(Bellamy POV)
“Why, if this isn’t the ugliest mug I’ve ever seen!” Urouge called out as we approached his camp.
“Ever looked in the mirror recently?” I shot back causing Urouge’s crew to bristle. For his part, the big guy slowly stood up and muscled his way into my personal bubble, his voice lowering itself threateningly.
“You insulting me, Hyena?” I was once more reminded of how ludicrously big Urouge actually was if he decided to stand up. More so when he cheated by using his devil fruit ability. “Pray I misunderstood you.”
“Hard of hearing already, old man? If you need a doctor, I can provide one.” We were all of the same human race, but why were so many individuals in One Piece so big? Admittedly, Urouge wasn't a homo sapiens sapiens but Doffy? The Admirals or Garp? They were humans, right? “I hear senility can set in early these days.”
“Such arrogance! Do you not fear divine retribution?” Urouge queried, shoving his face into my own, his nose a hair's breadth from mine. “Do you not fear god?”
“We killed a god and had him for breakfast. You tell me.” I replied, standing my ground. “And get your stinking breath out of my face.”
At that, he reeled back as if struck, his expression shifting into one of grave affront.
“My breath does not stink! I used mint mouthwash this very morning!” he protested strongly. I countered by waving a hand exaggeratedly in front of my face to disperse whatever vapors he might have left…even if they were very minty fresh.
“In that case, you may want to change your supplier.” I suggested.
“Can you handle the consequences of your words, Hyena? I promise you, it won’t be pretty.” He practically growled, slamming his pillar down for emphasis.
“Oh, it won’t be pretty alright.” I agreed, transforming my right arm, which seemed to be a signal for our respective crews to simultaneously take one big step back and form an impromptu fighting ring. I was going to have to discipline them for that later. How dared they abandon their captain in a time of crisis? “In fact, I am making it my personal mission to see you puking your guts out.”
“Big words for a little man, but do you have what it takes?” His crew had been going increasingly green as our conversation progressed, with some of his clerics silently gasping for air, the thick tension clogging their airways. I imagined that my own crew didn’t look that different.
“More than enough to take down a blown-up pufferfish.” I claimed, quite seriously. That certainly got a reaction out of him.
“Oh, you did not just go there.” he said, pointing a finger in my direction.
“I did. What are you going to do about it?” I asked and his answer was immediate and decisive.
“Drink you under the table, midget.”
“You will try.” I told him, my grin going savage.
“Challenge accepted.” A smile bisected Urouge’s face from ear to ear, rendering his visage even more terrifying than it normally was. Then the next thing I knew, he had his back turned to me as faced his crew and announced, “You heard the midget, let’s drink!”
And with that, all the tension vanished into thin air as if it had never existed in the first place, both our crews working seamlessly together to throw an impromptu party. Logs were either cut down or otherwise toppled to provide seating arrangements, bits and pieces arranged into a great bonfire upon which to roast newly hunted game. Barrels upon barrels of booze were unloaded from our holds and cracked open in record time, while Hewitt got to work on the hors d'oevres.
It was after several rounds of drinks had passed that Urouge returned to our earlier conversation.
“Something’s been niggling the back of me head.” he told me, ale in hand.
“I’ll bite. What?”
“When did you kill a World Noble?”
Silly Urouge, it was Enel I was talking about.
----------------------------------------
At first, my fellow captain had looked like I brained him with a poleaxe upon hearing of Enel’s fate. To be honest, I probably would have worn a similar expression on my face, if someone had told me that they had slain my worst enemy and effectively stolen my vengeance from me.
But that didn’t last for long, because once he found out that Enel’s power had been inherited by his first cousin once removed, Urouge had broken down into uncontrollable peals of laughter. By this I meant that the big man collapsed to the ground, clutching his stomach, and began rolling all around the camp. It got so bad at one time, that the only reason he hadn't gone wheeling full speed into the fire, had been thanks to the combined efforts of our crews. Even then, he completely lost control of his size and flattened Rivers, who had not been expecting the mass of muscle thundering towards him to turn into a much bigger mass of muscle.
Then again, Byron may have had something to do with Urouge's sudden loss of control over his devil fruit, if the mischievous glint in his eyes just prior to the start of a rib-tickling musical performance was any indication.
“Huhuhuhu…huhuhu…hu…” But eventually Byron had mercy on my fellow captain and the uncontrollable chortling subsided into more manageable sniggering. Urouge didn’t seem to care in the slightest that Aisa was giving him odd looks, as he wiped his eyes with his sandy hands, one of his clerics rapidly putting out the last embers on his back. “That just made my day. My thanks, Hyena.”
“You should be.” I responded dryly, before digging through my pockets to hand him a letter. “Your uncle sends his regards.”
“So that’s how you knew my childhood nickname.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, somewhat confused as to what he was referring to.
“Pufferfish. Some of the kids back home saw me practicing my abilities and the name stuck.” Urouge explained before his eyes narrowed into slits. “You didn’t know. I look like a pufferfish to you?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I smiled guilelessly at him, sugary sweet and oblivious, almost exaggerated in its innocence. For some reason Urouge didn't seem to believe me.
“Why you little…” Urouge began growing again, before being interrupted by my ship's mascot.
“Are you really my uncle?” At some point in our conversation, Aisa had wandered over to us, holding a skewer of meat in each hand and one in her mouth, around which she was articulating her words as clear as day.
She looked adorable, something which Urouge clearly agreed with, when judging by his rapid transformation from a pirate captain to a doting uncle. “Yes, I am. You look a lot like your mother when she was young. Just as adorable.” Getting down from our log, he knelt down in front of Aisa and spread his arms out wide in an open invitation. “Come here and give uncle Urouge a hug…hmmph?”
I wasn't initially sure why, but Aisa didn’t give the man his desired hug. Maybe it had been because this middle aged man was cooing at her, but she silenced the dangerous pirate by stuffing one of her meat skewers into his mouth. And she obviously only had one thing to say to the big lug.
“I’m not adorable.”
One of these days Aisa was going to have to learn, that just because you said something wasn't true, didn't make it untrue. And with the little girl proceeding to indignantly glare up at him, hands on her waist and cheeks bulging with meat like a giant chipmunk, Urouge was unprepared to be ground zero for the explosion of adorableness. It was a critical hit. HMS Urouge sunk.
“Thank you, Aisa.” I told her when I was handed my own skewer of freshly grilled meat, composed of an esoteric assortment of the local fauna. Hewitt really did some good work with these, I reflected as I bit through the well-done outer layer into the juiciness within. “Tastes nice, doesn’t it?”
My crew mascot didn't reply beyond a short nod, much too engrossed in munching her way through her food. Still, she didn't protest when I started absentmindedly giving her head pats. Protests arose instead from a different corner.
“Oi, how come you let the midget give you head pats when I don’t get a hug?” Urouge asked Aisa by way of protest. But his protest was brutally crushed near immediately.
“Bellamy is pretty.”
Then again, I didn't have time to enjoy the view of the rejection turning Urouge into a white shade…
…because, damn if my masculinity hadn't gotten caught in the crossfire.
----------------------------------------
“Good morning, pretty boy.” Urouge greeted me the next morning.
“Can’t you just call me a midget again, like you used to?” I requested. I did not whine. Big bad pirate captains did not whine…but I would admit that I groaned. My hangover was killing me. Urouge, curse his liver, was looking fine and dandy despite having been the first one to collapse last night.
“Nope, can’t do that, pretty boy. My honorary niece called you pretty, so don’t have a choice you see?” he told me, shrugging helplessly.
“Oh, shut up you big oaf.”
“And what if I won’t? Pretty. Boy?”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“I will make you, you fricking fat gorilla.” I promised him. Hangover or not, I had enough control over my faculties to punch the living daylights out of him. Could you imagine my next bounty poster reading “Pretty Boy Bellamy”? It would be a PR disaster of catastrophic proportions and a humiliation I would never be able to live down.
“Well, come on then.” Urouge grinned, making a come-hither movement with his index finger.
“Gladly. Spring Hopp…" SMACK
Before Urouge and I could settle our argument like men, we were dishonorably ambushed and laid out flat on the sandy beach. The culprit having accomplished this task by applying two precise whacks to the back of our craniums via a rolled up newspaper.
“Do you two have to do this again?”
In the face of a common enemy, an accord was struck and a temporary truce established.
“But Muret, he called me a pretty boy!”
“Your captain called me a fat gorilla!”
But our fledgling resistance was ground into dust with utter ruthlessness, wholly unfitting of a doctor.
“And both of you puked all over my freshly polished floor.” If Muret’s goal had been to make us feel like little children being scolded by their mother, she succeeded tremendously. “Do you know how hard Funkfreed had to work until the sickbay looked clean again? All night, and the place still reeks!”
Funkfreed, the ungrateful traitor that he was, had seemingly forgotten who had actually rescued him from Spandam’s filthy clutches and granted him a new home and a daily supply of fruit. Hence, he didn't make a sound in my defence, choosing instead to make mournful eyes at us and trumpet pitifully when Muret pulled him out and shoved him into our faces.
“Look at how tired he is! Hours spent scrubbing…” I tuned out her tirade, her words washing over me like waves over the rocks on the beach. I had found my zen. Inner peace.
“…you and your excessive competitiveness…” There was no war in Basing-Se. There was no war in Basing-Se.
“…and I have to keep everyone alive, because I’m the only person on this stupid island with any common sense…” Urouge was starting to go slack-eyed from where he was kneeling next to me, his raised arms inching lower by the minute.
“…and then you puke on my floor!” Muret punctuated her statement with another whack, this time aimed only at Urouge's head, which prompted him to return his arms to their raised positions. “Try and act like adult men. You’re captains!”
“Yes, Muret.” “Yes, ma’am.”
WHACK!
“How dare you call me old! I'm only twenty five!”
----------------------------------------
“Your crew is an odd bunch.” Urouge commented later.
“The best kind of odd there is.” I answered him, my gaze locked onto the bright moon hanging from the night sky. The stars weren't visible, probably due to the party bonfire still burning brightly in the middle of our camp, our crews having rebuilt and reignited it several times well into the night. “We’re going places.”
“That I can believe.” He acquiesced, making me blink. In response Urouge joined me on the ground, lying down beside me and placing his arms behind his head. “What? You’re obviously insane, so you’re either going to die young or make it big.”
“What do you mean, we’re insane? I’ll have you know that we’re all perfectly normal, thank you very much.”
“You rode the Knock Up Stream to find an island floating in the clouds, which science didn’t believe could exist.” He pointed out. “I'd say that qualifies.”
“Touché.” It did sound bad when someone put it that way. Though, that didn't change the fact I hadn't had a choice at the time. “Still better than challenging a god.”
“I never claimed to be sane, now did I?” he said, and we both began to chuckle. It was nice. “Where are you heading after this?”
“Sabaody again to finish some business before going to Marineford.”
“For Firefist’s execution?”
“It’s going to be the biggest spectacle of the decade.” And quite possibly the best opportunity I'd ever have to harvest some devil fruits. There were going to be thousands of people fighting and dying in a very small area, many of whom possessed devil fruit abilities. Even if the probability of each fruit reincarnating in a particular fruit was tiny, if there were enough devil fruits reincarnating near simultaneously and the largest concentration of fruit in a hundred-mile radius was sitting within the hold of my ship? I liked my odds.
“And after that?”
“Stay in paradise and train our asses off.”
“You're not heading to the New World?” Urouge asked, halfway sitting up.
“We won’t survive the way we are now. And neither will you.” I sighed. Urouge looked like he wanted to protest, so I kept going before he could. “Could you have beaten the robot Kuma on your own?”
It took a while and Urouge was visibly struggling with his pride, but in the end, he bowed to the truth. “No.”
“The New World is filled with dangers far outstripping the robot. It's not only the navy’s newest weapon you'd be facing either. Most of the pirates and marines over on that side are an order of magnitude stronger than what we are used to here in Paradise." I explained. "Here? We’re the big fish. In the New World? We’re prey.”
“And training in Paradise is going to help?” Urouge looked at me quizzically. “How will you grow without challenging yourself?”
“Just because one remains in Paradise, doesn’t mean that one can’t prepare for the New World. Rather, committing effective suicide is going to be counter productive to our survival. It’s better to prepare well and gather allies before attempting such a venture.”
“Allies?”
“Aye. I’m hoping to bring down Doflamingo within a few years, but I won’t be able to do it on my own.” I admitted, causing the big guy to shoot me a puzzled look.
“That’s surprising. I thought you were his devoted underling?” That image was always going to follow me around wasn't it? The black mark on Bellamy’s record. By this point, my answer was more or less a reflex.
“Young me did stupid things. Older me is fixing things.”
“And you want my help?”
“Aye.” I was willing to offer quite a bit as well in exchange, not least amongst which were lessons in haki. Urouge would be an amazing ally to have and considering he was able to take down one of Big Mom’s top three commanders in the canon storyline, he would develop into a powerhouse who would likely be more than a match for Doffy’s top executives. But as it turned out, I didn’t even need to make an offer.
“Then you shall have it.” He stated, surprising me with the simplistic solution to my problem.
“…not that I’m not grateful, but why?”
“You killed Enel and freed my uncle’s people.” Urouge answered me, holding out a hand, with which he pulled me to my feet as soon as I had grasped it. “For that you have my gratitude and my friendship.”
In that case…I had no reason to refuse. Maintaining my hold on his hand, I gave it a short squeeze.
“And you’ll have mine. Allies?”
Urouge squeezed back.
“Allies.”
----------------------------------------
A Murder Most Foul!
Welcome to Marineford Daily, your best and only source of accurate and unbiased truth.
Our society suffered an unspeakable loss yesterday. Amidst the chaos and unrest caused by a pirate uprising on Sabaody, one of the divine Celestial Dragons was treacherously assassinated while on his way home.
The family of the late saint had the following to say:
"Our son was a gentle and kind soul, generous to his peers and always happy to honor his lessers with his presence.
Growing up, he had been a happy boy with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. Even from a young age, he showed a proclivity for biology. Some of his favorite hobbies entailed gathering different bugs in an enclosed space in order to observe their interactions.
In particular he was a great believer in the theory of evolution. So much that he attempted to prove it by showcasing the underlying principles in his experiments, such as the survival of the fittest and the propagation of genes to the next generation.
Even on the day of his untimely death, he had been doing his best to inspect lives of the ungrateful bugs, who didn't lift a finger in his defence.
The world is a lesser place for his passing and science and progress has lost a bright star.
That he was taken from us by such despicable means fills us with sorrow and the determination to see justice done.
We shall spare no expense to see this revolt against the natural order crushed."
In the aftermath, three thousand former citizens from Sabaody were arrested and escorted to Mariejois to face divine judgement. Their crime was the audacity, to dare not to throw themselves into harm's way to protect the sanctity of the late saint's wellbeing.
The marine investigation found that the pirates responsible for the heinous act were "Red Flag" X-Drake, "Mad Monk" Urouge and Bellamy "the Hyena".
Thanks to our brave marines, two hundred of their underlings and sympathisers were arrested and summarily executed.
Unfortunately the cowardly criminals managed to flee and for now remain at large.
They are armed and dangerous and citizens are encouraged to not engage them and instead report them to the nearest marine base.
This was Marineford Daily reporting.
And as always, please follow us to never miss an update on the best news reports this side of the Red Line.