Worm Piece (Worm/One Piece)

Chapter Twenty

[H--t!]

Taylor shifted, her jaw clenching hard when a wave of pain rushed through her arm and along her side. "Ah."

[Host! Confirm Status Immediately!]

"I'm here, I'm here," she whispered as she tried to make sense of everything. Her bugs were moving around her, a cloudy swarm that took her shape and moved then dispersed back into a waving mass. And within that mass was the girl. She couldn't remember her name, but she was swinging a pole at a bunch of pirates and smacking them into the ground while they were too busy swatting at her bugs.

Taylor started to get a sense of where she was. The street one block down was little more than a torn up mess, a huge crater blown where she'd been before. There was a trail of blood where she was, a small puddle that she was the centre of but that lead off into the street.

She blinked her eyes open and took in the inside of a small house, just a plain old home, but one whose door was kicked open, blood trailing to where she lay on a soiled couch. Someone had dragged her here and, judging by the girl still fighting pirates outside... it didn't take much to put two and two together.

Taylor rolled off the couch and moved her arm to hold herself up.

She tried.

"Ah, dammit!" she screamed as her arm protested the motion with a jolt of pain.

[Host is injured. Host nearly died. Host is unintelligent. Host is Stupid!]

"Yeah, yeah, I get it," Taylor said. She flew in some bugs to take a look at herself, leaving the rest to... to her passenger who was doing a good enough job with them on her own. Her arm was a mess, definitely broken in a few spots and still bleeding though not enough to have her worried yet. "Damn."

The girl rushed in from outside, polearm by her side, hair plastered to her sweaty forehead. "You're alive," she said.

Taylor paused before speaking and nodded instead.

"We need to run. Your friend, Luffy, ran off to fight Buggy and Roronoa is trying to fight some swordsman. We can't stay here."

Taylor took control of the swarm, the insects becoming hers again with only a faint bit of resistance as her passenger let them go. It took all of a second to find Zoro dancing around the sharp strikes of a man on a unicycle. And down the street Luffy was swinging around like the monkey he was named after while Buggy... split himself into small parts to avoid his wild attacks.

"Right," Taylor's swarm said. "Let's go help Luffy."

"What?" the girl said.

"Hey, what's your name?" Taylor asked.

"I... I'm Nami," Nami said. "You're not seriously going back out there?"

Taylor stretched her neck from one side to the other. "Yeah, I am."

"Your arm's broken."

"It is," Taylor agreed as she stepped past Nami and into the street. Most of the mooks were already on the ground, Nami having ruined their afternoon and her passenger's swarm only compounding the pain with thousands of bites. Few of them were dead though, her passenger was holding back just as she would have.

[Idiot Host. Could have obtained a better Host. Remained with Current Host. Was a Mistake. Current Host is an Idiot.]

Taylor chuckled and walked past the bodies. Nami probably thought her mad.

A huge form moved into the range of her swarm, bugs dying off all around it in droves until she pulled them back and took in what her bugs were seeing.

The man was wearing a strange, furry costume, one that made him match the lion he was riding straight towards her. "So, you're still alive?" he asked.

"I am," the swarm said.

He took her in before climbing off his lion's back. "Just for now. Your bugs can't harm me and Richie. We have bug spray!" he revealed a can of bug repellant with a showman's wave. "I am Mohji, vice captain of Buggy's pirate crew."

"Cute," she said before she started walking towards him.

He didn't seem to expect her to walk right at him and his frankly gargantuan lion. She eyed the cat with a glare that had it back-pedaling until its master was suddenly alone in the middle of the street.

"You're injured," he said, sounding less than certain. "You'll be easy to take out!"

He raised an arm as if to tell the whole world that he was going to punch her and started running right at her.

Taylor shifted, hips twisting and upper body spinning around in a blink of an eye while her leg shot out heel-first in a roundhouse that would have made her teachers at the PRT snort derisively. It wasn't her best kick, but she figured it was good enough under the circumstances.

Her heel connected with a crunch of broken bones and the lion tamer tumbled to the ground with his eyes rolling into his head. His momentum had him rolling into an undignified heap a few feet away.

[Idiot Human should not have Engaged with Queen Administrator's Host!]

The lion stared at its fallen master, roared in defiance and charged at her.

Taylor looked down and wiggled her boot to make sure it was still snug, completely ignoring the lion. When she was sure her boot wouldn't fall off she looked up at the beast. "Back off," she said.

The lion clawed at the ground to stop, whimpered and ran off with its tail tucked between its legs.

Taylor looked over her shoulder to Nami who was staring at her, wide-eyed. "Wanna help me save some idiots?" she asked.

***

[] Go help Zoro
[] Go help Luffy
[] Steal Buggy's treasure
[] Focus on the mooks
[] Find medical help

[] Write in...