Memoirs of an OC - Story V, Chapter XI
Quest, Big Gundown
Or:
The Big Gundown
We start off the chapter in a new area! Yes! We're now in the “FORMER MINERS' LIVING QUARTERS” described to be “a large cavern with wooden houses built on the back wall. A couple of other corridors were leaving the place, but only one had railway going through, and it was the one the two pirates had entered from” and this is where the cart carrying Zoro and Brook finally comes to a complete stop. Wow. Their track must have been super-long. Brook has stopped panicking by now, which I'm not that surprised to learn, considering that they must have been traveling in that cart for at least half an hour before stopping. His voice also reads like it's completely monotone, which doesn't make me think of the way Brook speaks at all. Oh well.
Hang on a minute. Let's go back to the description of the place for a minute, because I'm getting really confused about the whole layout of the mines here. Maybe I'm just ignorant about how these things were done, but why would you place the living quarters for miners inside the mine? Even more so since this cave seems to be lower than ground-level, considering that Zoro and Brook weren't able to get out on their way there in the cart.
Wouldn't that be kind of unsafe, in case of a cave-in? I mean, wouldn't it be better to make a small town outside the mining area, instead of forcing your workers to go through winding tunnels or go on a dangerous roller-coaster through the mines just to go home to sleep? It just doesn't seem like a very good idea.
Anyway, because they've reached a dead end on the track, and there's apparently no way to go back the way they came, Zoro and Brook get out of the cart and start trying to figure out where to go next. Zoro points out one of the tunnels that he thinks they should take, and Brook laughs at him and in a long-winded way says that that means they should take the other one. … I thought the description said that there were “a couple” of corridors leading out of the place, and that one of them had the railway tracks in it. So... wouldn't that mean that there's only one other way out of there? Hm.
Zoro gets angry because of this, and Brook keeps pointing out that Zoro has no sense of direction. They keep at it for a moment, until they sense enemies approaching, and a bunch of fat guys (or more precisely “silhouettes of strong built - especially strong at the abdominal level”) appear along the walls around them. After a while, there's a lot of said enemies around them. In fact, the narration states that “They could now count perfectly how many fat and masked opponents had appeared all around them, even if both swordsmen weren't really keen on actually counting them.”
… Well, that sentence was pretty pointless, wasn't it? Sorry about that.
So one of the Beagle Boys appears to be the leader of the group, and he-- Oh, my goodness.
"Intr'ders locat'd." spoke the leading Beagle Boy in a small Den-Den-Mushi handset, "Getting' rid 'f them right n'w."
Authors. You can't write accents. Please stop butchering the English language with this horrible excuse for an accent. You can't just throw in random apostrophes all over your sentences. If you want these guys to sound a bit sluggish or something, you need to actually put some work into it. If you can't write accents in a way that doesn't stand out like a textbook example of People Do Not Talk Like This, write the words normally, and add narration that describes that the Beagle Boys talk with a drawl, or are talking like their mouths are full of cotton. It's much less annoying.
Seriously, authors. I mean, you don't even read these sentences out loud, do you? Or if you do, I don't think you're reading it the way the apostrophes say it should be read. I've pointed this out before, I think, but when you put an apostrophe in a word, that indicates that you've removed part of the word. Don't remove an important vowel like the u in “intruder” or the o in “now”, because it makes no sense when you try to read it out loud.
Oh, and what the hell is that apostrophe doing at the end of “Getting” anyway? It's completely useless, and has no function whatsoever, since it's just hanging there at the end of the word for no reason. Remove the g in that word, and it works. “Gettin' rid of 'em now” is a lot easier to read, though I'm sure native English speakers can come up with much better ways to write that sentence.
The authors also seem to forget that Den Den Mushi aren't cellphones. They're noisy, living, psychic walkie-talkies. When a character uses one to communicate, the other end of the conversation will be heard, but we have never been shown what the other side says in this story. This is something that annoys me on top of the horrible overuse of apostrophes.
I will point out every use of stupid accents in this chapter, because I have a feeling there will be a lot of them, and they annoy me.
Brook muses about the Beagle Boys' ability to follow through with getting rid of them, but is interrupted by all the Beagle Boys taking out their guns and aiming them at the two pirates. The Beagle leader then responds:
"'f course. Whut do ya think ya can do?" the Beagle Boy snarled with a superior tone, "Sw'rds are useless now, ya know. We hav' pistols and m'ch betta weapons!"
Okay. First of all, he'd be right if this was a realistic setting. But we're in a world where a good swordsman can cut through dense rock and metal with the wind caused by a swing of his sword. Bullets aren't automatically better in this universe.
Second of all, this just shows how completely useless the Beagle Boys are as villains in this setting. They're just not threatening at all. They're not even threatening in their own canon, so why am I expected to think that this moment is the least bit tense? The only thing they've got going for them is their numbers, and a hundred Beagle Boys are not going to be any kind of obstacle for Zoro and Brook. Let's just get this over with and move on.
Zoro joins me in my complete disinterest in this scene, and it makes the Beagle leader a bit angry. He orders the other Beagle Boys to “GET TH'M!” and everyone starts shooting. The gunfire is so severe that a thick cloud forms in the middle of the cavern. Then, there's silence.
Well, not really, because the next line tells us that there's a “faint tilting sound” coming from inside the cloud of smoke and dust, described as sounding like “something metallic hitting the stone ground”. Gee, I wonder what that is.
The Beagle Boys look on in confusion as a single bullet rolls out of the dust cloud and stops by the Beagle leader's foot. There's more TING noises as the cloud clears up, and... Er. I'm not quite sure. Apparently, we just got out of bullet-time or something, because the TING sounds were the bullets dropping to the ground. Which happened almost half a minute or something after the noise from the gunshots stopped echoing in the cave. This makes no sense. Bullets don't move that slow.
Do you know something else that doesn't make sense? The Beagle Boys were surrounding Brook and Zoro, and all of them proceeded to shoot at the two pirates at once. I really don't think that plan was very well thought out, do you? Even if they managed to take out Zoro and Brook, the spray of bullets would've at least taken out half of the Beagle Boys themselves! Zoro and Brook actually saved the Beagle Boys from killing each other!
Oh well, Zoro and Brook managed to get through the Beagle Boys - yeah, imagine that, the Beagle Boys were no match for them - and cut them down. Of course, it takes them a while to understand that they've been cut down, which gives the Beagle leader time to say “"Im… imp'ssible…!" and "Imp'ssi…ble…" before everyone falls to the ground. Not dead, of course, just unconscious, because that's how swords work, I guess.
Then... You know what, the authors almost manage to make a funny here. Look at the conversation between Brook and Zoro after the Beagle Boys are defeated:
"Zoro-san…" Brook began with a serious deep voice.
"Hum…?" Zoro nonchalantly reacted.
"I still believe it is safer to take this way, please do your best to follow…" Brook sighed with a patronizing tone while pointing at the gallery that Zoro was NOT walking towards.
"JUST SHUT UP!" Zoro snapped while baring his teeth, quite on the nerves.
The only thing that really ruins it is that Brook wouldn't use a patronizing tone. If that hadn't been there, I would have given the authors credit for writing something that I find somewhat funny.
Anyway, let's move on! We jump to a completely different place, the “LOWEST GALLERY” of the mines. The layout of the mines just seem to get more and more confusing.
We're joining Ace and Luffy as they're trying to find a way out of whatever place they ended up in after getting thrown out of the mine cart a few chapters ago. There's some pointless descriptions of how they ended up down there and how they landed... and then they make a pointless quip about Zoro not being able to find his way, and we're briefly catapulted back to Zoro and Brook. Here, the authors insert way too many of those “sneeze because someone is talking about you” gags, supposedly because everyone is concerned that Zoro won't make it out of the mines.
… Seriously, you can stop now. It's not funny. Zoro has plot protection when it comes to his broken internal compass, all right? His wandering off advances the plot while also giving chances for gags. Not like this. Okay? Okay. Let's go back to the story.
We cut back to Luffy and Ace, where the two are playing Rock, Paper, Scissors to decide which way to go. Luffy wins, which pisses Ace off a bit. Then... Uh. They go through corridors that are full of traps, which Luffy finds hilarious, of course. I'm just going to skip it, because it's not really interesting to read.
Ace gets annoyed with the way Luffy keeps choosing the wrong paths (suggesting that Luffy keeps winning at Rock, Paper, Scissors) and finally snaps and yells at Luffy to get serious. Luffy shoots back that Ace is a stick in the mud, which makes Ace space out and monologue in his head about how he can't remember the last time he really had fun. No surprise there.
Skipping over some angsting, Ace comes to some kind of conclusion that he should be more carefree from now on, and then they go through some more traps.
Arriving in another large space in the mines, where several tunnels stretch out in different directions, they decide to settle which way to go with another round of Rock, Paper, Scissors. But just as they're starting, Ace notices that Luffy has been cheating this whole time by using Haki to predict which move Ace is going to use.
What follows is just Ace berating Luffy for somehow being annoying and not realizing that everyone who goes to the New World knows at least the basics of Haki. As if Rayleigh didn't bring that up during the training. I'm not really sure what this has to do with Ace being fooled for this long without noticing it, but sure. Let's just keep going.
Ughhh... After that, what follows next is just needless descriptions of Ace and Luffy playing the game while both using Haki, resulting in Ace finally winning.
All of a sudden, there's loud cheering and applause coming from all around them. During the game, they apparently were too focused to notice that they were surrounded by Beagle Boys. I'm not sure how long they've been there, but they start taking bets on who will win the next round of the game. Ace manages to alert Luffy to the Beagle Boys' presence, and they start attacking the enemies.
After a little while, one of the Beagle Boys manages to think up the clever idea of just shooting their opponents. He's even speaking without an accent! Amazing! Let's see how that idea pans out.
The bullets just go right through Ace, and Luffy bounces them back. Big surprise. It's almost like these guys have no freaking clue who they're dealing with.
Yeah, Ace and Luffy beat the Beagle Boys, but the leader of the group manages to press a button on his Den Den Mushi before passing out.
Then... Oh my god, we're back with Sanji! How long has it been since we saw him? It must be at least two chapters since he showed up last. Let's see what's going on there!
We join Sanji just as the Den Den Mushi belonging to Blackheart Beagle goes off. Even though he was able to hear everything Blackheart and Sheriff Surferdude were sayingearlier, he doesn't know what's going on, and he can't move from his hiding place without being seen. Apparently, Sheriff Surferdude is “standing there on alert” for no apparent reason.
So Blackheart Beagle tells Sheriff Surferdude “Ne'd to go...” and “Don't forget ou' deal!” to which Sheriff Surferdude just smirks in reply.
Sanji watches Blackheart Beagle leave, and he waits for a few minutes after hearing the sound of a mine cart coming from one of the tunnels to be sure that the Beagle is gone. I'm not sure what Sheriff Surferdude was doing during this time, but when Sanji turns his attention back to him, he's just taken out a Den Den Mushi and is talking to someone.
"H'ya!" he said when connecting to his interlocutor, "It's me. Yea' a bunch of idi'ts. St'rt the plan!"
Sanji's reaction to this is to clench his teeth and say “Crap!” I'm not sure why. We don't know who he's talking to or what this plan is all about, so why is Sanji so alarmed? What did he learn while we were off wasting time with the other characters? We may never know.
So, we go right back to Luffy and Ace, who have been playing Rock, Paper, Scissors again. Ace got to pick the tunnel this time, and Luffy follows him, pouting like a kid all the way.
Ace goes on in his head about how amazing it is that Luffy managed to become equally skilled with the Haki-abilities as him in just a few months. Yeah, Ace, you're not the only one who can't believe it, trust me.
Then, all of a sudden, there are some “numerous aggressive presences drawing by” and both Ace and Luffy take off running just as the tunnel starts collapsing behind them. They keep running from the cave-in, until Ace spots a light at the end of the path, and they both jump just in time to escape. If the prose hadn't been pretty dry and so detached from the characters themselves, this might actually have been tense. But if the characters don't care that the ceiling is coming down right behind them, why should I?
We find ourselves in an even larger cave, which apparently looks like the room where the dragon was kept in Story IV with a ceiling that is so high that it can't be seen. It's also described to have “countless galleries like a giant termite mount,” some of them regular tunnels, while others have railways leading who-knows-where. Of course, I'm not sure why this is described, because we then learn that most, if not all of these tunnels are blocked by Beagle Boys.
Blackheart Beagle (although it doesn't say it's him at first) steps forward and says “Ya manag'd to get th're...” and Luffy wonders just who the hell he is. Ace calmly explains that it must be the leader of the Beagle Boys, making Luffy realize that this is the guy who stole Nami's gold. Yeah. Nami's gold. Not their gold.
Blackheart finally recognizes Luffy, and when Luffy tells him to give back the gold, the rest of the Beagle Boys draw and cocks their guns. Blackheart then sneers and asks them if they want to fight and then adds: “Ya're a very troubl'some bunch, but ya're not getting' away!”
… There's that weird apostrophe at the end of “getting” again! What is it doing there?
For some reason, this worries Ace and Luffy, since the narration says that they're “instinctively knowing that this fight won't be as easy as the previous one.” Ace starts going on for a bit in his head:
Most of them are out of reach for hand-to-hand combat… Ace estimated with a quick glance towards the upper galleries, Using fire would be useless too… they have the upper hand even if we attack from afar: distance gives them enough time to hide…
Ace? We're talking about the Beagle Boys here. This is not tense. These guys only have guns, and you and Luffy are invulnerable to bullets! This is just the characters saying that their powers and abilities are useless for no other reason than that the authors say so.
Blackheart's Den Den Mushi suddenly rings, and...Oh, now he's got some sort of headphone “transponder” to put on his ear to avoid having the other side of the conversation heard? Why hasn't this come up before?
Anyway, it appears that the Den Den Mushi brings bad news, since Blackheart frowns and says “Humph… Troubl'some bunch…” after hanging up. He then goes closer towards Luffy and Ace, and I think I'll spork the conversation that follows.
"Y'ur nakamas mess'd up our plans…" said the grey-haired robber, "S'me swordsm'n of y'urs… Tsk!"
Turtlecrackers: He must sound like he's got his mouth full of marbles. Or maybe ill-fitting dentures.
"Shishishi…" Luffy grinned proudly, his tone challenging and confident, "You shouldn't have stolen Nami's gold!"
Turtlecrackers: Or the gold that belongs to all the other miners for that matter.
"N'mi…?" spoke the Beagle Boy, "Sh's y'ur girl?"
Turtlecrackers: No, thats Nami. I don't know who N'mi is.
"Yeah!" Luffy nodded joyfully, his change of countenance even making Ace crash a bit in his back.
Turtlecrackers: ...That sounds painful.
Show some shame and priorities, aho…!
Turtlecrackers: Uh...why? Why should he feel ashamed about being asked about his girlfriend? Also, you're one to talk about priorities if you have the time to wonder about Luffy's priorities.
"So th't was y'ur girls…" the old Beagle Boy sneered, the plural at the end of 'girls' making Ace tense and grow slightly flustered, but hopefully for him, he was still back to everyone else,
Turtlecrackers: Uh... *scratches head* I have no idea what that means. Who is hopefully back to everyone else? What is up with this? The narration makes less sense than the weird accents!
"the ones th't numb'r 101.001 took car' of…"
Turtlecrackers: Was it? There was never a mention of any number, so it might have been the guy with the bison whistle. Who knows?
TILT. Luffy's smile disappeared instantaneously, and Ace's cheeks cleared from his flush in a second.
Turtlecrackers: Oh, noes! Our strong and capable to defend themselves girlfriends are said to be hurt! We must instantly believe the guy and get mad about it!
"What did you say…?" Luffy slowly asked, his tone cool, almost chilly, and the eyes hidden under the shadow of his hair.
Turtlecrackers: Oh stop it. I think Luffy would look straight at the guy at this point.
"Y'ur girls… y'ur pr'cious girls…" the thief leader repeated with a knowing smirk,
Turtlecrackers: Knowing? What does the smirk know? Also, they are not girls, thye are women.
"Now th'y've been all stomped on by b'ffalos. H'ndreds of b'ffalos in fury crushin' them! Th're gonna be nothin' left 'f them, nyarghahaha…"
Turtlecrackers: You'd think that if he knew that Mr 100.001 decided to have them trampled, he would check up on the progress of that instead of just assuming that it worked out as planned.
Anyway, back to recapping. Luffy breaks Blackheart's nose and then beats him up to the point where Beagle can barely tell the other Beagle Boys to attack once he manages to see over his ENORMOUS gut. Because he's fat, you know. But all of the Beagle Boys have been knocked out by Ace's Haki. Well...That was fast.
Now, what follows is almost a full page of Ace wangsting about how the Haki isn't his power, but that it comes from Gold Roger, and Luffy insisting that it's really cool. Ace goes on about how he doesn't like using it, but that it just happened because he got mad, and I frankly don't care.
So they decide to ask Blackheart Beagle where the gold is.
“Humph... Ya won't get away wi'h it!” says Blackheart Beagle. “Ya gonna hav' trouble with ou' boss! And I wanna not mess 'p with a Yonkou, if I w're ya...”
Ace asks him what he means by threatening them with a Yonkou, and grabs Blackheart by the shirt, lifting him off the ground.
“Urph'...” says Blackheart, apparently not getting the wind knocked out of him too much to continue: “Hff, hff... Ya wanna know now? B't it's too late! Ya've come too far! Ya'll regret in H'll to have angered the m'st dangerous Yonkou!”
Not too intimidated or impressed by this breathless speech, both looking very serious. Because it's serious business now.
“We work f'r the man who caus'd a Big War j'st to get one of his men back...” says Blackheart, apparently not having as much trouble breathing as the narration wants us to believe. He also appears to have been beaten to a pulp again. “It's too late for ya...”
Ace's rage is building while Blackheart is talking, and it seems like he's been suspecting something ever since the robbery took place in town. I'm not quite sure what that suspicion is, but it's making him hide his eyes under his hair, so it has to be serious.
Blackheart, on the other hand, seems to be on a roll, and shows no intention to stop talking any time soon.
“Yeah...” he says, sneering with a “bad omen superior tone,” whatever that sounds like. “Ya're gonna have to face the Emperor... WhiteBeard!”
Thinking for a second that what he said sounded very epic, Blackheart is crushed when neither Luffy nor Ace even believes a word he said.
“Don't mess with 's!” he roars, even though he supposedly has damaged lungs from the beating he took earlier. “Told ya! H'll is gonna break down 'n the ones attacking h's allies! Donna m'tter if we're just hired, he'll...”
He's interrupted by his “fatty ass” (because he's fat, you know) hits the ground after Ace lets go of his shirt. Blackheart is about to say something, but falls silent when he sees Ace copying Fuu's “let's make the air go frosty for no reason that is connected to the character's powers” move.
So Ace is really angry, obviously, and what he thinks is the best move right now is to take off his sand-colored shirt (seriously, did anyone else completely forget he had that on?) and show off the tattoo on his back. Blackheart is too shocked to say anything, and when Ace wonders if he'd like to “revise your [his] declaration”, he starts stammering.
“N...no... no... n... o... way...!” he gasps. “But he h'd to'd us...”
Ace wants to know who this “he” is, his eyebrows probably getting tangled up in one another because he frowns so deeply.
“He... tr'pped... us...” Blackheart says, now suddenly starting to pass out from his injuries. “Curse h'm!”
Ace demands again who this mysterious “he” is, shaking Blackheart by his collar.
“H... he betray'd Kaidou... he... the...” Blackheart mutters out. “The... SHER'FF...!”
Out of all the reviews on this chapter, only one person even comments on this zomgamazing cliffhanger. And even that person saw this coming. One reviewer even thinks that Whitebeard is behind everything for some reason.
Really? This is supposed to be the big reveal? We already knew that Sheriff Surferdude had something to do with the Beagle Boys, because we saw him talking to Blackheart and not arresting the guy! We also already know that the gold theft in town was staged, because we were shown the guy who alerted everyone at the saloon that the gold had been stolen, and we were told he's a bad guy!
We've also only seen the sheriff a handful of times, and he's never done anything normal that would have lulled us into thinking that he might be a good guy who just uses non-orthodox methods to deal with thieves at the mine. We didn't get to see him helping townspeople or catching purse-snatchers or anything else. He tortured a guy when we first got to the mines, and then took all the gold on his horse (who must have some kind of super-strength to carry all that gold) to his office in town. Then he chased after the Beagle Boys, and didn't notice he was followed as he made a beeline to go and talk to the leader of the thieves inside the mines.
Now we find out that the sheriff used to work for Kaidou, which isn't that weird, considering that the island is supposed to be part of Kaidou's territory. We know the island is part of Kaidou's territory, because we were told about in the first chapter of this story.
We know all of this because the authors have already told us everything. This cliffhanger and plot twist falls flat, because it's not surprising, and it's not really exciting.
Well... I'll stay on the lookout for new chapters. It might take another month or two.
Onward to: Chapter 12
Back to: Chapter 10
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