Memoirs of an OC - Story IV, Chapter IX
Quest, Feather
Or:
Ice Core & Eternal Feather
This chapter opens up with everyone except Luffy exclaiming “Robin?”, since she was the one who appeared at the end of the last chapter. There's some random mention that she is still wearing the pleated dress, and it's standing out against the ”bluish lit frame of the door.” Since her dress is supposed to be white, wouldn't it be blue-tinted by the light as well?
We briefly jump into Robin's POV, as she remarks on how everyones clothes are torn, and how strange it is that everyone seems perfectly fine otherwise. Then, she looks at Fuu, who is “pale and short-of-breath by the repetitive use of her spells but still forcing a smile on her lips to welcome her.” Why does she keep forcing smiles? Can't she just smile tiredly or something now and then? Forcing a smile sounds like it's all fake.
There's a brief mention that Luffy is, in fact, still fighting the queen, but that's not important right now. Robin starts to explain what she has been up to since they split up. She found information about the queen in the library, as well as some other references to the Narnia books, and even the source of the queen's powers. Fuu perks up at this, because it's information she doesn't already have in her memories.
Um, when has she ever shown any interest in learning, not counting her apparent obsession with the Void Century in that dull omake? I mean, yeah, she seems to think that she deserves to know everything whenever she feels like it, but I really can't remember reading about her actually interested enough in a subject to do research on her own.
Anyway, what Robin has found out is this:
"The Queen is a Sorceress from Charn, so she is of a different species than us. As such, she can naturally control magic in a somehow unlimited way…"
Followed by:
"… but…" [...] "She can only CONTROL magic, not CREATE it. As such, she needs to fulfil two conditions in order to make use of her power. Firstly: an artefact specialized in the kind of magic she is planning to use, and which she will use as a vessel for the magical energy. Secondly: a source of magic allowing her to catalyse the energy…"
Seems pretty straight-forward, doesn't it? It's just got to be hard on the queen, who has to use magic from an outside source when she has been brought to a world without magic. The source of magic is of course the ice dragon, as if we didn't know about that already.
But the dragon is long gone, so why the hell can the queen still use magic, you ask? Robin actually explains this to us:
"That means that Queen Jadis is now drawing into her own magical energy to fight us. She might not realize it yet, since she had used the Ice Dragon as an unlimited source of magic for a long time now, but the repercussions of depleting her own magic might be strong enough to erase her…
… Wait.
Dude. You just said that she can't “create” magic, just control it! If she needs an outside source of magic to use, then that suggests that she doesn't HAVE any magic of her own, doesn't it? Which one is it?
Also, how did Robin know that the dragon escaped? She wasn't there when it arrived with Ace, and it took off before Robin got there.
Robin also explains that the artifact is what is keeping the queen from noticing any side-effects from using her own energy to attack, but if that is destroyed, it's possible that they can destroy the queen as well. Am I the only one who thinks that sounds pretty sinister, considering that the Strawhats don't usually kill people? It just sounds like they're going to let the queen drain herself of her magic power and then destroy the artifact and watch her collapse and die.
Everyone is all happy about this news, but Zoro wants more information, like what is this artifact they're after, anyway? It's apparently called the ICE CORE (caps not mine), and while Robin says this, she looks curiously at Fuu to see what her reaction will be. I'm not sure why. When Fuu doesn't react any different than the others, Robin is confused and wonders if whatever it is she came up with while in the library was just her imagination.
Chopper asks what the “Ice Core” (the caps was for effect, I guess) is, and if it's alive or something. I'm not sure why it would be alive. An ice core is a sample taken from glaciers and such to gather information about the climate among other things. It's not magical.
I keep getting side-tracked.
Robin keeps looking at Fuu, expecting some kind of reaction as she explains what the Ice Core is:
"No, the Ice Core is the result of the merging of the Queen's magic with a powerful magic item." explained she while occulting the details about the 'item' until she could ask about it in private to a certain girl apparently linked to it, "It resembles a jewel containing the power of Ice, and therefore she incorporated it into her own weapon."
Yeah, her scepter. I think everyone else figured this out about two chapters ago. Also, why would Fuu be linked to the damn thing? I'm so confused! Anyway, they keep talking about this for a while, repeating that they have to destroy the scepter over and over again. Zoro and Sanji start to fight because neither of them could break it. Ace asks Robin if she knows of a way to break it, especially when Nami, who apparently has been watching Luffy's fight with the queen, announces that even Luffy can't break the scepter.
… I wish I was watching that fight.
Robin says that she does know how to destroy it, but she needs Luffy to hear her explanation, so she asks Ace to go out and keep the queen busy while Luffy comes over to listen. Yeah. Because Ace did so well last time he fought the queen, right? Well, apparently, the excuse for that is that he was worn out from fighting Snuggles McSweetykins earlier, or something. But now he's back to normal, and apparently a bit stronger than before. Right.
He uses his fire to distract the queen for a moment, so that Robin can explain what's going on. Luffy is annoyed that Ace is butting in on his fight, but Ace gets even with him and carries him off the floor.
I don't know why they keep mentioning that Ace is back in perfect condition, because there was no mention of him being worn out or anything earlier. He just did some stupid choices while fighting that almost got everyone killed, not because he was weakened, but because he was stupid.
I also don't know why they have to keep writing “kakkowarui” instead of 'uncool'. It's getting really annoying.
Anyway, he brings Luffy over to the others, and Robin starts explaining what they're going to do. We're not told what it is yet, though. We just get... one, two... thirty-one ellipses in a row.
Then, the queen manages to sort out the attack Ace left her with, but now she's surprised to see that Nami has used her Mirage Tempo to create duplicates of the entire group.
Robin has somehow been turned into the commander for this, and has let her mouth sprout from everyone's clothes in order to be able to synchronize their attacks. … They really haven't been having too much trouble with getting their attacks synchronized before, so I don't know why they suddenly need Robin to give them orders.
Anyway, she gives Zoro the order to attack, and all five versions of Zoro rush at the queen, who takes one of them out with her ice magic. It wasn't the right one, and Zoro manages to break part of the scepter.
Next, Ace is called out to take his turn. He makes a feint attack that throws the queen off guard, and manages to set the Ice Core on fire.
Sanji is next, and I just happily assumed that Ace didn't get out of the way before the cook throws his “Diable Jambe” attack to finally break the Ice Core.
When the jewel breaks, the queen is apparently turned into a snow statue as her powers are drained out of her, upon which Robin gives Luffy the order to deliver the final blow. I don't know why Luffy had to be told this. It's stupid.
Anyway, the queen is turned into snowflakes and dies. Everyone celebrates, even though Chopper and Fuu whines about feeling useless for a bit.
While the others... stand around cheering for themselves, I guess, Robin wants to show Fuu something. It's a piece of the Ice Core that she picked up from the floor. Robin just keeps adding on the cryptic bullshit, and just looks at Fuu with glowing eyes, and I have no fucking idea what's going on right now.
Fuu ”graciously” arches her eyebrow (what the hell, authors? I'm just going to assume that instead of doing it beautifully, she did it condescendingly) and decides to touch the pieces of the jewel. The moment she does that, there's a blinding flash and the jewel seems to melt and change shape. Once the light dims down, the jewel has been turned into... a feather of light. With some kind of “heart-shaped rune” on it.
So the feather just kind of floats in her hands for a moment, and she stares vacantly at it as it glows and emits a white light to surround Fuu and Robin. The others come over ”either wanting their share of fun or worrying for the one who was apparently holding on to a dangerous object.” Because that's what you do when someone is apparently holding a dangerous, unknown object - you walk towards it.
Then there's purple paragraphs about some kind of magic that removes the ice and frost from the surroundings and makes the winter go away, and everyone is happy.
But the chapter doesn't end there. Oh, no. The light from the feather starts to dim, but it suddenly stops and a light wind starts to blow around them, getting these reactions from the others (fuu just "wonders" “Huh?”) :
"What…?" exclaimed Nami.
"Hey…" murmured Chopper.
"Bah?" gasped Luffy.
"Tsk!" grumbled Zoro.
"But…" tilted Sanji.
"That's…" screeched Ace.
"Yare yare…" smiled Robin.
Because this is normal reactions to your clothes suddenly disappearing along with the magic that created them, right? Yep. We're having nudity in this story! Yay! I'm still wondering what happened to their own clothes after they changed into those white garments, you know.
Anyway, yeah, everyone is naked. But it's okay. The guys only got a glimpse before Fuu “instinctively” made herself, Nami, and Robin invisible. Robin also used her multiple arms to cover the guys' eyes, which is kind of unnecessary since they're now invisible.
Nami whines that Robin should have covered their eyes as well, because there are naked guys there, ew!
After a moment, Fuu starts making another spell while blushing and thinking this:
Waaaahhh… I wished this invisibility 'spell' on impulse, but when thinking about it, new clothes for everyone is way smarter… And the final result way less embarrassing!
And that's where the chapter ends. Hilarious, right? Yeah, no, I didn't think so either. I find it childish. Although I'm amused because it made me realize that if my pirate captain OC had been with them, she wouldn't have cared if her clothes disappeared, and would have been more annoyed that she was made invisible against her will.
Now, if you excuse me...
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit! Where the hell did she get the energy to not only turn the three women invisible, but to make another spell to - hopefully- make clothes for everyone? There was no mention of her getting energy from that feather-thing, and she was almost too tired to smile at the beginning of this chapter.
Oh, and what is up with this chapter? This is supposed to be the climax of the story, and we barely see anything of the fight against the queen, except the complete and utter pwning she gets, and then everything is fine. Except that I just want to point out that the final fight definitely wasn't even close to being fair. The queen had been fighting against Sanji, Zoro, Ace and finally Luffy for a long time, and she had lost her source of magic, draining only what little magic she had in her own body. Even if the scepter had kept her from harm as long as it could, her magic would have run out and they wouldn't even have needed to fight her.
The Strawhats were restored to their full potential, and once they attack, all that's needed is for three of them to attack the scepter one time each, and she's defeated. It makes me wonder just why she was written as so difficult to beat earlier.
Anyway, next time, we're going through the last chapter of this story. I'll add some of my thoughts about this story to the end of it.
Onward to: Chapter 10
Back to: Chapter 8
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