Geared Towards Conflict: An OPSI Tale

[Swordude]

<A weather-beaten, water-logged journal, inexplicably surviving to wash up on shore. Wait. Shore? You aren't on the beach... How?>



<You've open it. The characters are foreign but after a minute you're able to get a grip on them. They seem to be conveying the story of someone. Someone a long way from home.>


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I suppose you could call this the Prologue.

I'm writing this in a washed up leather-bound notebook, on a island in the middle of what I have scientifically and astrologically determined to be located in the dead center of fuckallsville.

The journal I'm currently writing to belonged to a bandit that was living in the cave he and a group of his buddies re-purposed into a shelter, I've re-purposed their shelter into MY shelter by improving the contents and doing away with the trash, namely by moving myself in and removing them. Amongst their stuff was this journal, and since it seems like it's previous owner was attempting to write hardcore erotica taking place between man and goat I feel that using it to keep myself from going insane alone on the island is a far superior fate for this little book. Since I had to tear out a lot of the last pages for the sake of my sanity there's not room for a header like I like, I've put it in going forward though.

My name is Kensen Shintoshiyori, at least, it is here. As far as I can tell this is the best translation for my original name. How did I lose my old one? Well hypothetical reader… it suppose it's best to start at the beginning.

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It started off normal enough. Normal work, normal household chores, normal evening browsing the internet and goofing off with some friends over Discord. Nothing out of the ordinary, but I was ok with that. I hadn't always felt that way, I used to thing a day not spent well was a day wasted.

That.... Well let's just say that got me into trouble of all sorts.

But anyway, I had learned to live with my ordinary days and enjoy them.

Too bad someone else didn't.

My evening was interrupted by a fist the size of a brick coming through my monitor and barreling towards the living room wall, stopping only briefly to knock me ass-over-teakettle from the impact on my face.

"What the-" I groaned from the ground under my chair. Only to stop as a pair of legs stepped down from my computer desk to stand in front of me.

"Now I'm going to stop you there." A new voice? What? "Yes a new voice, a new idea and very shortly a new world."

What.

I crawled up from my position on the floor to look around. Trying to figure out who was- "Right here sunshine." the voice spoke sharply.

He was… very nearly indescribable, imagine a white void shaped like a person, only it was also a human male with far too many teeth showing in his shit-eating grin, but imagine that he was also the most nightmarish amalgamation of uncanny-valley-dwelling Japanese trade-show robot and claymation.

He hurt to look at.
He hurt to think too hard about.
In retrospect, He hurts to remember.

"Yes. Thank you for that. I'm sure everyone at home will be thrilled by your scintillating wordplay. Now, I'm going to head off most of the bullshit that goes into making the sort of deal that's going to happen here shortly. I'll even do it both in a language you understand and in a method you can conceive of." He prattled though this spiel quickly. The way he was acting reminded me of someone trying to skip the opening cutscene in a game they'd played many times before.

I'm not sure that made me feel better or worse.

"Worse. It should make you feel worse." He interjected. Wait.. Is he- "Yes. In interest of speeding this whole shitshow up I'm pulling this right from your mind."

I finally managed to climb to my feet and face him. "But Why-"

Only to get a face full of boot for my trouble.

Wham.

Hello floor. Also OW.

A shadow fell over me as the Total Asshole Package leaned over me to lecture. "Did I SAY you get to speak? No. No I didn't. Now, you may want to stay there and listen for a bit longer, or I'll be forced to hit you again, and while I get my entertainment either way, I have better things to do than kick around a scrotum like you all day"

Great. This was my day now: getting kicked around by some complete and utter fucker from beyond conceiving decides just how to dick me-Urk.

"Enough. Prattling." He spat out, removing his foot from my spine. "You can monologue on your own time. And I'm not 'deciding' what to do with you, that much I already know." I could hear his grin as he walks away from me towards one of my bookshelves."What I'm trying to decide is where to send you. If you're a good little shitstain and stay right there facedown on your rug I'll even let you put your worthless little two cents in before I ignore you."

Yeah. Not trusting him any more than I was.

"Good choice. Now let's see what you have here…"

The Jerk-Currently-Demonstrable-To-Be-Omniscient started tearing my shelves apart looking at first one book, then another. Examining them for some inscrutable criteria.

"Redwall? Too furry" There was a small flutter in the air then a thump. I think I smelled something smoking.

"Douglas Adams? Eh. You'd only worsen it." Thump.

"Dresden Files? Neat but no. Too much work to get past the Gates." Thump..

"Hey, Discworld!" Oh God, maybe there's a- "You fucking wish! HAHAHA" There's a rip and loose papers land around me. was… was he destroying my books? That ASSHOLE!

"If I have to turn around and discipline you one more time you'll be departing with only your three most cherished organs to accompany you." He jeered casually at me.

..That. That hurt more than I thought it might.

Damn. Wait. I knew that order; it meant he's working his way down my fiction shelf. Once he hit the end of the books he's in the comics then… my RPG books. Crap. I need to pray he stops at the comics, there's some bad possibilities otherwise.

"Let's see… Spiderman? Nope. Thor? No. Batman? Haha, no. Sandman… Yeah no, Telute scares the shit out of me." More flying pages. More smoke.

"Now what have we here… Dungeons and Dragons? Now that could be fun. How'd you like to be a Commoner? Don't answer that, still no talking. Eh, D-n-D's done to death anyway. Pass."

"Hero system? Too fiddly, I hate point-buy. Same with GURPS."

"Shadowrun… now THERE's a possibility, I'll actually let you chime in on this one. What do you think of that?"

By this point I'd managed to pull myself to a sitting position with my back against a wall. Gotta play the game, who knew what he'd do if I didn't. "Uhh. Not bad? Lots of big name players, high stakes and uhh… exciting set-pieces?" I ventured.

"Of which you'd be complete shit at navigating. I'm in your head, I know what'd you'd build. Fucking Sand-Blaster Adept… Pass."

Without another glance at it the Ass-head Ouroboros tore my Shadowrun sourcebook is half and threw it to the floor. Then proceeded to reach for one of my worst nightmares.

"Not that book." I couldn't stop myself. "Literally anything other than that book."

He turned holding my RIFTS hardcover sourcebook and a smile. "Are you sure? I mean, you've only been not-thinking it loud enough to bring the roof down on me. I think it'd be a wonderful experience. Fighting mutants, demons, slavers, I'd introduce you to Lord Splynncryth! I'm sure he'd-"

You know what? I don't even care if he lands me there, I don't care what he does anymore. This… this… FUCKER comes into my house, coldcocks me, tears my favorite past time to so much tinder and just sits there all smug like he can do no wrong.

Fuck.

That.

Before I can even stop myself I speak, "If you move me into RIFTS I will use every exploit, every loophole, cheap trick, and vague wording abuse I know, every scrap of meta-knowledge, every forbidden synergy usually house-ruled away, I will make every deal with every entity I think I can contact, I will amass every prototype, Technowizard gadget, psionic ability, and weapon capable of shooting a missile I can muster for the sole purpose of SHOVING. IT. UP. YOUR. GODFORSAKEN. ASS. You know I would do it too, AND you know there's stuff in there no one will mess with even things on the power level of whatever the hell you think you are. I will find it and I will call every favor I can make, steal, beg or borrow to bring them down on you."

That Fucker just stared at me. Face(?) like a stone. It felt like an eternity before he spoke again. "You've really got a pair on you don't you? I've half a mind to rip them off for that, but consider me impressed. Now, I really like the RIFTS idea myself, but I'll tell you what's gonna happen. I'm gonna reach behind me and grab one last book. Then you're gonna flip a coin. Heads: RIFTS and all the outclassed fun I can have at your expense. Tails: A reprieve. Maybe." With that, the Energy-Based Ass-Form grabbed something behind him I couldn't see before moving it in front of me to show it off.

One Piece, First Volume: Romance Dawn.

Huh. Forgot I owned that, I never really followed it, other than knowing it existed, but damn if I wasn't I happy to see it now.

"Now. Here's your coin." The Unknowable Pest tossed me a quarter. I carefully checked its weight and that it was a legit as I could tell. With one last glance at my home, now pretty fully in shambles and more than a little on fire, I flicked it and watched as it arced and flipped before landing on half of Going Postal.

Tails. I breathed a sigh of relief.

"Congrats." The fucker spoke. "And as a prize, I'll make sure you find riiiiight in."

Darkness.
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An experiment on my follow through, my first piece of fiction for public consumption.
Tear it to shreds, but keep complaints relevant.

 

[Swordude]

Arc One: Wind

Chapter One:

[Log I]
Time/Place Unknown

I came to in a cell about as stereotypical as it gets: Solid walls made of a dirty honey-brown colored brick with a darker mortar in between them and the smell of damp filling the air. A door made of bars of metal stood closed (and locked, I presumed) in one wall. No windows, barred or otherwise in sight. The surface I came to on was a ratty canvas tarp thrown over moldering straw. That was about it, other than the indignity that was the pot in the corner. 'Not looking forward to needing to use that.'

Other than that the only thing of note was the condition I was in. Namely healed and dressed. My sucking chest wound of a patron I had had at least dressed me in my normal rough wear clothing: A set of brown tin pants, a breathable grey athletic shirt, my favorite black and white-lined zip-up hoodie, my steel-toed motorcycle boots and my 'signature' hat, a black ball cap with the Dungeons and Dragons Ampersand on the front, perhaps it was less useful than the rest of the outfit but the familiarity was comforting.

"You awake?"

Some...one? Had moved to the door when I was navel gazing. A weird looking kid in high heels was standing on the other side of the cell door looking in with a grin that held far too many teeth for my liking.

"You're the new blood to spill? Good. We need something new out there or it gets so very boring. Hah, not like you look like much" The way he sounded eager and not in a good way; like he couldn't wait to get the pleasantries out of the way so he could tear into something, probably me. "Ah well, you'll either toughen or tenderize. Either works. You hear that new blood? Survive or die!" He said laughing as he sashayed off.

Why.

That was...less than ideal, I have no clue where I am relative to… uh... Anything, now that I thought of it. I had no clue about the date, where the hell I was or if I was even in the universe I was told I'd be in; about to participate in what I had no other real choice to to believe was a kill-or-be-killed fight coming up.

I didn't like my odds so far.

I scrounged though the many pocket of my baggy pants hoping desperately for something, anything that could help me out. All I got was my wallet which contained nothing but a folded piece of scrap of leather and a twenty dollar bill, to taunt me I presumed. Opening it I saw it was a note from the asshat:

'Nuh-uh. You're on your own to start. Entertain me in the next fight. Survive and I'll reward you with a fruit suitable to you. Good luck killer, you'll need every ounce of it you can get. '

Unhelpful.

I'm not going to lie. I was in full panic mode at this point. My options were to suck and die or kill and live, or at least harm and live. I wasn't okay with those options, not at all, I was raised in the church, I grew up Southern Baptist and it had stuck, killing was not an option I wanted, but I was only within a prayer's distance of living if I held back.

I still vividly remember the prayer I had intoned at that thought:

May mercy be on their souls if I survive and forgiveness on mine. May mercy be on mine if I fail and forgiveness on theirs. Amen.

As small as the gesture was it did help me. This situation wasn't going to get better unless I made it so myself. I have to face what could be my end, I didn't want to do it with my head bowed, and I wouldn't go quietly.

I don't know how much longer I sat there, trying to keep myself calm, trying to put myself in fighting mentality. Doing what I could to prepare myself for what was ahead.

I was shaken for my reverie when a guard rattled on the cell door. A pair of old-fashioned manacles in his hands. He grinned. "Tsh. You're hardly worth the effort ain't ya! You think you can make it to the arena nicely or are these gonna be needed?" He shook the shackles.

I steeled as best as I could as I stood from my kneeling position and looked down at him, dead in the eye and with all the forced calm I had imposed on myself held out my hands. "Perhaps it would be best if there wasn't any temptation."

He looked a bit surprised for some reason, but composed himself and clamped me in his irons, which were surprisingly light, but felt solid. The chain was perhaps six feet in length and had thick cuffs at the wrist.

The jailer moved behind me as I left the cell, his spear leveled at my back. Clearly he was experienced at this job, not much chance at escape there. The walk was a long one apparently and he spend nearly every second jeering, taunting and jabbing at me. Telling me tales of the bloodbath that was to come and how bad the fighting was. The gruesome fates of the losers. The brutality of the winners. The hopelessness of my situation. I hoped it was exaggerated but I was able to glean at least something from his stories. Namely the nature of what was to come:

What they referred to as a 'grand' melee, fifty fighters all starting without weapons, but could acquire them in the arena itself and apparently the fight was to last five rather than last fighter.

Lack of weapon could get me before I could do anything about it, I had no special skill in hand to hand other than taking advantage of my reach being a bit longer than others. I needed some edge, and as I nearly stumbled over the length of the shackles I thought I had found it.

I contemplated my chains: Reach, Momentum, Flexibility and with the wristbands, Deflection. It might be my only chance. Now how to keep them…

Looking at the guard as he did his best to psyche me out I took a chance as we arrived to what I presumed was the arena landing. "So. Is the spear compensating for something or do you just enjoy prodding other men with it from behind?" I moved to the edge looking down into the arena and prepared myself.

My jailer stopped. "The hell did you say?"

"So now you're deaf as well as impotent? No wonder they've moved you to the duty of escorting unarmed prisoners in big cuffs: They can't trust you with much else." He's shaking now. I may yet live to regret this.

"You're gonna regret saying that!"

"The only thing I regret about this whole situation is realizing I have to breathe air that you exist in." Wow he's turning purple. I didn't know people actually did that in real life.

"I was gonna just kick you in after I took your shackles off! Now though? Ha! I'll watch you suffer in there and laugh!" With that he pushed me over the edge and down into the dirt below. Thankfully I was prepared for this and was able to compensate for the landing. What I wasn't able to compensate for was a duo below who had apparently arrived in the arena before I had.

The fight started instantly, with no warning or ceremony. One second I was standing from the dust, the next they jumped me with just their bare hands and fists thinking my shackles are more of a disadvantage than they are. I swung my arms together towards the leading thug who stumbled from the weight of a thick flailing chain striking him as I lashed out directing the chain like a whip. I didn't have time to do anything else since his buddy was on me before I could do much else, slamming an elbow into my chest. I managed to stave him off when a lucky backhanded blow from the cuff on my right caught him dead on and he stumbled back.

I seized the opportunity and rush forward wrists pounding at him and kept him down from repeated bashes from the cuffs. In the time it took me to deal with him though the first guy had caught his breath and was looking at me with a much more wary eye, standing woozily.

I put my foot down and pushed forward as aggressively as I could, I needed to keep moving forward, I couldn't afford to think any more. I wasn't expecting the guy to just try to make a break for it though as he turned as fled, but in the last second before he escaped entirely I slipped in the dust and fell arms flailing all the while and the loop of chain caught around his neck and pulled him down as I went down. Seized by a demon of ill-intent and I wrap the chain around his neck and pulled him back, ending this fight after kicking him in the skull a few times with the caps of my boots.

I was clear for a minute to catch my breath and observe as I dusted myself off. The coliseum was not overly-large, perhaps the size of a football field and was absolutely caked in dust, lots of dust, thick and flowing. In the stone stands was a small but absolutely raucous crowd jeering, cheering and drinking.

In the time it had taken me to clear those two, more than half the 'contestants' had gone down. Left of note were me, a man wearing… a… cactus. OK. Moving on.

'I don't have the brain power to devote to trying to figure that out right now.'

Next was one of the most stereotypical-looking gladiators I've seen, if not for his effectiveness I would expect him to be a joke and a young girl in her teens with pink hair. She seemed like she was reasonably competent with the sword she had picked up but she hadn't been keeping and eye to her surroundings: three more combatants we moving in to surround her. Armed with a spear, a weird claw looking gauntlet and a club.

I moved without thinking, dashing as hard as I could towards the cowards. 'Seriously? Three on on against a teen girl. Obviously I'm dealing with higher class of thug here'

I dropped the club wielder quickly between my momentum and the chain's weight, a single blow from the chain swinging down made for a nasty CRUNCH and he fell without looking like he would be making much move towards standing back up.

It wasn't a free victory though, the thug who had the stupid claw-looking thing he gouged me with as I dashed by, deeply cutting into my chest before I could get all the way by him.

'Shit! I really hope they didn't poison any of the weapons here.'

Still, that puts the claw guy well within what I could call 'thwacking distance' and he goes down just as easily as the first once I can pull off a twirl to get the chain up to speed. I wasn't able to enjoy this victory though, as the last of the three wised up and backed off. And just like my luck of late he had managed to get a hold of a spear that gave him longer reach than what I could muster. With that reach and my own encumbrance preventing me from grabbing the pole I wasn't sure how I was going to win this.

We had a bit of a stare-down, though we were both all too aware that too long spent idle would probably get us attention neither of us wanted. I decided it was time to play dirty with this guy, literally in this case.

Sliding a foot through the floor of the arena I sent a thick cloud of dust towards the spear-man, considering my foot sunk nearly four inches into the floor I was able to kick up enough dust for a cloud large enough to obscure me and him. Instead of striking him head on (I had no armor, one more blow would be too many and charging into a set weapon was suicide) I dropped flat down on my stomach with my arms stretched forward, propped up at the elbow and pulled my chain taut between them. Sure enough the spear-man charged out of the cloud towards where I had been and tripped over the chain, flying over my prone form and landing face first in the dust behind me, quickly standing I pounded the back of his head with my boots again, once I made sure he had stopped moving I took his spear and stood up from the dust again, kicking him one final time for good measure.

I took another breather trying to clear my lungs from the cloud of crap I had embroiled myself in. Covered in bloody mud, shit torn and breathing raggedly I looked around again. Not many were left. Perhaps a dozen or so tops, but no one other than Cactusman and Professional Gladiator were looking good. Pink hair girl was flagging as much as I was but was still light on her feet and fighting perhaps ten feet from me. She missed a stroke with her sword and her opponent was about to seize the opportunity.

'Damn it. Not again' I had thought 'can't afford kindness now. I need-'

Literally against my better judgement though I threw my hard-won spear at the girl's opponent and while it wasn't a decisive enough blow to end to the fight, it hit him in the shoulder and hurt him enough for the girl to deliver that final blow. As he crumpled into the dust she looked in my direction eyes wide for a moment and I nodded at her. She didn't deserve to be here. Hell I didn't deserve to be here, but damn if I was going to stand by and let her get hurt.

As I moved to pick up the spear again she started. "Thank you, I-"

"Not now" I interjected inspecting my thrown weapon. 'Damn, broke when he fell on it. Back to the chains I guess.' "Perhaps after we survive this."

She looked a little stilted as she gave me a nod.

A rough voice interrupted any further discourse though. "Well, well someone's confidant here aren't they?"

I turned towards the voice, the stereotype had apparently finished off his little coterie of challengers and was walking towards us with a pair of what can only be described as mooks moving just ahead of him and man he was ripped, his orange cape hiding little of his torso though I had wished he wore something other than a black speedo to fight in. 'Please no battle damage please no battle damage'

"Look" He continued as he began gesturing around the arena "This match is about over and there's just a few too many left. So I'm gonna make a nice and easy deal for you: Agree to give up and we'll all kick up a nice big dust cloud and the two of you get to flop on the ground without us actually beating on you. Everyone wins."

I saw the girl hesitate, I don't know why the hell she was here, but this sounded like a damn fine out to be honest, and I probably would have seriously have considered it normally: potentially making allies (or at least NOT making enemies) AND not getting beaten on anymore by a guy build like a brick house and a sword the length of one of his goons.

The only problem was the eternal, inter-dimensional, asshole powered guillotine aimed at my neck., I felt it drawing closer the longer I stood there, the jerk wanted blood. I took a step forward and started to speak as I wrapped my right hand loosely in the chain, shortening it to a more manageable size.

"I can't speak for the girl." I shook my head in the pink-haired fighter's direction. "I can't afford it though, sorry, but-"

Interrupting my own answer I threw myself towards the mooks before anyone else could react. Flinging the arm I had been wrapping the shackle's chain around forward and following closely with my opposite hand trying to maximize the distance the length would get flung. Thankfully all the mook I aimed his at had picked up was a short sword and even as he reflexively blocked with it it snagged in the links and the momentum dragged it out of the way, yanking it from his hand. I knew I didn't have very long before it would be three-on-one so I spun around as hard as I could before planting both feet deep into the dust and twisting my torso hard to provide as much leverage as I could into the swinging chain, what followed was a sound like someone throwing a watermelon against a sidewalk and he went over like a hewn tree.

I didn't stop to watch though as I hurled myself towards the second mook, who had paid far to much attention to the state of his compatriot and too little attention to me. His small shield sagging down leaving him open. I speared into him with my shoulder in a football-style tackle, utilizing my movement and weight to set him off balance. It worked about as well as I would have hoped and he was only barely able to stay on his feet even if his guard had been knocked wide open. With little else I could do I grabbed for him and threw the two of us into the dust of the arena floor.

In the dust I could hardly see, hardly breath and with the fight? Hardly think. I just kept hitting my opponent, over and over, again and again trying to thrown up as much dust as I could and rolling, pushing and pulling my opponent rapidly attempting to stave off what I thought was going to inevitable attacks from the sword of the big gladiator who had spoke for these schmucks.

I didn't have it all my own way though, it felt like for every blow I landed I missed another and he tried to hit me twice. The mook hadn't managed to hold on to whatever the weapon he had previously held, but the shield was strapped to his wrist and damn if it didn't hurt when he belted me across the face with it. He flailed like a berserker raining strikes in the dust and he nearly had me when the edge of his shield clipped my skull leaving my head ringing. If I hadn't already been on the ground I would have dropped to my knees as my vision blackened at the edges. As it was I had to drop my grip and just suck wind.

'Shit. Not now. Gotta... Something. Win. Do.'

I think I might have had a concussion.

Fighting just to stay conscious and vaguely upright it took me a moment to notice there was no other noise in the arena. Other than that of someone laughing in the stands.

"Fuffuffuffuffuffuffu"

Everything in the arena just froze at that sound, no one moved, I wager no one some much as twitched until the laughter quieted down. Hating myself for my hesitation, I looked up to the source.

It was a man dressed… eccentrically, a crisply pressed white button-up shirt he chose to leave open, a rather fluffy-looking feather boa wrapped over his shoulders, a pair of purple khapri pants, a pair of ruby-lensed and the single douchiest bleach-blond spiked hair do I've ever seen. All this and a haze of murderous intent thick enough that he could cut it with the straight sword he was leaning on.

I had no clue who this guy was, well, other than Dangerous.

"Well then..!! I haven't seen a single piece of trash with so much spirit in quite some time, let alone a whole group of them!" He spoke with a kid's inflection, bouncing from one word to the next, but enunciated and with a cadence that clearly wasn't used to others interrupting him. He wasn't rushed and wouldn't be so for anyone but him. "Especially that of the newest piece, My my such brutality you show for a simple demonstration."

'Brutality? I only got like two guys, and then the two next with the stupid claw? Then I got a guy with a spear, then a guy with the spear. Shit that's more that I thought. And the guy I mother fucking pirouette'd. And the-SHIT the last guy I was fighting!'
Definitely Concussed.

As my vision cleared of both black and blood I climbed to my feet ready to keep fighting, but when no challenger emerged I looked down where I thought I last saw him…

Oh.

I suppose having your face caved in like that and throat crushed would do that. 'Hellfires that's a lot of blood.'

See that sight, knowing that it was me who had done it? I couldn't keep it down, it was...bad. Well beyond the worst I'd ever seen, beyond worse than anything I'd even heard of. 'What the hell is wrong with me!? I get stuck in an arena and brutalize or kill at least six men with hardly an excuse!'

As I knelt there emptying my stomach of what little it had I heard the boa-man start to speak again with that same unattached voice. "Those who are left, I suppose I have to call you something more than trash since the trash wouldn't have survived… and since you're all going to be here for a while now, your new title...is Meat!"

Barely able to stand, exhausted, I didn't lift my head as the guard escorted-slash-drug me from the arena, I was too done to lift my head to any corpses I might have left behind like the one I strangled. Or the one leaking fluid from the crack in his skull. Or to see the eyes of the girl I helped try and fail to catch my eye.

Too tired. That's all. Too tired. That had to be the reason why. It had to.

I later learned four of the men were either dead on arrival or died shortly after being removed from the arena.

____________________________________________________________________

I don't know how long I spent in that cell after that fight. I don't know how long I knelt on that pile of straw staring blankly at one of the walls as I prayed for forgiveness over and over for what I had done. I don't know whether it was night or day, or how long it had been since I was taken from the arena and checked over by some seriously looking guy in a black coat and face-mask.

What I do remember is the injuries. Everything I hadn't felt riding the adrenaline high of the fight" The scrapes, bruises, scratches and tears I had accumulated, I felt those now, but more concerningly I found the gashes across my chest from that claw weapon were weeping. It had been less than a day and it was puffing up and seeping a clear fluid. The flesh was extremely tender and the precise stitches the doctor had insisted put in afterwards to close it were pulling painfully in it.

It was still better than thinking about the fight.

In retrospect I wasn't even sure how I had managed to take top five. My combat skills were very much limited to school-yard levels and the occasional wrestling session with my brothers. I didn't know what I was doing in that cluster of a fight. I kept replaying the whole thing in my head over and over again, each time seeing a spot where if I had been a little less lucky, a bit differently positioned I would have eaten blow after blow and it would have been my broken body that go dropped down the chute instead of theirs.

I shuddered, both from the thought and from the sudden chill the cell seemed to take on.

I was exhausted, mentally, physically, spiritually, everything. I just wanted this day to end, some part of me wanted it all to just be a dream but the reality of the situation was all too real.

I finally stood and kicked off my bloody dusty boots, ready to sleep and even that pitiful excuse for a bed was starting to look mighty comfy. I moved to lay down on my stomach and grab what sleep I could with my hood thrown up to block out the light of the torches along the outside of my cell door, finally ready to simply embrace the abyss and move on, slowly drifting into the lull of sleep.

This was, of course, when a wooden box was dropped on my head.

Thrashing under my hoodie and crappy blanket I moved out from under the box rubbing my head. "-The hell?"

It felt like it was a small treasure chest, smooth and polished wood shining slightly in the light of the torch flame. It had a latch that had opened as it dropped and spilled it contents on the floor.

I looked around for what had been inside it before my eyes locked on what looked like a crazy excuse for some sort of fruit. It was the size of a softball and instead of fuzzy it was spiked with a strange swirling pattern dancing all over it. As soon as I laid eyes on it I knew what it was, even with my admittedly limited knowledge of the universe.

'I guess that proves I'm in the One Piece Universe.'

I laughed, but it wasn't the laugh of a sane man. It was the laugh of a man who had only a choice between that and crying. It was the laugh of a man who knew he was never going to see home again. I laughed until my lungs burned and my belly hurt. I laughed until tears ran down my eyes and my glasses were fogged up. I laughed until I felt like I had nothing left in me but a hollow edge.

"BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

It was only then that I grabbed the Devil Fruit.

"Round one to you asshole!" I yelled to the ceiling voice hoarse and deep "But this game's winner-take-all and I'll be damned if I let you take anything else from me!"

With that I tore a bite out of the Fruit in my hands and my world changed.

____________________________________________________________________
It is funny looking back, it wasn't the fighting, the danger, or the adrenaline; it wasn't the weird hair colors or insane dressing habits. No the one thing that convinced me beyond the shadow of a doubt that I wasn't in Kansas anymore, that very little of my old life remained was a goddamn piece of weird-ass fruit.

As an aside, even writing this now I feel the need to scrape my tongue to get the taste out. The taste of the fruit was… conceptual in its awfulness, like eating the sensation of being kneed in the junk whilst suffering a hangover made from rusty machine oil and the aftertaste of the burnt smell of a meal you'd slaved over for hours.
It was bad, but at the time it was one of the most delicious things I had experienced due to the chance it gave me.

This seems like a decent spot to leave off, I've got to see what I scrounge around for food and supplies here anyway.

____________________________________________________________________
Thus it starts. Adrenaline is a hell of a drug.
Not in love with the fighting, but I need the practice.

 

[Curious Whimsy]

watched. I usually read updates from my email, so if for some ungodly reason you want my opinion on something, use un-spoilered author's notes.

 

[Leonardo DaFuzzy]

You can't just give us beggars crumbs and disappear.

 

[transhumanSage]

is it an actual devil fruit or a fake one from the factories

 

[Swordude]

You can't just give us beggars crumbs and disappear.

Click to shrink...

I went places far far from home. I am now no longer in those places. I should be resume writing shortly.

is it an actual devil fruit or a fake one from the factories

Click to shrink...

Consider the supplier, that's all.

 

[Kine X]

I'm looking forward to your story.

 

[Swordude]

Arc One: Wind

Chapter Two:

[Log II]
Time is T+Arena+? Days.
A small cave on an island in the middle of nowhere

As I had mentioned, My name is Kensen Shintoshiyori, and, as I mentioned it isn't my original name. It's what comes out of my mouth when I try to introduce myself and when I try to write my name. Because that isn't freaky. The first time I tried it I almost lost it all over again, but I'm determined not let it get to me, if I keep freaking out over everything that got taken from me or done to me I'd have never got anything done.

That's what I told myself anyway, As far as I can figure out it means the same thing as my name, as much as names have a meaning, like how 'Conner' meant 'Hound'. It was my name just put though the local filter. At least, I think so. I wouldn't have put it past my "benefactor" (Note to future me: If you find a way to make that phrase more sarcastic go ahead and edit everything that way.) to have me introduce myself as something excessively vulgar for kicks and giggles.

Anyway.

The Devil fruit I ate was… interesting. It allowed me to shift between my normal body parts and ones made from machinery: Gears, pistons, cranks, shafts, springs and so on. Actually using the power was weird. It's not like flipping a switch, turning a knob or any of that 'reach for the power inside you' nonsense that you see in a lot of fiction. It's weird. I keep saying that but it's keeps being true. Eating a Devil Fruit adds something intrinsic to you, something like a hand or a leg and once you get over the taste (The thought still triggers my gag reflex to this day) it's just… there and using it is simple. Or rather activating it is simple, I can only speak for myself but I feel like there's a lot I'm missing in my abilities and it seems like every day I find out something new.

It wasn't complex to learn to access the abilities my Fruit granted, it was as simple as stretching out my new 'limb', only instead of stretching I turned into a whirling mass of machinery. One second I was flesh and bone, the next a ticking, gyrating body of intertwined gears, pulsing pistons and other such machine bits. While on one hand it was one of the single most terrifying, self-doubting, existential-nightmare-inducing things I had seen I also now had something that looked like a wood-chipper crossed with a canning machine for an arm in a decided hostile area. I suppose it also helped that the process just felt natural; I felt like I had full control and articulation of my limb, no delay, no lag, no sense of foreignness or wrongness. Just Thought, change, brass wood-chipper.

I had become a Clockwork man
No, that's stupid.
Brass-Brass Man?
Nope.
Steampunk Man?
Eh. I'll come up with something good later.

Anyway I digress. After my debut, so to speak, life… wasn't good. Not for me and not for a lot of people in that burning tire fire of an arena.
____________________________________________________________________

Time is T+4 Days (I think? Time got funny)
Place was the same cell I started in.

Once the adrenaline of actually achieving something and surviving the day wore off I had passed out like a light. Oddly enough when I awoke I felt fine, no wounds or remnant from the head trauma of the day before.

'So being a Devil Fruit User gives passive healing? Or was it just my fruit? Hellfires. What IS my fruit anyway? What type even, Logia? Some weird Zoan variant?'

Seeing no reason not to I tried a few things trigger my new power, surprisingly enough all of them worked, but all in a different fashion:

Trying to stretch out past my limits resulted in my limbs elongating like a piston, slowly at first, but I was eventually able to move my limbs back and forth quite quickly, though I discovered short distances had what felt like the best effect.

Trying to move my body in new, formerly impossible ways, like rotating a hand all the way around resulted in small gears sprouting around the area in question and the movement being facilitated through their turning.

Trying to concentrate and focus my will solely on an idea started to make me jittery, like my whole body was a car spinning its' tires waiting for the light to change green. Interesting but I didn't know what that actually did for me just yet.

And least interestingly, trying to meditate on the changes, to determine what had changed let me hear a slow ticking. It was quiet at first but as I concentrated on it the rest of the world fell away and the ticking became louder. Again, I didn't know what it meant other that it meant something.

'Stupid fruit should come with a user's guide…'

With the lack of both windows and visitors time got away from me again. Five times someone brought me food: classic dungeon fare of sawdust bread, gruel and water and once to remove the indignity of the chamber pot, during which I had no fewer than four guards with guns aimed at me while I was against the wall of my cell and some servant or slave made the swap between new and old; So I presume it was two days or so before anything of interest happened.

____________________________________________________________________

"Heeeeeeeeelllloooo~! Rise and shine meat~!"

I was awoken to the sound of someone at the door of my cell again, stumbling from my sleep I sat up and looked over, it was that kid in the high-heels again, still as weird looking as before. He grinned far too widely at seeing me up.

"It looks like you've had all the rest you need meat~! It's time for you to go back to work, we've got such lovely times ahead for you." He spoke never losing an inch off his manic smile. "I think, after last time with those poor poor souls you brutalized that you might be better off without anything at all before we send you out to entertain our lovely guests…"

'Hellfires. They're sending me in unarmed? I guess any hope I had of keeping my Devil Fruit a secret has-'

"But the boss said it's a bit too early to have a blood bath against his lovely kitties just yet, they get so very bored when they can't… play with their food." He finished, cutting off my thoughts. "So why don't we have a nice little walk to the armory and you can pick out something nice for yourself before you paint everything~ red."

I wasn't sure how he intended that last sentence, but it was disturbing for either interpretation.

He unlocked the door, I was a bit surprised at the lack of additional guard presence, but something about the way this kid held himself told me trying anything funny was ill-advised regardless of how much ridiculous he seemed.

Regardless of how short to trip to the gladiator armory was it was far too long to have the kid staring into my back for, I could feel my skin crawling under his gaze the whole time.

The armory was pretty plain, not that I had much in the way of experience there, but everything in it seemed… shiny. Like it was more for style than substance. This made me wary, I didn't want to get a crap piece of gear, but also really didn't want to get sent to the arena without a weapon.

Thankfully the creepy kid left me there with some normal guards but not before a parting remark.

"I'll be watching meat~ don't die too fast…"

Unsettling little chump.

I wasn't able to spent too much time poking through the various racks, but I was able to find a spear that had some heft to it with a metal-shod butt, and some small armor bits like some vambraces, greaves and a set of shoulder pauldrons, I'm certain I looked like a chump, but armor is armor and you can never have too much in my opinion.

After suiting up I found myself in the arena again, this time without nearly as much dust and far more large cats.

There were three of them, larger and more vicious than I'd ever seen a big cat presented in any media and seemed all too ready to pounce. They had released the four of us all at once, each from a separate gate at each of the cardinal points of the map and we'd all stopped after walking into the area a bit.

I suppose we were all scanning the other for a weakness: Me, a terrified dimensionally-confused human standing in shiny armor with a pointy stick, a scarred male lion with mane matted with blood, a torn-up tiger drooling between his (presumably razor sharp) teeth and a bear missing an eye.

Wait What. 'Bears aren't cats'

In my confusion I must have missed some subtle clue because the next thing I knew I had a tiger barreling down at me and I only barely managed to avoid getting my throat clawed out by twisting to one side and letting the claw slam into my pauldron.

The blow still stung and the momentum forced me off balance, I was just barely able to back off enough to sweep my spear before another swipe from the tiger's claws was sent my way. My swing met the paw with the head of the spear and I cut into it with a grunt of effort before the tiger recoiled, it wasn't a deep wound, but it was an inconvenient one: The tiger couldn't easily put as much weight into that paw anymore.

Once injured the tiger backed off a bit and started trying to circle, to stalk me a bit more carefully. I knew that if I took my eyes off of it it would attack again, fortunately I was able to put my back against a pillar at the edge of the arena so it couldn't just dive past me and braced the spear against it as well.

When the tiger struck I was ready. After it stalked back and forth a few times it's eyes never leaving mine it finally had enough and leaped at me once again, but I was able to maneuver the spear point towards it can caught it an extremely lucky blow in the throat, unfortunately the spear wasn't enough to stop a a one ton load of leaping jungle cat and I could only partially get away from where it was going to land before it collapsed on top of me bleeding profusely and trapping me under it.

It was a minute or two of wiggling before I could even get a little out from under it, both of my legs and right arm were pinned under the soon-to-be corpse of the tiger, trying to get the leverage to move it just wasn't happening. I spent a paranoid eternity trying to free them with one free hand and failing when I struck on an idea.

'I can't move it with just my strength, I'm pinned under at a bad angle and it has to be at least eight or nine hundred pounds of cat… but if I can used my Fruit I might be able to try a different set of leverage.'
Concentrating on my pinned right knee I visualized a ratchet gear in place of the knee joint and a crank hidden on the side of my free arm, after a few seconds I was able to get a small enough crank poking out of my side (Still weird) that I could spin it and ratchet my knee until I could slip out from under the tiger entirely, free but coated in its blood.

Casting about I saw the remnants of my spear-- 'Not surprising, aggravating and unhelpful but unsurprising' The shaft had broken into two and the head was buried somewhere deep in the neck of the tiger.

'Great. Disarmed against…'

Looking over the other fight in the arena I saw the winner of the fight chewing at the remnants of the loser.

'The largest orneriest looking bear I've ever seen.'

I had a plan though. A shit plan, a probably suicidal plan but a plan nonetheless: The bear hadn't had the fight all it's own way, it had taken injuries that would probably give it trouble in future fights, or if things went my way, future fight. Like it's destroyed eye, or the limping front leg. If I could approach it right from its new blind-spot and weak-point, I might be able to get in the attacks I needed to survive this round.

I just needed the pointy part of my weapon back before someone did something or somebear remembered I existed.

Putting bloody boot against the neck of the corpse I ratcheted gears into my hands and clamped them tight around the blood-soaked wood the of the spear and pulled.

Clutch. My first 'real' technique.

With the longest section of my spear in my hands, I moved towards the bear, doing my best to stay in his blind spot.

It wasn't that far a distance, but each step I took seemed to require the utmost care, I knew if this went bad there wasn't a lot I could do other than just go completely Fruit-y on the bear's ass which I was trying to avoid for now.

...

'I regret everything involved with the sentence. Everything.'

I was at my goal, a pillar which was a short distance from the bear much sooner than I would have liked, but it was time for the plan. As best I could I clamped the spear in my mouth, trying to ignore the taste of blood and dust on my tongue, and threw my arms around the pillar and shimmied up as quick as I could. Standing on top, I called out and grabbed the bear's attention again.

"Hey Fogey the Bear! You want to tumble or are you just gonna sit there lard-ass?" Then threw my spear, I didn't need to stick it but I needed the bear to come at me.

Also, I'd like to see you try to come up with an effective bear taunt in the middle of an arena while fighting for your life, cut me some slack. Secondly, if I can think of a better one in the future I'm just going to pretend that's what I said in the first place. Who else is going to know?

Thankfully(?) the spear was able to get the bear's attention and it started lumbering towards me growling and mouth dripping with blood and offal.

Standing on the pillar I was just high enough up that it would need to get on its back legs to get at me and when I reared up I made my move.

Jumping off the pillar in the direction of the bear's busted eye I grabbed at the fur on the bear's shoulder and swung the rest of my body around, landing piggy-back on the bear just behind it's head.

'That worked. Color me surprised. Now just to hold on for Step two.'

Shifting my grip to right behind the bear's head I swung my left arm around the front of the bear just under its jaw with my forearm against it's throat I began to Clutch with everything I had. Needless to say the bear was not happy about this and began to squirm and buck, shifting me around and making it almost impossible to apply pressure with one arm.

Seeing little else I could do, I waited for a lull in the bear's bucking to grab the left arm's wrist with my right completing a hold around the neck. It was a long time coming, the bear was mad and wanted nothing more than for me to fly off and die. If I didn't have a literal iron (or brass bite me) grip on it there's no way in heaven I would have been able to stay on though his bucking and twisting. Finally though I caught a break when the bear accidentally stunned itself on one of the pillars in its flailing. From there I managed to make the last grab and quickly started to ratchet the the space away, even shifting my arms into pistons so they could recede further and hoping the brass wouldn't show between the bear fur, the blood and the sleeves of my much-distressed hoodie.

"Crush" I had mumbled into the bear's fur feeling extremely foolish even as I did so.

Once I had the mechanical grip the fight was all but over, the bear put up a threat, but couldn't buck hard enough to dislodge me and every swipe it made at me I was able to dodge by shifting into its blind spot or kicking at it's injured limb, plus unlike a normal human grip when I was locked I stayed locked, it would take a lot more than this bear could muster to strip my gears!

After what felt like an eternity the bear finally began to stop, first it shuddered, then faltered, then finally collapsed into a pile. I had done it.

Stepping off the bear I raised both arms above my head to the cheering and jeering of the crowd which hadn't quieted down for the duration of the fight. I started to walk towards the gate I entered through when I heard the voice of the creepy kid in heels calling out from the side.

"Aren't you forgetttttting something~?"

Oh. Guess I only choked the bear into unconsciousness. I didn't particularly want to go back to it and stab it to death with half a spear, but also similarly didn't want to give these guys cause to come after me for disobedience or something. Then I hit on an idea.

"No. It wouldn't be interesting, the bear all but gone now, it wouldn't be a fight. It'd be butchery. Boring butchery." I yelled back, hoping to stave off the kid's bloodlust.

There was a moment where I thought he'd just order me anyway but then:

"Fine~ I guess you're right meat. It's boring to watch someone kill a helpless thing like that. Go on back, I suppose you did fine enough for some reward." He said

I hoped that included a bath or something, because I was filthy as well as starving. I dropped the spear remnant and left the arena to a cadre of guards awaiting me.

Instead of escorting me back to my usual cell I was taken to another, better lit one through a solid-looking wooden door that was banded with metal. The room was lit by two torches and had an actual bed, a steaming tub in one corner and a tray of something steaming in a bowl on the table which had a single stool seat next to it nearby. After I walked in the guards shut the door behind me and slid something across it with sound of metal on metal.

At this point I couldn't have cared less. Hot bath and hot food? This was sadly the most comfortable I had been since I got stranded in this heaven forsaken place.

Finishing both food and bath I climbed onto the bed and fell asleep from the exhaustion before I knew it.

When I awoke, my cell had a bearskin rug across the floor and a note:

"Congratulations on your victory meat. It was well won and… unexpected. Consider your new furnishings a measure of my favor, when one fails to put up a good enough show it's best that one is turn to serve a better purpose elsewhere. Of course part of putting on a good show is making sure you follows the steps of the dance. Why if someone was to ignore too many of the steps it would cease to be an elegant method of entertainment now wouldn't it? At that point there'd really be no point keeping the dancers around any more now would there? Make sure to keep in step fresh meat, or who knows where you'll be keeping someone else warm…"

They signed it Dellinger.

I think I would grow to hate that creepy kid.

____________________________________________________________________

And I would be right, for more than one reason.

I still haven't come up with a better taunt either . Man, I thought I was good at wordplay too…

No matter, I guess. I'm about as stuck on this little burg as I was last time I wrote, the bandits shipped out on their little fleet of catamarans somewhere else rather than try to dislodge me from their main storage stash. On one hand good riddance, on the other it does mean I am well and truly stuck here until I can gather the courage to try my hand at shipbuilding or someone else lands here. It's not a bad position here though, there's a fresh water spring pretty close, a decent ecosystem of pigs and birds that should be fine as long as I don't go nuts on hunting and even some grain for pottage.

Even if I'm stuck here for a while I should be fine, it's a damn sight better than the shit hole I left anyway.

____________________________________________________________________
Have a chapter. I got tired of staring at it trying to find the stuff that's wrong. I liked the fighting better in this one, but I keep getting bogged down in the grit.
It's taking me longer than I want to really get any where.
Hopefully I can improve on the pacing as I get back into the practice.
As before, tear it to shreds.

 

[Swordude]

Arc One: Wind

Chapter Three:

[Log III]
Time is T+Arena+?+3 Days
Home Cave

I don't know, hypothetical reader, if you've ever been in a fight before. Not just a brawl or a school circle-fight, but a full-on high-stakes do-or-die type of fight. But if you haven't? It is exhausting. The knowledge that a single mistake could be all that it takes to end your chances at victory, the actual attempts, feints, move, counter-move and follow-up that make up every step of the dance weighing on your as you choose them, the constant attempts to rattle, confuse or deceive your opponent in an attempt to get an advantage, any advantage, over them you can. It all adds up and if you aren't trained for it physically and mentally it can be devastating.

I don't know how long I was there for after my previous entry, I know it wasn't too long, but the between the exhaustion of the fight, the exhaustion of my attempts to train in the cell, the exhaustion of practicing with my Devil Fruit powers while keeping the under wraps , the small fights against smaller animals and other fighters and the general lack of ability to tell the passage of time I was had lost days.

It was only after one of my experiments with my powers produced a metronome effect that I was able to grasp time again. I set up a section of my chest near my heart that would slowly crank a spring with every beat of my heart. Once fully wound the spring would release and send a vibration through my body, depending on how long I made the spring I could set a timer from seconds long to a little over a day. I made two one to measure they days which I would scratch into the wall and another for general timing stuff to help keep me sane. Plus it was good practice trying to keep the two devices functioning and semi-separate from just by body.

Note to Self: I need to rewind my internal chronometer again, it stopped sometime before I washed up on this island and I didn't give it much thought 'til now.

The next bout of note I had was the beginning of the end of my 'honeymoon' period at the arena, but before that I was starting to adapt. I didn't always win the fights, but I was able to avoid getting curb stomped even with only really subtle uses of my Devil Fruit like Clutch or another move where I would run a piston through my arm at the same time I swung it to add extra impact to a punch or stab. I called that one Straight, and it saved my bacon a few times. They didn't always make me fight alone either, sometimes they would pair me with another gladiator, though only once with the girl I had met during the initial melee, but I couldn't help but be wary whenever that happened. It didn't seem unlikely that they would declare we needed to defeat our partner to win after we fought everyone else or something like that. It seemed like the flavor of dickish that was appropriate with the assholes who ran the arena.
____________________________________________________________________

Time is T+40(?) Days
Place is my new cell.

I was in the middle of a set of suspended sit-ups when my next call to arms came up. At this point I was irritated at the interruption of my workout than the thought of fighting again. It was a small thing, but by working out I had some small measure of control over my life and my body, plus it wasn't like there was much else I could do in my cell anyway.

Thankfully, I hadn't needed to deal with any exceptionally odd or creepy members of the crew who ran the arena since the big beast fight, when it was my call to fight only a standard, forgettable type of guard would come by to escort me to the arena. I found what seemed like every other day or so unless I got hurt enough to hinder my performance, when that happened usually they'd send a doc of some type with bandages and a suture kit.

I wasn't sure if that was them protecting their investment or if I was being groomed for something or if they wanted their meat to last as long as possible. It was a little disconcerting not matter the reason.

I guess I had made a decent showing of myself so far, but then again my opponents weren't really much to speak of, I usually won and even when I lost I made damn sure to make the best showing I could, it seemed to work for the most part since I wasn't visited by any more of the higher-ups. The weirdest part of this time was that most of my matches ended up being against these sad little plastic robot-seeming things, usually a dozen or more at a time. They were… odd to say the least. The things looked like they were modeled after some super old-school kid's toys and we super varied, some looked like old nut-cracker type wood dolls, some looked like marionettes without strings, some were just like… trains, or animals, or
rocking horses or something.

Like I said, they were weird, off-putting, and really kind-of creepily out of place. They're sole redeeming factor was that they were only really dangerous in large numbers, otherwise they went down like wheat before a thresher, I was pretty able to render most of them into simple parts with even my (Devil-Fruit enhanced) bare hands. To be completely honest I'm still not sure what their deal was, most of them were pushovers, some could fight decently but all of them mostly acted weird. Whoever was in charge of controlling them must have been pretty new for it or something.

Anyway.

Every time I won I came back to a little prize, sometimes it was a nicer meal, sometimes a bottle of alcohol, that sort of thing. During this time it was occasionally hard to wrench myself out of the rut I was creating. Between the utter lack of outright negative consequences and positive reinforcement coupled with the complete lack of outside context or information I had it was pretty easy to lose sight of a bigger picture.

I digress. My interruption came in the form of another generic guard who wordlessly motioned me back into the shackles again and made to escort me again. At this point any attempts I made to resist, even in smaller ways resulted in either the guard locking the door again and leaving but no food showing up for a few days or him calling on several others to jump me a press-gang me into the chains anyway after a beating, no matter how much I tried to fight back, I would probably have to blow my cover if I wanted to take them and something told me my time wasn't yet.

I went with him without a word, moving to put my jacket on again before heading over and presenting my arms.

The trip was the same one I had taken many times by this point, but we didn't stop at the armory, instead my captor lead me directly to the arena floor.

Standing at the lip of the drop down onto the arena proper I held out my arms again for him to unshackle me again. Only for him to smile in really concerning fashion.

"Nope! You get to fight in chains again, the bosses got something special for you today! I've got 12,000 berri on you eating shit and dying so good fucking luck~!" He exclaimed as he swept his spear butt at me.

Even after the vaguely threatening atmosphere that had been building over the course of the trip I wasn't expecting a case of Suddenly Hostile! And ended up falling pretty gracelessly into the arena.

"Hellfires…" This wasn't the first time bosses had made me fight without weapons, but it was also the first time they've gone out of the way to handicap me. Intro fight into the arena notwithstanding the chains I had on now were both much shorter (perhaps four or so inches long) and thus much less useful than the chain-gang style ones I had on during my first fight. These being shorter would be a fairly large punishment against my balance, momentum and leverage in a fight, about the only thing I could do with them was garrote someone and to be honest with my ability to Clutch I could literally do that better with my bare hands. This was not a promising start.

Picking myself back onto my feet noticed that the crowd sounded like it was a lot larger than usual, walking under the arch out into the arena I could see that it was as packed as it was during my initial fight: Standing room only, people pressed again the railings around the edge of the arena, people yelling obscenities and generally going complete apeshit. It was only now though that I noticed the arena was absent of any other competitor, no giant animals, no toy-things, no other gladiators. There was only a singular figure standing at the center of the arena a grinning a grin filled with razor sharp teeth.

"'Grats meat! You've made it! You survived this long in the bosses' arena, that means you might actually be worth something… eventually." He sneered, pacing towards me as the portcullis behind me slammed down with an ominous clang. "So we've got another special little something for Mr. Up-and-Coming!"

He stopped and raised both his arms above his head and shouted to the crowd. "Are you folks ready to see experience some entertainment?"

The crowd roared. I shifted into a stance.

"Are you ready to see some blood?"

The crowd roared again. I muttered a quick prayer, I didn't like where this was going.

"Are you ready to see some suffering?"

As the crown roared a final time, I looked around trying to find the trick, the trap. This was a mistake, a bad one. The instant I took my eyes off Dellinger he rushed the distance faster than I thought possible (especially in fucking high-heels), and buried his fist deep into my stomach before I could so much as twitch.

As I went skidding back from the blow I tried to reclaim my balance, but the chains on my arms threw me off and I ended up landing on my back and went rolling.

By the time I stopped and shuffled to my feet Dellinger was on me again before I could regain much of my countenance, delivering a straight snap kick planting his high-heel directly in the spot he had just hit, folding me over like a house of cards. He even managed to step back as I threw up the remnants of my breakfast and a good portion of blood as I fell to my knees in pain.

"Not so tough eh meat? Not against a real challenge. Not against someone who matters." I heard him say. "So you've won a bunch of easy fights. Deal fucking deal."

"Hellfires."

I felt, rather than saw him move again. The displaced air giving me just enough time to curse before he lashed his fist into the back of my head sending me face-first into the mess I had just made and then stomping a foot on the back of my head keeping me stuck there in the mud, blood and vomit.

"You've got two choices here meat. Die, or suck it the fuck up. I'm beating your ass either way. If you eat it at least I'll have a decent sandbag for a while, it'll be nice to have one with some blood to it." I could hear his grin as he ground his foot down on the back of my head before removing it.

I tried rising to my knees, to pull myself out of the muck and wipe what I cold from my vision. My glasses were toast, but I had found my vision wasn't so bad since I ate my Devil Fruit. It meant I saw able to get a pretty good look at the foot swinging for me again. By throwing myself back I only just was able to avoid the kick but wound up flat on my back, not a good position to be in a fight.

Dellinger recovered quickly from the whiff, if he suffered at all and give me another one of his toothy grins before launching himself up something like thirty or forty feet in the air and started plummeting back down heel-first.

'Oh hell no I'm not lying still for that.'

As quick as I could with my pounding head and bruising stomach I rolled to my feet off to a side and managed to get away enough from the impact that I was actually ready for his next blow, expecting him to rush out from the dust he made on impact.

He obliged me pretty quickly, dashing out fist cocked back from the remnants of the cloud. It was more luck than anything else, but I managed to take advantage of the fact that for all his strength he still only had a kid's reach and finally managed left hook into his face causing him to stumble and miss his own swing.

Pressing the advantage as I could I brought my knee up aiming for his chest but he was fast, too fast for me to hit anything solid. I ended up only hitting him in the shoulder as he ducked my knee and left my vision. I heard him cackle somewhere behind me and to my right.

"So you aren't all suck are you meat? Too bad that little bit of fight is just going to get you in trouble. I haven't perfected this but trash like you are perfect for practicing on…" There was something in his words that was making my gut instinct go nuts. Spinning around towards his voice I tried something that I had practiced in my room. Imaging the gear of my body turning and ticking away with each other I set half of them to suddenly tick in the opposite direction locking them together with their neighbors and hopefully functioning as a type of hardening like flexing your muscle. I hadn't figured out how to do it uniformly or across my entire body but I had just enough experience that I could at least stop him from caving my chest in. I called it Jamming.

"Pistol High Heel!" He cried pumping one leg back to launch him forward and leading with the other at the center of my chest.

I was only just able to throw up a guard and I can guarantee if I hadn't managed to Jam my gears together It would have gone through my chest regardless of my block. As it was I think he broke my right arm and probably some number of my ribs as well as I was sent flying back into the stone wall of the arena.

I think I left a dent but my eyes were swimming at this point and I was standing only by the fact that I had landed on feet Jammed my legs from collapsing. When Dellinger got within range I tried to get another hit, another blow but he just parried my attempts with ease, grabbing hold of my arm in the middle of one and flipping me over with a level of ease that was disheartening.

'He really was just playing with me wasn't he.' I remember thinking, mostly because it was the last solid thought I had for the fight. The rest of the fight is just a jumbled series of blows and pain.

...I was flat on my back yet again in the fight and had this crazed shark-toothed high-heeled psycho standing over me. He didn't say anything this time, just reared his leg back again and kicked me square under the chin and I flew...

..I was crumpled on the ground doing everything I could just to breathe and I felt hand grab me by the ankle and swing me into a wall…

..I Tried to crawl, to run, to get away from the footsteps approaching me, I didn't manage to get anywhere before I felt a sharp pain in my side sending me rolling end over end…

..The cheering and roar of the crowd was all-encompassing, the only thing louder was the sound of my heart ticking in my ears. He bent over and I felt air in my ear, but whatever he said was lost to the roar of blood. I felt a hellish pain on the side of my head and felt something tear free in flash of fiery pain…

...I felt a weight on my stomach as blow after blow was rain down on me finally he stood and raised one leg, foot over his head in a vertical split before bringing it down at the center of my chest. I looked down and saw the heel buried up to its base…

After that I knew no more. I was lost in a maze of pain and of fire.

____________________________________________________________________

Time is T+42(?) Days
Place is Not my cell.

To be honest I was surprised that I woke up.

It was a gradual thing, from the total black of unconsciousness then a gradual feeling of pain spread across my entire body, one that increased as I drew farther into the world of consciousness, that more than anything else jolted me awake. Pain meant I was alive, but also hurt. I felt every bruise, every break, every cut on my body flare up as I tried to get my grip on the waking! Up!

Then the darkness very slowly receded from my vision and my senses started to make sense of where I was: The feel of the rough bed-sheets, the smell of harsh antibiotics and rubbing alcohol and the look of a room different that my cell. I knew this because for one it had windows. I could see the sun was setting but had no idea how long I was knocked out for.

"And he awakes. You took your time you know. Two whole days."

That was a voice I hadn't heard before. It was one like nails in ice, cool and hard. He had an undertone of impatience in his statement though, like a flash of heat quickly buried. I turned (painfully) to look at where the voice originated from.

There was a man sitting in a chair dressed about as eccentrically as anyone I seen who mattered since I've arrived here. A full off-white face mask and eye-obscuring goggles covered his face and he had at least a foot of white hair spiked on the top of his head like a mane. He only had a muscle shirt on but there was a dark navy blue coat hanging on a hook by the door I assumed was his. He was looking in my direction but with his goggles I couldn't tell exactly where.

"..Sorry?" I managed to choke out pitifully my throat burning with the effort.

"Hmm. It seems Dellinger went a bit overboard in efforts, he was not supposed to hurt you quite as badly as this, but at the same time you weren't expected to survive even if he didn't. I suppose we can just call it a wash." He intoned mechanically. "The injuries you are suffering are rather severe: Sixteen broken bones, including a rather glaring crack in your jaw and another in your skull, both of your arms are fractured with your right arm only just on the positive side of recoverable due to the miracle it remaining a closed fracture. You have deep tissue bruising across sixty percent of your upper body which nearly included a ruptured lung. Oh, and it seems Dellinger nearly tore your ear your your head. Take a look."

At this he retrieved a hand mirror from a nearby table and flipped it in my direction. My eyes widened at what it revealed: I looked like a piece of hamburger, with bruises and swelling covered most of my face and visible body that I could see reflected at me. Most shocking though was that, yeah, my left ear had a tear to it that looked like a shark bit off half of it and someone had gone through with a suture kit to keep the edges crisp. I tried to raise an arm to touch it but that plan was quickly stopped due to a fresh wave of pain as I tried again to move.

"Yes. I would not recommend repeating that. You haven't heal much at all from the fight" He said drolly. "I have projected you still require at least a week more of healing before you gain any sort of mobility but that seems distastefully wasteful both in time and in medicine. So graciously, we have arranged an… alternative method of restoration. For now though I think you can live with the pain. We will talk again some other time new blood… though perhaps I will grant you this mercy."
At that he stood up and took a syringe full of a clear liquid from the nearby table and without any further warning plunged it into my neck and depressed the plunger. I felt a blessed chilling wave start sweeping through my veins dulling the agony I was under.

"Thank you." I felt myself mutter my vision already start to swim as he turned back towards the door and gestured someone in.

The last thing I saw before the black overtook me again was a flash of turquoise hair.

____________________________________________________________________

This was yet another blow to my sense of time. I sort of puzzled together that they just threw me into a spare bed after the fight with little effort spent on medical attention. They cleaned me off, threw some bandages on some trouble spots, and then left to to either rot and die or stabilize and start healing. I wasn't sure at the time why I had been singled out for this level of brutality but I would soon learn.

Devil Fruit or No Devil Fruit there are some nights, usually right before the situation or the weather does something tricky that I can feel those breaks in my bones just a little bit. My time spent there changed me… I'm not… Ḩo̮̻͜w̗͈ ̩̩̪̦͞a҉͎̬͓̪̝̞b̦̙͓̬ͅo̮̕u̸ṭ̼̘̖ ̜̺̻̠͔a̙͓ ͚͉̤͉n͚̜̭͚̯̻̣i͝c̡͍̱ḙ̖̝̟͖̟̗ ͍̹͈͚̘̳͉̀c̭̤̥̫̞̕u͏̺̰̬̗̭͚͖p͍̰̗̖̣̼͡ ̦̲̥̤͘o̩̟̥f ̴͎̦͔̳͍̬̫m͢o̧̮̲v̴̘̭͓̠̙ḙ͎ t͙͔͓̘̺͙͟h̲̀e͜ ̞̙͓fu͏̤͙̥͉̖c̴̝͖̠͚ͅḳ̼̞͈͔ ̜̜̺a͏̬̠̤̜̝͚̱lo̱͕n̴͖̳g̖̗̬͕ ̫͖̺͉s͏͚̮̹̦ͅh̶̜̞̭͚̰i̜̠̤̰̯͙̹͟t͈̲̪̩w̥̩̝̰̩̹it͙?͖̰͟

No.

I've wasted enough reminiscing for a while now, I've got things I need to do if I want to survive and get off this island.

____________________________________________________________________
Here we start to see some background stuff in action.
There's something off about this chapter. I can't put my finger on it, but I didn't like its' flow. I also ended up re-writing so many parts of it that it barely resembles what it originally did and some of the ideas I had for it have got moved three or four chapters back out.

 

[Cap'nSmurfy]

My time spent there changed me… I'm not… Ḩo̮̻͜w̗͈ ̩̩̪̦͞a҉͎̬͓̪̝̞b̦̙͓̬ͅo̮̕u̸ṭ̼̘̖ ̜̺̻̠͔a̙͓ ͚͉̤͉n͚̜̭͚̯̻̣i͝c̡͍̱ḙ̖̝̟͖̟̗ ͍̹͈͚̘̳͉̀c̭̤̥̫̞̕u͏̺̰̬̗̭͚͖p͍̰̗̖̣̼͡ ̦̲̥̤͘o̩̟̥f ̴͎̦͔̳͍̬̫m͢o̧̮̲v̴̘̭͓̠̙ḙ͎ t͙͔͓̘̺͙͟h̲̀e͜ ̞̙͓fu͏̤͙̥͉̖c̴̝͖̠͚ͅḳ̼̞͈͔ ̜̜̺a͏̬̠̤̜̝͚̱lo̱͕n̴͖̳g̖̗̬͕ ̫͖̺͉s͏͚̮̹̦ͅh̶̜̞̭͚̰i̜̠̤̰̯͙̹͟t͈̲̪̩w̥̩̝̰̩̹it͙?͖̰͟

Click to shrink...

Hmm, some rather worrisome looking invisitext here.

 

[mickeysofine]

You should have the character turn into Nox expy.

Overall I'm enjoying the story. I'd like for the character to get out and explore, though. That's one of the main attractions of the One Piece world.

 

[Swordude]

Hmm, some rather worrisome looking invisitext here.

Click to shrink...

I have no idea what you're talking about. S͡h̷̛͞h͘h̀͢h̷h̕.̕

Overall I'm enjoying the story. I'd like for the character to get out and explore, though. That's one of the main attractions of the One Piece world

Click to shrink...

The intent is there, the pace is getting bogged down though. Arc I ends when freedom is achieved, we're perhaps three or so logs away from that.

 

[Chillingbear]

Great chapter as always

 

[Swordude]

Arc One: Wind

Chapter Four:

[Log IV]
Time is T+Arena+?+14 Days
Home Cave

I've officially been here for two weeks now. Not a lot to speak of has really changed. I've gathered the rest of the junk the bandits had hanging around here which included a fair sum of treasure, gold coins of various type, gems, jewelry and such. Completely useless now but it could be useful if when I get off this island.

I'm not really sure what my next step here is to be honest. I've got my food situation locked away for at least a bit, this island had enough on it that the group of thirty or so thugs hiding out here before weren't doing much against depleting it.

Though now that I think about it, if they just had catamarans that probably meant there were other islands relatively close by if they could get here from anywhere without a fully sized sailing ship….

Hmm.. Something to ponder, but it's not my first choice. The Curse of the Sea thing is absolutely true, I've tried a few experiments with it and I gotta say the results are interesting if not very helpful. (For rigor's sake I'm detailing what I've learned and what I did at the end of this book and will work my way backward.) I'm a poor navigator, especially so here where I don't know the constellations or landmarks. It would be pretty risky for me to just head out to sea in a tiny canoe and hope for the best. I'll need to check if there's a spyglass somewhere in the bandit's stash, maybe there's something in the wreckage of the ship I arrived here in?

I would say that's spoilers considering how I ended the last entry, but I think the fact that I'm alive and well enough to write these prefaces gave the game up some time ago. Yes I did survive though I suppose I ought to tell the story in order.

____________________________________________________________________

Time is T+45? Yeah, call it 45.
Place is my cell again

I was back in my cell shirtless and practicing the Jam technique again. Originally I needed to spend my full attention on it or my gears tended to re-align and the effect was lost or they would just jam together randomly about my body making the defensive aspect spotty at best. After nearly three days straight of trying nothing but that I was pretty comfortable with my ability and was working the Jam though my body in a repeating pattern leaving my brain free to wander.

I'm not entirely sure what they did to me. I went unconscious barely a functioning human being and woke up whole and hearty. Mostly anyway. That little shit Delinger took a chunk of my ear and whatever that spiked goggles guy had done to me didn't see to fix that, or any of the other minor scars I now possessed though none of them were really that notable compared to the ear.

Then again my ear was just a small part of that ass-kicking I was at the ass end of. I knew I was debatable as a fighter at best but I wouldn't have expected Delinger, or anyone else really to be able to move that fast and hit that hard. I had no idea where I was in relation to the world though. I figured I was probably in the Grand Line since that's where most of the movers and shakers of the world seems to be headed to but I couldn't be sure of it. Maybe these guys were freakishly strong, maybe they were bog standard. I didn't know and that scared me.

I know that the upper end of the power spectrum in One Piece is fairly nuts, even if you don't include the really strong guys I knew of like Garp, Sengoku, or Shanks and if these guys weren't somewhere near the top I was boned.

I didn't have a lifetime of adventure and hijinks behind me. I didn't have a crew of neigh-immortals ready to fight at my back. I didn't have the intense training that it seemed like so many had here.

I didn't really even have a dream, much less a plan, but at that moment I had two new goals: Get free and then Get the back.

Resource-wise all I had to depend on was myself, my admittedly eclectic skill-set and my Fruit powers. I had let myself get lax, get lazy. I had been fighting the dregs here and coming out on top fairly easily. The beat-down with fish-boy was a sign that I was headed towards a Bad End if I couldn't stop it. I needed to buckle down and start getting something together if I was going to make it out of this hell-hole intact. I was an Esper, and there are no weak powers. I was going to have to show them that, but not now. I needed to keep that ace for as long as I could.

My musings then were interrupted by a guard opening the door to my cell. The ear and other scars must have had some effect because when I turned to stare at him as he entered he looked taken aback for a minute before speaking up.

"R-Right, you've got another showing now. You've had enough time moping about, and the boss figures it's time for you to earn your keep again." The guard shook out.

"Is this a normal match or am I going up against someone special again?" I asked internally dreading the answer.

My question seemed to steady him for some reason since he put that slimy grin on his face as he answered. "If by normal you mean another free for all like you had when you arrived then yes. A normal match, now: arms."

I sighed internally as I presented my arms for the shortened shackles the guard held again. 'Well. It's better than a designated beat down I suppose, but I guess I'll just have to wait and see.'

The guard led me down the now familiar path that led directly to the arena, apparently either I was supposed to fight (heh) gearless again or they were leaving weapons around the arena.
My guess was the second, but at this point I wouldn't put it past my luck to leave me stranded in the arena with no armor, no weapons and shackled up short.

As it turned out I was wrong on both counts I learned as I was led into the prep room near one of the entrances to the arena proper. It was filled with various lumps of stuff each covered in a dirty off-gray tarp.

"Pick a pile, it's got some random stuff in it, that's what you get to use to fight." A guard stationed there drawled off as I entered, leaning lazily on a wall. "No scavenging other fighter's gear, no improvising weapons, and you have to wear all of it, even if you don't use all of it. Some piles don't have weapons, some don't have armor or less armor or whatever. Supposedly one has some real nice stuff but eh. Not sure if that's true of not."

I looked around to room as best I could while my escorting guard undid my restraints. There really was no way of telling, the piles under the tarps were shapeless for the most part, some had what looked like points or edges, some were flatter that others, one was gigantic but I was fairly sure that was a trap of some kind. My guess was that either it was actually worthless or it was a shit-load of stuff the picker'd have to weight themselves down with.

Seeing as I had no way of telling one pile from another I used the most ancient of strategies.

'Eeeny...Meeny..miny… you' I pointed at a bundle that looked like it had maybe a spear or a polearm under it. The lax guard nodded and gestured me to it.

Uncovering it I noted It looked like I got something in the middle of the line: A fancy looking glaive, half a set of greaves, a rough-spun red cape, and three pauldrons. I had a decent looking weapon, but almost no armor and weird armor at that.

Throwing the cape on I strapped the armor on where it belonged, contemplating the third pauldron I elected to wrap is around my left hand, maybe I could use it as a buckler or gauntlet if need be. No sooner than I had finished and picked on the glaive then I was hustled out of the large room into a smaller one down a hall with its own separate entrance.

I had been in one of these a few times before, usually when they had a surprise, needed to get something set up in the arena, or wanted all fighters to enter roughly at the same time. The idea was that the gate would lift and anyone in the room was to enter. I didn't know how long I was going to wait though, so I couldn't do something like commit to a nap or workout in case the wait wasn't long. Instead I decided to try out my new polearm.

Like I said, it was fancy and I'm no blade-smith so I didn't have a clue whether it was good fancy or bad fancy. It may be someone's masterwork that wound up here or it may be some gilded piece of trash that would break on the first good hit, I would just have to trust it would be enough and be prepared for if it wasn't.

It was maybe thirty minutes later that I could hear the crowd begin to roar through the gate which had begun rising. Steeling myself once more, I walked though and stood on the hard packed mud at the edge of the arena looking around.

Twelve opponents, the only one I recognized was the girl with pink hair. She had made out about as well as I had: long sword, full-sized kite shield, helmet and a mail shirt, though everything was large on her, she didn't seem nervous though. I wish I had her courage, the only thing keeping me going right now was fear, both of my 'patron' and of the terrors running the show here.

Everyone else was about as generic a fighter as I'd fought before, though a couple seemed to have worse luck.

One was literally covered in armor, head to toe, he had two shields, a full set of plate armor and what seemed like several breastplates, extra helmets, and boots strapped on him in every possible manner. It was actually pretty entertaining and the funniest thing I had seen since my arrival here watching this poor sap only just barely able to waddle forward under his pile of 'safety'.

Another had a knife, a net and unfortunately for everyone watching seemed to be clad in a stereotypical barbarian-babe chainmail bikini. Since I had to suffer the sight of him originally and the memory of him now I'm going to go ahead Hypothetical Reader and...

He was 5 foot nothing and probably three hundred and a half pounds of sweaty, hairy fat man crammed into a bikini in which the word overflowed is tormented by being forced to take the job of bearing that image forth. He wobbled with every step and was his own greasy-looking waveform generator shining dully in the sun when he stopped or made any sudden movement. He was both fascinating and terrifying to behold. His nervous sweat was pulling double duty to both let his odor waft genty in the breeze all around him and work as a discount oil-shine assuring that regardless of what he did next his every action would involve every roll of fat he had to be highlighted in the afternoon sun. I could see as his every movement was seared through my eyes directly into my brain where it will remain forever more.

If I have to bear that trauma so too will every person I meet. I will find the Esper who can turn memories into pictures specifically to help me in this quest because I will not suffer this memory alone.

Other than those two the other nine fighters were armed generically and to be honest I didn't put much faith in anyone here being anything other than a nuisance. Then someone landed into the arena from somewhere high that I could make out and I turned my attention towards them

They were tall, weirdly so, maybe ten or eleven feet tall and broad as four men. His hair was flat out wacky, being tripped to look like a four-leaf clover orthogonal to his face and I could see in his smile that he had painted or stained an emblem of a crossed out smiley-face and he opened his mouth to bellow.

'What is with this place and people with fucked-up teeth?' I remember wondering.

"Good mornnniinnnng Corrida fans-dasuyan I'll be your host today: The Amazing Buffalo-dasuyan!" Was this a normal person here? Or an exception? "We have a fanninn-tastic show planned for you today: Lucky Dip Deathmatch!"

Oh, Deathmatch. That's not a word I liked hearing.

"Each fighter chose a ranninn-dom pile of gear and that's going to be all they get-dasuyan! Now we're going to get to see if luck can trump skill here today! The last fighter stannninnding gets a great secret honor-dasuyan!"

That. Wasn't ominous or anything.

"Now! Fighters at the counnnninnnt of three! One-dasuyan!"

Well. Show time I suppose.

"Two-dasuyan!"

I shot off a quick prayer. One way or another, it was time.

"Three-dasuyan!"

With his last count the big man rocketed straight up out of the arena and began hovering a few hundred feet up.

'Esper' But I didn't have much time to deal with that line of thought as I rushed towards my closest foe: A spear man with a breastplate.

Not to brag or anything, but since I'd arrived here I basically went through boot camp from hell. I interspersed workouts with the most high-intensity 'sparring' matches I could conceive coupled with a graduating goal of 'survive or die' providing me an endless source of motivation to improve coupled with a local flavor of superpower that was the top type of three. The point I'm getting at is between my raw Devil-Fruit Piston powered swing and my own workout I had got to him before he was expecting it and cleaved through him like he was wheat before he could do more than raise his spear to block, blood spraying from his front as my glaive cut though the wood of his spear and his crap-metal armor eliciting a gurgling scream as he went down.

The crowd apparently loved that. It made me feel dirty with how easy it was. Thankfully he was just at the edge of my range and the blade went in only a inch or less into him.

'Fight now. Moral dilemma later.' I had to tell myself, it wasn't the first time.

It seemed like a few others had decided their odds weren't great solo or at least were better if I wasn't in the standing since I was quickly set on by two fighters at the same time, one with a tower shield and some long knife and the other with a net and mace.

For having maybe two or three minutes of communicating at most they did a pretty good job of coordinating. They tried to keep my flanked between them and the guy with the tower shield would use it to push me around while the guy with the net kept trying to keep me tangled. I was able to avoid a few of their tricks but I'm not combat expert regardless of how often I'd been doing it lately; net guy managed to trap my right arm in his net just as shield guy pushed me just a bit off balance. It must have looked pretty good to them with net guy's mace swinging right at me. Fortunately I had a trick or two up my sleeve, literally in this case.

"Jam." I raised my free arm mechanically and let it take the blow. I don't think he was expecting that since the reverb made him drop the mace jump from his slackened hand and I took advantage of that opening to use my whole torso to power a swing from the stiffened limb directly into his stupefied face. He quickly went down and I could turn my attention on his compatriot.

I hadn't had the time to clear the net and free my glaive hand though and shield guy was keen on preventing me from doing so; constantly rushing forward with his shield letting it take my staggered blows and letting it cover his profile when he struck out with his long knife. Thankfully the weight of the shield was slowing him down and I could back off when needed but I could get through it either.

Finally getting sick of the stalemate I tried for another trick I'd been working on. I jumped back and back up so that wall was at my back, one part protecting me from another opportunist as I finished this and one part bait so he'd approach trying to sandwich me between a rock and a hard place, and started to crank a spring in my arms. I'd discovered I could build tension in the machinery of my body early on but it was only during my Jam practice that I figured out how to direct it. The intent was to crank it high then let it loose all at once like a crossbow, and just like a crossbow it was apparently excellent at punching holes in thing as my charging opponent learned.

I called it the Straight, and he never saw it coming as I let go of the tension rocketing the glaive though the tower shield and from the gurgling I could hear on the other side into somewhere at least moderately important to him.

Withdrawing my arm I noted that my blade was slick with blood and that my foe had fallen. Quickly kicking aside his shield I raised my blade, my heart pounding and blood singing, ready to bring it down on him when I suddenly caught his eyes.

His glare was empty and his posture resigned. He had realized his fate was now to die and there was nothing he could do to stop me. I felt a chill run down my spine at this realization.

'I am about to kill a nameless man on orders of bunch of sadistic bastards and I was going to do it gleefully. Damn this place!' This place was poison and I needed to remember that.

I looked him in the eye and gave him a small shake of my head before striking him with the butt of my glaive. 'Not today. There may be a day when i don't have a choice, but. Not. Now.'

I didn't hit him hard enough to knock him out but thankfully he seemed to get the message and simply flopped down as though he was on hit and I was able to turn my gaze back on the field of battle.

Doing my absolute best to avoid looking at… bikini man. I noted that there was more progress than I was expecting, five generics were down and so was armor guy, though I'm not sure if that was because someone got to him or because he collapsed under the weight of his gear. Pinkie was finishing off another generic but it looked like another few were looking her way.

'Might as well…' I thought, it seemed like she was the only person here who could catch less of a break than me in combat sometimes. In all the fights I'd had with her I never saw her not get mobbed at some point, and while she was good she was also like two feet shorter and probably six or more years younger than everyone else here.

I started cocking a Straight in my off hand as I ran towards a duo who were coming up behind her.

"Night-Night numbskull!" I shouted, released the shot in the back of one's skull and folding him over like a beaten rug. Then before his buddy knew what was up I swung the glaive butt into the back of his knees collapsing him prone.

From there it was a matter of seeing how many stomps it took him on his helmet to convince him that trying to get up wasn't worth the trouble. (Four. It was four).

Then the next thing I knew I saw Pinkie dash by me and heard a gurgle come from being me. Spinning around I saw she had got a guy sneaking up on me in the calf before hitting them with her sword pommel, ending that fight rightly.

"Thank you." I muttered out ducking another generic jerk as she nodded her acknowledgement. Before she turned away though i added. "But I've got dibs on not fighting bikini-guy, so good luck~!"

I will treasure her face as she sputtered at that.

That moment of levity though was quickly shattered though as I heard something from above:

"Looks like our show is nearing its end already!" There was a spike of something nasty interjected in the middle of that seemingly innocent statement. My gut was telling me something I lately I was inclined to listen to it.

I threw myself flat in a ball and Jammed as hard as I could, and not a second too soon.

"So why don't we make this more interesting-dasuyan!"

There was a rush of wind and pressure that sent my curled form skidding and bouncing around towards the edges of the arena. I hit the wall and bounced around in a manner I assumed was similar to a fumbled football because the pressures kept me moving for a while. Amongst the tumbled images I could make out of my eye I saw bodies flying around in the winds as well as weapons and armor, finally the winds let me come a halt and get my bearings.

Uncurling I woozily stumbled to my feet and once the world stopped spinning I realized I was the only fighter left doing so. The only others even moving are Pinkie who is backed up against a wall and kneeling in some amount of pain and the fat bastard standing over her.

"--ur father would be so proud woulnnnnnnnnninnnn't he?"

I only caught the tail end of whatever he was saying but it seemed personal, and as dizzy and uncoordinated as my thoughts were at the time I knew I had two options here. As much as I know it's probably practical to let her do what she can to wear him down or keep his attention off me…

'Hellfires. Either I get the shit beat out of me again or never be able to meet my own gaze again. Fuck me and fuck this situation.'

And I charge. I don't really have a plan and I know that if this guy is anything like Dellinger I'm going to have a bad time. Buffalo initially doesn't do anything but mid-sentence he actually turned his head all the way around like an owl and flung two blades of compressed air at me, high and low. I somehow manage to dodge them by diving though the gap in between them and rolling to my feet.

'That was actually cool. Didn't think I was going to make that.'

"What's the matter fatso, nothing but hot air?" And there's my mouth writing checks I can't cash. I'm a sucker for a decent line but time and place brain time a place!

This had a duel effect. First, the big guy wasn't smiling anymore. Second he had fixed his eyes on me and slowly turned the rest of his body to match his head, the way he did it in the opposite way his neck had gone made it just that much more eerie.

"You stupid little nnnninnnitwits are always with the interrupting aren't you-dasuyan." His voice was even but in the same manner as an engine or a fan, it had a sort of buzz to it that just rankled me You're just here to entertainnnnninnn and forcing your betters to teach you lessons gets really borinnnninnnng! So just do me a favor and go die in a hole-dasuyan! Spin-Spin Spear!"

At that Buffalo all but spat another wind projectile at me again, this one longer and almost jagged in its movement, there was no way I was getting out of the way in time.
"Jam" I froze glaive and 'gauntlet' crossing in front of me, steeling myself for the impact. When it hit I was on just able to stay on my feet as I skid back leaving twin trails in the dirt, but it force of the missile blew my guard wide open and flung my weapon far from reach.

"Still stannnnninnnnding? A higher class of trash then-dasuyan! Looks like I'll have to devote a little extra effort here. Just one last thing to take care of…" He spun his neck around again towards the girl who was just struggling to her feet and before I could so much as twitch…

"Spin-Spin Spear!"

Sent a blast right at her. There was an explosion of dust, and before it cleared I was running.

"You rat bastard!" She was harmless! Well, right then she was she's better with a sword than I would have first guessed any little girl could be, still. "Where do you get off doing that!?"

"Hmm?" A face full of smarm whipped around again to show me the tooth smiley was in full view. "Well… it looks like you're the last one stannnniiinnnding. And as your amazing reward I'll let you choose: Everyone here dies and you get go or everyone else gets to go and you get to die-dasuyan!"

'Not actually a real choice. Same for the same reason I rushed forward before.'

"I-If I'm dying, I'm dying on my feet you fat blow-hard." I'd rather not admit to the stutter, but this was legitimately the first time I'd faced down the barrel of something this dangerous with a clear mind. The BASTARD that sent me here was too… eldritch for me to comprehend and Dellinger happened all too fast, I only barely remember the fight as it was. "I'm not going down easy."

If possible this made him grin larger and more sinister as the bloodlust crept into his voice. "That's what we like to hear-dasuyan!"

Before I could do anything else Buffalo launched himself up and out of my range again, held there for a split second, whirling like a tornado before dropping, his whole body positioned like a missile aimed at me, faster than his size even seems like it could allow to happen.

"SPINNNNNNNNN-SPINNNNNNNN DROP!"

I launch myself from my current position, diving headfirst in a direction, just trying to clear ground zero before he impacts like an earthquake. I'm caught mid-dive and send rolling further than I was expecting and in no position to do anything else when Buffalo sends a follow-up.

"Spin-Spin Needles!" I heard him call out. From the look of the technique it looks like he just sent a ton of his Spears at me rapid-fire.

The sight of the attack startles me, and I spent a second just staring at the mass of airblades speeding towards me, unfortunately that was a second I really didn't have to spare and when I panic and try to do something I end up trying to both Jam and squirm out of the way and fail at both as my Jam effectively shackles me in place as I'm still trying to lock it in place as the various airblades skewer me.

Right leg, right shoulder, left arm, gut and almost lung, in case you were wondering Hypothetical Reader, though thankfully not of them were anything drastic but they were painful and when I finally stagger to my feet again Buffalo is back in the air and laughing at me.

I take advantage of that though, listening as he stops retreating and preps for another dive. When he calls out for his next drop I'm ready for it, Jam fully locking in as I jump back from Buffalo's impact point. Dropping the defensive stance I quickly spool up a pair of Straights on with my glaive and other other with the 'gauntlet'. I dash forward into the dust cloud just before the rotor esper can whip up a fan to sent the dust my way and aim high before loosing my tension.

SHUNK-BAM! Two direct hits! Unfortunately for me though dashing in right before Buffalo spun to clear the dust meant that he was primed to spin and I was quickly hit hard in my side with a blow from an arm as large as my torso. I heard something snap and it suddenly got a lot harder to breathe.

It was probably something to do with what with the liquid I could feel pooling in my lungs.

Sent bouncing across the arena floor again I finally came to a stop only to see another one of Buffalo's spears headed my way. With no room to dodge and no time to set up a Jam I threw my right arm at it, trying to swat at it with my only piece of mobile armor.

Thankfully I timed it right, but at cost of the metal fragmenting on impact and shredding down my arm. Choking down the pain I tried to stand and keep an eye on my opponent but I was only able to catch a glimpse of his angry face sporting a bloody nose and a wound in his shoulder before he launching himself into the air yet again.

Now, I might have been a bit punch drunk, and a lot hurt, but I like to think I can at least recognize basic patterns here. I knew I didn't have much time, but thankfully I wouldn't need much for my plan. Looking around I noted my glaive didn't go far from me when I was disarmed from the impact.

As Buffalo descended once again I did a few things..

First, I knelt down and started my Jam.

Second, I pointed my glaive straight up butt firmly planted on the ground as my Jam finished interlocking as tight and completely full body as I could manage.

Third, I prayed that the weapon wasn't a complete piece of wall-hanger garbage.

See Buffalo had a thing about his dive-bombing, namely that he kept doing it face-first. So I was setting up a good old cavalry spike, braced by my powers and held on by desperation. With my lungs and ribs as busted as they were I wasn't doing any more dodging, I needed to end this and while I wasn't going to walk away I could at least end it on my terms.

The impact hit and my world shook.

Long story short, the glaive wasn't a cheap piece of crap but with the amount of force it went though I'm not surprised it broke, but at least it broke in a helpful way to me. Namely off somewhere inside my enemy esper's massive chest.

The look on his face when he saw he had committed to dropping on what was was one that kept me going through the pain that followed.

My little trick worked, but it didn't hit anywhere vital and I was also right at ground zero. Jam was by and far my best move but it wasn't perfect, not by a long shot. I could feel the teeth of the gear snapping as they forced themselves against each other from the force on the impact. I felt my Jam slipping and then finally collapsing as I had to let my gears subside again leaving me in a heap on the ground.

Before I could get up again I heard my opponent speak, and for the first time he seemed to be something other than sadistically gleeful as one of his plus-sized fists wrapped around my head cutting off my vision and lifting me up

"That. Hurt. Worm." Yeah. He was pissed. "But hey-dasuyan, I guess that means you're worth some effort. Spin Spin Tornado!"

It didn't take much effort to figure out what was going to happen next as he announced his technique and sadly I was right. With a firm grip on my skull Buffalo started to rotate his arm and almost immediately I blacked out as all the blood in my body was pushed into my boots from the centrifugal force only to come to again as I flying head first at an uncomfortable rate towards a wall.

"JAM!" I did what I could curling into a ball and locking my gears as best I could. Unfortunately I found that most of my gears I could make were still missing teeth and weren't able to lock together very well. Without even thinking I tried something different, spooling a spring around my non-jamming parts and coiling as tight as I could make it in an effort to not have every bone in my body broken again.

It sort of worked, but not for the reasons I thought it would.

As I slammed into the wall, I didn't go through it like I thought I would. I actually found myself flatten against it and my springs pulling tight before recoiling and bouncing myself off the wall a good few feet with far fewer broken limbs than I had thought, though my left side would be one large bruise if I survived this.

Unfortunately it seemed like I couldn't have all of one good thing as I felt the springs I made snap and unwind quickly giving me whiplash on the inside of my muscles as they carved though my limbs.

I didn't think your own Devil Fruit could hurt you like that, shows what I know I guess.

While I have a reasonably high pain tolerance I was long past it as thing point. I had had what felt like broken ribs again, a bunch of stripped gears (which felt like torn muscles) and from the blood pooling on the inside of my skin lacerated muscles and broken springs (which felt like someone tore a strip out of my hide). I was down.

"AAAAARRRRGH!" I was shredded, torn apart, maybe more than from my fight with Dellinger. But I needed to stand. To do something or this fucker was going to squish me like a grape.

I tried. I honestly truly tried. I dug deep for something. Anything that would let me get back up to stand one more time, to make good on my word to die on my feet. I pulled on every ounce of defiance and willpower I had left in me to try.

I made it to one knee, then fell back into a heap as I felt my body collapse into itself. I saw the bright sun in the sky before it was blocked by a face.

"...And now we see where defiance brings you-dasuyan! I'm surprised to be honnnninnnnest, I wasn't expecting you to actually still be alive, but I guess that's easy enough to fix!" He reached for me again and suspended me above his head as if to spike me into the ground when we heard a new voice.

"That's enough Buffalo!"

What.

I couldn't see the speaker but it sounded like I got saved by Mickey fucking Mouse. During his teenage years. On Helium. And he had apparent authority over a helicopter man.

What the hell was my life.

"He's had enough for today. And either he actually has some talent or YOU have been slacking in your own training if this no-name has given you any trouble." And he's had his cup of Carnation Instant Bitch this morning.

Nonetheless Lord(Hellfires!) Buffalo dropped me back into the dust to start making his excuses. "I was just toying with him-dasuyan! Had to make for an interesting show right? He just got one lucky hit off on me and..." Buffalo's rambling was tinged with fear? Who was this squeaky voice guy to him?

I shifted as much as I could to look, and boy was I glad I wasn't in any sort of form to laugh cause the originator of the tinny tirade was and from what I learned later this probably saved my life again.

He was tall, and broad, and spiky. Each should was like a football player's pads with the ace of spades tattooed on them, they made his head look tiny even with his long lavender hair. My vision was swimming again and I was doing everything I could not to just whimper and pass out as the big man approached Buffalo who was making increasingly nervous noises.

"I've seen enough for now. I'll get him to back to the infirmary. Send a runner for the usual suspects to fix this. Again." With that he grabbed me by an ankle and drug me behind him back in the direction he came from leaving Buffalo in a nervous sweat back in the arena.

While as appreciative as I was of the rescue the return trip left something to be desired. Or at least I presume it did. To be honest I passed out from pain shortly after the guy started moving me, but somewhere at the edge of my hearing I hear a voice echoing out as though from under a bunch of metal.

"Did I win?"
____________________________________________________________________

Time is T+46? Days
Place is my cell.

I woke up on the bear rug in my usual cell seemingly fine. I didn't have much in the way of pain, only muscle soreness. No sharp spikes of pain, no slowness to my movement due to breaks, I even felt my cogs and springs back to usual when I tried to spin them up again.

I do have to say that for a tyrannical, oppressive, human-rights-defying shithole this place had damn fine medical coverage.

I was only just able to finish a basic status check when I heard someone rattling keys on the other side of the cell door. I only just managed to rev down completely when the door opened and the goggles guy I had met before stepped in.

"And it seems like you have made a full recovery with our aid yet again. My my what would you do without us?" His voice dripped with irony.

"Uh. Die?" I wasn't really in the mood to smart off to someone who A: Probably could take me easily and B: Probably had a at least a hand in saving my life twice now. "Thank you for that by the way."

"Oh, it was not me. Or at least, not all me. When you have the power and have the means we possess here, little things like people dying or getting injured are not such a large issue." Or people staying alive and whole seemed to be the unspoken counterpoint to that. There was something off in how he said that, and didn't really like how it came out. "Nonetheless you have provided an interesting bit of entertainment and that is rare enough around here that it is worth the effort to preserve. That's why our leader opted to spare you, for now at least."

"I... see?" What did this guy want? What was his end game here? I was past confused. "Am I up for another fight? That's usually why people show up me here."

"Ah-hah! No. You have been given a bit of a reprieve. It would not do to put to same show out again so quickly." Again with the sentences I didn't like the implications of. The phrase 'Same Show' didn't sit well with me. "No, I've come with a bit of an offer. See, while it is quite the entertaining game to watch you struggle with anyone of even the slightest bit of skill watching the same dog get beat would not be the same a third, fourth and fifth time in a row."

"What are you offering?" I finally say, tired of him dancing around what he wanted. "You're here for a reason and it can't be for my amazing hospitality and riveting conversation skills"

"Ah-hah-hah! No. I am here to inform you of some little fact you seem to be incapable of grasping: You are being scouted by some of the crew here." He paced past me meticulously as he spoke. "You have lasted long enough and have little enough holding you back that waves are starting to be made about you. Little waves mind you, but waves nonetheless."

"I don't understand. All I've done is fight other people who are about as untrained as I am and fight some mindless beasts." I moved back from him, leaning back against the wall and tried to meet his eye though the opaque lenses in his goggles. "I'm not sure why this would be noteworthy enough for people to beat me to a pulp in some sort of vague hiring process!"

He stopped and looked at me, probably surprised at my outburst near the end. I got the impression of a raised eyebrow.

"I shall explain it plainly then since you truly seem incapable to grasping the idea. The the past fights you were in have been against relatively high ranking crew members who are sounding out if you are fit to an underling to them. You survival to the point that they were initially interested in you was noteworthy in that you possess no special talent, no grand training or noteworthy skill, but have survived where many others have not." His head turned away from he and he resumed pacing the length of the cell with his measured strides. "I am here because you interest me as well. Serve under me and perhaps something can be made of you."

With that he moved to the cell door and made to open it.

"Just know that that no one else here has any sort of interest in you that is conductive to your long term survival."

I spoke quickly before he could leave. "Oh? And you do?"

"Of course, I do. You… interest me. I have instructed before and you seem to have the same… fire as my last student possessed. Only with far lesser skill. It comes of being slothful in your youth I suppose."

"I don't see what you're getting at." I was getting tired of the constant insults and put downs I was getting here. I growled a little under my breath as he turned back towards me.

"What I 'Get' so to speak is another interesting opportunity and subject for my methods. If you accept, I will place you under my banner and you will be safe from the...nebulous attentions of the remainder of the crew."

I stood there in silence for what felt like few minutes turning his words over in my head before he spoke again irritated.

"My patience is not infinite and I will not make this offer again. Answer now or be subject to a fate of your own doing."

"...Fine" I didn't have much in the way of options and at least this guy seemed upfront about his predilections, but I didn't like the way he spoke, when I listened to him it sounded like he shuffled words around playing with their meaning and hiding something behind them, but I didn't have much in the way of choice, it might just be that his offer was the best of a bad hand.

I was wrong. Very wrong.
____________________________________________________________________

His name is Gladius. His entry into my life marked a turn for the worse. Words cannot describe how much I hate that man.

I am going to break every bone in his hands and f pull the shards out though his skin one by one.
I am going to cut his stomach open, break his spine and drown him in his own bloody bile.
I am going to rupture every one of his organs by beating them in with his own torn off arm.
I am going to feed him glass and slit his neck by strangling him with the shards still in his throat.

I am going to do it with a Goddamn smile on my face and a song in my heart.

And I am going to do the same to anyone who tries to stop me, and you better believe I'm a man of my word.

 

[reptil]

That ending rant got dark as hell what did gladius do to him. Ps can u describe his powers a bit. Is it gears, machine, metal. Can he form drills, or is he limits to simple machines like gears and pullies. Keep up the good work

 

[Chillingbear]

Oh shit, I approve! Looks like he is gearing up to be a tanky motha fucka

 

[Swordude]

That ending rant got dark as hell what did gladius do to him. Ps can u describe his powers a bit. Is it gears, machine, metal. Can he form drills, or is he limits to simple machines like gears and pullies. Keep up the good work

Click to shrink...

I think the usual reply to such stuff is that the only limits of a Devil Fruit are the user's ingenuity. That being said, Kensen has only a limited experience with his powers since he's trying to keep them on the down low. So mostly he's been experimenting with internal stuff only, this is reflected in his Jam, Straight, and Clutch being him turning his internals into gear or piston structures. To really learn his initial limits though, he's going to have to have to elbow room and freedom to explore it.

As for Gladius? Well, next chapter goes on a bit about him...

Oh shit, I approve! Looks like he is gearing up to be a tanky motha fucka

Click to shrink...

Yeah, it's too bad everyone he's met so far who's worth mentioning can brush him and his defenses aside. But, the dice I rolled for where he wound up have spoken.

 

[Trek]

You really like to make your mc constantly suffer for little to no reason huh. Not really my cup of tea, but let's see if things improve.

 

[Swordude]

You really like to make your mc constantly suffer for little to no reason huh. Not really my cup of tea, but let's see if things improve.

Click to shrink...

Imagine a mix between 'suffering builds character' and the fact that the starting location was randomly determined, considering that Ken got dropped in the freaking New World fresh off the metaphorical boat... Well, winning isn't going to come easy, so I wouldn't say 'no reason' as much as 'damn sorry about your luck, better make the best of it'.

 

[Swordude]

Curse of the Sea Experiments 1:

In an effort to do something productive with my time I'm recording here my ongoing list of experiments I've done between myself as a Devil Fruit User (Bah. I hate that name, it's so ungainly. I think the original work called them Espers? Or something. Anyway, that's shorter and easier to say so going forward that's what I'll use.) and the Curse of the Sea which for sake of doing this science thing properly I will reiterate as best I can here:

The Esper is rejected by the sea and is rendered helpless while submerged in it.

Or something to that tune.

Experiment 1: Is the Curse real?
Methodology: Find a shallow pool on the beach filled with sea water. Stick foot inside.
Results: I had to check and yup, It's real. The second I dipped a toe in the sea I felt an immediate sapping of my strength, while I could still move there was an immediate effect on me from the water.

Experiment 2: Can I maintain my power in the water?
Methodology: Attempt to run a piston from my arm while foot is in sea water puddle.
Results: Sort of, but mostly no. Once I put my foot in the puddle the piston stayed put and kept working, but I couldn't control it anymore it would just keep going in the direction I sent it to go when I submerged myself. If I need something simple I may be able to make something work, but anything that requires my active coordination is going to fail, potentially painfully.

Experiment 3: How much sea water is needed to trigger the stopping effect?
Methodology: Apply increasing amounts of seawater to myself until I get the power-sapping feeling
Results: I don't exactly have precision measurements here so here's a list of things I tried.

1. Handful: Inconclusive (Didn't think that one through…)
2. Large clamshell worth: No
3. Bucket: Yes
4. Beer bottle-ish size bottle: No
5. Whiskey bottle-ish size bottle: No if pour out, yes if splashed out of a broken bottle.
6. Boots filled with water: Yes (My fault for not marking high tide there.)
7. Washbasin: Yes, but duh.
8. Food can: No
9. Splashing Wave: Depends on size but usually yes.

In general it seems if there's enough liquid to qualify someone as 'soaked' it's enough to trigger the Curse.

Experiment 4: Does rain trigger the Curse?
Methodology: Get rained on.
Results: Admittedly this was an accidental test but I'll record it anyway. Surprisingly enough the answer here is No. At least until I got out of the rain, standing there in soaked clothing I felt the Curse but it was less than I would have expected. Maybe something about fresh versus salt?

Experiment 5: Does fresh water trigger the curse?
Methodology: Put foot into a freshwater puddle.
Results: Yep. This triggers, about the same as the salt water puddle, but I don't think it stopped my Devil Fruit. Maybe the weakness and the power loss are two different things?

Experiment 6: How much water is needed to sap my strength entirely?
Methodology: Sit in washbasin and slowly with freshwater, less than I could drown in though
Results: Again, no precise units, but once the basin was about half full (about 15 buckets or so.) I was unable to add any more water to the basin. It felt like I had just run a marathon but without the muscle fatigue. I could barely move and it took far more effort than I thought I would need to crawl out of the basin to recover. I guess I'm rigging up a shower or something because no way in hell am I going through the effort to heat enough water to bathe in only to drown in my efforts.

Experiment 7: Does drinking salt water trigger?
Methodology: Guess.
Results: Not…really. So initially when I drank a swig of salt water I felt a momentary wave of weakness but once I swallowed it it went away nearly instantly. So this isn't any sort of viable method to restrain, depower or imprison someone. Good to know I guess? Side note, there's no effect when drinking anything else that was drinkable on the island, coconut milk, freshwater, salt contaminated fresh water, pig blood, rum, grog, or mead.

Experiment 8: Loss of swimming skill?
Methodology: Create system of not-drowning. Use these to determine if it is the weakness or something else to the myth of 'being unable to swim' part of the Curse.
Results: I ended up rigging a few pig bladders filled with air. (I also learned with the right accessories I can effectively becomes an air compressor, so that was kinda neat.) and tried swimming in one of the larger springs. Long story short? The Curse takes the ability to swim from an Esper but not the knowledge on how. When I tried to swim with the bladders I could sort of doggy paddle but there was something in the Cursed weakness that made it so I couldn't coordinate my body to make the right motions. Or it could just be my specific Devil Fruit. The problems of a sample size of one.

On a side note this is sort of depressing for me, I liked swimming and I'd always been good at it. Growing up in the desert where I lived it was the best way to cool down, I had fond memories of my siblings and I at my grandfather's pool…

Experiment 9: Power Stop or Power Dispel?
Methodology: Activate a power, push power into the water.
Results: What I mean by 'power stop' was 'Do my powers stay but become unusable any further underwater?' and what I mean by 'power dispel' is 'Do my powers go away underwater?' The answer is Both, after a fashion. When I first sink an arm that is Jammed into the water I lose control of the ability to manipulate my gears, but that stay jammed together for a while, then eventually they… corrode is perhaps the best way to put it and eventually disintegrate leaving me with a weak, unlocked normal arm.

Experiment 10: Do other liquids trigger the Curse?
Methodology: Retrieve a bucket of the available liquids I have here, douse self. Observe.
Results: To wit, a list:

1. Rum (Don't worry it's not all gone, there's a decent amount here.): Nope. So I can swim in booze all I want.
2. Shitty watered down beer: Or apparently not. This triggered the Curse. Avoid Crappy establishments I guess.
3. Coconut milk: Sometimes? I tried it twice and got mixed results, it might be based on the tree I got the coconuts from at the time.
4. Pig's Blood: Creepily enough, no. I guess it means that if I get into a fight, Cursing myself on top of bleeding out isn't an option.
5. Piss: Who do I look like, Bear Grylls? If the crap beer did, my money is on this doing so as well.
6. Mud: Nope, not until it was mostly just dirty water.
7. Wet Sand: Also no.
8. Diluted Salt Water: At 1:1, 1:2, 1:3, and 1:4 of Salt-To-Fresh I got the full Saltwater Curse experience. Past that it was just the normal water experience.
9. Diluted Other liquids: I diluted some other alcohol to find the ratio. It's around 1:2 or 1:3 or alcohol to water before it starts sapping my strength at any noticeable level.

I'm tapped out of ideas I can actually try for now and really need to do a deep clean of the mess I've made with all this stuff on top of the other concerns at the moment, so I'll leave off for now.

____________________________________________________________________
An aside I had thought about while I was writing the next chapter. If anyone has any suggestions for other stuff Kensen could look into ask and I might add them to a future Log. I'll be trying to add bits of world building and a but more character history/exploration in these type of Log

 

[LokiTheDarkGod]

I wonder if SI can form a mech suit with the gears and machinery. Probably can't make a boat.

 

[Swordude]

Arc One: Wind

Chapter Five:

[Log V]
Time is T+Arena+?+27
Place is my increasingly homey cave.

It's interesting how much time passes with just day to day stuff. I built a water retention and filter thing out of some primitive concrete, dug an organized farm for some of the faster growing stuff and set up a elevated signal tower on one of the beaches. It's interesting how much stuff I remember from Scouting, I guess that Eagle rank didn't come easy for a reason.

Gotta admit, I got stupid lucky winding up here. After my disaster at sea I could have done anything from drown to wound up on a sandbar with nothing on it. Instead I wound up on a tropical island filled with resources (including booze!). If it weren't for the fact that I might be stranded here alone for a good long time I'd be enjoying myself a lot more.

Getting here though, was possibly the most difficult thing I've ever had to do in my life though, a voyage that I embarked on solely because staying was worse, even if it meant my death.

I suppose the lead up to that is the next part of my tale here.
____________________________________________________________________

Time is T+80 days.
Place is my cell

Gladius made good on his promise for training eventually, and as seems typical for a Shonen the training was of the 'from Hell' variety.

For example, I was woken this day by the door to my cell being blown in.

Blood pumping and heart pounding I had thrown myself out from the thin blanket and ended up in a heap at the foot of the bed before my brain even knew what was up.

"Hmm. I suppose your reaction time is not the worst thing about you, but your follow through is deplorable."

'What?' I was still shaking off the effects of my sleep and just looked in stupor at the source of the voice standing in the wreckage of the door.

"And you seem to have been struck dumb and stupid. Excellent." His dry tone made is sarcasm here quite clear. "Your training has begun and I will not abide a slacker. I have trained one pupil to a level I deem excellent and he began younger than you. If you cannot measure up you will be made to do so."

He made a small 'come along' gesture, spun on his heel and made to leave.

Between the adrenaline and my rural roots, any shred of grogginess I had was quickly displace and I rapidly made to follow, stopping only to grab my increasingly tattered jacket on the way out.

Once I had managed to catch up to Gladius I noticed we were heading in a direction I had yet to go. I wanted to ask what he had in mind but I wasn't sure (at the time, anyway) what kind of instructor he was; the kind looking to actually teach and have their student learn or the drill instructor just expecting orders to be obeyed. I figured I'd err of the side of not being disciplined for presuming to speak when not spoken to or something.

We walked for some time though the twists and turns of the depths of the arena, I tried to keep track of the exact path but quickly got lost after Gladius seemed to disappear and reappear again with an impatient look to him.

Eventually though he walked a path up a flight of stairs and out a door into a rough looking area.

It was a mostly barren field with rocks and crags strewn about it, there were small, weedy looking plants growing about the edges and pools of clear water of unknown depth, at the very edges were some actual trees, fir-ish looking ones that were white with seedlings. Ugly and utilitarian as the area was I couldn't help but marvel for a bit at it. It was the first time I had felt the wind on my face since I arrived here. I breathed it in, the scent of the flora, the faint sting of salt that told me we were close to an (the?) ocean. I marveled in it enjoying this first tiniest taste of freedom I had.

And because I'm not allowed to have nice things I was quickly send flailing end over end by something exploding at my feet.

"Your awareness is lacking; a small change of scenery and you disappear into yourself leaving your already lacking defenses wide open. This is one of the many many habits I will break you of in this training. Now pick yourself up and attempt to look presentable, I will be going over the rules for my training; you will abide by them all and do so gladly I am the one doing you a favor here and I do not care to repeat myself. It is… inefficient and wasteful." He stood at a sort-of attention while I pulled myself from the dust. "First, When you address me or anyone of my rank or above it is with the title 'Lord' and a name, anyone else who outranks you, which is everyone as of now is 'Sir'. Second, When I give you orders you will repeat them back to me fully and completely before you move to then fulfill them, there are only si-Five who have the ability to change my orders and I will make you aware of them another time--"


Blah Blah Blah. He lectured me for the better part of what felt like an hour. Gladius was a man who liked the sound of his own voice and liked things to be in a particular order, woe be unto you if you were found to be wanting. Long story short? His rules were to enforce a clear distinction of Lord-and-Lackey and guess which I was?

Yeah. His (simplified) rules were as follows:

1. Titles are always used, this was enforced religiously and even now it is taking a conscious effort to avoid writing him or anyone as Lord So-And-So. I'm getting better I guess.
2. Repeat orders then follow them. As humiliating as it is I actually understand the reasoning behind this one, it does breed clarity. It's just incredibly humiliating to have to sit there are repeat his orders back word-for-word like some stupid kid sent to the store for something, especially when it gets used to make you insult yourself.
3. Six men existed at all and only five left alive who outranked Lo Gladius: The chief cockalorum Donflamingo Donquixote and his elite lickspittles Trebol, a snot-nosed old fart, Diamante, a clown-faced cruel bastard, Pica, the sixteen-foot squeaker, and some guy I never saw called Vergo. Never learned the dead guy's name.
4. Orders were to completed in a timely manner. Timely meant within whatever arbitrary limit Gladius imposed. He often didn't tell me so I was constantly rushing to get stuff done, often at a break-neck pace because...
5. Failure to follow an order meant punishment and Breaking rules meant disciplining. The punishments were varied and sadistic, the disciplinary actions were cruel and unusual. I never received one without the other since Breaking a rule went against orders, going against orders was breaking a rule, it was an example of 'Kafkaesque' at its finest.

His first order was for me to repeat his rules. At the time I remember thinking that the rules seemed overly harsh but still in the realm of what I was expecting from a Training-From-Hell sequence so I grit my teeth and bore it. His next assignment was the first actual training task. Endure. Yeah, the stereotypical training type there, except he didn't just say it simply like that. How put it something like:

"Since it has been noted that you lack the mental capability to remove yourself from the path of danger, preferring to take your blows on the chin repeatedly we will begin with ensuring that you possess the ability to do so adequately. Now: You are not to move from the spot you are standing in unless pushed."

And then I made my first mistake as I took a sturdier stance. "Right"

I was then blown off my feet in a searing flash of fire. I could feel heat of the blast singeing my exposed skin and smelt the distinctive scent of burnt hair, it was only the fact that I landed in shallow pool of water (fresh instead of salt thankfully) that I only wound up covered in first degree burns.

"Do you possess no mind at all? Abide. By. The. Rules."

'Right. The rules. I can tell that this is going to be a reoccurring thing…' I thought dismally before speaking up. "Yes Lord Gladius. I am to remain without moving from this space unless pushed until such a time as you or a higher ranked lord tells me otherwise."

"I suppose it shows you can learn. Now for your punishment, I will be using higher bursts than I was initially planning and you will remain here under guard for six hours after today's training to prove you can master discipline." He readied his arm again and I braced a Jam. It wasn't going to be the last.
____________________________________________________________________

Time is ten hours later
Place is the exact same spot

The training went. Whether it went well or not was perhaps a matter of opinion. I was brain-dead exhausted. It had started fairly easily his blasts impacting the ground nearby and only hitting me with shockwaves and debris, but quickly moved up to blasts that felt like someone was hitting me with a sledgehammer each time. ~~Lor~~ Gladius wouldn't let me get complacent in my guarding too, each attack hit a different section of my body, each attack came at a different intensity, each attack came at a different time. I had no pattern I could fall into and was constantly forced to watch him and try to pick out a tell, a hint, of whatever he was going to do next.

It wouldn't have been so bad if he didn't insist on monologuing the whole time. He mostly settled on detailing the future training program and on insulting me, comparing me inferiorly to a whole litany of names, I knew only a few.

Setting aside the obvious ones here the only name I thought recognized was someone named Law. That's it, no first name given, just Law. He had been the previous protege of Gladius and then apparently went missing? I dunno Gladius didn't exactly give me a full story, I was only able to pick it up since he stopped talking about how Law did on a specific parts after a while.

As irritating as it was getting berated and compared to a child was the fact that a child was able to escape gave me a bit of hope.

The blast training went on for two solid hours. Two hours of me straining to keep my gears from slipping and keeping them from breaking. Two hours of pain. Two hours of picking myself and my metaphorical teeth back up whenever Gladius got bored and pumped the level of the explosion up. It finally ended though as I heard a bell off in the distance chiming four times. At that Gladius snapped to a sort of attention and gestured to me.

"Hmm. It seems our time is up for today." He blasted a circle into the rock perhaps a yard in diameter. "You are to remain in a horse stance in this circle as part of your disciplinary action. When the tower rings ten the guards will escort you back to you cell. I will retrieve you tomorrow for training at six. I had plans on giving you a small taste of free time but it seems your own lack of ability has denied that to you. Perhaps next time then."

He then gestured to a pair out of some of the ever-present guards but before he could say anything else I jumped in. "Yes Lord Gladius. I am to remain in a horse stance until the tower chimes ten and prepare for additional training tomorrow at six bells."

He was silent for a moment. "So you can learn. Good. The guards will watch you vigilantly. Do not disobey me." With that he walked back through the door and out of site.

This left me in an uncomfortable position for several hours as guards jeered and threw things at me. It sucked and I'm not inclined to elaborate much more on it.

In fact, the next few weeks sucked. Every day it was the same endurance training, but slightly altered. I was gaining an ability to endure that was worth noting because of all this though, that and a tolerance for pain that was building as quickly as my scar collection. Some days it was explosions, sometimes it was guards with clubs, once it was with glass flasks of acid (Oddly, Gladius wasn't there that day). I don't remember much of that day but I couldn't find a mark on me after I passed out and woke up in my bed again (I'm not sure what they were using to fix me but it was odd and inconsistent on what it fixed). Every day Gladius found some fault with my performance, attitude or results though that he assigned something to waste my time, all the while dangling the promise of some little freedoms in front of my face.

The lessons help though, as much as I hate to say it I got great handle of my Jam and finally began being able to use it where I needed it instead of needing to lock down my whole body and reset to Jam a seperate section. I also learned that while it did grant me a bullet-proof armor (at least for the small arms they used) it didn't do anything against fast, small, or piercing attacks like needles, glass shards or shrapnel but I was starting to get ideas about that as well...

Finally though, some weeks in we moved on to something new.
____________________________________________________________________

Time is T+133
Place is the training field

"I suppose I can consider you… proficient in your defenses now. You have neither perished nor become permanently injured so I suppose that will do for now as the bare minimum." He paced between pools over the flattened ground. Did someone maintain this area? I didn't see any craters stay between sessions now that I thought about it. "So today you will demonstrate your strength. Shortly a series of targets will be arriving, you are to avoid them and destroy them before the tower chimes two. I will return then to see your progress."

Then he fucked off in what seemed like a hurried manner as I stood there in confusion trying to parse his final sentence.

'What? Arriving targets I need to avoid and destroy?'

It dawned on me shortly when the sun seemed to go out. At my feet I saw a shadow growing rapidly and when I looked up it was just in time to see something approaching me at speed.

'HELLFIRES!'

After that I didn't have much time to think as pillars of rock thick as a telephone pole were rained down on me. They rained down at a rate of one every minute or so, each one hitting the ground with a crash and throwing up mighty clouds of dust and pebble spray. As I soon learned as I began smashing into the first one that landed fists covered in brass fixtures to protect them that each one was being deliberately aimed at me if I stood in a place for too long.

After twenty or so the pace slowed down as the field filled with pillars but I needed half a dozen blows to snap a pillar even when swinging with everything I had. A Straight could snap a pillar in two or three good blows but they needed time for me to torque them up. I even invented a full-body version of Clutch I called Crush in an attempt to hasten the destruction process and while I eventually managed to shear a pillar using ratchet-power I also had to endure three direct hits from whoever was aiming the pillars. Thankfully I had enough warning to Jam as tight as I could before each one.

Needless to say when the tower rung two I was beaten, exhausted, and buried under no fewer than six pillars with over a dozen others still standing tall in the training field.

As punishment I was forced to carry every broken piece of stone from the field to a nearby cliff and throw them into the sea. I also wasn't allow to break them any more than they already were.

I eventually managed to clear the broken stone chunks by levering them and rolling them away but I was sunk when it came to even the mostly-whole pillars that had hit me, let alone the whole pillars that were well over a ton in weight and wedged into the ground. I spent over four hours attempting to complete my task before I simply passed out, exhausted beyond rational thought by the efforts of the training and punishment.
____________________________________________________________________

Time is T+?
Place is one I still see in my nightmares.

I awoke to pain, both the slow throbbing kind that was your body's way of telling you that you overdid it and to there sharp lashes of burning pain across my chest.

"So. He. Awakens." I heard Gladius speak, his voice barely containing… something. I wasn't sure what it was, but it wasn't anger. The way he said those three words was confusing, like he couldn't decide how he wanted to feel. "I spend all my time and effort in an attempt to make you better. To train you into something worth speak of and you disappoint me over and over at it. It makes my heart bleed to see you disobey me so often you know? All that I ask for are the completion of a few simple tasks And. Yet. You. Disobey."

He punctuated his last four words with flashes of his short sword across my torso eliciting a scream from me before he turned away from where I could see him. I took the opportunity to look around.

I was gagged, stripped down and strapped down to a rack. The kind you see in a stereotypical medieval dungeon. I shouldn't be surprised the asshole arena has one but as cheesy as they often seem in media waking up chained down next to an honest-to-God iron maiden with suspicious stains glimmering dully in the torchlight is terrifying. The only people here that I could see were Gladius, myself and some nameless goon in a hood.

"I give and I give and I all I get back back from those I give to is disrespect and failure. You have failed me time and again with such regularity and consistency that one could almost find it amazing. Still, I am a generous soul, Eustace here will give you your punishment and then the scales will be balanced yet again and we may return to the world as it was." Gladius was monologuing pretty hardcore here, hinting that while he was looking forward to what was to come he also seemed like he wanted nothing more than to leave, so when he finished his little speech I wasn't surprised to see him make his way to the door. He did turn again at last minute before he shut the thick door behind him though. "Just remember this will hurt me more than it hurts you."

I had taken my eye off of the Hooded Guy --Eustace I suppose, and was too bewildered and in pain to think overmuch on my current situation but looking back I don't think it would have changed much. Eustace had moved to the wall and pulled a tool from it, It seemed familiar somehow but my exhausted and pained brain failed to make a connection. When he moved to a brazier and pushed the metal pole he took into of it, I felt some neurons fire. I'd seen those before, I'd grown up around them in-fact.

It was a cattle-brand.

I started to struggle, trying to get free but the chains were tight, as much as my pride hated it I even tried to plead but couldn't get anything out, I even tried to spin my gears but I felt weak, drained. I hadn't felt this way since the first fight I was in.

I was terrified, and I think even my my level best to hide the fact was showing. I tried to beat the fear, but I knew what was coming, reflected in the glaring eyes of the man in the hood as he drew the cherry hot brand from the fire. I could feel the tears stream down my face though and then my vision went white as he thrust the brand onto my chest.

Even though the gag I scream, I begged, I swore, I prayed. Anything to get the pain to end. Then finally after an eternity, it did. He withdrew the brand to the smell of cooked pork.

My long-empty stomach gurgled despite everything.

Then, through my tear-clogged vision I saw him reach for another brand.

"One down, few more to go." He chuckled and I don't think you could hate someone that much and not have them spontaneously combust.

My muffled screams went on for what could only have been hours as my torture continued.
____________________________________________________________________

Time is Unknown, maybe a day, maybe a few days, maybe a week further
Place is my cell

I awoke in back my cell in pain, a lot of it. My chest felt like someone had carved it out and replaced the missing chunks with needles and fire. Looking down I saw that someone had wrapped my chest in bandages that were soaked in a cool liquid.

Moving my torso, or even my arms hurt enough to cause me to go blind from pain so I mostly laid still until I fell into an uncomfortable and uneasy sleep.
____________________________________________________________________

Time is Unknown but a few days later
Place is my cell

I am healing, but still mostly bed-bound. I've needed to force myself up a few times though for the necessary biological needs each time going through a searing amount of pain that left me weak and my eyes blurry with tears of pain.

In addition to all that I found my sleep disturbed by nightmares. I guess it was my subconsciousness trying to get some relief, some control back over self somehow but It still hasn't stopped. I wasn't sleeping good, and spent most of my time lying awake thinking, plotting, focusing as hard as I could about the players here and how I could get out.

'One day I will get out of here. I'm going to take every lesson anyone can give me, I am going to gather every technique I can learn, steal or invent, then I am going to return here and level this Hell. I'm going to take these lessons and make them choke on them. Then maybe I'll be able to rest freely again.'

I think I went a little mad there in that cell. I wasn't interacting with anyone, not even the guards. I was in a great deal of pain. I was getting little sleep. There were days that I would swear on a stack of Bibles that I could feel the whole place plotting against me, from the guy in charge to the closest guards, it's a feeling I have trouble shaking sometimes even to this day.

Eventually though I healed. And it was the same day that I finally had my full range of motion back that Gladius appeared at my door again acting as though nothing had happened.

"I see you have made fine steps in recovering from your mistakes." He was the same as ever so I suppose it wasn't that long a time I was in convalescence, only now he seemed more sure, more straightforward if that makes any sense. "Tomorrow your training will continue. Be prepared for it."

It was out my mouth before I could consciously stop it. "Yes Lord Gladius, I will be ready for continued training tomorrow morning."
____________________________________________________________________
Time is T+152 onward
Place is the training field

If I had ever thought the training would let up after the branding I would have been wrong. But hey, Gladius had wanted to send a message and damn if I wasn't going to recieve it. He had wanted me to learn a lesson, but I don't think the lesson I learned was one he intended though.

As the pillars slammed down around me I felt my focus narrowing, my mind honing my anger and rage into an edge, my will channeled into the goal of getting stronger so that I could break this hell.

Every pillar I broke had a face superimposed on it.

Dellinger. Punch. Punch. Break.

Buffalo. Straight. Break.

Eustace. Kick. Break.

Gladius. Double Straight. Shatter.

Every time I got hit, I found it just didn't compare to the pain I had felt. I learned to disregard it.

Still. At the end of my days of training I was often found wanting, but by less and less. But it still meant denied meals, enforced beatings, lectures and psychological warfare.

I tried to that stuff out, to keep that focus that would set me free, to keep them from getting to me.
____________________________________________________________________

Time is T+2554
Place is my hell

I got up and made myself ready for continued training.

The day was fast approaching. I just had to hold on.

Just a little longer. Then, I'd be free.
____________________________________________________________________
Despite everything, I learned.

I refuse to detail my time in the arena further. It was humiliating to me, painful to remember, and good only for breeding hatred. One day I will go back and I will reduce it to rubble, put end to my tormentors and salt the earth beneath it. Maybe then I will finally be free from it.

But that day isn't today.

I have work to do. Kensen signing off.
____________________________________________________________________
So there, one of the last little surprises of the first arc. My apologies for yet more beating on an increasingly dying horse, if you would pardon a minor spoiler this is the second to last chapter in this arc and by a far the most sadistic. The expected wondrous adventures on the free seas should begin shortly.

 

[Chillingbear]

Ooo nice chapter, his strength is increasing nicely and seems to becoming just the right amount of insane soon

 

[Swordude]

Arc One: Wind

Chapter Six:

[Log VI]
Time is T+Arena+?+17 Days
Place is Home Cave on Fuckall island.

Yeah. I named it indicative of what's here. The island is currently in the midst of getting hit by a storm, a pretty small one, but there's a lot of wind and waves happening so I'm hanging out and writing by the light of the fire just lazing and relaxing to the sound of the weather. It's actually pretty peaceful.

I still haven't quite got used to the freedom yet now that I think about it. I still bolt out of bed when something makes noise out of the cave, I still find myself going through the motions of training even if it isn't enforced on pain of pain any more, but that last part is probably for the best considering the monsters out there. I wonder how I stack up now that I think of it…

Logically, having a Logia means I'm at the top of the pile when it comes to early on, but I don't have any sort of special martial art and certainly don't have any of the local flavor of universal super power. I got my ass handed to myself on all sorts of fancy platters, but I'd never seen anyone I fought before in the little bit of what I'd read in the series so they might be completely off the plot for all I know. Though I had thought I heard the name Donflamingo before as some sort of Anti-Pirate or something? It had a long name that started with 'Shi-'. Same group Crocodile was part of.

I dunno.

Anyway, power musings aside, there's a extra reason I'm making an entry tonight: A rowboat washed on shore last night, not that terribly rare an occurrence since Fuckall island gets a lot of driftwood and a lot of the stuff are former parts of ships, but notable in that it A; Was whole and B: contained someone(!).

The woman inside was dehydrated and sunburnt pretty badly, I don't know how long she was on that boat but is was long enough that she was insensible, mumbling some stuff about the numbers and days of the week. I pulled her out and am doing my best to keep her alive; getting some fresh water in her system and keeping out of the sun. She seems pretty weak for now but then again people always bounce back pretty quick in worlds like this don't they? I'm keeping an eye on her for now, both to monitor her condition and to prevent any knives from being planted in my back.

Not that I keep knives or anything else that could easily be re-purposed into weapons near her. I wasn't stupid. Still, I guess it's a good thing I don't really need to sleep anymore eh?

It does leave me with some time to kill in the late hours though. So I guess now's as good a time as any to pick up where I left off...
____________________________________________________________________

Time is T+2660
Place, the Southern Docks of Dressrosa

I'd 'made my bones' by now, I guess it wasn't that unusual considering the that I managed to not die and proved reasonably compliant. The biggest change in my life was that someone in the metaphorical upstairs decided that I needed to be a constructive member of society instead of some weird battle junkie living in a basement somewhere.

So I lost my old 'job' as a gladiator and was formerly assigned to a quartermaster to pick up work.

Ok, not going to lie. It's the consolation-est of consolation prizes for the shit I had to deal with but there's something really neat about being able to think of myself as an Ex-Gladiator. Sort of like being ex-military but with more oil and less comradery.

I still had to deal with the shitlords that made up the elite here but they never really tried to wreck me the same way they did before. I'm not sure if that was because someone gave some orders or because, Holy Hallelujah, was I a lot better now than I was before. Either way, It has got me some breathing room when it comes to fights.

When I spar now? I win almost universally against mooks, can pretty consistently win against the gimmick-type dudes and such, can occasionally eke out a win against people who know what they're doing and have been doing it for a while and regularly get trashed by everyone else.

Man... playing with a handicap blows when you need to keep paranoid about never revealing it.

One actual-no-seriously pleasant surprise I had was that most of the stuff I arrived with that got shredded over my gladiator career I was able to source, replace, or repair fairly easily. My hoodie became just a charcoal hide (Not cow though, I'm not sure what it was. It's vaguely reptilian though) with light brown-colored fluff lining the neck that I stuffed micro-chainmail inserts into because FUCK not having armor. My boots are the same leather but I scavenged the steel for the toes from my old pair and pounded some nails through the soles for traction and ass-kicking purposes. My old hat had given up the ghost but I was able to find a new ball cap that could get the ampersand sewed into it, apparently in black and brass but at this point I wasn't too picky. Surprisingly, my tin pants made it through everything with only needing minimal patching so the only total loss of my outfit were my shirts. I found a bunch that were comfortable but they were just plain colored...I miss graphic tees, weird as that may sound.

Other than that I'd grown back into being in my mid twenties again (which was weird). Which meant my hair started growing likes nuts again, one of the first things I did once I got free-ish was find a knife sharp enough to cut my hair to just a few inches long again and trim down my beard to only an inch or so. Arguments about whether I could pull off the lumberjack look or not aside, I really didn't want to give any of these chuckle-heads a handle on my face, if a shaggy-looking haircut was the cost then I was willing to pay that.

I'd managed to avoid though the grace of God any other major 'punishment' sessions that resulted in scarring , but still found myself drug into one or two when someone felt in needed. I'd learned how best to keep my head down for the most part.

I'd also picked up a ridiculous amount of toning, between the lean meals, training and 'training' sessions I'd bulked up about as far as my frame would let me go without some major diet and regime changes, leaving me still long but now not so lanky. If I was inclined to be vain I'd say Olympian, but probably just closer to Collegiate swimmer level.

Not that I'd be swimming any time soon or anything.

Vainglorious introspection aside, I'd been declared 'as adequate as I was going to get' by Gladius which apparently meant that I'd need to earn my keep now. Since most of my technical know-how is regarding regarding computers that don't exist here (I think? I seem to vaguely remember something about some cyborgs or something... ) and I think I would rather stick my arm in a wood-chipper than go back to the arena I was left with grunt labor; namely, a dock-hand.

It was pretty simple work, report in in the morning to a supervisor, get assigned some task like moving containers onto ships, running messages, moving containers off of ships, delivering packages, moving containers from one pile to another and then back again for no real, discernible reason….

Look, my job involved a lot of containers. And moving. It wasn't hard to figure out.

That being said some of my co-workers at the time didn't seem to get that. After the third time a different worker had to extract someone who had managed to box themselves in a warehouse in such a way that they couldn't leave (How.) my assigned supervisor started to just give me my orders and leave me to it so he could supervise the problem children.

Naturally I reacted accordingly to this measure of trust by abusing the ever-loving bejesus out of it. Just because I was free-er doesn't mean I was free.

See, I'd started to learn the island (Dressrosa apparently, not sure I'd mentioned it before.) and it's ins and outs. If I was inclined to take some punishment at the end of it I could slip off in the middle of a task and pursue some other goal before returning with the results of whatever I'd be assigned. As long as I didn't do it regularly or be gone for too long the worst I got was usually a whipping or beating I barely felt anymore. My body was here but my eyes were on the horizon and my heart was somewhere out on the waves.

Now that I think about it, Dressrosa is a really pretty island, lots of flowering plants, tall trees, pretty natural rocks, white sand beaches. It actually generally had a pleasant scent about it as well, something vaguely citrus-y and spicy.

I blew past all of that when I was first allowed out. The instant I could, I found a cliff that overlooked the sea and I felt something stir as I looked out over it. As I stood at that cliff I saw, for the first time, the ocean of One Piece. I saw the cresting of the waves as the wind danced across the surface. I could smell the salt in the breeze. I could hear, somewhere, that freedom beckoned if only I could reach out a take it.

So that's what I had been planning to do. Every delivery that I could get away with it I would open it to see if it was useful to me. Even the big crates were a cinch when your hands double both as ratchet jacks and mechanical presses. I stole food like hardtack and jerky; I stole empty barrels to fill with water, stolen flour, grog, rum, and even orange juice; I stole tar, canvas, cordage, wooden planks and beams; I stole or copied every map I could find; I even stole cash or valuables when the rare opportunity presented itself.

I'd stored all of it in my secret hideout: a grotto I'd found outside of the city, near the southern docks and just above the high tide line. I suspected it had been used in the past for smuggling or such-like but it hadn't looked like it was in recent use when I found it so I'd been keeping my stuff there. I'd set it all up so I could put my stuff on a sledge and move it if I really needed to go. But I'd long since gather enough supplies for what I calculated to be sufficient for me to be out at sea for months. Now I just needed a few key details.

Today, I'd found a real treasure. A special type of compass, called a 'Pose'. Since apparently this part of the world fucked with normal compasses you needed fancy ones and even then, as was my apparent luck, this particular area of the Grand Line fucked with the normal type of fancy compasses so you needed a super fancy Pose. Unless you had an exception like the one I had found. It was apparently a special type of pose called an 'Eternal Pose' which only pointed to one place, but always pointed there regardless of the general magnetic fuckery that is an apparent fact of life out here.

My only problem is that I have no earthly idea where this shiny doohickey points to, when I compare it to a normal compass it says North, but that methinks that doesn't mean much. But, it was a line out, my best one short of bribing some other ship to let me one, but the Wee Todds in charge here kept a pretty strict watch on the ins and outs of the docks.
So, now all I needed was a ship. It was something else that I'd been keeping my eye at and ear to the ground over, but taking a ship wasn't nearly as easy as skimming from a delivery. I'd seen plenty in my time here but there was always something wrong. One was too small to get anywhere, another would be the opposite: far too large for one man to operate. Another had enough crew to keep a constant watch. One in particular that stands out in my memory was one had an officer that reeked enough of power that even approaching them felt like holding a rattler by its' tail. I'd made a note of their three-skulled Jolly Roger to avoid in the future...

I needed a ship that was big enough to survive the seas if I needed to travel any real distance, but also small enough that I could take any remaining crew on it out before too much ruckus was raised over it. I'd long figured that no one who landed here with regularity was the kind to take a risk over setting off the goon squad who ran things here, I doubted I would be able to negotiate passage and I didn't favor my luck at playing stowaway much either.

I'd just need to keep watching. I'd waited this long at least.
____________________________________________________________________

Time is T+2674
Place, a warehouse on the Eastern Docks of Dressrosa

There was something in the air of late. A low ringing tenseness that was an ever-present undercurrent of late. No one else seemed to notice it, but some of the higher ups had started moving with an energy that they'd previously been lacking.

I didn't know what it meant, but I've started keeping my head down a bit more, after getting caught out 'after curfew' my 're-training' was harsh enough for me to feel it again. I'd rather not repeat that.

I had everything I needed bar the final piece, I could afford to be patient.
____________________________________________________________________

Time is T+2686
Place, my cell, recovering from a 'spar'

I'd caught Gladius watching me again. It's been happening more and more lately. I'm not sure why though. I don't think I've been found out since I haven't had to go back to Eustace's tender care but I'm not a fan of being under his eye again.

I'm not sure what is going on around here to merit this change, but my gut and the way the words in the wind are blowing are telling me something is up and I need to get out before it's too late.

____________________________________________________________________

Time is T+2692
Place, the Streets of Dressrosa
I was intending to spend the day indoors today, the weather was making noises about coming to a storm and the storms on this island were pretty nuts. I was hoping to spend the day back in the library going over some of the sea charts again and making notes. Instead I got word from a guard to report to Lord Gla The Asshole again.

I didn't get any word on what he wanted though, only that I was to meet him in his office. Needless to say my nerves were a little on the wracked side when I showed up. I knocked once at his door and waited for his acknowledgement before entering (To do so otherwise got me lashes, how many depended on his mood when I caught him but at least twenty-five and sometimes as many as forty.)

He seemed to be doing some paperwork at his orderly desk, the pen scraping across the paper in a manner reminiscent of a whetstone on a knife before he folded the paper up into an envelope and looked up to where I was standing at attention.

"Ah, my student. I have heard few complaints of your work as of late, it is good to see that the lessons I have spent so much of my valuable time imparting have finally struck home with you. But! Before you grow too large a head from this praise you should know that I have been hearing of your laziness and propensity to...dawdle in your labors." He spoke with an anticipation, like he could barely contain himself and wanted to finish up here so he could get to it as soon as he could. "That ends now. As a student of my esteemed self I cannot allow you go into the world presenting my teachings with such… lackluster results. No. From now onward if I hear of your failings again I will be forced to take measures that you will no doubt find familiar."

At the end of his little speech he was looking at my chest, where the burn scar peeked just past the fabric of my shirt.

"Nonetheless, I have a job for you to complete to aid in your now ongoing crusade against your many inadequacies." Great. Now he's pontificating. "My lord has asked me to oversee a particular endeavor of his on a island nearby, which one exactly does not matter to you, and require a ship prepared for my departure that is outfit to my standards. Standards you should know very well by the way. Take this note to the central Quartermaster it contains a list of instructions for today's actions. He will instruct you you duties further."

He handed me the note as he stood up and walked past me before gesturing me out of his room and closing the door behind me with nary a further word.

____________________________________________________________________

Same Day
Dressrosa City Square


I ended up taking the long way out of the coliseum bowels, just trying to get my bearings back, dealing with Gladius was troubling at the best of times, but there was something overly sinister about him in our last little discussion. I usually got the willies about him but now my gut was screaming at me and my hair was all on end, I couldn't shake a feeling of paranoia.

Treacheries against me (real or imagined) though were not a good enough excuse for me to avoid a direct order for too much longer, so I eventually made my way to one of the harbor offices that the higher-ups from the docks tended to gather.

Thankfully I'd put enough of my time into working here that I got to talk to who I needed to with minimal jerking around and only needing to name drop Gladius once to a particular obstinate secretary. The quartermaster was a pirate-y type person who looked like they'd gone to seed: Bandana, screwed up teeth, bad breath etc. but he seemed to know what he was doing and he took the letter without question and started copying some section down on a piece of scrap as he read it while I stood with my back to the wall trying to calm my paranoia in the silence. Finally he finished the letter and tossed it into a nearby brazier before looking at me.

"Got a mort 'o goods what need gathering before they get's loaded. Go inspect the ship, an' finish these off and be back 'ere in two hours time." This was a man who spoke at you the way he felt about you apparently, and for some reason he really didn't seem to like me, his formed his words like blows and launched them at me as hard as he could. Sad part was I had no clue what the hell I'd done to piss him off. "You'll get what you need then." What's coming to ya​

Shaking my head to clear it of overly twitchy thoughts I took the offered list and once again headed out on errands.

It didn't take me too long to find the right portage, the ship was clean and obviously new, as I stepped on-board I could even smell that the varnish they used was still mostly fresh. Pulling out the list I was disappointed to see that while several of the tasks were involved in getting a ship ready to sail the rest were a bunch of pointless bullshit, stuff like 'Pump the internal reservoirs to exactly 43.56 liters', 'Polish the brass doorknobs', and my personal favorite: 'Ensure all handles of the steering wheel are equivalent in length'.

Momentarily disregarding the list of make-work I cast an eye about the ship. While I was no trained shipwright I'd devoted a fair chunk of my time while I was here to studying everything I could that might help me get the Hell out of there. As such I could tell you all sorts of useless facts about this boat or ships in general, but really only a few mattered. It was a type called a 'packet boat', hardy ships meant to transport passengers especially and goods generally over rough seas. This one had four gun ports but no cannons, in general packet ships were around hundred and fifty to a hundred and seventy feet, meaning they were actually big enough to travel fairly well in all weathers and sea types. The reason I even know about them is because packet ships happen to have one particular trait I've been searching after for a long while now: They just so happened to be around the max size one person could pilot by themselves.
I felt my fingers go numb and my breath go short as I took this information in. As the my observations shot though my brain it all spoke to a singular idea: This was my chance. The ship was unmanned and unlikely to be manned until the weather calmed down, I had more or less full access to it for now without suspicion and no one outside this island could even recognize it since it was a brand new ship.

I was on the clock though, I had two hours at best to get this whole ship ready to depart, two hours to load it with my ill-gotten justifiably commandeered goods and get the hell out before anyone thought to stop me.
Uttering a quick prayer of thanks for the miracle that this surely was, I took off down the docks feeling like my feet were barely hitting the ground amid the general grumblings of the mostly indifferent workers.
____________________________________________________________________

Same Day, a little bit later again
Southside Docks

Shifting the rope net that held the cargo camouflaged I thanked my past self again that I had the foresight to store things in order of priority rather than by similarity. If things went to shit now I'd only be out gunpowder, leisure goods, and some 'treasure' rather than be short on something important like water or nails.

My time was running short though and I needed to report back, I wouldn't be able to drag all of this onto the ship before the two hours I'd been given were out. My plan was to stash this sledge in one of the lesser used warehouses and come back for it the instant I was free. As I walked out of the storage area though my every instinct I had flared to life as I heard a voice come in from the entrance.

"He went in here. We should have him cornered now boyos!" I didn't recognize the voice, but I recognized the intent of his words. This was a trap, an ambush, set for me specifically. I don't know how they knew, or how exactly I knew they knew, but the instant the lead thug spoke I knew beyond a shadow of doubt that the game was up.

'Well. I guess it's time then.' I felt a load come off my shoulders, even as I knew that there was trouble ahead I knew now that one way or another, the time for subterfuge was over.

Maybe I could have hidden, taken them out one-by-one Batman style, but I wasn't certain about my stealth abilities, besides they already knew I was here and if they were smart they'd have told someone where they were looking.

Besides I have Seven. Goddamn. Years. Of rage to pour out.

I blitzed them, tearing out from behind a stack of crates and launch a right hook in the face of the first guy I saw twisting my whole body behind the force of the punch. I heard a crack and my target dropped like a load of bricks. Then I did it again, trying to maintain my momentum and milking as much as I could get from my ambush.

I wish I could say that I called out something witty or clever but mostly it was "RAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!" and variants thereof.

There were actually more guys than could actually fit though the double doors of the warehouse, something like thirty or forty even. Some freaked out when I jumped from the shadows and backed off, but the sheer number of them meant that there was not really place to run away to so mostly they ended up counter charging me.

I didn't really have much time for complicated strategy, I just knew I needed to get out of the warehouse and the fastest way for me to accomplish that was through. I plowed into the mass as I could occasionally grabbing someone and tossing them out of the way behind me if I couldn't launch them back. I liberally used Straights to literally punch though foes and hitting the guy behind them. The bottleneck actually proved useful for me in the manner of Horatius at the bridge where only a few of them could actually engage with me at a time, but it also meant that I wasn't making any headway as moaning bodies started clogging the way even further.

Then someone threw a firebomb into the building and shit got real.

It flew over my head as I knelt, finishing off one of the mooks who thought grabbing my leg to slow me down was a good idea with a few blows to the skull. By the time I stood back up to deal with another mook the bomb can landed on a shelf behind me and had lit the whole thing up.

"Just a little longer!" One of the thugs in the back yelled and I got a sudden chill as I processed that.

Reinforcements were on the way, and they probably weren't going to be more bog standard thugs either. I needed to leave. Now.

Throwing one of the bodies at my feet towards the door I ducked back into the warehouse, hoping to grab few seconds of peace between the shadows of the shelves and the flickers of the growing conflagration when I heard him.

"Now now Kensen. Do not think you can simply leave so soon after I have spent such time arranging this little get together for you." Gladius. Hellfires! "After all, you have been such a busy little bee, or perhaps i should call you a magpie? One always stealing from their betters and leaving them short perhaps?"

As he walked in his men parted around him and began pulling back, out of the doors and away from what was probably about to be a bit of a war zone.

"Imagine how distraught I was when one of my men assigned to watch you reported back that you were to callously biting the hand that so lovingly cared for you-" I had about enough of his condescending shit by this point we were both itching for resolution between us and we both knew it, There wasn't going to an end to this any other way. Still I guess I got cocky; I should have known someone would keep an eye one me.

"Are you being sarcastic or do you actually believe the utterly insane drivel pouring from your mouth?" I interrupted him. After seven years damn that felt good.

He stopped. "I suppose you still have much to learn. Nevertheless I am a gracious teacher, once I have pacified you here we will start from the beginning again, only this time perhaps with reminder of your actions today. You really don't need both eyes, or both kidneys for that matter…"

It was time to try out a suspicion of mine. "And I take it you will be personally responsible tearing my eyes from their sockets? For shoving your hand into my side and digging out my kidneys with sheer brute strength?" His voice was sadistic and due to the light situation of the area it was hard to tell but was Gladius turning… green? Time to push for it. "Or perhaps you will cut my tongue out 'to make you cease your prattle' and let me choke on my blood and bile over and again before finally cutting into my throat letting me brea-"

"CEASE YOUR PRATTLE!" He roared one hand shakily covering his mouth and the skin I could see definitely taking on a greenish tinge.

Is was then that I seized the moment, I had taken the opportunity during our little back and forth to start coiling a spring in each of my legs and the instant his guard dropped to cover for his nausea I released the tension rocketing me forward!

As his guard was way off due to his weak stomach with regards to injuries and body horror (Which is still weird no matter how I think of it. A sadist with no stomach for torture or pain? Only in One Piece I guess…) he didn't have enough time to fix it fully and my Bolt landed square in his stomach and launched him into the far side of the warehouse.

I knew though that Gladius was damn tough. I had to watch before as he put down an entire crew of over three hundred pirates by himself only tapping into his powers on rare occasions. My little love tap there was only going to keep him away for a short time, so I did my best to get away in his absence.

The only hole in my spur-of-the-moment plan was the fact that there were an assload of dudes sitting in the entrance blocking it. I tried to get through them, but I hadn't exactly had free reign to experiment and develop a decent area-of-effect ability. I ended up trying to just leap past most of them by cranking a Straight into my legs but there wasn't really anywhere I could go, I hit the side of the warehouse and landed in the dead center of the mob.

Thankfully(?) before they could try to just drag me down into a dog-pile there was a tremendous bang from behind us. Instinctively I curled up and Jammed before the impact hit and blew away most of the random mooks. I would have taken advantage of the cleared door way to try and get out again but this plan was hampered by the vise grip around my neck.

Before I could even unwind my defensive maneuver a rather pissed looking forced me to the ground, effortless shifting from a choke-slam grip to a rear-naked hold that had me face into the floor and him laying on my back keeping me there.

"You have made quite a number of mistakes here this evening Kensen. The greatest of which was thinking you were strong enough to even think of coming up the victor when faced against me. However this is my failing as a teacher, I will endeavor to work into your very bones the lessons of obedience and discipline, though perhaps some of those bones may be broken; after all, you will require punishment for your failures." came the crowing speech from above as he tightened his grip on my limbs.

This was his mistake. Not go to on too far a tangent in the middle of a fight here, but have you ever seen those industrial signs? You know the ones. They usually have a graphic on them demonstrating where NOT to put your hands? As I activated my Fruit Power I'm willing to bet that Gladius hadn't learned not to stick his hand in the gears.

"REV!" My cry may have been muted by the floor, but the effects certainly weren't. As my body turned into a shredder I felt fist a tugging as Gladius clothing sucked him closer followed by a tearing and the feeling of a liquid seeping into my gears; finally there was a disturbing crunch and Gladius made a noise of pain was was at some level pure catharsis to me. Unfortunately before I could inflict any further damage on him, he blasted himself off of me and tumbled across the ground a few times, coming up to his feet in an initially unsteady stance.

"What? You… DEVIL FRUIT!" He called his voice as shaky as his legs. "Where? How?"

As I stalled my gears spinning and climbed to my feet I saw that, as visceral as it had felt, the damage I had dealt wasn't as serious as I had hoped: I had shredded his clothing, tore into his skin everywhere we had been in contact and hurt his right hand enough that it was sporting all sorts of odd angled fingers and he was forced to cradle it to avoid further pain. He was rapidly steadying though and I saw that his exposed skin was the color of dark steel, metallic and reflective in the light of the growing fire.

Once I saw that Gladius wasn't out of the fight just yet though I dived behind on the stacks of crates. 'Rule one: Always be a moving target.' Considering the blast that hit behind me, my maneuver was taken none too soon.

"Fine!" I heard him call. "So you have acquired a bit of undeserved power. It will not let you win. Not against us. Not against ME! Burst Devil. Burst Devil! BURST DEVIL!"

I don't know what that move did, I didn't see Gladius perform it, but it disintegrated my cover, leaving me standing exposed among a heap of burning wreckage. My opponent might be hurt, but he wasn't going to fall for my shredding trick again or anything else that involved him getting close either. Gladius was many things but as much as I hate to admit it, stupid wasn't one of them. I needed a way to end the fight before he brought the building down on both of us.

The ground shook as I Dived behind another pillar of storage for cover. I felt the the building shake as Gladius started carpet bombing the area I was in. I was there for a just a second trying to get my breath back.
'Great. I'm trapped in a burning building with a explosive lunatic.' I was desperately trying to find something that would even the odds and finding only an increasing amount of embers and shrapnel. My sole advantage now was that Gladius and his bursts had thrown up enough dust and smoke that visibility was getting low inside, but I could hear that he had moved next to the door, so I couldn't just sneak out. 'I could realllllly use an out right abo--'

"BURST DEVIL!"

Stowing my thoughts for a moment I took another clockwork powered leap from one piece of cover to another, thing time landing beside a set of familiar-looking barrels.

'...and I'm back to the reason I'm trapped in this situation.' It was my last supply sledge, apparently it had survived but I immediately began looking for a new place to hide, I knew what was in these containers: One was a barrel of flour that I couldn't fit on the earlier sledge because of its' size and the... rest... were…

I had a new plan.

Acting as quickly as I could I pulled the storage netting I had woven and shoved all the small barrels inside of it before tying it closed and forming a tightly wrapped bundle. While I knew I was in a really precarious situation I didn't really feel nervous: Either I would get this right or it really wouldn't be my problem anymore.

Next, I began going full Donkey Kong as I grabbed the now-separated barrel of flour and started ratcheting tension into my spine. As I bent back nearly double I hoisted the barrel into my arms I released the tension and flung the barrel towards where I could hear Gladius calling his attacks. Reason number Umpteen not to do it I guess.

I know I do it too. Shut up.

As expected though Gladius saw it coming at the apex of the arc of the throw and blew the thing to sawdust. One little problem now though: Its' contents.

Quick science lesson Hypothetical Reader: What happens when your exposed flame meets a fine aerosolized powder such as… oh, I don't know...flour?

Yeah, and It only got worse for that area when I launched the bundle of barrels afterward and threw myself into the safety position Jammed the instant they went airborne. Gladius didn't manage to shoot my second load down though, probably because he had a sudden onset of "Oh-God-Why-Is-Everything-On-Fire"-syndrome which was only about to get worse.

Remember how I said the rest of the sledge was luxury goods and gunpowder? Yeah, when I said luxury goods I mostly meant fancy (read: High Proof) alcohol.

There was a shattering of glass then another great 'Wumph' of flame and a sudden cut off of additional explosives. On one hand Gladius either legged it or bought it (My guess is on the former) but on the other the sole entrance to the building was on and I repeat all the fire.

'...And the gunpowder yet to go off.' I had thought, taunting Murphy much a little harder than I ever thought I would.

Following the subsequent loss and eventual recovery of my immediate hearing I picked myself up from where I had been rolled to look around.

There was no sign of Gladius, and also no sign of the wall the entrance had been on but very much sign of his men.

'...' I was a little speechless, even in my own head, the results were… definitive. I didn't have a lot of time, and I needed to take advantage of the window I had created, but I also didn't feel right leaving behind bodies I had made without saying anything.

'We may have been enemies, but I'm glad it was quick. May you find yourselves at peace and rest, wherever that may be.'

Prayer finished I began my mad dash for my sole chance off the island.
____________________________________________________________________

Same Day, minutes later
On my Stolen commandeered ship

As I cut away the last of the ropes tying my ship to the dock I cast an eye back over it, making sure that I wasn't followed and…

Wow. That's a lot of fire.

Ok. So the Southside docks had bigger problems than one ship leaving, good to know.

Once the final line fell into the harbor I could already feel the ship bobbing freely in the breeze, I needed to move sharply to make it out before the tides turned against me.

I couldn't help but flashing a grin as I looked out onto the ocean. I'd done it, I was finally, blessedly free! My hand unconsciously turning the ship's wheel in the direction of anywhere but here I felt a laugh bubbling up, something I hadn't experienced in years.

"BWAHAHAHAHA! Fuck you, you rot-cock bastard! I made it!" I called to the blue skies, feeling more joyous than I could ever recall as the adrenaline of my escape faded, as the pressure that had built up on my shoulders over the years dropped and I felt light as the breeze and free as the wind. "Unbent! Unbowed! Unbroken!"

Where I was going, I had no clue. The ship has supplies enough for some time stored for some two or three dozen crew. I had no Idea what I was doing, but even drowning at sea in freedom was better that living one more day on the Godforsaken island.

I was free, and NO-ONE was going to take that away from me.

____________________________________________________________________

Time is Arena + 7?
Place? Why the Freedom of the Seas of course!

It was about half an hour after my euphoric fit that I got to experience my first storm at sea since I am, apparently not allowed to have nice things.

The storm lasted a full week and being the sole crew member of the good ship Whats-er-name I was forced by my complete jerk of a captain to do everything. The ship was caught in it the whole time too, nothing in my admittedly-meager navigation skill set was able to get it out. This meant I was often faced with giant waves that would threaten to engulf the ship, sometimes they would even lift the boat and fling it a distance that felt like miles away, forcing me to Clutch at something as the boat would hang in the air for sometimes up to a minute though tornadoes or other windstorms.

There was lightning, St. Elmo's fire, or even just regular fire raining down on top of the torrents of water, giant hailstones and straight-up clouds of ash. At one point it felt like the ship was in complete free-fall and I couldn't even tell when it entered it or left it. I can't say for certain because once I registered the feeling of falling my courage failed me and I lashed myself to several empty barrels and held tight until the feeling of a normal storm returned. I ended up keeping some supplies on me at all times after than and always had my jury-rigged PFDs on no matter how awkward it made things sometimes.

I also got sea sick. A lot.

It was bad, but it wasn't the worst I had encountered so far. I had secured the wheel and set the sail with the wind so that I was at least going in the vague direction of the Eternal Pose I had but the weather was all-consuming. I was no navigator but away was a pretty clear direction to find. I spent most of the time bailing water out and patching cracks and holes in the boat, when I wasn't doing those I would tie myself down and take fitful catnaps, cram a ship biscuit and hardtack down my throat and pray fervently. I was close to freedom.

It was near the end of what I roughly guessed was a week that my luck ran out. The ship cracked itself to splinters on some spit of rock that was tossed up from the sea below and flung me over the railing and into the ocean. I'd never really stopped praying as the storm went of but the last thing I remember before an impact that led my head directly into a wooden beam crashing about storm was 'If this is it, no one can say I went quietly…'

Then everything went dark.
____________________________________________________________________



Arc One: Wind, Fin.


____________________________________________________________________
And that's the first arc done. This one was a chapter that just. Wouldn't. End.
Hopefully it flows well enough though, it took longer than I wanted though because of something... else I was working on. I don't plan on doing 'interludes' as it were (other points of view are going to be regular, planned parts of the story along side the first person journal entries) but it'll be something hopefully interesting.

As before, tear it apart but keep it relevant.

 

[Chillingbear]

Hmmmmm I didn't expect that, i thought the MC would be on the island until luffy came and he would help with the uprising.

I do like the direction this is going. I really look forward to the next chapter .

Also have you considered posting this on fanfiction(the website)? I imagine you would get a really positive response there !