– Bellamy –
While I was certain that my knee had broken a few of his ribs, Treasure seemed very unwilling to let me go and engulfed me in bearhug instead, even chaining us together for added measure.
"Die!" he hissed into my ear, and I knew pain.
----------------------------------------
Springs were compressible.
I just wanted to put that out there. Now, the degree to which they were compressible varied depending on the respective size, shape, and material composition of the spring in question, but the basic premise wouldn't change. This was in part because one, a non-compressible object could hardly be called a spring any longer as it wouldn't fit the basic definition of what a spring purported to be; and two, everything on earth was compressible in one form or another and thus had the properties of a spring. Which also implied that all of creation was a spring to some degree…
Possibilities perhaps?
Anyway, to get back on track, springs were compressible. When using my Coil Chassis, I was literally composed of thousands of coiled springs. Ergo, I should have been compressible and unsurprisingly I was. My body adapted to the sudden strain applied by Treasure's chains by occupying smaller and smaller volumes of space, while Aisa's lightning tried its best to melt through our opponent's haki. At least, until my Coil Chassis reached a limit I hadn't known it had and would not be crammed together any further, which had also been when the pain started. As anybody who'd ever gotten a door slammed unto any part of their anatomy would surely attest, that shit really hurt. Treasure had rammed that up to a thousand by turning his chains into a poor man's omnidirectional, hydraulic press.
Had Treasure applied the same amount of force from only one direction, I probably would have been fine, not least because my body would have been able to bend and contort to adjust accordingly. However, with Treasure's chains encasing me completely and squeezing from all directions, there was very little I could do that I wasn't already doing. Unfortunately, regardless of how hard Aisa and I tore into the guy, he seemed very intent on all of us going down together and simply refused to give an inch.
In my pain-addled mind, I briefly played with the idea of bursting into a pile of tiny individual springs to escape the current encirclement, but common sense quickly shot that down. If reattaching an arm had carried risks of malalignment and permanent debilitation, trying to pull my entire body back together was very unlikely work as intended without some serious preparations beforehand. So, instead of going against the rational part of my brain, I decided to try something more logical.
Get bigger.
Consciously willing my springs to extend, I turned the one-sided offense I'd been suffering under into a contest of brute force, however not one of muscle but of devil fruits. Intentionally, I might add, for if it had been I probably would have lost because my body wasn't tempered enough yet to compete with a New World Veteran like Mad Treasure. Though, when it came to our mastery over our respective fruits? That was a whole different story.
While he'd showcased several abilities he hadn't in the movie, with my survival depending on it I had focused almost everything I had on mastering mine whereas he had not. That difference in motivation ended up being key in allowing me to compete with him on even ground and even pushing him onto his back foot.
"Twenty Million Volt Vari: KICK!"
"Gaah, you little shits!"
Longwinded as that entire explanation might have been, the actual amount of time which had transpired was rather short. In particular, the interval from Treasure enveloping me to Aisa leaping out of my body to plant her heels into his jaw could be counted in mere seconds. Which was just about enough time for Law to get his breath back and come over to help.
"Radio Knife!"
Smoothly cutting through the chains binding me in place, Law carried on by taking advantage of Treasure's momentary mismatch between bodily sensation and optical input to slip inside his reach…
"Mes!"
…and cut out Treasure's heart. While unwrapping myself from the now inert chains, I got a front row seat to our enemy's eyes bugging out as he registered the fact, that his vital organ was tumbling through the air instead of being safely protected within his ribcage. Not that I really blamed the fella, because seeing one's own beating heart be excised must have been an unexpected sight, to say the least.
In the end, it proved to be too much for Treasure. Turning on his heels with no hesitation, he ran for the hills with his extracted heart grasped firmly in his hands. Much to the dismay of his remaining crew, I might add. Unfortunately for them, their cries of disbelief and despair fell upon deaf ears as their captain sought to escape on his own. Naturally, we weren't going to stand aside and let him go so easily.
"Abandoning your men to save yourself, that's a bit cold, isn't it?" Law asked him conversationally once he caught up to his quarry with a quick teleport, interposing himself between Treasure and his chosen escape route. "What happened to the concept of maintaining trust and camaraderie?"
"Why the fuck would I give a shit about that?" Treasure spat out, swinging a chain like a flail in Law's general direction, which my ally easily ducked under without losing a beat. "I can gather comrades with money and purchase trust with gold. As long as I have my treasure, I can always start over!"
"And you'll fail again. After all, money can't buy success and is no substitute for genuine effort." Law lectured, smiling easily as Aisa and I completed the encirclement. "In the grand scheme of things, your treasure really doesn't matter."
"TREASURE IS THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS!" Roaring like a wounded animal, Mad Treasure launched a cascade of spiked chains at Law while simultaneously fending off Aisa's own attacks. "There's not a single problem in the world that treasure and gold cannot fix so long as you have enough it! There's no goal worth pursuing in the world apart from it!"
"Though, it doesn't look like it was worth it at the moment, now does it?" I quipped, trying to rile him up further. "In the very unlikely case that you get out of this alive, you might want to reconsider your priorities in life."
I succeeded.
"YOU WILL NOT TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME!" Forcing Law and I to take a step back or risk having our heads caved in by a veritable hydra-like mass of thrashing chains, Treasure broke through our perimeter at its weakest link: Aisa. My crew mascot, bless her heart, did try to stop him but was caught off-guard when Treasure opted to simply take her lightning lance head on. Essentially, gritting through the pain and focusing everything he had left into running away with a sizeable hole in his gut.
Away from us and towards the coast where his ship presumably lay anchored. That the shortest route would have taken him straight through the group guarding Olga and her father probably hadn't even factored into his calculations…and that proved to be his downfall.
Wounded and tired as he was, Treasure wasn't nearly as fast nor strong as he'd been at the beginning of our scuffle and Lily was one of the top fighters on my crew. Not to mention that his philosophy on life had probably rubbed her in quite the wrong way, if what Sarquiss had told me was any indication.
"Outta my way, you stupid bitch!"
"Fucking make me, asshole!"
What happened next was a masterful example of teamwork, which was only made all the more beautiful by the spontaneity of it all. The chains which had been meant to sweep Lily and her compatriots aside, all disintegrated into a cloud of reddish flakes upon contact as the steel rusted away in an instant. The baffled look on his face turned into befuddlement, as a pair of hands flowered into existence to grab his ankles. The facial transition finally ended in alarm when he lost his grip on his own heart, causing it to painfully bounce a few times before coming to a stop next to a pair of boots he could have sworn hadn't been there moments prior.
"Where the h-hell did you c-come fro…" Treasure groaned, scrabbling for his heart which was just out of reach, only for his eyes to widen in agony as Mani's knife pinned it to the ground.
"Where do you think?"
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
Mani smiled.
----------------------------------------
– Mani –
For someone who had given her captain and the others such a hard time, Mad Treasure's death had been rather anti-climactic. Though in hindsight, she probably wouldn't have ended things in quite the same manner if she could go back to try again. Blood was surprisingly difficult to wash off of fashionable leather boots and there had been way more of it spurting out than the isolated organ should have been able to hold.
Apart from that minor inconvenience however, things had gone rather swimmingly afterwards. With their officers gone, the surviving members of Treasure's crew had surrendered without a fuss and promptly been put to work shifting everything in their hold into their treasure's new home. And what a haul it had been… mountains of silver and gold, piles of precious gems and precious stones, not to mention the chests full of cash and other valuable items, including but not limited to a very luxurious armory. It had been so much that Mani wouldn't have been opposed to securing their silence in a more permanent manner afterwards, but the Captain had decided otherwise and allowed Treasure's former crew to go on their merry way once the job was done.
Not because he had a bleeding heart, mind you, but because committing such an act of cruelty and ruthlessness in front of a civilian you wanted to recruit (temporarily) would have been counterproductive. Though, neither of the father-daughter duo had seemed particularly disturbed by the violence, so perhaps Bellamy needn't have worried?
Especially as convincing the alchemist to take them to the Pure Gold hadn't been that difficult either. Starved for human contact as the man apparently was, Alcier had been surprisingly talkative, which had made it a piece of cake for Mani to tickle information out of him. Getting men to spill their secrets had been something her mother had been rather good at back in the day. Mani had inherited that skill, for lack of a better word, and it had been one of the tools she had used to survive the streets before she joined Bellamy.
There had been a brief, emotionally laden interruption midway through, when Alcier's motivation to create the Pure Gold was revealed to have been a desperate attempt to halt his daughter's terminal illness from progressing any further, by taking advantage of the anti-aging properties inherent in the light of the alchemical miracle. Soon after that, Olga had tearfully reconciled with her father. Meanwhile, the Crew was forced to come to terms with the reality that the child was older than all of them combined. Naturally, Olga and Alcier had ignored the gobsmacked looks on their rescuers' faces and promises were made to spend their remaining years together as a family.
That had led to the two doctors present asking what illness Olga was suffering from, and to Alcier subsequently finding out that a cure for the disease had been developed in the two centuries he'd spent idling away inside a fish. After a bit more wrangling, Alcier agreed to lead them to the Pure Gold in exchange for the cure, safe passage to a secure location where he and his daughter could start a new life, in addition to sufficient funds with which to do so with. Naturally, Bellamy had agreed, offering to take them to Baltigo Base.
In Mani's opinion, it had been a smart choice on Alcier's part, the man being obviously aware that in the hands of someone without the power to defend it, the Pure Gold was a curse rather than a blessing. It was far better to sell it to the highest bidder while he still could.
Turned out, the Pure Gold had been hidden in an abandoned temple-like complex, complete with traps, hidden passages, and various tests of skill. Under normal circumstances, the Crew may have struggled to clear the obstacles laid in their path and reach their destination, but with the original system designer along for the ride, they had breezed past everything without any trouble.
They found the mythical metal sitting in a jar amidst stacks of books and piles of scattered papers, its soft glow illuminating the dusty lab it was slumbering within. Most of the Crew had stood frozen in place, staring at the object in fascination and near reverence. Bellamy and Law, on the other hand, had walked up to it and unceremoniously packed it into a thick burlap sack.
"Right, time to see what other goodies this place has to offer." Bellamy had said, eagerly rubbing his hands together. Alcier had glanced askance in his direction but had wisely kept his mouth shut. For her part, Olga had stomped over to Bellamy and held out a hand, demanding additional payment for the right to plunder Alchemi for its remaining secrets, to which Bellamy had laughingly acquiesced.
The island had been rather sparse in terms of traditional valuables and the atmospheric conditions within Bonbori's stomach hadn't been the most suited to the preservation of written works. However, the crew still found a small library's worth of academic papers, experimental logs and textbooks, though nobody amongst them could really make heads or tails out of their contents. Fortunately, Alcier had agreed to cooperate as a sort of freelancer in exchange for ownership of the library. That is, once he and Olga got settled in properly and he had some time to set up his new workshop.
Loath as Mani was to give up something likely worth hundreds of millions at the very least, sometimes one had to invest for greater returns. Hopefully gaining the cooperation and goodwill of the most experienced alchemist on the planet would be worth it in the long run. Though, what exactly Bellamy hoped to gain from this relationship was a little unclear to Mani.
After all, it wasn't like they could physically carry any more gold at this point.
----------------------------------------
Alabastan Rennaissance!
Welcome to Marineford Daily News, your only source of accurate and unbiased truth.
The Kingdom of Alabasta has recently announced an absolute swath of reforms aimed at improving the lives of its citizens, including extensive government investments into welfare and provincial development. Countless industries are to receive subsidies and interest rates on loans are to be lowered to facilitate economic growth. Already, production has ramped up significantly on traditional export goods such as spices, incense and jewelry; while other more civilian industries are following suit to increase the level of self-sufficiency of the desert kingdom.
Surprisingly enough, most of the funds needed to pay for the implemented measures are said to have come directly from the personal coffers of the royal family. Combined with a general pardon for every member of the now disbanded rebellion, this has allowed King Cobra to enjoy near unprecedented popularity amongst his subjects.
In turn, such positive public sentiment also translated into increased tolerance and patience, as a few more contentious but no less necessary reforms are enacted, all of which are aimed at cracking down on corruption and breaking up the monopolies of established corporations. However, experts fear that such measures will threaten to drive away foreign investments, which are critical to maintaining the desert kingdom's economic stability. Especially as Alabasta is poised to re-enter the world stage as a major mercantile power.
However, rumor has it that rather than the King himself being driving factor behind the reforms, the entire renewal movement is the brainchild of his daughter Princess Vivian (better known as Vivi to the masses). Considering, that the story of Princess Vivian actively lobbying for the pardon of everyone involved in Kohza's rebellion, is well known and verified by numerous sources, there may be good reason to give credence to such rumors. Questions are still being asked as to her motivations for making such a sudden debut on the political stage, but there is no denying the public's adoration for their princess.
Having risen to prominence in the recent months following the Marine arrest of the former Warlord, Sir Crocodile, the princess has only recently concluded a tour of her future realm on which she promised an era of great change. While it is as of yet unclear what the extent of those changes will be, there is little doubt that the formerly isolated kingdom is rising from its centuries long slumber.
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.