DANCES WITH DEVILS, Part the FIFTH!
Chapter 6: The Sun, It Shall Shine Again 「太陽が必ずまた昇る」
The flash bang heralded the surprise attack of the Devil Dare Society. They exploited the blinding glare to hide in strategic spots all over the ship, except for Falstaff, who zipped straight for his nemesis-to-be.
As such, Zoro, as ever, was the first to disappear.
“Zo-Zoro!” Usopp gasped, blinking rapidly as the light faded. Not again!
But this time Usopp didn’t waver; he brandished his sling shot and scouted the area frantically for enemies. “Wh-who are you? Where are you?”
Luffy had just stuffed the girl bug in a jar when it happened. “What was that light? What’s going on!?” He immediately raised his dukes and cast his eyes all over the ship. He focused his Color of Observation but the sonar of the Bitter Pill caused him to clasp his ears in pain, dropping the jar. And shattering it.
Then Kurt’s sea king carried the Kakisto over to kick up tremendous winds and mists, allowing the Devil Dare Society members to stake out their targets without getting discovered.
“Stand back Luffy, I’m used to smokescreens, and I’ve got one of them in my sights!” said Usopp, pulling back his Black Kabuto and aiming at the foremast, where he could just barely make out the figure of a hulking man clambering up the pole like a monkey towards Nami’s location on the crow’s nest. The monster winds filled out the ship’s sails to capacity but didn’t affect the man at all. Nevertheless, Usopp proved himself a master sharpshooter by hitting him dead center despite winds that would have sent lesser snipers ducking for cover. “Green Star: Vine Tendril Shot!”
Jamal toppled, entangled in a straightjacket of vines and totally caught by surprise, but before Usopp could seal the deal he was lifted up off the ground by the throat.
“Impressive!” sang Fasmidi, luxuriating in her hybrid form. “Those eyes of yours are truly sharp enough to befit one with the potential to be great.”
Usopp gargled in her grasp, kicking and struggling, terrified by the glowing green spheres analyzing him coldly.
“However, my eyes see all,” she boasted, and she tossed Usopp as hard as she could towards Jamal without injuring either of them. “I know how much you hate snipers, Jamal. Have fun.”
Jamal exerted his titanic strength and broke free of the vines. Then he retrieved a small crystalline orb from one of the pouches on his jacket. “Just add water,” he recalled, grinning. Usopp was still dazed, and soon found himself stuck in a head lock.
“No!” Chopper transformed into his Horn Point and charged at Jamal blindly, relying on his sense of smell.
But Jamal had already lugged Usopp with him over the edge of the ship hurtling into the ferocious waves. Chopper rammed against the side of the ship and fell in after them.
This was bad. Luffy gritted his teeth and rubbed at his eyes. He couldn’t Gatling, he couldn’t risk hurting his own nakama. He called up: “Nami! Can you clear the fog!?”
“I’m on it!” Nami spun her baton dexterously in her fingers.
Fasmidi scuttled on all six up towards Nami and jumped against the air, arresting Nami in her inescapable alien clutches before she could affect the weather in any way. “You interfere, she dies!”
But Nami was not about to become a hostage. “Thunder tempo!”
With a brilliant flash that pierced a pocket of the fog, the lightning coursed through Fasmidi’s body, causing her to let go and drop against the violently billowing sails; Nami had gotten so skilled she could avoid electrocuting herself even at point blank range.
Not the type to waste time patting herself on the back, Nami was climbing down the ladder as fast as she could to aid her nakama. However, a man appeared to be materializing from the fabric of the sails as Fasmidi struggled to recover beside him, scaring Nami witless.
“HOW DARE YOU!?” he screamed, grasping for her, half man, half cloth. He managed to grab her and dunk her into the waves just in the nick of time before Franky’s missiles could intercept (he had been aiming for the sail on which Fasmidi lay but missed).
“Brook, play louder!” said Franky. “The sound is breaking against the sonar that’s confusing Luffy’s senses!”
“Okay!” Brook drowned out the roar of the winds with a finger-flaying guitar solo, or at least it would have flayed his fingers if he had any skin to begin with! But the skull joke remained in Brook’s skull. Unfortunately for Luffy and the rest of the crew, Brook was the next to be taken into the abyss, manhandled by yet another Devil Dare coward who snuck up on him from behind.
“It’s time we settled the score once and for all, Brook!”
That voice! Could it be?
Brook’s voice was cut off by the water but he held his guitar close to his chest.
“Dammit, I won’t let this happen again! Everybody stick to the sides!” said Luffy, biting his thumb: if he couldn’t pinpoint any of his opponents, then he’d have to scare them into submission. “Gear Third!”
Luffy’s arm grew to roughly the size of the ship and began probing around for Fasmidi, who it seems had slipped off.
“Robin, tether everyone’s feet to the deck by the ankles!” shouted Franky.
“I can’t, where are y-“
Her voice disappeared, muffled by her attacker. Franky stumbled after her but he too was soon restrained and pulled hard and fast to the floor, by what he did not know. All he could hear next was the splash of the sea as Robin was taken with everyone else.
“WHERE ARE YOU BASTARDS!” Luffy screamed, bashing his huge arm every which way.
Suddenly a powerful vacuum sucked Sunny towards the weather machine-so powerful it even robbed Luffy of much of the air inflating his arm. He flew into an opening in the dome of the machine like a rag doll while Franky remained pinned.
Fasmidi and Kurt’s joint plan had gone off with nary a hitch.
Air soon returned to Luffy’s lungs, and groggily he surveyed his new surroundings. He was lying face up on a rotating gear, trapped inside a barque-sized transparent dome. The machine was full of fans, with a huge one spinning and oscillating at the very top. The dome was structured with cutting-edge technology that let the fans and various suction chutes of the machine manipulate the air outside the seemingly solid dome through a matrix of tiny pores in its surface. Down below, a massive whirlpool of seawater, running the whole contraption.
Luffy clutched his straw hat to his hair and panted, relieved it hadn’t flown away. He was still buffeted by winds on all sides but stood his ground as he got back on his feet, his unbuttoned sequin shirt flapping like a cape.
“ZORO! NAMI!” Luffy called futilely. “Anybody in here? Usopp, can you hear me! S-Sanji?” He remembered Sanji had been lured away earlier. “SAAAAANJIIIIIII!”
“You’ll see them all very shortly.”
Fasmidi had emerged from within the core control center tucked away inside a jungle of gears impassable except by insects. “I toggled off the mist setting so you could see for yourself.”
A girl? Luffy looked down at her, puzzled-she didn’t have the glowing green compound eyes he associated with her voice.
She was wearing a blouse and skirt made of thatched coconut fronds, which served as her pragmatic battle dress in lieu of adequate clothing that would fit her larger hybrid form as well. As a leaf insect, the dress of leaves integrated with her body. She demonstrated this by transforming.
Those eyes! It was her! Luffy quickly put two and two together. “You’re the girl bug!”
“I am the one true prophet of the Sea Devil, the Deepest Depth. I am the Heiress of All,” she corrected. “My eyes see everything-and yours will too! Behold!”
Huge spherical orbs similar to the dome were bobbing up from under the water one by one, and inside each orb was a distinct arena or platform, with a Straw Hat and a Devil Dare member trapped inside.
“Each orb represents an aspect of ourselves,” Fasmidi preached. “When we prove ourselves in honorable combat and demonstrate to the Sea Devil that we are most worthy, we will fulfill our ultimate potential and become the gods of those aspects. And this wonderful machine, Monkey D. Luffy, is part and parcel of the most important of the sacred sacrificial arenas-the Orb of Storm!”
“I don’t care about any of that!” Luffy shouted. “If you don’t release everyone right now then it won’t matter if you’re a cool bug, I’ll tear you TO PIECES!”
Fasmidi scratched under her right antenna and beat her leafy wings a little. “I’m not surprised a monkey like you has no comprehension of the gravity of your predicament.”
The mist may have lifted outside the orb, but the winds were still swirling in a circular pattern like a hurricane, creating a moderately strong whirlpool that carried every floating orb along by the outer limits. It was to be Sanji’s spectacle.
“Tonight is the night against which the sun shall never trespass again. Our Lord is the king of darkness, and he accepts only the strong unto the bosom of his mists,” she recited.
“Huh?” Luffy picked his ear. “Of course the sun is gonna rise again! It rises every morning, stupid! Where have you been?”
Chapter 7: Battle in the Bottle 「瓶の中の一戦」
“Gum Gum Gatling!” Luffy struck the dome, but his every punch glanced off without leaving so much as a dent. Then he had an idea.
“I’ll rip these gears out!” he said.
“I’m afraid I can’t let y-“
“Shut up!"
An unexpected wave of Color of the Conqueror haki broadsided her, and she fell to one side.
“What… what is that power!?” she gasped.
“Oh, you’re still awake?” Luffy’s only concern was leaving the dome; he heaved at a nearby lateral gear with all his might, having to sidestep and shuffle along to keep up with the gear he was standing on. “You’re pretty strong.”
This did not compute. She was supposed to be dominating him. How could her divine eyes have failed her?
Then it clicked. This power, it was meant for her. Davy Jones was testing her.
“Ugh, if only it weren’t spinning…” said Luffy. “Maybe I should just jam them?”
Fasmidi used the wind to her advantage, gliding on the breeze with her leaf wings and kicking against the air with four legs to accelerate.
“Gum Gum!” Luffy used the spin of the gear to his advantage: “WHIP!”
Luffy’s sweep kick sent her tumbling towards the seawater below, the true hazard of the stage for both Devil Fruit users; however, Fasmidi could stay above the water as long as she ran across it, like Brook. Luffy had no such luck.
Fasmidi kicked off with the wind and quickly ascended back to where Luffy was. She knew now this wasn’t going to be a fight she could win easily, and so she didn’t advertise her attacks.
“GUM GUM AXE!” Luffy intended to meteor kick her back into the water, but Fasmidi intercepted his leg and dragged him off the ledge of his gear.
Luffy stretched to reach the fan at the very top of the machine and grabbed one of its blades, spinning him and Fasmidi at a 60 degree angle around the enormous contraption.
“GET OFF!” Luffy blasted her with another dose of haki, but she’d already come up with a clever workaround and transformed into her tiny insect form to keep from losing consciousness. In this form she could also stick to surfaces, so when the centrifugal force sent her flying she merely attached herself to the side of the clear dome and climbed up.
Luffy bounced back up towards the biggest fan and tried to jam it from underneath by holding onto the blades, since he wanted to chuck it on her and pin her down for good. But the mechanism of the whole machine was too strong to budge.
Fasmidi morphed back into her hybrid form, which reformed the dress of coconut fronds around her, and tackled Luffy off the top, but Luffy threw off her stabs and swipes with a brief activation of Color of Armaments haki and followed up with a Gum Gum Stamp.
Fasmidi purposefully took the full brunt of the Stamp and hugged Luffy’s foot so that when it snapped back she could run him through with her bullet-like claws using his own momentum, forcing Luffy to blow up into a balloon to preempt the strike.
They were equally physically strong, and seemed equally resourceful in combat, except of course for that strange psychic power of his… could it be his D. that lent him such might? She had to squeeze the information out of him somehow. She would do the Devil proud tonight.
Luffy was floating as a balloon, sent every which way by the winds like he was caught in a cyclone. “Gear Third!” He opened up his mouth until it was bigger than the rest of his body and sucked in the gust he was trapped in, transferring the air to his leg and inflating it. This way at the very least he wouldn’t drown.
“It’s the leg of a giant!” Luffy shouted. “And I’m going to squash you like the stupid bug you are!”
“Leg of a giant, brain of an ant.” Fasmidi swooped in for his head, but Luffy saw it coming and drew up his haki shield. It wasn’t his head she was gunning for, though.
“My hat!”
Fasmidi slid to a halt on a gear and threatened to throw the hat into the works. “I saw how you checked for your hat before you even thought to call for your friends.”
Luffy couldn’t transition from Gear Third to Gear Second without pausing, but he could now localize Gear Second to energize a single limb. “Jet Pistol!”
The punch came so fast Fasmidi could barely see it, but then she had four powerful arms and managed to catch the punch. Once again she rode the snapback, and this time Luffy’s own speed prevented him from canceling. Fasmidi walloped Luffy hard on the side of the head, his hat on her insectoid head.
The shock and precision of the attack caused Luffy to hack up first blood, and the air in his giant leg gave, causing him to drop precipitously. Luffy would have drowned had he not pushed against the dome with his leg while it was still about twice his size.
Fasmidi seized her chance and struck again while Luffy was still disoriented, kicking him down to the bottom platform by the seawater, which was made of seastone, disabling Luffy’s rubber immunity.
“X marks the spot,” she laughed as he doubled over. Standing above him on the seastone platform, her Devil Fruit ability was also canceled and she reverted back into her human form: long purple hair, half-dead eyes, and strength enough to lift an elephant even with her vitality dampened. She adjusted the straw hat over her cascading locks and ground her bare heel on Luffy’s newly non-rubber ankle. Stars swam before his eyes and he cried in pain.
Before Luffy could muster up another haki blast Fasmidi grabbed him by his hair and dunked his head and chest into the water, holding him down for fifty seconds.
“Gwah!” Luffy gasped for breath; he was not used to being underwater for any length of time. There was no way he could use his haki like this.
“Now… you’re going to tell me about that D. of yours…” Fasmidi purred. “Or we’re going to be prolonging this indignity till the moon rolls away.”
Chapter 8: Excess Funds 「過度な金子」
“Ugh…”
Nami came to. The last thing she remembered she was drifting down towards the Locker, and now she was fine? What happened?
She was still wet-can’t have been a dream, then. She coughed up a little seawater and felt like hell. Why had she grown her hair out this long, it was sopping…
Her surroundings were beginning to come into focus. The storm was still going strong… funny how she hadn’t been able to feel it coming. Maybe she just had to get used to the Grand Line again…
Nami stretched and got up, slowly shedding her disorientation and realizing with some panic that she was no longer on the Sunny.
“Ah, so you’re up! My name is Goldweadth Gallant,” said a voice. “And I’ll be your executioner this fine evening.”
This was the Orb of Fasmidi, the first such Aspect Orb Goldweadth had designed. As such the “arena” was simply a flat gray floor which seemed to contain strange vaguely foot-shaped grooves.
“What the…"
“Ah, those are where my replicas of Fasmidi used to stand-they’re currently taking care of another one of your friends, I’m afraid.”
At those words Nami remembered what had happened-her nakama were in trouble!
“What is this!?” Her mind snapped back to crystal clarity. She was stuck in a glass sphere, floating in the ocean. “How did I get here!?”
Goldweadth sat down and began twiddling his thumbs impatiently.
“Aspect Orbs. They fit in the palm of your hand until they’re exposed to seawater. Then they expand and trap in the targets, then filters the water back out. The technology was originally meant to revolutionize the fishing industry, but let’s just say I snatched up the patent before it went to market.”
“So everybody’s trapped in these cages?”
Goldweadth grinned. “Yep. Well, pretty much everyone who matters, anyway. In any case, kindly pick up your staff so I can kill you.”
Nami was skeptical. “How could you have afforded to buy such an insanely valuable-“
“Let’s just say I’m made of money,” he said. “Now pick up the damn staff. Can’t have the Sea Devil think the match was unfair. Don’t really know the Lord’s criteria, better safe than sorry.”
“So you’re saying if I don’t pick up the staff… then there’s no match.”
“I figured you might say that. So here’s the deal-thing can shoot lightning, right? You’ll kill me in no time flat with just a twirl and a kiss goodbye.”
“You’re going to have to try better than that,” said Nami. “I’m a swindler myself, and I wasn’t born yesterday.”
“Oh come on,” he whined, leaning his head against his palm. “All right, how about this: Maybe if you shoot some lightning at the sides of this here orb, you could break through and escape to save your friends. It’s your only real option at this rate.”
Nami gulped. She crouched down and her fingers reached for the baton. She bit her lip. The moment she touched the thing he would spring in to attack.
Wait. He only knows about the lightning, and clearly he didn’t care or seem frightened in the least. That’s the attack he was expecting. And Nami didn’t think he looked bright enough to be bluffing. He had to be a Logia or a Paramecia to have melded with Sunny’s sail like that-a cloth Logia, maybe?
She grabbed the baton and immediately he lunged at her.
“RAIN TEMPO!”
Success! Goldweadth was impeded by the torrential downpour. She knew from Luffy that showers of water didn’t activate a Devil Fruit’s universal weakness, so it only followed that water was a particular weakness of this Fruit.
“You’re some sort of fabric,” she surmised, intensifying the precipitation with each flourish of her staff. “You’re useless in the rain!”
“Not quite.” Goldweadth, though pinned to the floor, was able to shoot out a flurry of metal coins from the palm of his hand at her, knocking the baton out of her hands. “I ate the Fruit Fasmidi gave me, the Kane Kane Fruit 「かねかねの実」!"
“You mean you’re literally made of money!?” Berry signs appeared in her eyes. She now understood how Sanji felt when he discovered Absalom had partaken of his coveted Fruit.
"How else could I have afforded all this for the Society?” Goldweadth laughed. “It was Dark Providence.”
The rain subsided and Goldweadth shook himself dry. Nami made for the climate staff but Goldweadth buried her in a wave of cash.
“Money” couldn’t be a Logia type, so that narrowed it down to Paramecia, which Nami could physically harm. Excellent news, but how would she reach her staff now that he was intent on suffocating her with money? Then an idea came to her.
“Fasmidi, did you say her name was? Must be pretty fat and ugly if her ‘replicas’ made those grooves with each step.”
Jackpot. Goldweadth practically lost his mind at that comment. In a rage he unloaded his maximum payload of coins on her, but Nami was saved somewhat by the protection of her bed of cash; she wriggled free and dashed for the staff.
“RAIN TEMPO!”
“Coin Purse!” Goldweadth guarded himself against the downpour with an impromptu shield of golden coins, a single bulbous green eye sticking out.
That eye used to be gold, Nami observed. He must be running out of coin power. Perfect!
But Nami was dismayed to see that Goldweadth had time enough to flip through his wallet and pick out a fresh coin, rubbing it against the tip of a single exposed finger. Apparently this recharged him.
“Touch memory,” Goldweadth explained. “So long as I’ve got the real metals of proper coins on my person, my body can ‘memorize’ the currency and counterfeit it. Same with the cotton inside paper bills.”
“So that’s how it works! Thanks for telling me, dumbass!” said Nami.
“What do you mean? There’s nothing you can-“
The staff whacked him on the hand, causing him to drop the coin. His hand recognized a new metal, but it wasn’t a metal in any currency the Fruit could identify, meaning his power shorted out long enough for Nami to deliver the finishing blows-an armor piercing “love slap” to the cheek, and a kick in the balls for good measure.
Then she sat on his back and set to creating a stable water cycle of constant rain inside the Orb, ordering him to spawn as much paper money for her as possible.
Chapter 9: Kingmaker 「キングメーカー」
The sight of Nami earning her flawless victory cured his speech paralysis instantly. “Melllloooriiiiine!” Hearts bounced off his eyes.
“What, yadedede, you think she’s okay lover boy?” said Kurt. “Then there’s something you have failed to grasp-even if your little friends beat them? They’ve still lost. There’s no way out of those things; hell, they were designed that way. You see they’re all a bunch of religious loonies convinced the world will end altogether if and when they win, so why bother making the trap escapable? Your crew’s gonna die of starvation sooner rather than later. Any way the cookie crumbles, it’s me who gets the last laugh.”
“You’re… you’re sick,” Sanji slurred. “You need… help.”
Kurt raised an eyebrow. “I’m not the one who needs help here, son.”
“Don’t have to do this,” said Sanji. “We can help you."
“’Don’t have to do this’? ‘You can help me’? Son… ‘this’ is me. Now… press your luck…” Kurt grazed his knife against Sanji’s ear. “And I just might have to make this unpleasant for you.”
Sanji seethed. “They’ll win. Somehow. And I will make that kid…” he coughed.
“What? What will you make that imbecile?” snapped Kurt.
“King of the Pirates,” he said with a DON.
“Now there’s some premium grade storybook bullshit.”
_*_*_*_*_
Inside the Orb of Jungle, Chopper and Usopp faced off against Jamal the Hunter.
“Don’t know who to kill first!” Jamal guffawed. “The coward or the beast!”
Jamal squared on them. “I wonder which of you two pathetic animals will run away first.”
“Usopp, please cover me!” said Chopper. “I’ll scout for his weaknesses!”
Chopper placed two hooves together like a frame and focused.
“Hahah, he’s cute,” said Jamal. “Never seen a talking animal in my day, but I suppose there’s a first for everything. And funnily enough, on the end of the world.”
Usopp readied another Vine Tendril Star, but Jamal swatted Usopp away from his prey with amazing speed. Usopp landed smack dab against the trunk of a tree.
“Hate snipers,” he spat. “I’m a bodyguard by day, poacher by night. And only cowards pick things off from the sidelines. The manly thing is to feel the life of an animal ebb away in your very hands.”
“Usopp! His weak point is-“
Jamal lifted Chopper up by the throat and nerve pinched him. “Good thing you’re human enough in this form to have that nerve there, otherwise you would probably have transformed already and I wouldn’t have gotten to stuff your *cute* face and place it above my mantle.”
“U-sopp…” Chopper managed to blurt out; it seemed the method for him was imperfect.
“Do you see now how useless it is to resist your fate if you’re a weakling?” said Jamal. “In any case, were it not the end of humanity tonight I might have been stuck in my old quandary-to sell or to choke. You’re a talking animal so you would have fetched I don’t know many millions of berries out on the black market. But I probably would have still choked the life out of you, come to think of it. You’ve just got one of those face, I guess.”
A green powder smacked Jamal in the face. “Was that supposed to do something, weakling?”
“You talk too much!” Usopp had recovered somewhat and was training yet another Green Star at him. “You love killing animals, let’s see how well you do against plants! Love Tree Scissor!” Usopp chopped through the air enthusiastically.
The green powder was actually thousands of tiny seeds that had dusted the jungle soil beneath Jamal’s feet and ravenously devoured the forest’s nutrients to shoot up in a lightning-fast spike trap of love trees (twin trees connected at the base), causing Jamal to drop Chopper from his death grip.
“I’ve gotcha buddy!” Usopp caught Chopper in his arms and fell back on his knees.
“His skin is like a tank… Only weak point… His liver… Aim for it…” Chopper coughed. Jamal was already managing to free himself of some of the binding branches.
“Yosh!” Usopp tied a vine around his neck to protect against a nerve pinch.
“Taking orders from a pet?” Jamal sneered, still struggling to break free of his prison. “Shouldn’t be surprised, one good look at you and I can tell you’ve never had the chutzpah it takes to be your own captain. All you can ever be is a follower! It makes me sick! A weakling like you, thinking he can take me down!”
“I fight for the king,” said Usopp, as he sat down to concoct his ultimate explosive. “That’s all I need.”
Jamal was perplexed at first-a pirate fighting for a king? But then he remembered Usopp’s bounty poster; his alter ego was “Sogeking.”
“So you hide behind a mask. Don’t want to be hunted by Marines, right?” Jamal spat. “Pathetic. Once I get my hands on you you’ll suffer the brutal end you deserve. And then you’ll die knowing who the true king is!”
Jamal finally ripped free and within a split second landed a blow to Usopp’s head that would have pulverized anyone else. But Usopp didn’t step back an inch. His feet were rooted to the soil!
“What the-” Soon Jamal’s feet were joined to Usopp’s.
“I had to make sure you wouldn’t hurt Chopper while my plan took effect,” Usopp explained, as the plant snare entwined their lower bodies. “You were expecting me to run, perhaps? I’d hardly be a brave warrior of the sea if I left the nakama behind me exposed to danger!” said Usopp with a DON.
“But now I can pummel you as many times as I like!” Jamal subjected Usopp to a savage flurry of punches. Usopp reeled from the pain, but he refused to back down.
“I thought you fought for the ‘king,’ why are you sacrificing yourself!” said Jamal.
“I am fighting for the king…” Usopp proudly declared. “The king… of the seas… the Pirate King… my captain, Monkey D. Luffy!"
“That’s even more pathetic! Your life is worth nothing compared to his!? So you’re just a pawn, is that it?”
“Wrong again. I’m his KNIGHT!”
Usopp had figured out that Jamal wouldn’t try to escape the trap right away if it meant he had the opportunity to brutalize the long nose, which gave the plant the time it needed to wind its way up to Jamal’s liver and carefully inject Usopp’s poison.
Jamal yelped with agony. Had Usopp merely aimed all his explosive pellets at Jamal’s liver, the hunter would simply have deflected the projectile with a slap of his gorilla-like arms. This was the only way to incapacitate him for good.
Jamal’s survival instinct took over and his eyes went totally white with rage, adrenaline magnifying his muscles to terrifying proportions. Jamal thought the only way to survive this was to kill Usopp and trigger the endtimes. “DIE!”
Usopp braced for impact. This punch would surely kill him, but at least he’d rescued Chopper…
“Roseo!!” Chopper saved Usopp with a last-second hoof stomp to the back of Jamal’s head, knocking him cold-he’d brilliantly aimed for the adrenaline center of the brain, even while Chopper himself was running on pure adrenaline. He quickly collapsed back into his Brain Point form, tongue lolling, barely able to move.
“Hold on, Chopper!” Usopp tended to Chopper’s wounds, bandaging him up with efficiency and precision. “That okay? You feeling better?”
Chopper giggled-it was like the reverse of their fight in Alabasta. “Thank you, Usopp.”
“No problem, just relax-“
“Actually, Usopp, you’re supposed to tell me to stay awake so I don’t go into…”
And Chopper did stay awake, schooling Usopp on medical minutiae for so long that Usopp entertained the notion of just bonking him on the head anyway.
The flash bang heralded the surprise attack of the Devil Dare Society. They exploited the blinding glare to hide in strategic spots all over the ship, except for Falstaff, who zipped straight for his nemesis-to-be.
As such, Zoro, as ever, was the first to disappear.
“Zo-Zoro!” Usopp gasped, blinking rapidly as the light faded. Not again!
But this time Usopp didn’t waver; he brandished his sling shot and scouted the area frantically for enemies. “Wh-who are you? Where are you?”
Luffy had just stuffed the girl bug in a jar when it happened. “What was that light? What’s going on!?” He immediately raised his dukes and cast his eyes all over the ship. He focused his Color of Observation but the sonar of the Bitter Pill caused him to clasp his ears in pain, dropping the jar. And shattering it.
Then Kurt’s sea king carried the Kakisto over to kick up tremendous winds and mists, allowing the Devil Dare Society members to stake out their targets without getting discovered.
“Stand back Luffy, I’m used to smokescreens, and I’ve got one of them in my sights!” said Usopp, pulling back his Black Kabuto and aiming at the foremast, where he could just barely make out the figure of a hulking man clambering up the pole like a monkey towards Nami’s location on the crow’s nest. The monster winds filled out the ship’s sails to capacity but didn’t affect the man at all. Nevertheless, Usopp proved himself a master sharpshooter by hitting him dead center despite winds that would have sent lesser snipers ducking for cover. “Green Star: Vine Tendril Shot!”
Jamal toppled, entangled in a straightjacket of vines and totally caught by surprise, but before Usopp could seal the deal he was lifted up off the ground by the throat.
“Impressive!” sang Fasmidi, luxuriating in her hybrid form. “Those eyes of yours are truly sharp enough to befit one with the potential to be great.”
Usopp gargled in her grasp, kicking and struggling, terrified by the glowing green spheres analyzing him coldly.
“However, my eyes see all,” she boasted, and she tossed Usopp as hard as she could towards Jamal without injuring either of them. “I know how much you hate snipers, Jamal. Have fun.”
Jamal exerted his titanic strength and broke free of the vines. Then he retrieved a small crystalline orb from one of the pouches on his jacket. “Just add water,” he recalled, grinning. Usopp was still dazed, and soon found himself stuck in a head lock.
“No!” Chopper transformed into his Horn Point and charged at Jamal blindly, relying on his sense of smell.
But Jamal had already lugged Usopp with him over the edge of the ship hurtling into the ferocious waves. Chopper rammed against the side of the ship and fell in after them.
This was bad. Luffy gritted his teeth and rubbed at his eyes. He couldn’t Gatling, he couldn’t risk hurting his own nakama. He called up: “Nami! Can you clear the fog!?”
“I’m on it!” Nami spun her baton dexterously in her fingers.
Fasmidi scuttled on all six up towards Nami and jumped against the air, arresting Nami in her inescapable alien clutches before she could affect the weather in any way. “You interfere, she dies!”
But Nami was not about to become a hostage. “Thunder tempo!”
With a brilliant flash that pierced a pocket of the fog, the lightning coursed through Fasmidi’s body, causing her to let go and drop against the violently billowing sails; Nami had gotten so skilled she could avoid electrocuting herself even at point blank range.
Not the type to waste time patting herself on the back, Nami was climbing down the ladder as fast as she could to aid her nakama. However, a man appeared to be materializing from the fabric of the sails as Fasmidi struggled to recover beside him, scaring Nami witless.
“HOW DARE YOU!?” he screamed, grasping for her, half man, half cloth. He managed to grab her and dunk her into the waves just in the nick of time before Franky’s missiles could intercept (he had been aiming for the sail on which Fasmidi lay but missed).
“Brook, play louder!” said Franky. “The sound is breaking against the sonar that’s confusing Luffy’s senses!”
“Okay!” Brook drowned out the roar of the winds with a finger-flaying guitar solo, or at least it would have flayed his fingers if he had any skin to begin with! But the skull joke remained in Brook’s skull. Unfortunately for Luffy and the rest of the crew, Brook was the next to be taken into the abyss, manhandled by yet another Devil Dare coward who snuck up on him from behind.
“It’s time we settled the score once and for all, Brook!”
That voice! Could it be?
Brook’s voice was cut off by the water but he held his guitar close to his chest.
“Dammit, I won’t let this happen again! Everybody stick to the sides!” said Luffy, biting his thumb: if he couldn’t pinpoint any of his opponents, then he’d have to scare them into submission. “Gear Third!”
Luffy’s arm grew to roughly the size of the ship and began probing around for Fasmidi, who it seems had slipped off.
“Robin, tether everyone’s feet to the deck by the ankles!” shouted Franky.
“I can’t, where are y-“
Her voice disappeared, muffled by her attacker. Franky stumbled after her but he too was soon restrained and pulled hard and fast to the floor, by what he did not know. All he could hear next was the splash of the sea as Robin was taken with everyone else.
“WHERE ARE YOU BASTARDS!” Luffy screamed, bashing his huge arm every which way.
Suddenly a powerful vacuum sucked Sunny towards the weather machine-so powerful it even robbed Luffy of much of the air inflating his arm. He flew into an opening in the dome of the machine like a rag doll while Franky remained pinned.
Fasmidi and Kurt’s joint plan had gone off with nary a hitch.
Air soon returned to Luffy’s lungs, and groggily he surveyed his new surroundings. He was lying face up on a rotating gear, trapped inside a barque-sized transparent dome. The machine was full of fans, with a huge one spinning and oscillating at the very top. The dome was structured with cutting-edge technology that let the fans and various suction chutes of the machine manipulate the air outside the seemingly solid dome through a matrix of tiny pores in its surface. Down below, a massive whirlpool of seawater, running the whole contraption.
Luffy clutched his straw hat to his hair and panted, relieved it hadn’t flown away. He was still buffeted by winds on all sides but stood his ground as he got back on his feet, his unbuttoned sequin shirt flapping like a cape.
“ZORO! NAMI!” Luffy called futilely. “Anybody in here? Usopp, can you hear me! S-Sanji?” He remembered Sanji had been lured away earlier. “SAAAAANJIIIIIII!”
“You’ll see them all very shortly.”
Fasmidi had emerged from within the core control center tucked away inside a jungle of gears impassable except by insects. “I toggled off the mist setting so you could see for yourself.”
A girl? Luffy looked down at her, puzzled-she didn’t have the glowing green compound eyes he associated with her voice.
She was wearing a blouse and skirt made of thatched coconut fronds, which served as her pragmatic battle dress in lieu of adequate clothing that would fit her larger hybrid form as well. As a leaf insect, the dress of leaves integrated with her body. She demonstrated this by transforming.
Those eyes! It was her! Luffy quickly put two and two together. “You’re the girl bug!”
“I am the one true prophet of the Sea Devil, the Deepest Depth. I am the Heiress of All,” she corrected. “My eyes see everything-and yours will too! Behold!”
Huge spherical orbs similar to the dome were bobbing up from under the water one by one, and inside each orb was a distinct arena or platform, with a Straw Hat and a Devil Dare member trapped inside.
“Each orb represents an aspect of ourselves,” Fasmidi preached. “When we prove ourselves in honorable combat and demonstrate to the Sea Devil that we are most worthy, we will fulfill our ultimate potential and become the gods of those aspects. And this wonderful machine, Monkey D. Luffy, is part and parcel of the most important of the sacred sacrificial arenas-the Orb of Storm!”
“I don’t care about any of that!” Luffy shouted. “If you don’t release everyone right now then it won’t matter if you’re a cool bug, I’ll tear you TO PIECES!”
Fasmidi scratched under her right antenna and beat her leafy wings a little. “I’m not surprised a monkey like you has no comprehension of the gravity of your predicament.”
The mist may have lifted outside the orb, but the winds were still swirling in a circular pattern like a hurricane, creating a moderately strong whirlpool that carried every floating orb along by the outer limits. It was to be Sanji’s spectacle.
“Tonight is the night against which the sun shall never trespass again. Our Lord is the king of darkness, and he accepts only the strong unto the bosom of his mists,” she recited.
“Huh?” Luffy picked his ear. “Of course the sun is gonna rise again! It rises every morning, stupid! Where have you been?”
Chapter 7: Battle in the Bottle 「瓶の中の一戦」
“Gum Gum Gatling!” Luffy struck the dome, but his every punch glanced off without leaving so much as a dent. Then he had an idea.
“I’ll rip these gears out!” he said.
“I’m afraid I can’t let y-“
“Shut up!"
An unexpected wave of Color of the Conqueror haki broadsided her, and she fell to one side.
“What… what is that power!?” she gasped.
“Oh, you’re still awake?” Luffy’s only concern was leaving the dome; he heaved at a nearby lateral gear with all his might, having to sidestep and shuffle along to keep up with the gear he was standing on. “You’re pretty strong.”
This did not compute. She was supposed to be dominating him. How could her divine eyes have failed her?
Then it clicked. This power, it was meant for her. Davy Jones was testing her.
“Ugh, if only it weren’t spinning…” said Luffy. “Maybe I should just jam them?”
Fasmidi used the wind to her advantage, gliding on the breeze with her leaf wings and kicking against the air with four legs to accelerate.
“Gum Gum!” Luffy used the spin of the gear to his advantage: “WHIP!”
Luffy’s sweep kick sent her tumbling towards the seawater below, the true hazard of the stage for both Devil Fruit users; however, Fasmidi could stay above the water as long as she ran across it, like Brook. Luffy had no such luck.
Fasmidi kicked off with the wind and quickly ascended back to where Luffy was. She knew now this wasn’t going to be a fight she could win easily, and so she didn’t advertise her attacks.
“GUM GUM AXE!” Luffy intended to meteor kick her back into the water, but Fasmidi intercepted his leg and dragged him off the ledge of his gear.
Luffy stretched to reach the fan at the very top of the machine and grabbed one of its blades, spinning him and Fasmidi at a 60 degree angle around the enormous contraption.
“GET OFF!” Luffy blasted her with another dose of haki, but she’d already come up with a clever workaround and transformed into her tiny insect form to keep from losing consciousness. In this form she could also stick to surfaces, so when the centrifugal force sent her flying she merely attached herself to the side of the clear dome and climbed up.
Luffy bounced back up towards the biggest fan and tried to jam it from underneath by holding onto the blades, since he wanted to chuck it on her and pin her down for good. But the mechanism of the whole machine was too strong to budge.
Fasmidi morphed back into her hybrid form, which reformed the dress of coconut fronds around her, and tackled Luffy off the top, but Luffy threw off her stabs and swipes with a brief activation of Color of Armaments haki and followed up with a Gum Gum Stamp.
Fasmidi purposefully took the full brunt of the Stamp and hugged Luffy’s foot so that when it snapped back she could run him through with her bullet-like claws using his own momentum, forcing Luffy to blow up into a balloon to preempt the strike.
They were equally physically strong, and seemed equally resourceful in combat, except of course for that strange psychic power of his… could it be his D. that lent him such might? She had to squeeze the information out of him somehow. She would do the Devil proud tonight.
Luffy was floating as a balloon, sent every which way by the winds like he was caught in a cyclone. “Gear Third!” He opened up his mouth until it was bigger than the rest of his body and sucked in the gust he was trapped in, transferring the air to his leg and inflating it. This way at the very least he wouldn’t drown.
“It’s the leg of a giant!” Luffy shouted. “And I’m going to squash you like the stupid bug you are!”
“Leg of a giant, brain of an ant.” Fasmidi swooped in for his head, but Luffy saw it coming and drew up his haki shield. It wasn’t his head she was gunning for, though.
“My hat!”
Fasmidi slid to a halt on a gear and threatened to throw the hat into the works. “I saw how you checked for your hat before you even thought to call for your friends.”
Luffy couldn’t transition from Gear Third to Gear Second without pausing, but he could now localize Gear Second to energize a single limb. “Jet Pistol!”
The punch came so fast Fasmidi could barely see it, but then she had four powerful arms and managed to catch the punch. Once again she rode the snapback, and this time Luffy’s own speed prevented him from canceling. Fasmidi walloped Luffy hard on the side of the head, his hat on her insectoid head.
The shock and precision of the attack caused Luffy to hack up first blood, and the air in his giant leg gave, causing him to drop precipitously. Luffy would have drowned had he not pushed against the dome with his leg while it was still about twice his size.
Fasmidi seized her chance and struck again while Luffy was still disoriented, kicking him down to the bottom platform by the seawater, which was made of seastone, disabling Luffy’s rubber immunity.
“X marks the spot,” she laughed as he doubled over. Standing above him on the seastone platform, her Devil Fruit ability was also canceled and she reverted back into her human form: long purple hair, half-dead eyes, and strength enough to lift an elephant even with her vitality dampened. She adjusted the straw hat over her cascading locks and ground her bare heel on Luffy’s newly non-rubber ankle. Stars swam before his eyes and he cried in pain.
Before Luffy could muster up another haki blast Fasmidi grabbed him by his hair and dunked his head and chest into the water, holding him down for fifty seconds.
“Gwah!” Luffy gasped for breath; he was not used to being underwater for any length of time. There was no way he could use his haki like this.
“Now… you’re going to tell me about that D. of yours…” Fasmidi purred. “Or we’re going to be prolonging this indignity till the moon rolls away.”
Chapter 8: Excess Funds 「過度な金子」
“Ugh…”
Nami came to. The last thing she remembered she was drifting down towards the Locker, and now she was fine? What happened?
She was still wet-can’t have been a dream, then. She coughed up a little seawater and felt like hell. Why had she grown her hair out this long, it was sopping…
Her surroundings were beginning to come into focus. The storm was still going strong… funny how she hadn’t been able to feel it coming. Maybe she just had to get used to the Grand Line again…
Nami stretched and got up, slowly shedding her disorientation and realizing with some panic that she was no longer on the Sunny.
“Ah, so you’re up! My name is Goldweadth Gallant,” said a voice. “And I’ll be your executioner this fine evening.”
This was the Orb of Fasmidi, the first such Aspect Orb Goldweadth had designed. As such the “arena” was simply a flat gray floor which seemed to contain strange vaguely foot-shaped grooves.
“What the…"
“Ah, those are where my replicas of Fasmidi used to stand-they’re currently taking care of another one of your friends, I’m afraid.”
At those words Nami remembered what had happened-her nakama were in trouble!
“What is this!?” Her mind snapped back to crystal clarity. She was stuck in a glass sphere, floating in the ocean. “How did I get here!?”
Goldweadth sat down and began twiddling his thumbs impatiently.
“Aspect Orbs. They fit in the palm of your hand until they’re exposed to seawater. Then they expand and trap in the targets, then filters the water back out. The technology was originally meant to revolutionize the fishing industry, but let’s just say I snatched up the patent before it went to market.”
“So everybody’s trapped in these cages?”
Goldweadth grinned. “Yep. Well, pretty much everyone who matters, anyway. In any case, kindly pick up your staff so I can kill you.”
Nami was skeptical. “How could you have afforded to buy such an insanely valuable-“
“Let’s just say I’m made of money,” he said. “Now pick up the damn staff. Can’t have the Sea Devil think the match was unfair. Don’t really know the Lord’s criteria, better safe than sorry.”
“So you’re saying if I don’t pick up the staff… then there’s no match.”
“I figured you might say that. So here’s the deal-thing can shoot lightning, right? You’ll kill me in no time flat with just a twirl and a kiss goodbye.”
“You’re going to have to try better than that,” said Nami. “I’m a swindler myself, and I wasn’t born yesterday.”
“Oh come on,” he whined, leaning his head against his palm. “All right, how about this: Maybe if you shoot some lightning at the sides of this here orb, you could break through and escape to save your friends. It’s your only real option at this rate.”
Nami gulped. She crouched down and her fingers reached for the baton. She bit her lip. The moment she touched the thing he would spring in to attack.
Wait. He only knows about the lightning, and clearly he didn’t care or seem frightened in the least. That’s the attack he was expecting. And Nami didn’t think he looked bright enough to be bluffing. He had to be a Logia or a Paramecia to have melded with Sunny’s sail like that-a cloth Logia, maybe?
She grabbed the baton and immediately he lunged at her.
“RAIN TEMPO!”
Success! Goldweadth was impeded by the torrential downpour. She knew from Luffy that showers of water didn’t activate a Devil Fruit’s universal weakness, so it only followed that water was a particular weakness of this Fruit.
“You’re some sort of fabric,” she surmised, intensifying the precipitation with each flourish of her staff. “You’re useless in the rain!”
“Not quite.” Goldweadth, though pinned to the floor, was able to shoot out a flurry of metal coins from the palm of his hand at her, knocking the baton out of her hands. “I ate the Fruit Fasmidi gave me, the Kane Kane Fruit 「かねかねの実」!"
“You mean you’re literally made of money!?” Berry signs appeared in her eyes. She now understood how Sanji felt when he discovered Absalom had partaken of his coveted Fruit.
"How else could I have afforded all this for the Society?” Goldweadth laughed. “It was Dark Providence.”
The rain subsided and Goldweadth shook himself dry. Nami made for the climate staff but Goldweadth buried her in a wave of cash.
“Money” couldn’t be a Logia type, so that narrowed it down to Paramecia, which Nami could physically harm. Excellent news, but how would she reach her staff now that he was intent on suffocating her with money? Then an idea came to her.
“Fasmidi, did you say her name was? Must be pretty fat and ugly if her ‘replicas’ made those grooves with each step.”
Jackpot. Goldweadth practically lost his mind at that comment. In a rage he unloaded his maximum payload of coins on her, but Nami was saved somewhat by the protection of her bed of cash; she wriggled free and dashed for the staff.
“RAIN TEMPO!”
“Coin Purse!” Goldweadth guarded himself against the downpour with an impromptu shield of golden coins, a single bulbous green eye sticking out.
That eye used to be gold, Nami observed. He must be running out of coin power. Perfect!
But Nami was dismayed to see that Goldweadth had time enough to flip through his wallet and pick out a fresh coin, rubbing it against the tip of a single exposed finger. Apparently this recharged him.
“Touch memory,” Goldweadth explained. “So long as I’ve got the real metals of proper coins on my person, my body can ‘memorize’ the currency and counterfeit it. Same with the cotton inside paper bills.”
“So that’s how it works! Thanks for telling me, dumbass!” said Nami.
“What do you mean? There’s nothing you can-“
The staff whacked him on the hand, causing him to drop the coin. His hand recognized a new metal, but it wasn’t a metal in any currency the Fruit could identify, meaning his power shorted out long enough for Nami to deliver the finishing blows-an armor piercing “love slap” to the cheek, and a kick in the balls for good measure.
Then she sat on his back and set to creating a stable water cycle of constant rain inside the Orb, ordering him to spawn as much paper money for her as possible.
Chapter 9: Kingmaker 「キングメーカー」
The sight of Nami earning her flawless victory cured his speech paralysis instantly. “Melllloooriiiiine!” Hearts bounced off his eyes.
“What, yadedede, you think she’s okay lover boy?” said Kurt. “Then there’s something you have failed to grasp-even if your little friends beat them? They’ve still lost. There’s no way out of those things; hell, they were designed that way. You see they’re all a bunch of religious loonies convinced the world will end altogether if and when they win, so why bother making the trap escapable? Your crew’s gonna die of starvation sooner rather than later. Any way the cookie crumbles, it’s me who gets the last laugh.”
“You’re… you’re sick,” Sanji slurred. “You need… help.”
Kurt raised an eyebrow. “I’m not the one who needs help here, son.”
“Don’t have to do this,” said Sanji. “We can help you."
“’Don’t have to do this’? ‘You can help me’? Son… ‘this’ is me. Now… press your luck…” Kurt grazed his knife against Sanji’s ear. “And I just might have to make this unpleasant for you.”
Sanji seethed. “They’ll win. Somehow. And I will make that kid…” he coughed.
“What? What will you make that imbecile?” snapped Kurt.
“King of the Pirates,” he said with a DON.
“Now there’s some premium grade storybook bullshit.”
_*_*_*_*_
Inside the Orb of Jungle, Chopper and Usopp faced off against Jamal the Hunter.
“Don’t know who to kill first!” Jamal guffawed. “The coward or the beast!”
Jamal squared on them. “I wonder which of you two pathetic animals will run away first.”
“Usopp, please cover me!” said Chopper. “I’ll scout for his weaknesses!”
Chopper placed two hooves together like a frame and focused.
“Hahah, he’s cute,” said Jamal. “Never seen a talking animal in my day, but I suppose there’s a first for everything. And funnily enough, on the end of the world.”
Usopp readied another Vine Tendril Star, but Jamal swatted Usopp away from his prey with amazing speed. Usopp landed smack dab against the trunk of a tree.
“Hate snipers,” he spat. “I’m a bodyguard by day, poacher by night. And only cowards pick things off from the sidelines. The manly thing is to feel the life of an animal ebb away in your very hands.”
“Usopp! His weak point is-“
Jamal lifted Chopper up by the throat and nerve pinched him. “Good thing you’re human enough in this form to have that nerve there, otherwise you would probably have transformed already and I wouldn’t have gotten to stuff your *cute* face and place it above my mantle.”
“U-sopp…” Chopper managed to blurt out; it seemed the method for him was imperfect.
“Do you see now how useless it is to resist your fate if you’re a weakling?” said Jamal. “In any case, were it not the end of humanity tonight I might have been stuck in my old quandary-to sell or to choke. You’re a talking animal so you would have fetched I don’t know many millions of berries out on the black market. But I probably would have still choked the life out of you, come to think of it. You’ve just got one of those face, I guess.”
A green powder smacked Jamal in the face. “Was that supposed to do something, weakling?”
“You talk too much!” Usopp had recovered somewhat and was training yet another Green Star at him. “You love killing animals, let’s see how well you do against plants! Love Tree Scissor!” Usopp chopped through the air enthusiastically.
The green powder was actually thousands of tiny seeds that had dusted the jungle soil beneath Jamal’s feet and ravenously devoured the forest’s nutrients to shoot up in a lightning-fast spike trap of love trees (twin trees connected at the base), causing Jamal to drop Chopper from his death grip.
“I’ve gotcha buddy!” Usopp caught Chopper in his arms and fell back on his knees.
“His skin is like a tank… Only weak point… His liver… Aim for it…” Chopper coughed. Jamal was already managing to free himself of some of the binding branches.
“Yosh!” Usopp tied a vine around his neck to protect against a nerve pinch.
“Taking orders from a pet?” Jamal sneered, still struggling to break free of his prison. “Shouldn’t be surprised, one good look at you and I can tell you’ve never had the chutzpah it takes to be your own captain. All you can ever be is a follower! It makes me sick! A weakling like you, thinking he can take me down!”
“I fight for the king,” said Usopp, as he sat down to concoct his ultimate explosive. “That’s all I need.”
Jamal was perplexed at first-a pirate fighting for a king? But then he remembered Usopp’s bounty poster; his alter ego was “Sogeking.”
“So you hide behind a mask. Don’t want to be hunted by Marines, right?” Jamal spat. “Pathetic. Once I get my hands on you you’ll suffer the brutal end you deserve. And then you’ll die knowing who the true king is!”
Jamal finally ripped free and within a split second landed a blow to Usopp’s head that would have pulverized anyone else. But Usopp didn’t step back an inch. His feet were rooted to the soil!
“What the-” Soon Jamal’s feet were joined to Usopp’s.
“I had to make sure you wouldn’t hurt Chopper while my plan took effect,” Usopp explained, as the plant snare entwined their lower bodies. “You were expecting me to run, perhaps? I’d hardly be a brave warrior of the sea if I left the nakama behind me exposed to danger!” said Usopp with a DON.
“But now I can pummel you as many times as I like!” Jamal subjected Usopp to a savage flurry of punches. Usopp reeled from the pain, but he refused to back down.
“I thought you fought for the ‘king,’ why are you sacrificing yourself!” said Jamal.
“I am fighting for the king…” Usopp proudly declared. “The king… of the seas… the Pirate King… my captain, Monkey D. Luffy!"
“That’s even more pathetic! Your life is worth nothing compared to his!? So you’re just a pawn, is that it?”
“Wrong again. I’m his KNIGHT!”
Usopp had figured out that Jamal wouldn’t try to escape the trap right away if it meant he had the opportunity to brutalize the long nose, which gave the plant the time it needed to wind its way up to Jamal’s liver and carefully inject Usopp’s poison.
Jamal yelped with agony. Had Usopp merely aimed all his explosive pellets at Jamal’s liver, the hunter would simply have deflected the projectile with a slap of his gorilla-like arms. This was the only way to incapacitate him for good.
Jamal’s survival instinct took over and his eyes went totally white with rage, adrenaline magnifying his muscles to terrifying proportions. Jamal thought the only way to survive this was to kill Usopp and trigger the endtimes. “DIE!”
Usopp braced for impact. This punch would surely kill him, but at least he’d rescued Chopper…
“Roseo!!” Chopper saved Usopp with a last-second hoof stomp to the back of Jamal’s head, knocking him cold-he’d brilliantly aimed for the adrenaline center of the brain, even while Chopper himself was running on pure adrenaline. He quickly collapsed back into his Brain Point form, tongue lolling, barely able to move.
“Hold on, Chopper!” Usopp tended to Chopper’s wounds, bandaging him up with efficiency and precision. “That okay? You feeling better?”
Chopper giggled-it was like the reverse of their fight in Alabasta. “Thank you, Usopp.”
“No problem, just relax-“
“Actually, Usopp, you’re supposed to tell me to stay awake so I don’t go into…”
And Chopper did stay awake, schooling Usopp on medical minutiae for so long that Usopp entertained the notion of just bonking him on the head anyway.