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XXX
“So, what kind of capture-targets are we aiming for, dood?” The prinny asked once it was finished playing around with their new sci-fi force-fields.
“We aren't.” She responded bluntly. “I sold the Stamp.”
“You-...” The prinny stared slack-jawed at her. “You sold the Stamp, dood?! That's how we're supposed to make more credits, dood!”
“To do what with?” She tilted her head at them. “We have powers and a new life, in a world dangerous enough that even trying to live peacefully would classify as 'entertaining'.”
The prinny continued to stare at her for a long moment. “Are you saying you don't want a harem of sexy women throwing themselves at your feet, dood?”
She made a face at the suggestion. “I don't condone slavery. I don't need some divinity telling me that I'm correct in order to dislike what I dislike.”
“But-... But what about my feelings, dood?!” The prinny objected. “What if I wanted to have beautiful women throwing themselves at my feet, dood?! Think about me, dood!”
She huffed. “You've already got a beautiful woman right in front of you.”
The prinny paused to look her up and down, then scoffed dismissively. “I don't care how you dress, dood. It's not like you've got anything to show, dood.”
She blinked. She glanced down at her flat chest.
There was a long and silent pause, with absolutely no violence involved whatsoever.
Then she took a calm and tranquil breath and went and pulled the prinny's head out of the tree that it'd been spontaneously embedded in through some kind of random and inexplicable event.
“You shouldn't comment on the size of a lady's chest. It's rude.”
“That's bullshit, dood! I've got force-fields! Why can you just kick me through a tree, dood?!”
“Angelic light-magic is super-effective against Devils.” Also, he'd been looking at her chest too much to see the foot coming for his head.
Not that she'd kicked the prinny through a tree for commenting on her chest-size. That'd be crazy. She wasn't at all a violent person.
XXX
Dying and waking up in an office, where some clerk gave her a brochure that was a job-offer? Not exactly what she'd been expecting from the afterlife.
Realizing that the job-offer was to track down and 'capture' people across the multiverse, including gods, enslaving them to be entirely and happily subservient to herself. And to then sell those people onwards for more skills, more power, and access to new worlds?
It was immediately obvious that there wasn't really anything she could do about the Company as a whole. If they were powerful enough to sell gods like trading-cards, she wouldn't be able to stop them even if she gathered the gods of hundreds of worlds under her own banner.
In light of that, it made sense that a lot of contractors fell completely to debauchery, in the same way that most authoritarian-raised teenagers went crazy when they finally escaped from the grasp of their parents.
'Because I said so' is after all only a valid reason for a rule until that person stops having power over you. And considering how many humans tended to have morals based around things that their religions told them, or just knew that society as a whole would find unacceptable?
It made sense that a lot of people, when offered the opportunity and the excuse to do whatever they wanted, started doing horrible things. 'When in Rome' and all that.
Not all contractors were like that, and some would immediately retreat to some peaceful world and live out their lives like that. But that also meant that anyone they left behind after they died from old age? They'd be 'reclaimed' by the Company. And since apparently one of the ways to capture people was to make them say the words 'I love you' and mean it?
She was guessing that the reason most were allowed this way of deliberately failing in their 'duties' as a contractor was the Company's sadistic thrill of watching all of that contractor's loved ones realize that they'd been unknowingly sold into slavery by the person they loved. Classy.
That said, considering that 'entertainment-value' was the most important thing in the eyes of the Company? Someone locking themselves in an apartment for the rest of their lives would likely just end with the Company sending in a second contractor to 'teach them a lesson'.
So, what kind of world could she go to where entertainment was always around the next corner, even if she never captured anyone?
The answer had been obvious from the get-go, but that left her with the realization of trying to actually find some way to survive the dangers of One Piece. A world with a gravity that would crush any human from her own world like an egg hitting the pavement, and filled with people who could literally punch lightning-bolts in the face.
A simple power-swap would cover that, but it would also be incredibly expensive, and she'd also need some way to move around from island to island, and-...
And in the end, she'd decided to set herself up for growth instead of trying to put all her points into something that would let her swim across the planet under her own strength.
But perhaps the Company had expected her plan, because they were very stingy with the amount of points available to her.
The solution was a prinny. An incredibly cheap purchase that would let her access the Item-World and the infinite level-grind that was Disgaea's leveling-system, provided that she had an 'enclosed vehicle' to access it through. But with how those vehicles were prized, it was honestly cheaper to buy a 'Template-stack' that gave that prinny the reduced-to tier-four abilities of a 'ship-girl'.
Considering that she'd never actually watched most of those ship-girl series', she'd picked the only one she knew for a fact came with the ship. As in, a ship that she could ride inside of as a captain.
The fact that it had sci-fi force-fields and hover-abilities and was a submarine, and could shoot super-missiles, and-... Honestly, cool, but not the main reason it was picked. It wasn't like the prinny would have access to those things for a long time, after all.
Having said that, she'd now given a prinny the ability to do a lot of unholy destruction, whilst at the same time refusing to take the ability to make them perfectly obedient. Meaning that she'd needed a lot of personal fire-power in order to make sure that the prinny didn't descend into doing exactly the kind of horrible things a contractor could be expected to do on an unsuspecting world.
Prinnies were 'supposed' to be treated miserably, because their existence was basically a form of purgatory for their sins. That didn't mean that they'd be happy about it, but it meant that she didn't need to feel overly guilty about having one as a 'slave', provided that she actually paid them. With money.
Having spent some time thinking about it, she'd finally settled on giving herself the cheapest version of the angel-abilities of that boob-anime with the devils. Angelic light-magic that destroyed devils would probably not be very effective in One Piece – despite the name of the 'Devil Fruits' – but it should hopefully give her a head-start on defeating demons in the Item-World.
Her own Template-stack was harder to pick, but she finally decided on the darkness-magic of a girl who loved to level-grind. The personality wouldn't bleed over, but the skills of 'being good at leveling' would probably come in handy.
As for her appearance-...
Well, if you finally have the opportunity to look however you'd like, and the understanding that you're immortal enough to be frozen in time unless you change it right now, could you really blame her for finally becoming a cute girl?
... She honestly hadn't expected the chest-comment to sting.
XXX
“So we just... cruise around, dood?”
“Pretty much. There's plenty of food in the sea, and you should be able to make drinkable water from the salt-water too.” She looked around the submarine curiously. “We don't have anywhere to be, and plenty of time to dive into the Item-World.”
“With what item, dood?”
“I picked up a pebble on the way down here. That should do, right?” She proudly held up the pebble.
The prinny stared at the pebble for a long moment, then stared at her. “We're going to die, dood.”
Pessimistic little shit.
XXX
“See? It worked out fine!”
“I can't feel my legs, dood!”
“You never had any legs to begin with!”
XXX
“It's easy, you just cut out the bone and skin, and then stick it in the fire until it's brown!”
The prinny stared at the massive carcass. “Whatever you say, dood.”
XXX
“This is charcoal, dood.”
“It. Tastes. Fine.” She ground out through gritted teeth.
“The insides are still raw, dood.”
“Sushi is supposed to be raw!”
“You're not supposed to make sushi over an open fire, dood!”
“Shut up!”
XXX
The first record that the Marines had of the young girl and her penguin, was when they were spotted bailing on the bill of a restaurant.
They were arguing the entire way back to their ship, even when they casually avoided or knocked down the people trying to stop them. The ship itself was... a strange thing.
It was made from metal, and wholly enclosed, with no sail at all. It was also far too large to be crewed by only two people.
At least, this was the assumption until they spotted several identical penguins untie the ship's moorings. After that, it became obvious that the penguin had some kind of duplication-Fruit. Which explained a few things, and not much else.
The girl looked prepubescent, probably not older than twelve, and had black wings and white hair. The penguin was bright blue, had a bag around its waist, and had peg-legs, combined with some tiny decorative bat-wings growing out of its back.
Quite bluntly, together with their ship – which had no flag – they were very visually distinct, so there should've been no issues whatsoever in finding them again.
Which was why the long time until they were next spotted was so strange. They hadn't had time to stock up on supplies, and the nearest harbor shouldn't have taken them more than a day-or-so to reach. Provided that the strange ship could move at the speed it'd left the harbor with.
Instead, they only showed up a month later.
On the grand-line of all places.
XXX
“Do you... know where we're going, dood?”
“Towards adventure! Full speed ahead!”
“There's a rock-cliff ahead of us, dood.”
“Then go around it! And then full speed ahead!”
“The scanner says that it looks like some kind of reef, dood-...”
“Pick a direction and step on it!”
XXX
“Huh. That explains all of the sea-kings. We must've gone through the calm belt.”
“My hull, dood! My beautiful hull, dood!”
“You should've thought about that before running straight into a cliff!”
“It wasn't a cliff, dood! It was moving around, dood! I had to use a force-field and torpedoes to blast us free, dood! We were being eaten, dood!”
“The important thing is that we're safe for forever, now.”
“We're taking in water, dood!”
“Safe for forever.”
XXX
Thankfully, the grand-line conveniently divided itself up into 'routes'. And outside of eternal-poses, nobody was really able to switch routes. So they at least knew where the duo would show up next.
They obviously weren't a priority, because even if they'd resisted arrest? It was an attempted arrest over bailing on a restaurant-bill in one of the Seas. As far as criminal activity went, they were about as close to nonexistent as it could get.
However, their ship was a unique oddity, and the command had been wanting to get their hands on it. So they were being tracked.
Except, of course, then the enigmatic ship showed up on another route. Which made no sense at all.
Unless their ship had some kind of navigational-equipment more advanced than even a log-pose? It wasn't impossible, considering that nobody even knew how the ship moved, let alone anything else.
XXX
“A log-pose? Uh. Y-Yeah. We totally have one of those!”
“We don't, dood.”
“It's just... not here! Right now! But we definitely have one!”
“You were too cheap to buy one, dood.”
XXX
There were unconfirmed reports of sightings of a ship fitting the description suddenly appearing out of nowhere after a ship had suddenly capsized.
Whether a coincidence, or if the crew of the strange ship were resorting to common piracy, was difficult to say.
Though what reasons it might have to resort to such things was unclear.
XXX
“Hahaha! I told you it'd be a waste of torpedoes! Just ram them from the deep and they break apart like confetti!”
“Repairing my hull is more expensive than launching torpedoes, dood!”
“I'm a genius!”
XXX
“Jackpot, dood! This is already-cooked food, dood!”
“I can cook!”
“Look, dood! The rice is white and fluffy, dood!”
“Huh. That has to be some kind of fluke. Rice is supposed to turn black when you cook it, right?”
XXX
“Hey, little girl, give us your money!”
She glanced up at the armed men who'd apparently surrounded her whilst she'd been focusing on balancing her newly-acquired dinner.
They looked... shabby? Very stereotypical thugs. But this was supposed to be the Grand-Line so who knows how strong they were?
Then again, surrendering would mean putting her dinner down. And she'd worked really hard on this. She'd needed to steal so much money to afford it.
With that in mind, she decided to just kick the guy nearest to her between the legs. If they were strong, she could probably argue that it was instinct and not at all on purpose, please don't hurt her. And if they were weak, then maybe she could still-...
The guy was lifted off his feet.
He was airborne for a solid few seconds.
He was already unconscious from the pain on his way up.
Right. For all that One Piece was a terrifying world filled with monstrous tier-sevens, those guys were one in a million. The strong could knock out thousands of people just from glaring at them. Which meant that for all that the high-end fighters were scary, the low-end weren't so bad.
She considered this, and then she thought back to how they'd spent hours screwing around in the Item-World. Fighting ever-stronger monsters, and equipping themselves with ever-stronger items as a result.
She didn't have haki, and she definitely didn't have Conqueror's haki, but as long as she was careful she wouldn't even need to drop her dinner to deal with these guys.
Said and done, a few well-placed kicks to the thugs who moved as if they were underwater, and she could keep on her way. She was even merciful enough to avoid more crotch-shots.
And it wasn't entirely because the thugs had mostly been running away from her once they realized what had happened to her first target. Cowards.
There were lots of guys who'd be willing to pay good money for a pretty lady kicking them in the balls. She definitely remembered that that was a thing. A sex-thing that she didn't want anything to do with, but still. Rude.
XXX
Nami stared at the strange shape that rose to the surface.
It didn't look like a sea-king. It looked like a ship. Like maybe that Wapol-king's submarine? Except... it looked sleek in a way that she couldn't really associate with that man.
Then some kind of opening at the top popped open and a small girl climbed out. She had white hair, and a set of small black feathery wings, and if Nami didn't have experience running exactly that sort of con on unsuspecting pirates, she would've probably cooed at how cute she was.
Then the girl spotted her.
“Fuck! That's the fucking Straw-hats! Prinny! Fucking dive! Dive-dive dive! I ain't getting involved with their shit no matter what!”
She then dove back into the strange ship and slammed the hatchet closed. But not before Nami heard a second voice.
“The Straw-hats have a chef, dood! A really good chef, dood!”
“Not the fucking time!”
And then the ship sank beneath the water, just as quickly as it'd appeared.
Nami frowned after it. Thirty-million beli was a lot for a pirate from the Blues, but that was only for Luffy, who hadn't been the one the girl had recognized. So... why did this random girl in an underwater-ship know about the Straw-hats?
And why had she yelled about 'not getting involved'? Did she know something about Baroque-works?
Nami whined to herself as she made the necessary adjustments to their heading. She'd just gotten better from her illness, why did someone have to remind her that they were planning on fighting Crocodile, with no knowledge about how much he knew about anything? She suddenly felt a desperate case of can't-go-ashore-because-I'll-cry coming on.
And she wasn't even close to shore.
XXX
The next time Nami spotted the underwater-ship, it wasn't underwater.
It was sailing next to them, up the Knock Up Stream.
It didn't have sails, or an open deck, so it was hard to tell what they were doing there, but even over the roar of the upward-bound river, Nami was pretty sure she heard voices.
“Why the fuck are we flying?!”
“Who turned off the gravity, dood?!”
Then they hit the clouds, and even the roar of the Knock Up Stream that they were sailing on dimmed.
And then they were in the sky.
XXX
“We're taking in water from everywhere, dood!”
“All powers to shields and repair-crews!”
“The shields are kinetic-absorbers, not water-tight, dood!”
“Grab as much chewing-gum as you can carry!”
“How will that help my beautiful hull, dood?!”
XXX
“I can't believe that worked, dood. I'm held together with duct-tape and chewing-gum, dood. I feel violated, dood.”
“But we're no longer drowning! That's progress!”
XXX
The third time Nami spotted the underwater-ship, it surfaced from the clouds.
It was genuinely a beautiful sight, and it made the rest of the crew stop and stare with awe.
Then the hatch opened and that same girl peered out at them.
“I fucking knew it! This is Straw-hat bullshit! Prinny, set course back to the sea!”
“What course is that, dood?!”
“Downwards, dumbass! Clouds are in the sky, so we just dive until they stop and then there'll be sea again!”
“That just means we'll fall to our deaths, dood!”
“Then flap your fucking wings and fly!”
“I ain't high enough level for that yet, dood! We'll fall and die for sure, dood!”
The girl's face contorted very visibly for a long moment before she turned back from her shouting-match to glare at the Straw-hats.
“... Can you help us down from here? We're a bit lost.”
XXX
Prinny turned out to be a... bird-thing.
Nami had seen a lot of weird shit since entering the Grand-Line, and Prinny wasn't the weirdest one, but she very much hadn't expected... that.
The girl was apparently the captain, and had been very cagey about her name. Which was weird, until Prinny had apparently realized that the girl had forgotten her own name.
“It never came up before!” The girl defended herself.
“Is this why you keep calling me 'prinny', dood?!” Prinny shouted back at her.
There was a long and slightly awkward pause.
“It is, dood! You forgot my name, dood!”
“It's probably a really dumb name!” She shouted back.
Which... Nami was getting the feeling that the girl was the one in the wrong here. And that maybe they should try to step in? To help them sort this out before it became ugly?
“Cannon-Fodder is a proud and noble name, dood!”
... Then again, perhaps this kind of situation was best resolved between the involved parties, without outside-interference.
Yes. Best not to get involved.
“Shishishi! I can-...”
The girl's attention snapped away from the prinny, to instead focus with deadly intensity on Luffy. “If you try to give me a name, I will make you allergic to meat.”
“Eh? What's 'allergic'?” Luffy tilted his head.
“It means that your body will treat it like poison.” Chopper helpfully explained. “This usually means that skin-contact will cause rashes, and eating or smelling it might result in a severe enough reaction to cause immediate organ-failure.” Chopper then did a double-take, going from cheerfully informative to horrified. “Wait! Please don't do that! That's really scary!”
Considering how Luffy had taken a very blatant step away from the girl, he agreed.
“If the sanctity of my identity is threatened, I will use every means at my disposal to survive.” The girl declared, seemingly seeing nothing at all strange about promising a genuinely horrific fate in retaliation for someone attempting to give her a friendly nickname.
Then again, considering some of the names that Luffy had come up with over the time that Nami had known him, she couldn't exactly blame the girl for nipping that in the bud. Being renamed 'wingsy' or something would be utterly mortifying.
“I must admit to some curiosity in regards to your method for delivering this allergy to our captain.” Robin said something scary with a warm smile on her face.
The girl winced. “Uhh... I don't have a way to do that. Right now. But !” She held up her finger when it looked like Luffy would open his mouth to decry her for her baseless threats. “But I will find a way to make it happen.”
“Captain, please don't fight with the young mademoiselle.” Sanji interrupted them. Calmly.
Nami's eyes narrowed at how Sanji didn't kick Luffy in the head for fighting a girl. Suspicious.
“Clearly she's had a trying time.” Then Sanji turned towards the girl. “Even if I believe that threatening our captain's ability to eat the only food he regularly consumes to be overdoing things.”
Sanji was scolding a girl. Nami felt like her world-image was falling apart. What the fuck was going on?
The girl stared at Sanji for a long moment, then she glanced down at her chest. Then her face turned bright red, and-... And were those tears in her eyes? What-...?
Then the prinny started laughing like a maniac.
And suddenly the prinny was punted through the steel hull of her ship.
Nami didn't even really see the girl move. What the fuck kind of strength was that?!
“Nothing to show off at all, dood!” The prinny cried out, slightly muffled from being buried underneath the steel-remnants of the hull, but with undeniably malicious glee.
“Shut up! Boobs aren't everything!”
“They are to men, dood!” The prinny disagreed with unnecessarily loud conviction.
Nami was starting to get a headache.
XXX
“So what's a sexy little thing like you doing out here, dood?”
Nami blinked.
Nami turned to look at the prinny, more than a bit annoyed at being addressed as-...
The prinny wasn't looking at her. In fact, they seemed to be entirely focused on... staring at Going Merry?
Was he-... Was he trying to flirt with their ship?
Nami hurriedly decided that she wanted nothing to do with any of this, and immediately retreated.
Not longer after that, there was the distinct sound of something metallic breaking, followed by the despairing cries of the prinny.
“My hull, dood! My beautiful hull, dood!”
Nami had clearly made the right choice.
XXX
“You repair your ship really well, could you help us with Merry?” Usopp asked.
The girl blinked, then traded a glance with the prinny. “Uhh... our ship is self-repairing. Kind of. It's complicated.”
“I can totally help with your beautiful Merry, dood!” The prinny disagreed.
The girl sent the prinny a glare, possibly at the 'beautiful' comment, because apparently that was something she was sensitive about? Usopp didn't get it, but then he'd never really understood girls, so that was fine.
“Prinny. If you start spreading your stuff all over Merry without her consent, I will drop-kick you back to the blue-sea.”
Unlike her normal loud screams, this calmer anger was genuinely much scarier. She wasn't even looking at Usopp and he kind of wanted to cry.
“So it's fine if she consents, dood?” The prinny didn't look affected at all though, which was kind of amazing.
The girl shrugged. “She's an adult. She's free to make dumbass decisions about who she... shares materials with.”
Usopp's attention snapped back to the actual conversation, because wait. What. Was-... Was she implying that the prinny would somehow fix Merry in like... some kind of sexual way?
Usopp suddenly very much didn't want to ask the prinny for help anymore! Merry's innocence was at stake!
XXX
Conis was such a sweet girl. Until she wasn't. She'd betrayed them and now-...
“Pfah, dood!” The prinny emerged from the crater, looking completely unaffected. “Why did the ground disappear, dood?!”
“Prinny, were you trying to look up Conis' dress?” The prinny's captain asked with a wide smile that didn't do anything to the oppressive sense of menace coming from her. “Whilst she was in the middle of a guilt-induced breakdown?”
The prinny glanced up at her, held her gaze for a long moment, and then slowly started to crawl backwards into the crater. Not saying a word.
It didn't save him.
XXX
“How come they didn't steal your ship? You're outlaws, too, right?”
“Eh? They're still trying to move it, dood.”
“Huh? But it's right there-...”
“They're kind of weak, dood.”
And no explanation beyond that was offered. Though, admittedly, the Straw-hats were a bit too distracted to interrogate them about it.
XXX
“Ohh, what big strong wings you have.” The girl-captain commented in a blatantly false tittering kind of voice.
The man on the giant fire-breathing bird glanced at her and looked very confused for a split-second and then-...
Then the prinny blasted both him and his bird out of the sky.
Chopper stared at the prinny's weirdly calm face and was suddenly very sure that that guy was going to die now.
Chopper didn't really understand why the prinny had gone from waving a flipper at the man and yelling, to this silent murderous intent all of a sudden, but the shift had definitely happened.
And even if the man and his fire-breathing bird was scary, he kind of... felt a little bit of pity? Just a little bit?
XXX
“Sorry, I'm allergic to gods. Can't help.”
“What-... What the fuck does that mean?” Nami complained.
“It's a whole thing.” The girl motioned to her wings. “Don't worry about it.”
“I am worrying about it, though!” Nami continued to complain.
XXX
Enel was god, and he'd determined that there would only be five people alive at the end of the day. Since two extras were lingering at the edges pretending not to be included in that number?
Enel decided to pay them a little visit. Show them their error in attempting to defy god.
And-... And he couldn't get in?
The ship looked to be made out of the kind of vearth that was called 'steel'. So he should've been able to just... enter it. The same as he could his own ship of gold.
But he couldn't. Trying to touch it just... sent him on his way? Somehow? Like a slippery eel.
It was honestly infuriating.
So Enel decided to simply destroy them with god's judgment-...
And it didn't even scratch them? At all?
“Is he still out there?”
“Fear the power of nano-machine powered lighting-rods, dood!”
Enel clenched his fist. But-... But they were on a ship, not technically on his vearth. That meant that they didn't actually count to his prediction-...
“Yeah, dood! Run away like a coward, dood!”
Enel saw red.
XXX
Nami would honestly admit that she'd kind of forgotten about the nameless girl-captain and the prinny.
In her defense, she'd been under a lot of duress trying to survive navigating through Enel's delusional mind, and then celebrating her captain's miraculous victory. Also, helping chopper with bandaging up the idiots who'd tried to fight lightning.
So, when she spotted the strange ship after Going Merry once again took to the cloud-sea, she didn't feel very charitable.
Yes, they'd won in the end without their help, and even gotten a wonderful haul of gold for their efforts. But also, they'd nearly died. And these guys had just... hidden away and pretended not to be involved?
And then the girl-captain popped out of the hatch, covered in bandages. What.
“So, in case you're wondering. Sitting inside of a metal-vessel means that lightning will just kind of bypass you, because that's easier than trying to fry you. But. And this is kind of important. But, taunting the lightning-throwing jackass might motivate the fucker to heat up all of the metal that you're inside of.” The last was said with a very malicious glare downwards, likely in the direction of the prinny. “Anyway, you guys wouldn't happen to have any burn-cream left over?”
And okay. Fine. Nami wasn't going to ask. She didn't want to know.
XXX
The way they'd survived was simple, really.
Once they'd realized his plan of burning them to death inside of the submarine, they'd just entered the Item-World.
It wasn't exactly a long-term solution, but it meant that they went from 'alive' to 'not there' from Enel's perspective. Which was basically how haki-perception of people dying seemed to work anyway.
They would've been found out if Enel hadn't gotten distracted, because hiding in the Item-World was a bit like hiding inside of an active war-zone, but thankfully Luffy had been very distracting.
It hadn't stopped them from getting a few burns, especially the prinny. Though with them being a submarine mental-model rather than flesh-and-blood? Any burns that they sustained would be better treated by a metal-worker than a doctor.
Except, of course, the denizens of the Item-World had decided to launch a few hundred fireballs at them whilst they were hiding from being burned-to-death by Enel.
Never change, Item-World. Never change.
XXX
Nami didn't think about how to actually get down from the cloud-sea, until they were already over the edge.
In that singular moment, she probably saw her life flash before her eyes twice-over.
She still probably handled it with grace and calm, comparatively.
“Fucking flap your fucking wings! Flap them like you fucking mean it!”
But thankfully, they all made it safely back to the wonderful regular-level sea.
“You've got wings too, dood. You should've helped with the flapping, dood.”
“I was inside the fucking submarine! Any lift I added with my wings would've been canceled out by the down-force-...!”
“You didn't even try, dood.” The prinny shook its head with the air of a disappointed parent. “At this rate, they'll wither away, dood. Same as your chest, dood.”
Nami very hurriedly set Going Merry on a course away from those two, because she really didn't want to deal with their bullshit.
The sound of horrific violence echoed behind them.
Nami didn't turn around.
XXX
Ace stared at the buildings sinking into Teach's shadow, suddenly very certain that getting in close was probably a very bad idea.
And then the buildings burst back out again, in smithereens.
“It's the sun, dood! I can see the sun again, dood!” A penguin-like creature cheered happily.
“Hey, where did our food go?” A second shape pushed aside some debris, revealing a young girl with white hair and black feathery wings.
“Our food, dood?” The penguin-like creature glanced around. “Our food, dood!”
Ace, knowing better than to come between whatever the fuck these two were to have survived not being splattered and the asshole who'd ruined their dinner, very quickly pointed at Teach. “He did it.”
But when they went to extract their vengeance on Teach, of course the bastard grabbed them, erasing their powers-...
Except they... didn't lose their powers at all.
Instead, Ace was treated to the view of a tiny slip of a girl turning a grown man inside-out with a spear made out of solid light, whilst the penguin-creature held the screaming man down with some kind of barrier-power.
Ace had set out on this journey to avenge a brother's murder, and this was clearly just a flight-of-fancy from their side of things. So in that sense it chafed. Ace should be the one to kill Teach, not these nobodies.
But on the other hand, Ace had never really had the stomach for killing someone slowly.
He figured that it about evened out.
XXX
Haki was a weird thing.
It was willpower given form, and in that sense it was honestly very consistent. But 'magic' was by most settings a way to 'force your will onto reality'.
In other words, from a purely academical perspective, she would've given herself half-decent odds to be able to more-or-less replicate haki-feats with magic. At least, once she figured out how to use her magic properly.
However, that was also the kind of thing that she didn't want to try out outside of an emergency. Hence why they'd tried to dodge Enel's attention.
It was all well and good to claim that theoretically you could punch lightning in the face, but that didn't make it something you actually wanted to test.
But when some absolute fuck-wit decides to drag you into a black-hole and then fails to actually hurt you?
Perhaps it was a quirk of Blackbeard's specific Devil-fruit, or perhaps something about his haki, or perhaps grinding away through the Item-World had finally pushed her high enough that she could rule over the Grand-Line as a god-king.
In the end, the actual reason why didn't matter so much. What mattered was that Blackbeard had picked a fight with them, and failed.
There was no need to worry about Blackbeard's Devil-fruit because it'd already done everything it could to them, and failed to scratch them. There was no need to worry about his haki, because it was no doubt already inherently infused in those same Devil-fruit powers. There was no reason to avoid a fight, because the asshole picked the fight first.
Was there a reason for killing the man slowly?
Did she need one?
XXX
“Is that the Strawhats again?! No! This is bullshit! Fire the torpedoes!”
“No, dood! You're going to explode the chef, dood!”
“Uhh...” Franky pointed in the direction of the massive submarine that had just appeared, clearly confused.
“Ignore them.” Usopp responded immediately, very deliberately not looking in their direction. “Listening to them is just going to give you a massive headache, so you should just pretend that they're not there and hope that they'll go away.”
“But that's such a super-cool ship though!”
“Did you hear that, dood!” The prinny sounded incredibly smug, possibly because he was actually the ship? Usopp had some theories that he didn't actually want to know the answers to.
“You sure you want to be complimented by a man in a speedo?” Was the girl-captain's brutal response.
“Oi! This is a super-cool outfit!”
There was a long moment of silence.
“It doesn't feel so good anymore, dood.”
XXX
“Someone punched a Heavenly Dragon! The Marines are coming! Run!”
“Should we worry about that, dood?”
“What? No. If we start caring about shit like that, we'd have to like... go on a rampage to save all of the slaves, and that'd be a pain in the dick.”
“I thought you hated slavery, dood.”
“Yeah? That's a reason not to participate, not a reason to go on a crusade.”
“So we're not going to rescue all of the slaves, dood?”
“That's what I said.”
“But we're still pirates, dood?”
“Yeah? What of it?”
“And the Marines are sending some Admiral over here to clear out the pirates, dood?”
“Not seeing the-...”
“Pirate scum!”
“... Okay, that's on me.”
XXX
Kuma had scattered the Straw-hats. As the man continued to be his regular self, he didn't actually tell anyone where he'd sent the crew. So no arrests were made.
This kind of shit is why nobody liked the Warlords. They were incredibly frustrating to work with.
Rayleigh had also been spotted at some point before the events, and he'd interfered with Kizaru. It was unknown if it was on behalf of the Straw-hats, or if he'd just decided to pick a fight. The man could be unpredictable like that.
The Marines had also encountered several other pirates. The 'supernovas' had seemingly all been present, and they'd continued to be a thorn in their side.
It hadn't been anything especially frustrating though, except for one thing.
One of the fighters had been a young girl with black wings. They still didn't actually have a name for the damn girl who'd been popping up all over the Grand-Line to cause chaos, and by now they definitely needed to raise her bounty.
Especially since the Heavenly Dragons they'd been sent to defend had all ended up dead in the confusion. And that girl was probably their main-suspect.
'Black-Feather' had been the final decision. Not the best of epithets, but descriptive enough that they'd hopefully be able to catch an actual name one of these days.
And at least things had calmed down-...
“Sir! Someone climbed the Red Line! They're torching Mariejois!”
XXX
“I thought you said you didn't want to get involved, dood?”
“Did they, or did they not have a shit-ton of gold?”
“I can make gold by eating coal, dood.”
“But that's not very pirate-y, is it?”
“This was more 'revolutionary', dood.”
“Heeh? Revolutionaries are supposed to stick around in the aftermath to 'make things better'. We just torched the place and left.”
“Yeah, dood. But it was for political reasons, dood.”
“Everything can be construed as a political reason if you think about it long enough.”
“You yelled 'death to all slavers' as you did it, dood.”
“That could mean anything.”
XXX
Ace stared at the face of the person who'd killed Blackbeard.
They still hadn't added an actual name to her wanted-poster, but the bounty attached was the same size as Dragon's.
What the actual fuck.
Ace had maybe had a few fantasies of torching Mariejois, because he still remembered very clearly what'd happened to Sabo. But it'd always seemed like such an impossible idea. An untouchable giant.
And now it was burnt to the ground, by a nameless little girl and her penguin-creature.
Ace wasn't sure what was going to happen now.
Yeah, the Marines would be hunting her to the ends of the world, but who knew if they'd actually be able to do anything. Also, the Revolutionaries would probably be trying to make a move in response.
There'd been hints that the world was changing, and even if Ace loved him, Whitebeard was old. Maybe they'd be able to get to Raftel within his lifetime, maybe they wouldn't. Ace had been optimistic, but now it felt like they were facing down an entire tsunami worth of world-changing things, and a part of him wasn't so sure anymore.
Ace would be a Whitebeard until the day he died, even if the old man croaked. But he was starting to feel like he understood why Whitebeard hadn't already reached Raftel.
Who cared about some far-flung goal like that, when his family was right there beside him?
XXX
“Hey, I know this guy! He's the asshole with the lava!”
“I invested in fire-proofing, dood!”
“... Lava isn't exactly 'fire' though?”
There was a long pause, punctuated by a lot of violence.
“My hull, dood! My beautiful hull, dood!”
“Justice is absolute-...!” A declaration interrupted by a spear made of light, applied directly to his face. “And pirate-scum like you-...!” A second interruption, this time by a black sphere the size of a wagon.
“Eat shit! Eat shit! Eat shit!”
It was the first time that Black-Feather officially faced-off against a haki-user in truth.
Turns out, her magic did work pretty similar to a haki-powered Devil-Fruit.
And unfortunately for the fucking Marines, there wasn't a lot to do during month-long sea-voyages beyond diving into the Item-World, endlessly grinding away.
There was a reason why the monsters of this world were classified as Tier-Seven, when the true monsters of Disgaea were classified as Tier-10. She wasn't up there, yet, but comparatively? Item-Bosses were a lot scarier than Akainu.
XXX