly depressing, overly zealous man.

Unfortunately, the man took the order seriously. Quickly standing up at attention, both feet planted at the ground. I could hear the cracking sound from his broken leg as he put his weight on it. I could also feel the glare from the Menra, most of the healer's work on the Priest's leg coming undone with that single action.

"Ah, God's kindness, to allow a wretch like me to die on his feet." Came Ohm's sad logic about the situation.

Now unable to just force away the headache on my followers increasing stupidity, I rubbed my temples to sooth the migrane caused by the depressed priest.

"Just sit down and put your damn leg up, you imbecile." I said, no longer able to keep my voice aloof as the pain in my head grew.

His stupidity was such that the headache it caused was enough to make me lose my tenous control over my repressed mantra, which increased the headache as I went from just dealing with some over the usual stupidity, to both that and being bombarded with thoughts, memories and emotions that weren't mine.

One day really wasn't enough to learn how to control the new sense.

"Meh~ God is showing such mercy to that undeserving Priest, maybe I should get injured too~" Came Yama's disturbing thoughts.

"I knew I should've given that idiot a stronger dose of analgesics. Three damn hours to do a proper cast for his limbs in this undersupplied tent, but does the empty dome appreciates it? Noooo, put all your weight on your broken leg, yes, that's..." Came the healer's increasingly angry rant over Ohm's stupidity. Well, at least she wasn't blaming me for it.

Theirs were the easier Voices to understand, there was also the incoherent sea of thousands of stray thoughts and emotions from all over the city of tents that I called a camp.

Having to once again focus on pushing the Voices to the back of my head so as to not overwhelm me, I closed my eyes and focused on burying their murmur on the depths of my brain. The headache growing for a tense second, before there was a moment of lightness and the voices quietened.

When I finished and opened my eyes, it was to a seated Ohm looking at me expectantly and a Menra looking at me terrified. Yama was behind me, so I couldn't see him, but I could hear him grovelling.

It was when I realized I was glowing with sparks, lowering my voltage so as to not burn down the medic tent and stop glowing, I quickly shot down Ohm's disturbing hope for the death punishment.

"It was no failure, I had never expected any of you to be able stand up to Urouge." I said with an once again aloof tone of voice, my annoyance quickly tunning down now that there weren't thousands of voices screaming in my head.

Still, with no wish to deal with the depressive bald man, I turned to the healer that hated me before Ohm could come up with arguments on why I should blame him and how he deserves a fate worse than death. The dude really needs to lighten up.

"How long until they're good enough to move?" I asked the blond medical expert.

The healer looked a me, unable to hide her glare for a second, before forcefully bringing back her pokerface.

"Their injuries are serious." She said with a dead tone of voice. "Ohm and Shura will take at least a month to go back to full strength, Gedatsu at least a week more than them."

I'm not waiting a whole month to deal with this.

"I said until they could move, not until they are healthy." I snapped back at the healer.

There was quick lull on the conversation, the healer just staring at me. Thankfully my mantra being suppressed meant that I didn't have to know the many tortures I'm sure she was thinking up for me with all of her vast knowledge of the human anatomy.

For a second I thought she wasn't going to answer. Not sure what I would or should do then, as Enel probably wouldn't take talking back. Fortunately, she didn't force me to find out.

"Ohm should be able to walk again in week, though he shouldn't do anything straining with his leg for at least a month." She said through gritted teeth. "Gedatsu probably can already walk, there was no damage to his legs and not that much to his head, but he will just have to remain careful of his ribs, any blow could shatter them right now. Shura... I can't say for certain, he has a serious concussion, I'm still not sure if he will wake up." She finished, trailing off and focusing on whatever notes on Shura she was currently holding.

Okay. A bleaker picture than I hoped, but they should be fine. Probably. It's One Piece biology after all.

Still, at least a week. Hm, a good deadline I suppose, gives me some time to practice a bit more with my powers and learn about my surroundings, but not enough time for Birka to actually do something that could hurt me. Probably.

Definitely safer to learn a bit more about what I can do and where I am before rushing into enemy territory.

Decision made, I turn to Yama. Ignoring the healer, who had already turned away from me and was currently reading something at Shura's bedside.

"Get the camp ready to move." I said. "We leave for Birka in a week."

The fat half-giant knelt with a shout of "Of course, your Holiness!". The healer glaring harder at us behind my back while changing my Priest's bandages, not sure if because I was taking her patients in the time she considered the bare minimum or because of Humpty Dumpty's shouting at a hospital. Probably both.

Now, to escape for some peace before my followers and responsibilities bury me.

"I will be meditating on how to deal with Birka until then. Is there anything you will need Yama?" I asked moving to the tent's flap, with the read I had on Egg's personality, he shouldn't ask for anything in a futile attempt of proving himself.

"Of course not, God! I shall carry on your orders without fail!" He roared, as if getting the camp to move was an arduous and dangerous task.

Well, good to know my read on him was right.

With time gained and tasks delegated, I left the medical tent. Yama behind me.

As soon as I stepped a foot outside, I saw as many of the cultists, surrounding the tent at a respectable distance, zeroed in on me. This time I interrupted before they could start kneeling and question me with their silence (with my mantra quieted at least) and judgy eyes.

"Enough!" My voice thundered over the whole camp and stopped the cultists closer to me from kneeling.

"We are marching to Birka in a week from now." I continued "I shall meditate on how to deal with our old home's defiance, and expect not to be interrupted until it's time to move. Yama shall act as my intermediate in the meantime."

I could see their side-looks amongst each other. I was not sure if because of curiosity on how I intended to deal with Birka or because of any problem they might have with either dealing with Birka or having Yama as an intermediary.

And I was not opening my head to the sea of headaches that was mantra for now. From my read on Yama's earlier, he is loyal and diligent, despite his many faults, it's a easy job, and I'm sure he can handle it until I can get a handle over what is going on.

With all that I wanted said, said. I walked in a straight line to the where I vaguely remembered to be the tent I had awoken in, the worshipers splitting as if the Red Sea in front of me, pushing themselves to get out of my away. I made sure to look straight ahead and consciously ignore every subtle attempt of getting my attention.

Anything could wait until later, after some training with mantra, after I could properly read people's damn minds. I had no idea what they wanted right now, and had no wish to deal with the headaches of mantra in front of everyone, so no way of knowing without talking to them.

And I did not want to talk with them right now. From what I gathered from my followers, they will either hate me, hate themselves or be crazy enough to give me another cause for headache.

Screw all of that, I'm not dealing with it until I get a grip on my magic lie detector/mind reading powers.

Finishing my beeline, I reached the slightly larger -and definitely more golden- than others tent. Getting inside it, I quickly collapsed on the collection of fine pillows that was spread like a sofa on the tent's side. The bed is the golden hammock I woke up in, so probably a sofa type of things, canon-Enel did seem lazy.

Collapsed on the pillow covered ground, I took a deep, unnecessary breath. That all went... About as expected.

My followers are divided mostly between homicidal fanatics or rational people that hate and are terrified of me, being able to feel people's emotions and hear their thoughts is literally a headache and Birka is coming soon and will probably be worse.

The only bright side of any of this is that I got some more time before I have to deal with Birka, time to practice mantra -maybe some more with lightning-, and that no one seems to question my Enel act so far.

And a side that I'm still not sure if it's bright or dark, is that I'm still not tired at all. So I couldn't even get the comfort of a proper night of sleep, but I would have more time to train.

Letting out the third sigh of the day, I sat up from the pile of pillows. Running a hand over my face, I set myself up in a meditative position that I barely remembered from the early days of my real(?) world life.

If I'm not going to sleep, might as well do something productive.

Closing my eyes and taking another necessary breath to relax, I opened up my Observation to the world once again.

Immediately, a wave of voices and feelings washed over me, a splitting headache following as the thousands of voices speaking in unison and the quick flashes of anger, fear, joy, pleasure, tiredness, and many other incomprehensible emotions ran through my brain.

It was a constant effort to keep it in focus, trying to make sense of the unending out of sync chorus of Voices that dug into my brain like a jackhammer.

For a long while nothing of it made much sense, it was just countless of Voice screaming over each other. But, after a while, I started to manage to get actual snippets of conversations around me.

First, I managed to half understand a conversation between three cultists close to my tent. Then, while keeping the previous conversation running in the back of my mind, also check another cultist close by... who was currently having an entire conversation with himself on his own head. Seriously, how many crazies did original-Enel gather?

Ignoring the guy talking to himself about how... he did what with that bird?! Now definitely shutting off the insane man talking with himself. I continued training on listing in on various people's surface thoughts and actual conversations at the same time.

What was once a splitting headache slowly dulled into a numb pain in the back of my brain. Being able to understand one conversation at a time soon became able to understand two, then three, then I included reading a person's thoughts at the same time as I listened to their conversation. The power quickly becoming as instinctual as zapping around the sky had become.

I still couldn't keep two entire islands within my mantra, as canon-Enel could, but at least I could take hearing the many Voices around the camp without my head feeling like it would explode now.

I was removed from my thoughts and training by the sound of a loud gong ringing over the tent city.

Opening my eyes, and now being able to ignore the murmur of the Voices without needing to shut them down -even if I couldn't quite comprehend what they were talking about without focusing on it-, I saw that the gong was to wake up the camp. I could feel the number of conversations rose as most of the asleep camp awoke.

I had noticed a smaller number of conversations, but the number of thoughts had remained the same, so I didn't even realize that it had gotten so late that most of the camped city was asleep. It did explain the very random thoughts I'd gathered around the camp, most people were just dreaming, not clinically insane. I hoped.

I had arrived at the camp between the middle and the end of yesterday's afternoon, and entered my tent as the sun was going down. And apparently just spent the entire night and however much it has been since sunrise training.

And still, no sign of tiredness. A bit hungry, but not as much as I should. Still, a quick walk to a wooden table, and I got an... apple? It looked like one, but more round and a bit bigger than the ones I remembered. With a bite, I discovered it was also a bit sweeter than I remembered.

Still, apple-analogue eaten, I sat back in my pillow bed. So, apparently I got hungry. No sign of sleepiness, don't need to breath and can unmake myself into lightning. But I still need to eat. No signs of needing to unload anything eaten so far to.

Ignoring my increasing questions over my own humanhood, and forcefully shoving back the quiet voice saying that maybe there is something to that me being God thing, I closed my eyes once again.

I'll make a proper check on my needs and humanity after this is dealt with, for now, I closed my other senses from the world and focused on the Voices once again.

I have a volatile political situation at hand, and, considering I'm already invincible -always a dangerous line of thought to have-, better to train up my mantra. I'm sure being able to read minds and emotions will be useful to deal with whatever it is I'll need to deal with at Birka.

Anti-climatic finish, I know. It was pretty filler, I wanted to set all up for the Birka confrontation and not just go straight from "what the hell is going on?" to "lets start conquering". Give the MC some proper time to get over the confusion of world displacement and suddenly being God-King.

Finally some proper Enel bulldozing over everyone next chapter.

I have no idea if I'll go with Enel/MC needing sleep or food. We know Logias can eat, but is there any instance of a hungry or tired logia? Because technically he is lightning... Canon-Enel did go to a deserted moon, with only robots as company, is there food there? Might edit this later on if I decide to change it. For now, he needs food and drink, but no sleep or air.

As always, please point out grammar and/or sentencing mistakes. There is no beta-reader and proof-reading my own stuff is very boring.

Last edited: Jan 13, 2021

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CrowKrowQrow

Sep 5, 2020

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CrowKrowQrow

CrowKrowQrow

Nov 12, 2020

#227

Just to point out that I have no idea how to write recently-overpowered demigods taking over anime sky theologian kingdoms. If you ever were the object of worship of a personality cult, some tips would help. Started this thing only with a giant clusterfuck of a Marineford arc in mind, now trying to stumble the way there.

"Thoughts" Other people's thoughts, read through mantra.

'Thoughts' MC's own thoughts.

"Talking" When in bold letters, it's using the super-voice from the Rumble-Rumble fruit.

"Voice", "Listen", "Hear" and "See", with capital letters, are referring to doing said things through mantra. "Cloud", with capital letters, is about the Emperor Cloud.

I wrote this chapter separately, as in, a few hundred words every one or two days. So if you notice a broken up idea or phrase that just doesn't make sense, please point it out as it's probably an idea I had but forgotten to continue or take out.

Large explanations at the end of the chapter... mostly over-explaining some scenes that I was staring at during writing blocks.

A week later, at Enel's camp, close to the City of Birka

I watched as a piece of red-hot, molten metal came out the other side of my hand with a sigh of annoyance. My other hand quickly caught the falling blob of molten metal, stopping it from making a hole in my tents' floor.

Another failed attempt of not burning away what I was touching when in lightning form, which I entered automatically when I used my powers.

I knew it was possible to do it, OG-Enel passed through wood, stone and people causing no damage to any of it. Unfortunately, I lacked the control needed for it.

Still, I had gotten better over the week. I had started this exercise at the deserted sky island, and only moved to my tent before yesterday, when I was confident I wouldn't burn it down.

Thankfully, being made of pure lightning assured that a bit of molten metal couldn't burn me, being made of a material of far higher temperature, I could hold the heated piece of mineral just fine.

Not needing to sleep, I had made a training schedule divided between day and night time, making far more progress than I would have otherwise, as not needing sleep and being able to move at lightning speeds saved plenty of time, and the impending conquering or making peace with a hostile sky kingdom gave me plenty of motivation.

Having already learned how to punch giant beams of energy and how to fly, I focused on control during my short training time.

More specifically, I focused on not burning everything around me when using my powers and on trying to make an electric charge away from myself... well, first it was attempting to make lightning come down from the skies, but there was no progress there and making an electric charge away from me seemed like an obvious first step.

I got something out of both.

I no longer burned everything in a one meter radius around me, but I still burned whatever I touched when using my powers.

And while I still couldn't do anything close to lightning strikes from islands of distance, like canon-Enel, I could now control and generate electric charges at a short distance.

It's a close range distance so far, as I do not have enough control to gather enough of it at the skies to bring down Enel's death beams yet. But the first steps were taken, I will get myself satellite guided lightning strikes soon enough.

This training was done during the late night and far away from the camp, both because of its destructive potential and to get away from my followers. Most people were dreaming around then, and their Voices/thoughts were very strange during it.

A disturbingly high amount of both the men and women had some very weird dreams about me specifically, most either sexual or homicidal. The really scary ones were the mixture of both.

During the days I mostly stayed around my tent, reading up on Birka and practicing my mantra during a time when people were awake and more normally hating or worshiping me.

It took a while to get used to the constant buzzing in my brain, and I still couldn't really grasp everything happening around the camp as the original Enel probably could. But now I could hear everything said/thought about me within the camp.

Which still left me without a moment of rest, as a camp made up of followers or haters of Enel tended to think of him a lot, which meant a hundreds of Voices going around my head at all times.

It didn't take long for me to realize it was easier to get an understanding of Birka through mind reading than book reading, but I still did the latter for a while. The books were well written and doing so while using mantra was a good multi-task training.

After my control over my lightning form was enough that I was almost sure I wouldn't burn everything around me -which means since before yesterday-, I stopped reading while training my mantra and started training control while doing so instead, sitting in my tent, listening to every conversation and thought about me while trying to have a metal coin pass through my hand unharmed.

As the molten metal cooling in my left hand will attest, I haven't succeeded there yet.

Now training control during the day, most of the nights were left just for large scale experiments. Mostly attempting to get lightning to come down from the skies anywhere I want.

No luck there, just yesterday I managed to get it to come down directly above me.I haven't trained with it enough to consider it mastered, but it's reliable enough that I would bet that if I wanted to, I could bring down a large bolt of lightning on myself at any time. Unfortunately, I won't have the time to practice more with it to be sure.

As if hearing my thoughts, I sensed a familiar Voice approaching.

I stopped before my next attempt of not melting metal to look up just before the moving mass of hair called Gode entered with a tray with two bowls and a plate of assorted fruits, doing an awkward bow with his hands full.

"God, I've brought breakfast, as you ordered." He stated the obvious with a serious face, voice and Voice.

I stood up from my position crossed legged on a floor-pillow and put the molten metal that used to be a coin in a metal bowl on the nightstand before walking over and taking the bowl from the tray.

I looked at the mixture of grilled fish and a strange nut with a rice-like texture, and waved for Gode to sit on the chair close by the entrance. Put in there exactly for him, as I preferred the mass of floor-pillows spread around a corner of the tent.

It wasn't the first of these visits, after I had spent the first two days after my return to the camp stuck on my tent trying to not have my head explode from the thousands of minds screaming at me, I decided to try and get some council from the only person around here who I knew wasn't either insane or despised me.

I had, of course, checked his thoughts -hell, I'm doing it now- and found nothing incriminating. Some worrying thoughts here and there, but everyone had some of those.

He was definitely better company than 90% of my camp, which was divided between crazies believing I'm god and people who despised me and wanted to torture me to death, but feared me more.

Thankfully, Gode was not insane, did not believe I was an omnipotent/present god and did not wish a thousand different deaths on me.

He just joined Enel out of a strangely detached curiosity over what will happen after seeing his-mine overwhelming power... he has a strangely detached view over pretty much everything so far.

Still, just him not hating me and not being insane would already make him great company by the camp's standards. But even better, the man was a bookworm with way too many ideas, so he was also a wonderful wall to bounce ideas at. Ideas such as:

"So Gode, have you thought of any better way to bend Birka?" The main question over the last days of conversation.

This was unfortunately not a good question to prove his usefulness as a councilor, as his reaction of freezing, running 30 different scenarios through his head and shaking his head negatively became the expected after I asked it repeatedly the last four days.

I sighed, looking up at the tent's roof.

So far the only idea that Gode and I had was using even more overwhelming power than the first time that Enel (the canon one) had tried cowing Birka.

Hopefully that and the somewhat more moderate demands would be enough to cow the zealous, militaristic nation into compliance... The chances weren't that good and neither I or Gode have any real idea what to do in the case it isn't.

Well, no, that's not true. Gode actually suggested wiping Birka off the map -his own homeland, where he grew up and the only place he knew his entire life- in case they still resisted, citing it would make the other two kingdoms more compliant.

The man was ruthless. Still, being always reading his thoughts as we spoke, I could attest that it was from a completely pragmatic point of view, believing that everyone who would surrender over the threat had already left it for my camp, and that the fear caused from said annihilation would allow the other conquests to go on with lesser bloodshed, believing it was the option that would cause less overall pain.

Better than most of my followers, who just wanted to see the world burn. Either way, I was hopeful to avoid that road.

I've only accidentally killed one person so far, one of my own followers when I attempted to read his older memories instead of only his surface thoughts, and I wanted to keep the body count as low as possible for as long as I can.

I had chosen one of the crazies for an experiment, the man had killed his entire family in a ritualistic sacrifice for me after canon-Enel's attack on Birka. And I could feel that he had no regret over it, hell, I'm pretty sure he just used the attack as an excuse.

How I knew that, was because the experiment was a partial success, I was able to access his senses and older memories. And was able to hear through his own ears his last death cries as his brain melted inside his cranium.

That none of my followers bothered to question me over one of their one being covered in lightning, suddenly convulsing and then his head melting, didn't surprise me that much.* They just blinked at the death, dragged the body away from the camp and threw it at the sea for the Sky Sharks.

What had me worried was the lack of any feelings after I accidentally melted a person's head, regardless of how despicable said person was. And I didn't wish to try and see if I had the guts to do the genocide Gode was suggesting, I feared for my mentality if it was as easy as my first kill.

Being able to fly, to move faster than sound, to disintegrate pretty much anything on your way, to read minds. All of that while being practically untouchable, not needing to breath and knowing you could grow even stronger.

All of that can easily go to one's head, I regularly try to remind myself that I'm not invincible and above reproach, yet I seem to believe it a bit less each time, and I feared what would happen if I stopped believing it entirely.

I had seen the kind of asshole Enel's powers could make, and I've felt its intoxication on my short stay here.

But there was no other option. If I wanted to remain on the White Sea, I would need to deal with Birka, and canon-Enel had already set a pretty bad precedent, so I would have to force a resolution.

And I wanted to stay up here in the Cloud Sea, there may be many troubles, I may have to deal with merging what used to be three nations with 400 years of aggression into one thing, but it is still better than having to deal with the Four Emperor and the World Government.

I landed a jackpot by being inserted into an overwhelmingly powerful character in the most isolated place in the Deathworld that is One Piece, no way I'm leaving it to deal with the many monsters at the Blue Seas below.

Sighing, I finished eating the fish and nuts with my hands -how they did it here, I missed cutlery*-, got up, quickly turned my hand to energy to burn any leftovers away, put the bowl on the same nightstand as the bowl holding the now cooled lump of metal that used to be a coin, and walked towards the exit.

I strode past a still eating Gode, who had been as silent as ever during my contemplation, said a simple "Finish eating, then report to Yama." and left my tent. Not needing to look to See him nodding, overly serious as always.

Leaving the isolation of my tent, I was met by a sea of statues, all my followers freezing whatever they were doing to look towards me with their heads down.

After a lot of trouble I had managed to make them stop kowtowing -which confused many, as it was something canon-Enel had enforced harshly-, but despite explaining repeatedly I didn't want anyone to stop working on account of my presence, they still did this.

They at least had more reason than most today, as it was the deadline I had set to march towards Birka, their homeland. And I could hear the questions buzzing in their heads.

"Back to your tasks." The loud order was enough to get them out of their frozen state and to remove any thought of asking about how I would deal with Birka. Good, I have no great plan to share after all.

Walking through the packing camp, I made my way towards the infirmary, where my mantra told me two of my Three Priests still resided and that Yama waited by it to meet me, as had been agreed beforehand.

Arriving at the small open space between the infirmary and the rest of the sea of tents, I found Yama seated on a floor pillow outside the medical tent, in front of a small low table with various papers strewn on it that the giant egg that was my second-in-command tried not to doze off while reading.

His tired look made me almost sure he had spent the night in that place, probably not to be late for this. I wasn't sure, as he was so far the only one I did not bother reading the mind of while close by.

Both because of trust, as the times I did read his mind left me no doubt about his loyalty, and because his thoughts freaked me the fuck out.

So, unlike pretty much anyone else, I deliberately had no idea what he was thinking as he saw me and got up with a smile to greet me. Something creepy, I'm sure.

"Your Holiness!" He exclaimed loudly, the tiredness in his face disappearing for an excited look. "Most of the camp has already been packed and the work is well within the timetable *meh* we should be moving by noon!" He said with a proud smile and an expecting look.

"I see." I responded tiredly. "Good work, Yama." the man started preening like a peacock over the minor compliment. It was seriously unsettling seeing the large man act like a teenage girl in love.

I got away from the still preening man when he closed his eyes and starting squirming in place over the light praise, imagining things that I'm sure would make me thank God for having learned how to block someone's Voice... the one time I can thank God, refer it to myself, and be right.

Walking past the squirming giant egg, I entered the medical tent once again. Once more being glared at by Menra, the healer, before she got a hold of herself, restrained her glare and ignored me in favor of going back to whatever she was mixing in the mortar.

On a better note, this time the two priests were conscious, Shura having woken up from his short time coma just before yesterday, while Gedatsu woke up the same day of my first trip here, just after Menra lowered his sedatives.

The third priest, Ohm the Depressive, was meditating alone on the edge of the camp, my mantra told me.

Yama entered the tent just as I finished my evaluation.

Shura started to move to get up despite his still swollen head. Menra glaring at me for some reason instead of at the idiot getting up.

"Just stay in the bed, Shura." I said before he could hurt himself further.

"God!"Was the thought from Gedatsu, who had already got up and knelt while I dealt with Shura, he was purple faced and seemingly biting his own lip."Though we might have failed your holiness and let the First Fist escape, we shall endeavor to..."

As I read the continuous monologue in his mind, I got a headache, for once for reasons unrelated to the thousands of Voices constantly screaming in unison inside my head.

"You need to open your mouth to speak, Gedatsu." I told him exasperated, the man making an overly exaggerated face of surprise.

"Ah! How careless." He exclaimed over the obvious remark.

I knew he did this type of silliness from the anime, but somehow the stupidity of it still caught me off guard.

"Though we-" He continued, actually speaking his thoughts now.

"Yes, yes, I heard." I interrupted, no interest in having the monologue repeated. "All of you will have a chance for redemption in the days to come." I had no idea what was coming exactly, but I'm sure there will be enough trouble for them to prove themselves useful against.

Looking at Shura, the visibly more injured of the Priests, I stared at him, the proud warrior fidgeting under my gaze.

As I watched him, I saw through his eyes quick flashes of a seemingly unconscious Urougue springing up from a bed in this same infirmary and almost crushing Shura's head in his grip before throwing the barely conscious Priest aside like trash. Followed by various images of imagined punishments that he feared I would dish out over his defeat.

All of that under a chorus of: "I did not fail, there's no way I could've reacted. I did not fail, there's no way I could've reacted. I did not fail, there's no way I could've rea-"

"Yes, you did and yes, there is." I interrupted his desperate inner chant.

His sullen face and Voice making it clear he understood I was referring to his unspoken thoughts, he opened his mouth to defend himself, before he flinched and closed it in silence.

"You have mantra and could've and should've expected Urouge to get up, so yes, you could've reacted and yes, you did fail." I continued, his face growing somber and… now he was worried about who would take care of his bird after his execution.

"But as I said to Gedatsu, there will be plenty of conflicts for you to prove yourself in the coming days." I continued, speaking as if throwing them at people I didn't like was a great honor.

He certainly took it as such, feeling an overinflated sense of importance on how "My strength is recognizable even by God, I won't let this chance pass me by", along with an overwhelming sense of relief and joy at not being killed. Outside of his thoughts, he just bowed his head and said.

"Thank you for this opportunity, God. I won't-" He was interrupted by an ear busting screech from behind me.

"I just told you to keep your head up!" The healer screamed, appearing by the Priest's bedside in a single movement and slamming his head back against the pillow with enough force to probably cause more damage than the previous bow did.

"Eeeeh..." I watched stupefied as the healer ignored me, the WMD with an ego problem, and bound the stunned Priest to the bed in what couldn't be more than five seconds.

The woman finished, bowed in my general direction -various torturous ways of killing me going through her head as she did so- and returned to her mortar. Leaving a mummified warrior taped to the bed.

Technically she didn't do anything, just interrupted Shura to do her job. But the imagery of me being tortured and killed she had playing in her head as she did so...

Perceiving such thoughts and images was an unfortunate commonality as a mind reader in a camp largely made up of people who violently hate me. But very few were so detailed and overall painful.

And I could hear the determination in her Voice, she would go through it if she wasn't sure it was impossible and that I would kill her in half a second.

Ignoring the desire to smite her over a thought, and one that was understandable considering that 90% of her recent patients were Enel's victims, I turned to the mummified Priest currently thinking about how dare she ruin his image and something about honor duels.

I turned to my other Priest, who had now forgotten how to breath and was rolling on the ground as if it would help anything.

My last, third priest was meditating away from the main camp, feeling the essence of the World through his mantra and the feeling of the wind on his skin, and thinking how freeing death would be, when he could finally join it.

…

"Meh~~" Were the strange sounds that I refuse to call moans from the giant egg squirming beside me, the closest thing I had to a second in command. Considering that he had sniffed my general direction while trying to be sneaky just before he started making said noises, I really rather not know what he was thinking about right now.

Once again faced with the... eccentricity of my army, I cemented in my mind that they reaaally have no place anywhere near diplomacy.

Wishing to get away from the open air insane asylum I called followers, I turned towards Humpty Dumpty's cousin on the sex offender register.

"Yama!" He stopped at attention instantly. "I'm going ahead, get the camp moving faster." I said to the Eggman, who proceeded to bolt towards the exit, hopefully to comply with my orders.

"Menra!" Even if she hated me, the healer was still smart enough to snap to attention at the call. "Shura is clearly not able to go, get him and any other injured or elderly in a cart." I told the woman, who stared strangely at me, considering what I had seen not two minutes ago, I had no interest in looking into her mind to know why.

"Gedatsu, you just take in air from your mouth or nose to breath, you idiot!" I yelled at the Priest still rolling on the floor, slowly asphyxiating himself to unconsciousness.

He stopped mid-roll to take in air, taking various large breaths, before saying.

"Ah! How careless of me!"

… I don't know if I laugh or be angry at the impossibility of how a person like that is still alive and supposedly a great warrior.

Rubbing my temples to try to fight my ever returning headache, I waved in his general direction when he was about to say something.

"Just help the healer with whatever she needs." I told the imbecile who was somehow an officer of my army while walking away from the tent, ignoring the familiar crowd that had formed around it after I entered the infirmary, forcibly keeping their Voices to small whispers.

I quickly got some distance from the tent and everything else important that could easily catch on fire if I turned to electricity near it, there were some people close enough to risk some light electrocution, but nothing too serious, probably, either way, I kept walking instead of zapping away.

Looking upwards, I quietly lamented the demented gathering I called subjects, and I had been intent on taking them along to try to subjugate Birka.

It would've probably ended badly and I would likely need to beat up all of Birk. It would likely end badly either way, but I had thought seeing the many former citizens on my side might help along diplomacy.

Gode had been against it, citing that most of my followers were people discontent with overall Birka, and their presence wouldn't help a peaceful conquest. I had still hoped to bring them along, hell, even if just as moral support for me.

After actually spending sometime with them though, not just reading their minds from a distance, I was sure that Gode was right and this wasn't my best idea.

My chosen isolation from Enel's lieutenants had allowed me to avoid scenes such as those. While their minds were a mess from afar, pretty much everyone's was as well.

But actually interacting with them, seeing them in person and focusing on their thoughts and quirks, they were all so... idiotic.

The most normal one is Shura, and the man is a giant-bird rider with both a superiority and an inferiority complex.

Sighing and rubbing my temples harder to fight the growing headache, I stopped mid-step. 'Aaah, I'll really have to do this myself.'

How hard could it be to convince an entire nation to surrender to a totalitarian regime under someone with a known past as a megalomaniac psychopath... really, why are they even resisting?

Turning to face the crowd following around me, I declared, voice booming around the camp like thunder.

"I'll be going ahead, to pave the way to our return to Birka." I could feel the apprehension and excitement from the different sects of my subjects. "By the time you arrive, Birka will have already joined as the first step towards the White-Sea's unification!"

Some more fanatic followers started to roar at the simple speech, most others just squirmed in apprehension about the monster that is me saying he is going back to conquer their homeland.

I consciously ignored the cry of "This is the time for the Cleansing, let's go brothers, do not suffer the heathen to live!", that more than half of the camp didn't react positively to it was a win in my book.

'Now, let's see how hard I can screw this up.' With that optimistic thought, I zapped upwards, ignoring the poked anthill that was the camp, everyone of my followers running around to gather anything they needed to get moving.

Idly floating above my camp, I turned towards the general direction I knew Birka was, and the next second I was a bolt of lightning flying through the air.

After a few zaps, I Heard Birka before I saw it. A sea of Voices far larger than even my own village of tents.

Arriving above it, I idly floated over the expansive sea of almost identical small pale-white buildings with rounded roof tops, all well spaced and organized around wide, also white roads. Everything within an equally white short wall that made a circle around the whole city and with a large park full of trees right in the middle of it.

It was the first time that I visited the city, but at least the second one for Enel. With the people there definitely not forgetting the first time, as I could See a guard on the wall look up, notice the man floating above the city and remember what happened the last time he saw something like this. The city was burned in a rain of lightning.

Continuing to idly float by even as the loud alarm bells started and people started scattering like rats, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, forcing the newest sea of Voices screaming over my own thoughts to quiet down.

After a few seconds to restrain my own mantra, I zapped directly down, stopping with my feet on the ground, directly in front of the large wooden doors that stood on the molded solid-cloud wall.* Might as well enter the city properly.

"Oi!" I said loudly, but not thunder-boom loudly. "Open up!"

"Eh..." One of the two guards above the gates sounded out, looking at his companion in doubt. I could Hear the various doubts and the overwhelming fear coming from him. "No?" He said as if it was a question.

I sighed at the negative answer.

"I said I would return, here I am, let me go talk to the Elders so we can get this over with." I said loudly to them. "One way or the other." I finished quietly to myself.

One of the guards looked at his companion, who hadn't said a word so far, and I could see through the silent guard's eyes as he climbed out of his burning house while Enel laughed above the skies of Birka. Then the memory of finding the broken and burnt bodies that were once his wife and son after a whole day of searching the wreckage of his burnt home.

As the other guard said nothing, the speaker -who fortunately wasn't too affected by the not-me-me last rampage through the city- turned back to me.

"Why don't you wait here and I'll go get them." He said, while only thinking about how it would be someone else's problem after he tells the Elders.

"No, I'm entering and going towards them." I said, I was already too hated to win anyone over by being nice, and I can't really intimidate them by complying and waiting outside. "Now." I finished after the guard kept staring at me.

He started scratching his beard as if in doubt. Unfortunately, as I could hear his thoughts, I knew his entire plan was to see how long he could stretch this silence while hoping someone or something intervened to save him.

Not the best plan, but considering my plan on conquering the city was literally shock and awe -shock those who oppose me, awe those who don't-, I can't criticize anyone's lack of planning.

"I'll just knock then." I said mostly to myself, but from the uncertain "Eeeh..." from above, they had heard it as well.

Bringing an arm up to the wall, feeling it heat up as a charge of electricity ran through it, I lightly scraped my knuckles on the gate.

A giant beam of energy left my arm as soon as it made contact with the wood, disintegrating it.

The beam vanished as quickly as it appeared, taking less than a second to annihilate both the wood and the solid cloud around it* and disappear.

The thin cloud bridge that was left holding the two guards above the empty spot that used to be a gate held for a second, before shaking and collapsing down as it no longer had the support it needed, the two guards falling with a yell.

"Aaahh! My leg!" The speaker of them fell from the almost 10 meters high drop on his left leg, it bending wrongly in at least three different spots. The other one...

My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of three gunshots in quick sequence as the guard who had fallen on his side managed to grab his pistol through the pain of his broken ribs and fire in my direction.

I just looked on with a raised brow as two shots went harmlessly through my chest and a third passed between my eyes. 'Huh, good aim.'

Ignoring the bullets going through me, I pointed my arm in his general direction and tried to release the smallest charge I could.

Unfortunately, knowing this was One Piece, and having only practiced on rock-like clouds, I might've overestimated their endurance.

Hundreds of thin streams of lightning burst from my arm, covering the general area in front of me, including the two guards. I heard a pained yell, but by the time I managed to pull back the chain lightning, I was left with one dead and one very charred person.

"KilL mE..." Aaaaand the Voice went quiet, definitely two charred corpses now.

The anime tendency of having any and everyone being hit by deathly attacks and just passing out might've somewhat fooled me.

Taking a deep breath and resolutely ignoring the lack of any true feelings regarding my two more recent murders, besides an annoyance over said lack of feelings and over the bad smell of burnt flesh, I turned around back towards the city. Worrying about it or stopping now wouldn't help anyone.

Beyond the destroyed gate was a large, wide road made from a slightly whiter material than the surrounding white buildings, going from the entry gate, through a corridor of short buildings and ending in a square park, filled with vegetation, a rarity in the Sky lands. A tall but thin tower poked out from the middle of the canopy, I started walking towards said tower.

After a week forcefully ignoring my followers, it was easy to pretend the terrified citizens crowding sides of the street, jumping to get out of my way, didn't exist.

Hell, a few even shot me, but it did nothing and I wasn't sure if I could react without killing everyone in the shooter's general direction. And it's not like it did anything besides sounding annoying.

So, I kept walk-

"Ah!" I was interrupted when a soldier tried rushing at me with a spear, it passed harmless through me, but the conductive material carried a high enough voltage that spear-wielder's muscles cramped and he fell forward, towards where he was running, me.

His muscle-locked but still living body fell directly through me, the living mass of plasma, and a burnt corpse came out the other side. It was a strange sensation to me, and probably a terrible one for him.

I probably could've made myself solid to hold him or lower my voltage to just electrocute him a bit. But I was busy thinking first about how "is this dude seriously going through me?" and then "hooooooly shiiiiii..." as he did so.

There was a loud, collective gasp from the crowd around the street, and a moment of quietness, before the shooting returned, now in an even greater intensity. It, of course, did nothing.

I closed my eyes and counted backwards from ten, trying to calm myself and not think about the smell of burning flesh from the guy that died literally through me.

The constant sound of gunshots didn't help me find my zen, instead, I found the headache once again. After a few more moments of getting shot, said headache grew out of hand.

"Enough!" The booming roar echoed through the city, everyone freezing in reflex. Shattering windows around me and causing a few of the people closer by to hold their now bleeding ears and stumble over the loss of their equilibrium. Oops.

There was a moment of blessed quiet, everyone too shocked and fearful to do anything, so I relaxed and-

A lone gunshot interrupted my thoughts, the bullet entering through one my ears and leaving through the other.

I raised my hand and fired a person sized beam of energy in the general direction of the bullet before I could process what I was doing. A second after, when the beam dissipated, there was nothing in said direction.

Thankfully, whoever the shooter was, he was shooting from a house's roof, so I just erased someone's top floor, and not a whole neighborhood by reflex.

Once more there was a tense silence, during which I didn't relax, considering what happened after I had done so a second earlier.

This is going from bad to worse, but I have already killed four people over this, so I'm solving it today. Somehow.

With an unnecessary but calming deep breath I gathered... either the determination or the frustration necessary to push through this. Definitely one of the two.

Standing up straighter, I addressed the still frozen-in-shock crowd.

"This time, I have come in peace." The human barbecue besides me silently disagreed. "I do not wish to bring more violence and pain to the place I too have been born and raised in." Except I haven't. "But I will not accept any attacks on myself or my followers, and after today, you will all become part of the latter." Probably not the best choice to hang their subjugation over their heads, but hey, what do I know about dictatorial take over speeches. "Hopefully, then I can work to mend the wounds in Birka, and, after it, we can work together to do so for the entire Cloud." There, short and vague enough that I can't be held to any promise later on, I know at least that that was important as a politician.

The generic speech was launched in the air, loud enough for all of the large city of Birka to hear it (the capital of the nation of Birka, yeah, really creative).

I could Listen to the general apprehension and disdain of the citizens from all over the city. Enel's last visit had affected all of the city, and most of them had at least one relative or friend killed in it.

Hearing me talking of mending the wounds that I created for nothing else than to sate my ego a little more than a week earlier, left a bad taste in all of their mouths.

Not the best speech, and I think they hate me a little bit more for it, but at least no one has shot me since it ended, so I'm taking that as a victory. I'm taking any victory I can.

After a moment trying to think if I should say something else to see if I can actually calm things down instead of just helping them remember resistance was futile, I turned around and kept walking towards the tower in the center of the city. Better to do nothing than to screw things up further.

This time no one shot or interrupted my path, so I took a leisure walk through the city's main road.

Short but wide, cloud-made, half sphere constructions surrounded the street, with the tallest of it having at most three floors. All of them white and cloud-made. Quite a few were damaged or slightly burned, probably another sign of Enel's first visit.

After a few more moments of walking, ignoring the various Voices roaring quiet death threats or praying for their lives, I arrived at the edge of the park in the center of the city. The cloud-made road and wide, white houses giving way to tall, oak-like trees and green grass.

Most of the crowd that had been quietly following me stayed at the park's edge. From what I read, only the warrior and priestly castes of Birka could enter the large park. Some soldiers kept following behind me, hands tense around their guns and blades, but all were too scared to actually do anything.

After a quick relaxing walk through the park, I reached the tower, the battered mountain of muscles that was Urouge and a tiny old man that barely reached my stomach meeting me by the entrance, a couple more well equipped soldiers around them. And I could sense five more normal sized elders hiding behind the entrance and the soldiers.

I stopped on the grass in front of them, the Birkan soldiers behind me effectively boxing me in, not that it would make a difference.

There was a moment of tense silence, during which I could hear the muscles of Urouge's fist clenching in preparation for a fight. Even if he didn't let it show, I could hear the fear in his Voice, he would still give his all, but even he knew he wouldn't beat me.

The old man besides the Mad Monk (Yan, my mantra supplied) was just tired and disappointed, there was some fear, but it was only for the city, none for himself.

As I looked into his eyes, I could see the memory of a me that was not me holding the same old man by his throat, cold, arrogant eyes smiling at the old man he held dangling in the air as the city burned in the background.

Wonderful, person that hates me number 3895. No, despite the disappointment, there was very little anger, some, but not the rage that it should be.

As the moment of quietness stretched, I cleared my throat to get this over with.

"So, have you told them of my new terms, Urouge?" I smiled at the leadership of the nation I was currently subjugating.

Said warrior monk just narrowed his eyes, glaring at me. The elders behind the soldiers looked at each other in thought, while the tiny Elder continued staring impassively at me, currently thinking about the time a kid Enel showed him a small mechanized toy he had built. Not a single thought about said terms.

After another tense silence, the Elder sighed.

"Yes, Urouge did pass on what you've told him." The Elder's scratchy voice sounded on slowly, every word measured. "It indeed sounded more reasonable than your last showing." He said more to himself.

"And?" I pushed it through, I was already pretty sure what the answer was from his Voice, and heard the thought before he transformed it into words.

"And Birka will still not bow to you, Enel." He said, not a hint of fear on his voice even as every soldier around us held tight to their weapons in an attempt of feeling safer.

I closed my eyes and counted backwards from ten. Canon-Enel had already proved that I could and would kill everyone here, and all I asked for not doing so was to accept me as their absolutist king, not that difficult of a request for anyone with a survival instinct.*

Having calmed myself down from the frustration of not getting the easiest possible solution, where everyone just gives up and does what I want without further complaints, I turned back to look down at the Elder.

"You know me, Yan." I said, guessing he did both because of memories of Enel as a kid playing in his head and the disappointment he felt over this entire situation. "Do you doubt either my word of non-interference with Birka's day-to-day life or my word of retribution in case of resistance?"

There was another moment of silence, I could see the old man's memories of an anti-social kid, always playing with the gears of any machine nearby, barely talking with others. And images of the monster that burned half of the city not ten days past.

"No, I don't doubt you." He said with another sigh. "You've always disliked anything unnecessary, and after last week I know you don't need to lie here." He finished, looking up, thinking of his daughter, banished by himself over a minor theft, of his son who died of disease and who he never visited in his final days because of the thousand troubles of the country he was the leader of, along with various other minor regrets over almost five decades of leadership. "Still, we have our honor and our beliefs, and we will not, can not, bow to someone like you."

My fist clenched instinctively. I was not sure if it was the overall resistance to my orders or something this body remembered, but every word of the old man spoke annoyed me. The rumbling of thunder sounded in the distance.

"Where is the honor in this useless resistance? You know that you cannot win, all you need to do is accept me as a ruler, as I said to Urouge, I'm not demanding any damn large scale change anymore, I already proved I have the power to both conquer Birka and to protect it afterwards, all I want is to stop the war and all of you from bothering me." I explained through clenched teeth. "Where is the honor in resistance, when you lose nothing from surrender?"

The Elder just looked sadly and disappointed at me, though a bit relieved, his thoughts turning to something besides his own past mistakes for a change.

"At least he didn't make it completely about his imagined divinity. Maybe even if this doesn't work, things won't be as terrible as I feared for the ones that survive."

"If what doesn't work, old man?" I interjected, his thoughts immediately going back to his second's grandson's birth, which he wasn't there to see because he was settling a dispute between two fishermen.

He was consciously keeping his thoughts focused singularly on a memory. In his case, older memories of his mistakes.

A common technique against advanced mantra, from what I read. An unfortunately common technique in a Sea where every warrior or priest worth anything knows mantra.

I could just take the memories from him, it did work the single time I tried. But it would melt his head, and I both was already hated by Birka and wanted to keep my already higher than intended murder quota as it was.

Urouge was also keeping his thoughts focused on different ways to cave my face in, no idea if it was also to keep me from reading his Voice for the plan or just because he hated me that much.

None of the other guards or elders seemed to have any idea what it was about, their thoughts varying between one-thousand-and-one different things per minute, like most people in tense situations.

I closed my eyes despite being surrounded by enemies that wanted me dead, trying to focus to find some among the thousands of Voices that had a plan to attack me or something similar from what the Elder was talking.

There were, of course, hundreds or thousands of people thinking about how to kill me right now at Birka, but all of them were vague wishes, none seemed like a proper pla-

If I hadn't been looking for it, I would've missed. There was a man atop of a building on the edge of the park, looking like one of the countless faceless soldiers that shot me on the way here. He, like most soldiers, was thinking of shooting me, looking at the meeting through his rifle's scope.

But there were two things wrong there. One, he was the only soldier with a scope I had Seen or seen so far, and two, just before he actually aimed to shoot instead of just thinking about my head splattering, he sent a prayer to the Sky Father for the Elder's plan to work.

Unfortunately for him, it was another God that heard it.

In the less than two seconds between his finger finishing to press on the trigger and the bullet leaving the weapon, I turned into energy and zapped towards him, passing by the in comparison snail paced bullet on the way.

The soldiers and the five tall Elders flinched and panicked when I disappeared into a streak of lightning, the tiny Elder just grimaced and held his cane tighter, praying to the God he wasn't sure he believed in anymore for a miracle.

I appeared beside the shooter in a blinding flash, a lanky man with windswept dark hair wearing a rough leather trench coat over the dark robes common to the soldier caste of Birka. Currently laying down on his stomach, his smoking rifle still aimed at the park.

There was half a second where the man thought about his son and his wife, both killed during Enel's last attack, a blink later he unsheathed his trench knife, got up and slashed at my neck in a single movement, with inhuman speed and practiced ease.

For me, still half in lightning form, he seemed as if in slow-motion, my far faster arm easily grabbed his wrist, while another held him off the ground by his throat, immobilizing the man.

Focused on it as I am right now, I had just about enough control to at least not cook him alive like the spearman still smoking somewhere in the city, there was still a small window between me being electricity to move quicker than he could follow and me being human to grab him without killing him, during which he was badly burned where my hands met his flesh.

He didn't drop the knife, holding it tighter despite the pain on his burnt wrist, glaring at me even as he grinded his teeth to try and hold in the pain.

The man was tall, probably six feet something. Tall, but still a humane height, while Enel was... 8 something I think, I hadn't taken the time to measure my new height. But it is taller than all besides Urouge and Yama so far, and it allowed me to easily hold the shooter above the ground and away from myself.

He still kept trying to kick me, but it just wouldn't reach. Kicking through electricity would probably hurt him more than it would me either way.

I held the flailing man and listened to his Voice. Since he was part of it, he should know what was the Elder's plan, and the sooner I know it, the sooner I can crush it and consider this dealt with.

The man -Vayo, my mantra supplied when I focused on his Voice-, was currently a strange mixture of thoughts of his dead son and wife's smiling faces and of me with an open smile on my neck, bleeding to death as he continued to stab my soon to be corpse.

Lovely, but what mattered was that, under the desperate want to avenge his family, there was a thought on how he just needed to stab me once, connected to a memory of the tiny Elder giving him the knife that he currently gripped like a life-line and three strange bullets, explaining how it was a sacred stone bought from a group of Blue Sea explorers that managed to climb the High West.

I tightened my grip on both his neck and wrist, his struggle growing weaker by the second from the burns, lack of air and pain, he resisted a bit longer, then went limp in my grip, releasing the knife, that fell to ground with a dull thud.

I could've shocked him into compliance of course, but last time I did so I ended up with two well-done human barbecues.

Releasing the limp shooter when I heard his Voice go quiet, passing out from a lack of air -at least one damn non-lethal takedown today-, I reached down to grab the small blade, taking it by it's shark bone handle and bringing it to eye height so I could inspect it.

It was dark gray, looking like a completely ordinary, non-reflective but well polished stone. I ran a hand over its edge, lightly enough not to cut myself, feeling the cool material over my palm.

But there was the problem.

Keeping myself in human form was instinctual, like breathing or blinking, an action you do reflexively, but is able to consciously stop yourself.

And right now, even as I touched and ran my completely human hand through the dagger, I was consciously stopping myself from keeping to a human shape, and should be a barely humanoid mass of electricity, yet I wasn't, and the knife didn't go through or melt when in contact with my hand that should be plasma. Which could only mean one thing.

Oh shit, they have Seastone.

There was a brief moment where a deep cold ran through me as I realized they could've killed me, in my walk through the city, being showered in gun bullets, I probably wouldn't have noticed another one of hundreds of shooters thinking about how his shot would kill Enel. Hell, I had only really cared about him because of the Elder's thoughts earlier.*

Okay, maybe I should try to avoid actually getting shot from now on. I move at lightning speeds how hard cou-

I froze as a Voice just below suddenly stopped counting backwards, its owner moving as fast as she could.

"You do not need to do this, Tuji!" I shouted as loud as possible, breaking nearby windows and reverberating over all of Birka.

The Voice stopped close to its objective, a woman named Tuji, as my mantra supplied.

I hadn't paid her any attention earlier, counting it's a rather common way of dealing with stress and panic, so she was just one of hundreds doing so at the time.

But, much like the shooter, the moment she actually had to act, her mind instinctively went over the plan. "Guard your mind and wait for the shot, if you don't receive confirmation from Vayo in ten seconds of either the kill or safety, detonate the cache." I could hear the voice of the Elder replay through her own Voice.

Said cache being literally all the explosives within Birka that the Elder had gathered without the notice of the majority of the population during my week long absence.

I hadn't tested if explosions could hurt me yet, and would rather test it in a more controlled scenario, it would also definitely hurt everyone around the block, that hadn't been evacuated or informed of the bomb, most likely so I wouldn't discover it.

There was a moment of doubt, where she remembered her little brother, her only living family -also thanks to canon-Enel's rampage, way to go, not-me-me-, a moment during which I tried to think of any way to quickly reach her that did not involve going at live munition, straight through wooden floors as a mass of burning hot energy.

Then she found her will, pointed the flame dial at the mountain of haphazardly held together bombs, and the closest five buildings and almost two hundred people went up in flames.

I had half a second to throw the Seastone dagger as far as I could, not wishing to have that around me when the explosion hit, then the fire consumed me and the unconscious man, making my only non-lethal takedown useless.

I closed my eyes when the rush of fire and concussion force broke through the floor and hit me... and had no effect. I opened them a moment later, seeing purely a dance of red and orange as what was left of the building burnt around me.

Running my hand through the all-surrounding fire, feeling a barely noticeable heat, I took a deep unnecessary breath, not bothered by the smoke filling my plasma-made lungs.

I could Hear the screams of agony of the hundreds of Voices burning either to death or enough to be scarred for life. Beyond it, I could hear the thousands of Voices around the burning block, either mourning or fighting desperately against the fire for their loved one stuck inside, or just fighting the fire to try to stop its spread.

"Aaaaaahh...", "I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I'm not ready, I don't-", "Mom..." "Hahahahahaha", "It hurts, everything hurts so much.", "I need to leave, I need to leave, I need to leave..."

Beyond the varying panic of the hundreds still alive slowly cooking inside the burning inferno, I could feel the Elders approach the border of the flames, along with Urouge and the soldiers that were surrounding them minutes ago.

Having confirmed that I wasn't hurt by explosions, flames and the resulting lack of oxygen. I walked through the blazing wreckage, passing by and ignoring the burning man that ran in front of before falling dead a couple feet away.

I ducked under a burning doorway, leaving the inferno unharmed and clean as a whistle, the soot being disintegrated away by my plasma-made self.

Standing to my full height out of the blinding fire, I was once again face to face with the Elders and their soldiers, now all six of them out in the open and surrounded by a crowd of curious bystanders.

The tiny Elder stood in front of the crowd and his fellow Elders, hands balled on his cane, regret, sadness and acceptance clear in his Voice.

"So..." I started, before looking around, at the still burning pyre that used to be at least five communal houses, at the many people desperate both for the ones still inside the fire and over the fact that I was unharmed and then looked at the sky, trying to find the right words for the situation. "Was your plan to kill everyone before I could do so?" Those were not them.

I could Listen to the rage and desolation from all around me, especially said Elder.

"No, my plan- no, my hope, was that such sacrifice could save the rest of our city. It seems like it was just an old fool's hope." He answered, looking not at me, but at the pyre where over a hundred people died and a few dozen still slowly burned alive as a result of his orders.

The people around me whispered, disbelief and further desperation spreading through them, surprised the explosion actually had been from the Elder's plan. They had probably thought it had been from me.

I stood there for a moment longer, staring at the Elder who no longer bothered to shield his thoughts, I could feel his disappointment (mostly in himself), fear (mostly for the city) and resignation.

Besides him, Urouge was a mix of rage (at me) and disappointment (at the Elder), apparently he had been against the plan.

I took a deep breath, looking up at the overly large birds flying on the clouds above the Cloud and trying to think of a proper way to convey, "it's useless, bow to me."

"Your leaders' last plans failed, burning down an entire district through no action of mine this time." I spoke, voice rumbling through the city. "All of your warriors, the First Fist and even the plan of the Elders, weren't enough to stop me."

I could hear the buzz of the whispers of the Voices from the people that had been too far from the explosion to be sure what happened, curiously discussing my lies, praying for salvation to the Sky-Father or just panicking.

"I know that my last showing hasn't... exactly left the best impression." The universal holler of anger from all over the city told me that underplaying murdering about of the city wasn't the best thing to say. "But this time I have tried to come in a peaceful manner." And accidentally murdered three people. "I demand nothing besides peace with our surrounding nations and the cooperation of the warrior caste to unify the Cloud, I do not demand tribute, I do not care for which God you pray, I simply want your peaceful cooperation." And subservience, but better not to say that.

There were a lot more Voices actually considering my words now. Though many were still pure rage, many more still wanted to simply live quietly and peacefully, or had children, elderly or sick of their own to think about.

"Any who wish to resist, who cannot accept life under my rule, may meet me outside the western gate, where I will fight any challenger in a 1 on 1 or as many as you want vs me fight." I continued, sensing that even if no longer a majority, far too many people still wanted to resist. "Do not let your resistance and inability to let go of the past to harm those who wish for a more peaceful tomorrow." Wow, I really suck at this, a couple more people decided to fight me to the death just cause I tried to act as if the rightfully angry were being petty.

Finished with my speech, Hearing the various reactions through the Voices around the city, I turned back to look down at the miniature Elder.

"So, Yan," I said, taking the Elder from his staring at the district in flames by his own orders. "I will ask one last time, without me demanding any radical change or unreasonable tribute, will you still not surrender?" I asked seriously, even if I was already sure of his answer from his Voice.

He thought about it, thought about surrender, thought about his predecessor and teacher, about his long dead wife, his dead son, exiled daughter and estranged grandchildren, and looked to the skies. "I'm tired" Then he took a deep breath.

"Urouge." He addressed the First Fist, who was besides the Elder, barely restraining himself from attacking me. "I make this decision because I'm tired, and can go on no longer." Then he hit his cane against the leg of the much larger man. "You are the new leader of Birka, make whatever decision you believe will be the best for the city. I believe in you." Then he took a few steps forward and stared at me, Urouge too shocked and confused to say anything. "You know my answer, boy."

I bit my lips, trying to think of something to convince the old man, unfortunately, I wasn't that great of an orator and he had nothing to lose. "That I do."

I crossed the few steps separating me and the Elder, Urouge moved to intervene, but a hard look from said Elder stopped him.

Coming to a stop at an arm's reach of the older man that barely passed my knees, I looked down at him, I wanted to ask if he was sure, maybe try to dissuade him, it would help me if I could still keep the man in charge of Birka's administration, but his eyes and Voice left little doubt.

Still, despite my surety of his determination, I couldn't help trying again.

"Are you sure, old man?" I asked as I put a hand above his head, thunder rumbling in the distance. "Like I keep saying, I do not require any great change, and intend to solve the war that has plagued this Cloud for over four centuries, you could still be of much help to Birka." I questioned him needlessly.

He smiled, not at me as much as at his memories, now pleasant instead of his many mistakes. Meeting his wife, his children's birth, his coronation as Elder and then Head Elder, laying in bed besides his wife with his young son and infant daughter, basking in the comfort of their presence.

"I've seen enough, I've done enough, I've lost enough." He sighed. "Now I'm tired. I do not doubt your word, or your power, but I do not intend to change my mind and principles just so I can see, do and lose a bit more."

"Hm." With that simple sound, my hand was covered in lightning as I did to the old leader of Birka the same I had done to the maniacal psychopath back at the camp, electricity going through his head, flashes of feelings and memories going through mine. And, in a half a second, Yan, the man who ruled Birka for 49 years was melted into a pile of goo as a strange and confused play of his life rushed past my eyes.

Unlike the previous deaths, this one left a truly bad taste in my mouth. I disliked the other deaths because they were unnecessary, a result of the warriors stubbornness and my own lack of control. But the Elder... seeing his memories, I could say for sure he was a better leader than I, yet-

I didn't have the time to process the rush of memories, as a wall of muscle literally went through me as a result of Urouge's attempt at tackling.

Despite me being caught off guard and not lowering my voltage, the Mad Monk only came out smoking and slightly burnt, instead of being turned into human barbecue, like the guard had been earlier.

He turned around to charge at me again, but I flashed feet first into existence in front of him, letting my faster than sound momentum do most of the work, I hit the larger man with two feet to face, sending him flying, before I flashed into existence once again, this time above him, kicking his airborne body back to the ground, ending with him half sunk into a crater and me mounting his chest. Shoulders really, the man was gigantic.

He still tried to get up, and a fist as large as my chest went through said chest, only ending up with a further burnt hand for his troubles. One lightning accelerated punch was enough to daze him enough in compliance for a second. I gave a second one just to be sure.

"Stop this Urouge!" I shouted at the monk fighting off a concussion beneath me. "You heard the Elder, and we both know that he wanted you to surrender."

"The... Elder..." He started, taking deep breaths between words to try to make everything stop turning on itself as his body twitched involuntarily from the electricity. "Told me... to do what I... believed is best for... Birka." He said, before removing his head from the deeper crater my punches had buried it in, staring hatefully at me. "And surrendering to you... will never be that."

A vein popped somewhere in my forehead and there was a buzz in my ear that wasn't there a second earlier. Lightning crackled as storm clouds gathered above the city.

I've been screaming at everyone to surrender, yet they all chose to fight to the death. And when I kill them, and scream at the next person to surrender, they still choose to fight to the death too. Seriously, can't they learn? Can't they make this a bit easier?

Trying to calm myself down so I wouldn't needlessly fry Urouge, I-

Another hand the size of my torso went through me as Urouge futilely tried fighting back, a lightning bolt almost hit where I was standing above him, but I was able to restrain myself, with the lightning simply burning the street beside us. Another punch put the Monk down again.

"Damn it, Urouge! Deep down even you know that surrendering now is better than the other option." I said to the warrior monk, who only glared back at me. "You know you cannot beat me, the Elder knew you cannot beat me, all of Birka together could not beat me. I'm not asking you to like me, I'm not asking to let go of your way of life, I am just telling you to surrender, and you know the result of not doing so."

I could hear from his Voice that he wasn't convinced.

"Birka-" Another lightning fast punch interrupted him... It was kinda of fun being able to hit someone that didn't break as easily.

"Birka has two options, they will surrender or they will die." I coldly interrupted his next useless resistance speech. "Despite how much you may hate me, despite how confident you are in Birka's strength of body and spirit, you know they cannot defeat me. And that is saying nothing of my own followers, who I can sense approaching the city as we speak."

"If we are to die, we die. At least we will die with our honor." He replied from the ground.

The previously popped forehead vein was joined by another.

"Aye, if you resist till your death perhaps you can pass on without regrets as a warrior. But you are no longer just the First Fist of Birka." I tried arguing with the downed monk. "If you stand and fight, the warriors will surely fight alongside you, and die alongside you. But if you do so, besides the warriors who will choose to, many innocents in the infighting will die regardless of my own actions, as the houses still burning besides us can prove."

I said to the monk, who just clenched his fists in frustration, the last orders of the Elder going through his mind.

Feeling my followers approaching the hole I had made through the wall during my arrival, and sensing the warriors close by it getting ready to try to fight the incoming army despite their numerical inferiority, I knew I needed to get this over with quickly, one way or another.

"If you stand and fight, you may die with your honor as a warrior intact, but with Birka gone. If you kneel to fight another day, you may continue to protect Birka with your new honor as a leader intact." I said while getting up from him and leaving the crater. "Now you need to decide what you value the most, your rage and honor, or the lives of the thousands of people entrusted to you by the Elder."

I left my position above Urougue and turned to stare at the monk still lying down on the hole in the ground, ignoring the various soldiers that surrounded us, all unsure of what to do.

For almost a minute, Urouge could only think of old memories with the Elder -'that apparently had practically raised him, the Hiruzen to his Naruto'-, then he thought of his friends and various acquaintances around the city, and finally, he thought hard on the last words of his father/grandfather figure.

"You are the new leader of Birka, make whatever decision you believe will be the best for the city. I believe in you."

The monk got up in a single move, jumping from his laying down to a standing up straight position and staring seriously at me, still on eye level with me, despite being in a hole in the ground. I believed I knew his answer, but with how much he wanted to cave my head in, it was hard to be sure.

But I needed an answer quickly, my followers and the warriors of Birka were forming battle lines around the hole in the wall, and I would rather avoid that bloodshed. Or I would have to make sure it was one-sided if I couldn't.

Then the newest Head Elder of Birka closed his fist so hard that he probably broke a finger, and took a knee.

There was a loud murmur around me, the warriors surrounding us feeling a mix of rage, disbelief, betrayal and relief. Most couldn't believe that Urouge would give up and felt angry and betrayed over it. But a not insignificant part of them just felt relieved over not dying today.

After a tense moment where I wasn't sure if they would follow the Mad Monk's lead or try to fight on their own, the first warrior threw down his rifle, the rest following suit. And even if they didn't kneel like Urouge had to, we all knew that they had given up.

"See, everything is much better when we work together." I smiled.

Their barely restrained Voices of hatred, the roar of the fire still burning close by and the cries of those with family members lost in the fire were my only answer.

Yeah... didn't really like the chapter, but gotta push through to get him established as god-king.

In canon, all of Enel's army hated him, only serving because of fear of him and fear for the populace if Enel had to solve civil disputes. It won't be the case for the other nations in the fic, but will be the case for Birka, who already hated Enel and would have been completely destroyed in canon.

Probably unnecessary explanations:

1 - "That none of my followers bothered to question me over one of their one being covered in lightning, suddenly convulsing and then his head melting, didn't surprise me that much.*"

Canon Enel blasted people without any warning over what he Heard from a whole Island away without the Skypieans batting an eye, so, agreeing with it or not, people are not that surprised by unannounced lightning executions. Melting heads over giant lightning cannons was new though.

Also, in case anyone wondered how he melted someone's from a distance, when I said earlier that he had just started training on creating/manipulating electric charges at a distance, it's because it's easier to do so when aimed at someone's Voice. He hasn't figured that out yet, as the last and only time he experimented with a person, minds were literally blown.

2 -"What had me worried was the lack of any feelings after I accidentally melted a person's head, regardless of how despicable said person was. And I didn't wish to try and see if I had the guts to do the genocide Gode was suggesting, I feared for my mentality if it was as easy as my first kill.*"

Enel completely destroyed his homeland (Birka) and the place he ruled for years (Skypiea), with his life plan being building a giant space-ship so he could leave everything and everyone behind to go alone to "Paradise", showing no sign of remorse or care. Hell, he kills Gode and his other advisors after the Ark Maxim is finished for no other reason than "I don't need you anymore". Pretty sure the guy is a seriously megalomaniac psychopath.

The MC won't be a psychopath, he can and will learn to care, but being on the body of a psycho, he will lack that instinctual care common in humans. It helps keep him from being too "nice" despite coming from our modern world and the memory of when he did feel empathy keeps him from being too "Enel".

It also makes easier for people to be wary of and dislike him, the dude is way too overpowered, if the character is loved and doesn't have personality flaws there would be no conflict whatsoever in the story, I like powerful characters, not perfect ones.

3 - "how they did it here, I missed cutlery*"

Skypiea and Shandia will use cutlery, while in Birka they eat with their hands... I don't know, just throwing some small cultural differences between the nations I guess.

4 - " directly in front of the large wooden doors that stood on the molded solid-cloud wall.*"

Skypieans use cloudcutters to cut Cloud Islands and use it to build their structures (canon). They don't name the type of cloud used afterwards (like Ohm's sword is known to be made of iron-cloud), so I'm calling the building block clouds, solid-clouds.

5 - "There was a brief moment where a deep coldness ran through me as I realized they could've killed me, in my walk through the city, being showered in gun bullets, I probably wouldn't have noticed another one of hundreds of shooters thinking about how his shot would be the one to kill Enel, I only really cared about him because of the Elder's thoughts earlier.*"

Just in case anyone wondered why they would make a plan that failed like that.

They made this plan because canon-Enel would've been more experienced with mantra and able to better filter the entirety of the city's mantra for one actually planning to kill him instead of the thousands just wishing. So they bet on a great shooter with anti-mantra training from a far away distance spot, instead of confusion by hiding in the masses. Wouldn't have worked either way, as both canon-Enel probably still would've noticed said shooter when he prayed for the Elder's plan, and he would've just arrived raining lightning either way.

Last edited: Jan 2, 2021

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CrowKrowQrow

Nov 12, 2020

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CrowKrowQrow

CrowKrowQrow

Jan 16, 2021

#246

Yo, I said at chapter 1, but just to point out again the MC will be somewhat uncaring, this is more of a less evil Kaido/Big Mom type of character than a Dragon/Kuzan hero of justice.

"Thoughts" Other people's thoughts, read through mantra.

'Thoughts' MC's own thoughts.

"Talking" When in bold letters, it's using the super-voice from the Rumble-Rumble fruit.

"Voice", "Listen", "Hear" and "See", with capital letters, are referring to doing said things through mantra. "Cloud", with capital letters, is about the Emperor Cloud.

Mostly an interlude of a chapter. To give an idea of how Enel's occupation is going from some different point of views, give some time between the conquest of Birka and the conquest of the other two nations and to give the MC a bit more time to train off-screen.

Four weeks later, on the outskirts of the city of Birka, capital of the Theocracy of Birka. 10 years before canon.

"Hrgh!" With a grunt of pain, Enel, the God who conquered the zealous nation of Birka in a single day, was sent flying through the air above the pale surface of the ground of a clearing close to the current capital of his budding kingdom, the white walls of the city barely visible in the horizon.

The God claimant bounced off the ground once, then barely managed to turn mid air and thrust an arm into the ground to stop himself and gather his footing, standing on his feet on the edge of the Cloud Island, the cloud sea just behind him.

He turned around just in time to see a fist larger than his head cover his vision, a fist that he barely managed to duck beneath.

Using his position under and inside his enemy's guard, Enel tried to deliver a punch to his attacker's ribs, but even with his new body's surprising strength, the awkward position from which he punched and his enemy's own greater resistance meant that said enemy didn't even flinch.

The blond barely managed to jump to the side to avoid the pincer attack of an elbow from above and knee from below that came as retaliation, the jump also served to get him a bit farther away from the dangerous sea-cloud water.

He was forced to touch the ground in a roll to dodge the shoulder tackle of his pursuing opponent, then, before he could get up from his roll, he hastily turned and crossed his arms in a guard to defend from the stomping kick that once again sent him flying.

Enel managed to turn himself mid-air just in time to see a large fist coming at him again, intent on burying itself on his stomach, then its target disappeared in a flash and the fist passed through the weak electric charge that was left in its place. Weak enough that it caused only a slight tingle in the attacker's arm.

The attacker turned to see the smaller blond looking in the distance, probably Hearing something at the city close by. The bruises covering his mostly bare upper body being disappointingly small for the aggressor.

"Hah~" The blond sighed loudly while stretching. "It seems that we will have to stop it here for today Urouge." He said with a smile that always looked mocking to the monk. "I need to-"

"And the other part of our agreement?" The monk rudely interrupted his -technically- leader before he could finish his phrase and flash away in a blink.

Enel blinked at the interruption for a second, then rose a brow at the warrior monk in curiosity.

"Are you sure? It always ends the same way for you." The man who had murdered almost a fifth of their hometown asked amused.

Urouge just clenched his fists and got into a battle stance in response, taking the fight seriously for the first time today.

When Enel had asked the monk to be his sparring partner, Urouge had refused, not wanting to be in the man's presence, much less as his punching bag. But when Enel told him that the spars would be with just their fists, and with the supposed God in a human, touchable, beatable form, Urouge was more than happy to accept.

He guessed that the prick must've been in a good mood, because the monk was even able to make a request in exchange for the chance of beating that smug, long-eared face in. That said long-eared prick fought him seriously after.

The First Fist of Birka intended to use those fights to try to learn something, anything, that he could use to defeat the blond invader. It had been almost three weeks since the fights started, and he hadn't made any progress there, hadn't even managed to react before being knocked out in any of their serious fights so far.

At least he got to beat up the arrogant God before being flattened, that was nice.

The possible future Supernova clenched his fists even harder as his opponent directed him a knowing smile, the man was probably reading his thoughts right now, and knew of his intent, but he didn't think of Urouge as enough of a threat to do anything about it.

That arrogance would be the Rumble-man's downfall, Urouge swore to himself and to the dead that he would make sure of it.

So, preparing for one more bout for the sake of information, the monk tensed his muscles and-

Urouge saw a flash of blue, then darkness.

He would wake up hours afterwards, lightly burnt and muscles still spasming, as had become the norm after the serious fight that shouldn't even be called a fight.

At the city of Birka, capital of the Kingdom of Birka. 10 years before canon.

Tarho was an average boy of Birka's artisan caste, at 12 years old he had been training for a while to take over his father's smithy. He had a happy family and home, his future was looking bright.

Then, everything changed when Enel attacked.

Tarho had been sleeping when he was awoken by an orchestra of thunder. The loud booms in quick succession made him jump from his bed just in time to see from his window as a large lightning bolt crashed into the communal house in front of his own, exploding the building.

The impact caused by said explosion took Tarho off his feet, sending him flying away from the window, somehow avoiding all of the shrapnel and hitting his head on a nearby closet, knocking him out.

When he finally woke up, half of his own house was gone, a blackened crater the only thing left in its place. The gone half also being where his parent's bedrooms had resided.

Panicked and wanting to escape the crashing reality of his orphan-hood, the boy bolted from his home's remains, running through the rain of lightning under the constant laughter of a demon calling himself God, till one of the countless bolts hit the ground close to him, the resulting explosion sending him unconscious again.

After he woke up on a stretcher at an improvised medical tent, Tarho just followed the motions as the healers with barely any training did some quick inspections and then sent him on his way to help the reconstructions efforts.

Still, after days carrying building materials from one corner to another and either sleepless or nightmare filled nights, the demon had returned.

Tarho had frozen when the boom of thunder sounded out despite there being no clouds overhead, though this time it was not accompanied by the laughter that still haunted his nightmares.

Frozen in fear, he heard the struggles from outside his temporary bedroom as the people shot at the demon with no effect and the loud explosion that rang nearby moments later.

The boy had stayed frozen and huddled on the bed of the communal home he had been assigned to sleep on until everything had gone quiet.

Then, and only then, he left the imaginary safety of his bed to see a large fire visible at the distance and the army of traitors that had left with the demon marching through the city streets.

Though instead of murdering everyone and burning the city to the ground like in his nightmares, the demon did a public proclamation, one that Tarho honestly couldn't remember what was said. Too busy fighting his fight or flight instinct at the sight of Enel and constantly imagining how to kill the self-proclaimed God.

After said proclamation, what was supposed to be an invading army of traitors had started working on the reconstruction efforts along the loyal citizens of Birka.

Or those who were supposed to be loyal citizens of Birka.

Tarho refused to work alongside the traitors and follow along whatever the demon had ordered, so, instead of working on the reconstruction efforts, the 12 year old spent most of time fluttering about the city, trying to figure out how to do something, anything, against the monster that had taken his family.

He learned quite a lot in his self-imposed spy mission, he learned the name and the routine of the leader of the White Berets -the demon's newest police force-, he learned some of the demon's routine and he learned the face and routine of its strongest followers, who called themselves Priests.

But, most importantly, he learned that Elder Yan had both a dagger and bullets capable of killing the monster.

The boy had no way of knowing why whatever was the Elder's plan had failed, as he had only overheard a couple of old Birkan city guards -now White Berets- talking about the weapons' existence and that it had something to do with the large fire caused by the demon's last attack.

Still, despite the lack of information, it was the first and best clue Tarho had so far. So, while almost everyone was focused on the easier areas for a quicker reconstruction effort, Tarho dug through the ashes and dirt of what used to be a residential district.

He did find some people doing the same around him, but most were desperately looking for family and friends that were almost definitely no longer alive under the rubble. Still, the boy ignored their desperate search to focus on his vengeful one.

Eventually, after days of sifting through rubble, ashes, suspiciously bone-looking debris and more obvious human remains, the boy found a dagger whose blade was unnaturally preserved among the destruction.

It's handle was half melted, yet the dagger's stone feeling but steel looking blade looked completely unaffected by the explosion and fire that had consumed everything else around it.

A blade that the boy now clutched beneath the rags he called clothes as he stalked the medical that he knew that, following the routine of the last few days, the demon should visit soon enough.

Tarho knew his chances were thin, the monster was called a God by a large part of the city not just for his lightning, his seemingly omnipresence played a large part in the facade of divinity, during the last few weeks the man constantly appeared in flashes all over the city to stop both crimes and gatherings of dissenters.

He had stopped doing so recently, these last few days the monster had started just blasting people with lightning from above without even being near said place.

The boy wasn't sure why he himself hasn't been smited yet, and had to fight the constant urge to look up and see if light was gathering above him.

Either way, despite knowing that his chances of success were thin and his chances of survival thinner, Tarho still needed to try. The nightmares would never let him sleep again otherwise.

So here he sat, crouched in an alley with a view to the medical tent, waiting for his both prey and monster under the bed to show up.

The boy tensed when the sound of an electric charge reached his ears, followed by the boom of thunder. He instinctively looked up, then forcibly released the tension on his body when he saw no storm clouds above him.

Those sounds had become somewhat common since the invader had started using lightning strikes to both stop criminals/dissenters and warn the White Berets to go gather the mostly unconscious targets. Despite their increasing commonality, they still froze the boy.

The targets were only mostly unconscious now, at the start of it, most of the lightning strike victims ended up dead. Even now a few didn't survive the electricity, with the White Berets then just gathering the corpses.

But the moment after he released the tension in his muscles, he froze again. Though the sound of thunder rumbled through most of the city with every lightning strike, he shouldn't have been able to hear the crackle of electricity.

Tarho started turning, dagger coming out of his destroyed shirt to stab at the presence that he felt behind him, but a larger hand quickly grasped his left wrist and lifted the malnourished boy up.

He squirmed and kicked at the monster of his nightmares, now real and focused on him, but the larger man kept a firm hold of his wrist, stopping him from moving the hand that held the knife that could -supposedly- kill the demon.

"Thank you. I had been wondering where this had ended up." The blond currently holding the child captive said casually, his free hand reaching for said child's closed fist and prying the knife out of the relatively weaker fingers. The kid had quite the grip, refusing to let go of his only weapon, but could do less in front of Enel's stronger fingers.

"Aaaaah!" A furious shout was the kid's only response as he continued to kick and squirm even as his only weapon was removed, but he was held far enough from the rumble-man that none even connected.

After a few moments where the blond man simply held the knife cautiously and stared curiously at the screaming and squirming brown haired preteen, the kid tired itself out and hung limply by the arm held in the God's grip.

"Hm." The adult sounded out to himself. Having read the various thoughts that were floating around the kid's head during his tantrum, Enel had a solid grasp on his motives. Enough of a grasp to know that he had pretty much ruined the brat's lifem, even if he wasn't himself when he did. Or that himself wasn't him. One of the two. Either way, it was not the type of thing that a sorry could solve.

"Hmmmm." He sounded out to himself once again, trying to think of what to do with his attempted assassin.

Unable to think of a proper plan, and knowing that canon-Enel unfortunately had already done way too much damage for him to pacify the brat, he just went with the first thing that came to mind upon seeing the crowd that had gathered from the child's screaming. Throw the problem at someone else.

"Ohm!" At his shout, the by now familiar homi/suicidal baldy, who was already at the forefront of the crowd, stepped further forward. "Take care of the kid." The city's supreme leader said while throwing the by now limp brat at his sword-wielding Priest.

Who then started unsheathing said sword.

"I mean go get him some food and something to do besides plotting my death!" The lightning-man screamed before he ended up complicit in child murder.

Technically again, if one counts this body's previous experiences.

The anti-life Priest went completely still at the shout, hand still grasping his sword's handle.

"God..." He started before fumbling with his words, not knowing what to say about the unexpected task. "This was not why I joined, this was not what I hoped, this was not what was promised."

But he was interrupted before he could voice his doubts.

"I won't stop." Said a small but resolute voice, as the brat, now hanging limply in Ohm's arms, glared at Enel. "I don't know how yet, but I will kill you!" The kid said, voice growing from small and determined to a hateful snarl at the end.

There was a tense moment of silence as the crowd prepared for any of the varying forms of lightning execution that they had seen throughout the last four weeks. Enel was kind of annoyed by those thoughts "I haven't killed a kid since I've been me."

For a lack of better response, and because the kid's serious glare looked far too out of place on his baby fat filled face, God laughed.

"Yahahahaha. Well, you need to be alive to try again in the future, to stay like that, you better not annoy Ohm too much." He informed his would-be killer with what he hoped was an encouraging smile.

Unfortunately, Enel had a resting arrogant face, and every smile looked mocking. The laughter probably also didn't help, but the kid's face was funny, despite the tense moment.

Though he wanted to, Enel found it surprisingly hard to truly care about his subjects' plight. Sure, hurting and killing them wasn't fun and he avoided it when possible, but it was hard to truly care for them, they were so... fragile.*

It didn't help that he could read most people's deep thoughts and did so all the time with multiple peopl. 'That mother just thought of bashing her own daughter's head in, that man is only not a rapist because of fear from repercussion, that woman is thinking far too much on how running a knife through someone would feel like for it to be healthy and that guy is just sick.' People were surprisingly disappointing on average, almost all restrained said impulses and thoughts, but that they still had them was somewhat depressing.

And definitely annoying to listen to all the time. Probably not very healthy for one's sanity too.

He had been trying to emulate how he knew he should act and feel like, but it just wasn't the same. Still, at least he wasn't murdering rightfully angry children, that had to count for something.

"God, I-" Now it was Enel that interjected over whatever complaint Ohm was about to make.

"I have spoken, Ohm." I said seriously to the death-obsessed warrior. "Take care of the kid. Try training him, maybe you will find something interesting about living in doing so." The blond said to his subordinate, before flashing away with the dagger that he had come for.

A stifling silence settled in the crowded alley, most murmuring about the newest strange intervention by what half believed to be a god and the other half believed to be a demon.

Tarho just kept his glare on the spot that Enel had been on less than a minute ago. The demon came for the dagger and took it with him, that could only mean one thing, it was true, the dagger could hurt it, maybe kill it.

Ohm just stared impassively at the sky for a moment, before turning back to the brat still limp in his hold, who continued to glare at the spot that God had been seconds ago.

The Priest felt a surge of annoyance within him, and the thought of disobeying his orders and freeing the kid ran through his head. The young boy was already familiar with the pain of living, returning him to the World would've been a mercy.

But Ohm shook his head free of such thoughts, he knew that disobeying would mean his death.

He had joined Enel exactly because of the man's lack of regard for human life. Which, along with his god-like destruction potential, made Ohm's dream almost seen possible.

The dream of a peaceful world, without humanity in it.*

With such a strange mentality, Ohm was among the minority of God's followers that disliked Enel's sudden change.

Though the man had retained his arrogant continence and fearsome power, the personification of thunder seemed more mellow than the Priest remembered.

The Enel that he had followed through the ancient temples around the White Sea would've never allowed the brat to threaten him like this and live. Or Birka to resist as much as it continued to, even now Enel spent his days dissipating dissenters and criminals, instead of purging the whole city as he would've before. As Ohm wanted him to.

Still, despite Ohm's dislike for his liege's new found mercy and his own new orders, the Priest would follow them through.

The swordsman monk might not care much for death, be it inflicting it or being taken by it, but he intended to do so after dutifully pursuing his dream of freeing as many as he could. And going against Enel was just plain suicide, the coward's way out.

He would-

"Are you just going to keep staring at me, old man?" the Priest's thoughts were interrupted by the snarl of the brat that he still held in his arms. The kid's light brown eyes glaring back at the Priest's sunglasses.

"No." The swordsman said after a moment of silence, taking account of his surroundings and noticing that the crowd that had formed early had already dispersed with Enel's absence. "God has ordered me to train you, so that's what we shall d-."

"Birka has no God besides the Sky Father!" The kid snarled. The king of Skypiea calling himself God was historically a problematic claim for Birkans, Tarho never cared much about it, but he refused to call that monster God.

"Let's start with the first lesson that every warrior should know." The Priest continued as if the brat hadn't said anything.

"I said, I WON'T F-"

Whatever Tarho was about to scream was interrupted when the monk released his hold, letting the kid fall from his arms. Then, before the young avenger could react, the warrior monk spun his heel and threw an elbow at the still falling brat with a roar of "DODGE!".

As the elbow connected with the pre-teen's left ribs and sent him flying at the nearby wall, knocking the air out of him and almost knocking him out, Tarho decided then and there that he would kill this Priest too.

"DODGE!" Distracted by his murderous thoughts, Tarho was unable to comply with the order and dodge the following foot to the face, then he knew no more.

Staring at the kid that he had just beaten to unconsciousness, Ohm's hand went to his head as he mumbled. "Old man my ass, I'm just 20 years old. Damn early balding."

At Heaven's Tower, Birka's administrative center. (The thin white tower in the middle of Birka's garden that I mentioned last chapter)

Enel POV

"The reconstruction of the eastern wall and the buildings along it has finished early today."

"Ah, then that just leaves the western residential district to go, right?"

"Yes, dreadful business that, the explosion and subsequent fire made sure that there was nothing left to build upon and plenty to clean up."

Two of Birka's Elders discussed the reconstruction efforts on the seats to my left that were further from me.

"I still don't believe that the Skypiean fish farming method is the best option for the planned farms. Birka's largess and the lack of surrounding isles creates a very different sea than the Skypiean archipelago."

"And I've already told you that it's better to use the well known and proven method and work out the differences than to start from scratch. At this point you're simply looking for excuses not to do it."

Gode scolded an old builder on the seats to my left closer to me.

"It's the fourth riot this month."

"It was still less than expected. I'm just surprised that there was one, since lightning started falling on the riots or those plotting gatherings, things have toned down significantly. I'm just worried that this new riot might make God go back to the lethal lightning strikes instead of the more recent stunning bolts."

"Hm, that is another issue, Birka has always exiled most of its criminals, we don't have the prisons to keep up with the riots and God's new orders to imprison them."

Two Elders discussed my newest non-lethal responses on the seats to my right that were further from me… Not that my responses were lethal by choice before, but there were faaaar too many crimes going on post-conquest, so I just couldn't afford to wait until I had better control over my long-distance lightning bolts.

I had tried to personally flash into and solve whatever was going on in the first few days. But, somehow, the presence of the guy that killed at least one loved one of everyone in town tended to escalate things. Who would've guessed?

"We could level what little is left of the burnt district and use the freed land as a better makeshift hospital, the current ones are far too overstacked."

"Perhaps a new prison as well."

"I would rather not have one of those built in the middle of the city."

"Hm, if nothing else, it would ease on the resources needed to make one at a close-by deserted island, with these cuts we could free up enough-"

Whatever Elder Hosso was about to say was silenced the moment I raised my hand, the whole table quietening up as all looked nervously at my direction. Gode hid his fear it well, but I could still Hear it.

The table before me was composed of almost all of the most important people of the occupation, with me at its head.

Spread around the table were four of the five Elders of Birka, Gode -my right hand man and the closest thing I had to a Prime Minister- and Tui -the rather popular head of the city's masonry guild-, who has proved to be very useful in both the rebuilding and the pacifying efforts.

The ones missing were Urouge -who, despite not having the necessary age, still took Yan's Elder seat-, who was still knocked out after our spar, and Yama, who was currently busy with his work as the new of the new White Berets, my mixture of police and military force.

Humpty-Dumpty did plan to abandon everything and rush to the meeting, but I was able to stop the police force's chief from leaving his post during such tense times in order to kiss ass.

That it was my ass, that he was a grown-ass man and that "kissing ass" might not be just a metaphor if the eggman put in his twisted head that it was a proper way to show respect was a large part of why I had fervently convinced the man to remain at his post.

"It's heartening to know that things seem to be going well." As far as a hostile conquest goes. "But why don't we get to today's main point." I interjected while looking pointedly at Gode.

It was good to know that the reconstruction efforts were going according to schedule and that the violence and resistance, while there, was lower than expected. But we have had far too many meetings about that and likely will have many more in the future, but this wasn't one of them.

With a cough, Gode shared the day's breaking news.

"Yes, as I've informed our God earlier this morning, our spies have found out that the Skypiean God has been conversing with the Shandians, and that they have arranged a meeting four days from now." The cold-hearted ball of hair explained.

"Our spies" is a nice way to say "about three people". It was surprising what two greedy cooks and a resentful guard could figure out for you.

Skypiea had spies on varying levels of Birkan adminstration as well, but it was hard to keep said spies with me in charge, being the mixture of Storm and Professor X that I was.

There was a brief murmur around the table as each person wondered why the century old enemies were meeting. It's not like it was the first diplomatic meeting between the two, but almost none ended well, and none ever worked out in the longterm.

I let the murmur sound out a bit longer, then raised my hand again.

"We might not know what the meeting is about." Well, I'm pretty sure that's Gan Fall's attempt at peace. That canon-Enel supposedly ruined. "But the leadership of two of the Cloud's nation gathering is a chance that I don't intend to let pass me by."

The Elders and the Tui tensed up, worried about both the possible re-entry of Birka into the 400 year war and the bloodshed that would likely follow my declaration.

I would be annoyed that they thought I would just erase the meeting and then go on to kill anyone who doesn't kneel to me. But, considering Enel's past actions, I can't judge them for it. And I had enough experience ignoring that type of thought over the last month to not get annoyed by it anymore.

Hell, it was actually kind of nice that the Elders and the leader of the masonry cared more about both their people and nation and even about the lives of foreigners than their own benefit.

Of course, Gode was the exception, he didn't particularly for himself, but for how this would be the chance for a quick unification. The man was obsessed with the perfect State.

"So, continue the reconstruction efforts for Birka, but also get ready for the separation of a large part of its population, who shall follow me to the Upper Yard." I finished to a silent table.

My impromptu councillors were anxious, but hopeful with the news. They hoped that I would leave the city after the unification and that the people I would take with me were my more devout followers, who were causing a not insignificant amount of tension with the majority that hated me.

They were surprisingly competent and caring for One Piece governmental officers, which is most of the reason that I kept them around and in power despite knowing that they hoped to see me and my followers gone.

Fortunately for them, those weren't unfounded hopes, though not dead as they hoped, I would leave Birka after the unification, and would take most of my followers with me to… whatever place I decide to put a capital on. Probably Giant Jack, like in canon.

Still, hearing the conversations and Hearing the thoughts around the room, it was somewhat uplifting to know that none of them doubted that the unification would happen, the only doubt being about how bad the collateral damage would be.

Even if it was more because of a mixture of fear and an erroneous belief in my invincibility, more than any belief in me personally, it was still relieving that these more experienced geezers thought that things would go -relatively- well. Well for me, at least.

Though the knowledge that there was some meager amount of seastone in the White Sea had been sobering -I thought to myself while twirling the recently confiscated knife-, I should be fine as long as I defeat most of the resistance with ranged attacks and pay attention to my Observation.

Speaking of Observation, Hearing a worrying train of thoughts within my range I let the room fade from my thoughts and filtered the sea of Voices that was Birka to follow that of Jion, a warrior-caste resentful of the occupation, I focused on him as he broke into the house of a former lover of his, one who had followed canon-Enel with his first wave of followers out of fear after his attact.

Sitting quietly on the table a whole city away, I ignored as the Elders started to now discuss ideas on the newest migration and about collective efforts with Skypiea on better fish farming and kept my focus on Jion as he crept closer to said former lover and confronted the terrified woman.

I knew what he intended to do, I had Heard what he intended to do, yet I gave him the benefit of the doubt, the chance to turn back. At least until he drew his sword amidst shouts of betrayal, then a thin lightning bolt cut through the house and hit the enraged man's raised sword, the current flowing through to knock down said man, possibly with some permanent nerve damage.

The White Berets would follow the lightning strike and check on the area soon enough, upon which they should imprison the man and offer some manner of recompense to the woman for the broken house (probably just a priority in the reconstructions efforts, the budding nation couldn't afford much excess yet).

Another potential crime stopped, I opened my eyes with a sigh.

The Elders had said that the crime rates were below their expectations, but, having to hear the Voices of the victims and the perpetratos of each and every crime in the city, I still found it to be too much. Though they were growing ever lower, and my control over my powers was growing exponentially greater.

That knowledge and watching the Elders discussing the potential new plans, deals, laws and projects that would come with the unification, each believing in it and seeing its benefits, despite their personal dislike for me, did give me hope that things were looking up. That maybe this whole unification shtick would work out.

Hopefully Gan Fall and whoever was the Shandian Elder could be reasoned with. I would hate to have to murder them otherwise.

Ooof, sorry for the wait, last year's ending was a very busy time for me, and this year is looking to be the same.

Either way, everything is reasonably settled for the unification of the Emperor Cloud's three nations in the next chapter. Then likely another interlude/consequences chapter.

Probably unnecessary explanations:

1 - "The possible future Supernova clenched his fists even harder as his opponent directed him a knowing smile, the man was probably reading his thoughts right now, and knew of his intent, but didn't think of Urouge as enough of a threat to do anything about it."

Yeah, it is an arrogant mindset, and though he won't reach the level of canon-Enel's God complex, like I said at chapter 1, he will grow somewhat arrogant. I like strong characters, not perfect ones. Enel is very strong, so he needs personality flaws to create blind spots and weakness and not just solve any and everything like the Gariest of Stues.

And so far it's an arrogance also motivated by mercy, as the only response to the dissenters he/I could think of -besides a mix of patience and hope, which he is trying now- is killing or imprisoning over half of his subjects for treasonous thoughts and making half-assed plans that they themselves didn't believe in.

Birka will always be a tense situation, but it will soon be just a third of his kingdom, and then even less.

2 - "Sure, hurting and killing them wasn't fun and he avoided it when possible, but it was hard to truly care for them, they were so... fragile.*"

Like I said last chapter. The MC won't have a God-complex and kill people for no reason like OG-Enel. But, being on Enel's body he will have a lower empathy, much like canon Enel, who annihilated his home-town and erased Skypiea just because "he was done with it".

Basically an excuse on why he wouldn't go around being benevolent with his OP powers. Mostly because I want to write about a less evil Big Mom/Kaido type of character, not a straight up Dragon/Kuzan hero of the people.

One reviewer was particularly repetitive at PMs about how "a lack of empathy makes him a Gary Stu" and "it makes no sense, empathy has nothing to do with the specific brain."

For the first, well I still have no idea how a lack of an ability to care and connect with people would be in any way a positive trait for it to make someone a Gary Stu. Just as the common Shounen protagonist is both strengthened and held back by caring too much, an amoral character is strengthened and held back by said amorality, no one trusts a sociopath.

For the specific brain thing. Just do a 3 second google search.

3 - "The dream of a peaceful world, without humanity in it.*"

Ohm dreaming of eradicating humanity is canon. According to the wiki, he feels that humans are too violent and prone to conflict, and the only peace they could find is in death. Basically, a real swell guy who someone probably should murder.

Eh, will either redeem him through the years training Tarho or have Tarho become the better swordsman and kill him eventually. One or the other.

4 - "Two Elders discussed my new non-lethal responses on the seats to my right further from me… Not that they were lethal by choice before, but there were waaay too many crimes going on post-conquest, and I couldn't afford to wait till I had better control over my long-distance lightning bolts."

This month-long jump was mostly to give some time for the MC to learn how to use his powers. I wanted to make a longer jump, but also want to finish conquering the rest of the archipelago soon.

Either way, while he still has some problems with control, he can now throw lightning bolts at anywhere in a city wide radius around him (not quite canon-Enel's archipelago wide radius, but getting there). Also, he still has some problems with control, so some of the criminals do end up dead and/or with various life-long issues.