780"Captain, we're approaching Jaya. Do you have any orders for the crew?"
Someone once said that there are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally, acceptance. Mind you, I wasn't experiencing grief per say. More like…confusion? Frustration? Perhaps befuddlement is a better word. Anyhow, my response to being slapped in the face by reality wasn't exactly that different from a person experiencing grief. Put yourself in my shoes and tell me you wouldn't react like I did. I dare you.
"Someone get me a drink! I'm not drunk enough for this shit."
And just in case it wasn't blindingly obvious…I was in denial.
Fast forward a little bit and I had come to accept certain aspects of my new reality.
One, I was on the island of Jaya populated for the most part by the scum of the earth. Two, I was hence by necessity in the world of One Piece and most likely fucked because I did not know how to fight. Three, I am doubly fucked because my crew will likely mutiny without continued looting, plundering and carnage unless I can find some way to keep them busy. And finally, I am royally fucked up the arse even if or probably especially if I avoid said looting, plundering and carnage, because the psychopath whose flag I'm flying is going to come kill me for being boring. And if that last tidbit didn't clue you in as to whose body I inadvertently hijacked…
"W-what can I g-get you, Captain Bellamy Sirpleasedon'tkillmepleaseIhavechildren!"
Sigh.
"Just hand me an ale. A cold one." I'm not even sure why the bartender is so scared of me. It's not like I killed anyone yet. In fact, I haven't raised a single finger in violence since I got here. I even pay for my beer like the law abiding citizen I am...was...
A bloody dagger sinks into the bar with a soft THUNK.
"I'll have what the captain's having. Quickly now." a smooth voice demands as its owner plops down unto a stool next to me.
One thing you start appreciating on jaya is how much faster and better the service gets the more you scare people. Case in point, mere seconds after the order is placed, my second-in-command is leaning back in contentment, drink in hand.
"Sarquiss."
"Captain."
"Make sure to clean up later. I don't want bloodstains on my ship." The man just grinned before knocking back his glass of ale. Upon reflection, Sarquiss and to a lesser extent, the rest of Bellamy's crew may be the reason everyone is so scared of me. In the last five days we had been on the island, they had started ten bar fights, six riots in the streets, beaten up seven pirate crews for giving them "funny looks" and caused some thirty casualties…eight of them fatal. Oh, and commandeered the pub's whole supply of alcohol on the third day. Heaven knows where the poor barkeep managed to get replacements.
You wouldn't have guessed it from just the show, but Bellamy's crew is fairly competent by paradise standards. Sure, only Sarquiss has a bounty worth mentioning but all of them would have had a fair shot at an Olympic medal in my old world. Unfortunate for them that this world was populated by monsters who could crush mountains with their fists and where even unnamed extras could toss a grown man around like a ragdoll.
Anyway, thanks to my surprisingly tough crew, I had been left alone and unmolested, with plenty of time to brood on what to do next. Couldn't leave because the log pose refused to reset. Couldn't train without making the crew suspicious, not that I knew how. Couldn't stay sober because I'd go mad. Thankfully, the crew had decided that my moodiness was a byproduct of absolute boredom and had pried no further.
I did experiment a little in the privacy of my room and discovered two things. First, basic control over Bellamy's devil fruit came naturally to me just like the body remembers how to walk after amnesia. Second, I could compress my springs effortlessly, regardless of their size and toughness, which irritated the hell out of the physicist within me. Yes, I'm a nerd, deal with it.
It did have a lot of potential though.
"By the way captain, a new crew arrived today."
The force a spring can exert is directly proportional to how much it is compressed.
"Most of them are the usual garbage but their captain does have a fairly decent bounty."
Thing is, in order to compress a spring initial effort is usually a mandatory requirement.
"Guy is worth 30 million. Of course, he isn't at our level...I mean I'm worth more by a good margin."
That puts a soft cap on how powerful a spring can be. But if said requirement doesn't apply to me?
"I don't know…maybe he'll be tough enough to offer some entertainment? He should be able to survive a punch or two."
I can turn part of my body into springs. Nobody said how big that spring had to be. Or for that matter, what it needed to be made of…
"Wanna go have a look? Lily took some of the boys to keep an eye on them."
Chrome Vanadium maybe? That was industry standard back home.
"Are you listening to me? Bellamy!"
"Huh, what?" I feel as if I should be offended at the way he dramatically sighs but that big knife scares me.
"Wanna check out the thirty million?" The Strawhats are here?
These are not the Strawhats. I have absolutely no clue who they are and I am pretty familiar with the One Piece canon. Ergo, the guy currently waving a pillar masquerading as a club has to be nameless, insignificant fodder.
By contrast, I'm or at least the body I am inhabiting is a named character, an existence much higher up on the food chain of disposable mooks… Lost in thought, I don't even twitch as the club whizzes by mere millimeters from my nose. Of course, the crowd breaks out into excited chatter over my nerves of steel and my keen eyes allowing me to judge the range of that club with pinpoint precision.
"Just because you have a higher bounty, you think you're better than me? I'm Big Bat Barrick! Bully of Blackden Burgh!" Turning my attention back to my opponent, I take in his appearance for the first time. My knee jerk reaction is that the guy looks absolutely ridiculous. Black leather jacket, slicked back hair like a counterfeit Elvis, black sunglasses with large black sideburns. Not too bad, right? But the pants! Oh, the pants!
"I'll beat you into the ground and show the world I'm a greater pirate than you! After I kill you, the world will fear the very name of Big Bat Barrick!"
They're neon pink! With glitter! And to make bad matters worse, they're ballooning around the knees. And let's not even talk about the shirt.
"Look at how scared you are! Frozen in fear! This is the great Hyena? This?" Barris or Barrack or whatever is wearing a neon green shirt in the style of Elisabethan England. Maybe, just maybe if he were as scary as Doflamingo, he may have been able to pull it off. Maybe. But with how…wide and corpulent he is, I'm more concerned for his cardiovascular system than I am for my own well-being. And considering that this was objectively more danger than I had been exposed to in my entire life, that was saying something.
"Today will be the day you'll all remember as the day…"
It's my first fight and all, but I can't help it. The absolute travesty of fashion before requires an appropriate response from any man of common sense, one which cannot be stopped by any amount of human will.
"Do you require psychiatric aid?" One would have been able to hear a pin drop in the resulting silence, which fell over the entire town square. Most of the crowd looked terrified whereas my crew were smirking. Barrick? Barrick just looked confused. "I hear that prolonged exposure to stressful situations can result in irrational behavior and uncontrollable urges. You might want to get that checked out."
"…wut?"
"I have a good doctor on my crew if you need it…which from the looks of it certainly seems like you do. Hey Muret! What's your professional opinion on this?"
"Nothing quite as drastic, captain." You could just hear the malicious glee oozing from her voice. Ladies and gentlemen, that is my doctor to whom I'm to entrust my physical and mental wellbeing. "He's simply mentally underdeveloped. No one would dress this…ugly otherwise."
My crew breaks out in peals of laughter, Sarquiss visibly having trouble standing upright and consequently leaning on Lily for support. Lily on her part seems to tolerate her boyfriend hanging off her shoulder like a limpet, all smiles for now. When the crowd nervously joins in, it proves to be too much for Barrick.
"I'll beat you like a dog, Hyena!" he screams, charging at me on his stubby legs, his club raised high. The ground trembles with every step he takes, deep footprints being left in his wake. His face is distorted in fury, spittle is flying everywhere and his expansive reservoirs of lard which are flapping violently do make for a horrifying sight to behold. But…he's just…so…slow.
Just a quick step to the side and a half turn leaves me facing his undefended back, a critical mistake on his part which Barrick realizes soon after, desperately rotating his great mass to compensate. But when Barrick does manage to turn around, it's just in time for my fist to knock his head back. And to my personal surprise, it felt surprisingly instinctive. Gotta love muscle memory.
"You broc me 'ose! I kill you!" He isn't down but I hadn't really expected him to be. Regardless of his jarring fashion choices, he's still a pirate worth more than most east blue pirates had to offer…discounting outliers like the Strawhats of course. But he's not scary. Should I be scared?
Jump, jump, duck, sidestep, slap. And eew, I'm not doing that again. That felt gross. "Please stop getting spit everywhere!" I call out to him but Barrick just howls in response to my polite request. How rude.
Leaning back to avoid a wild swing, I transform my waist, place my hands on the ground and…flip. My foot collides with his jaw with a very satisfying crack, sending my opponent to the ground...defenseless. But I'm a generous man so I wait for him to get up, which he does eventually if unsteadily.
To be honest with myself, I do have a reason for prolonging the fight and it's not just because I'm a sadistic bastard. If I'm going to be living as Bellamy from now on, I'm going to have to learn how to fight eventually and that in a world with monsters like Luffy, Doflamingo or Dellinger, even if one discounts the marines. And nothing teaches you how to fight than good old experience. Logical conclusion? Use this live punching bag to test out my new body.
One of the first things to figure out is something critical to my survival. How tough am I? The simple answer is, very.
That's a solid steel bat he's swinging around, probably weighing a good two hundred kilograms and it does absolutely nothing when I block it with my forearm. In fact, it looks like it hurt him more than it did me from which I can only conclude that one piece physiology is broken as hell. Barrick flails at me for a good while, as I just stand there, blocking everything with a lazy nonchalance. It's quite easy to be honest, which seems to piss him off even more.
Objectively, Barrick is likely faster with his bat than most major league athletes back home, but speed is almost always relative when it comes to combat. And like I mentioned already, he's just so much slower than me that he may as well be standing still. Weaker too if the amount of damage or lack thereof is any indication. Bellamy for all the ridicule he got for being taken out by Luffy in a single punch…has a tough body. But Luffy is a monster so he really doesn't count.
Before Barrick can blink, I'm in front of him, jabbing him in the nose. And by the time his counter arrives, I'm long gone, his left hook sailing through the space my head had just vacated. Without the expected resistance, Barick is flung around by his own momentum, revealing his unprotected flank to me, which I eagerly take advantage of, burying my fist into his side with a quick two jumps. A desperate backswing is easily avoided by a little backwards hop, something which is surprisingly easy when you have springs for legs.
Jump in, jab, jump out, repeat. Faster now. Jump in, jab, jump out, repeat. Faster. Jumpin, jab, jumpout. Faster. Jumpinjabjumpout. Within a minute Barick's nose is doing a very good impression of a squashed berry.
Having proven beyond all doubt that I have the speed to keep dancing around him forever, the next thing I decided to test out was the OG Bellamy's "ultimate move".
Sadly, I don't really know the specifics of how he did it, not having managed to assimilate all of his memories into mine, but the show had given enough hints to get started. Make some room, crouch, transform my legs…
"Spring hopper!" The tunnel vision is atrocious, the world turning into an elongated pipe. If this was what he had seen every time he did this, it was no wonder Bellamy didn't even hit Luffy in that fight. This is just like Kuro and his knock off soru but worse as I'm moving around in 3D at speeds far greater than that prick, trying to adjust the angles of recoil on the fly. The more jumps I chain together like this, the faster I get, but also the more difficult it is to see where I'm going. This is not going to be effective at all until I can get a better reaction time or haki as I'll be relying on pure luck to bring me to my target but this doesn't matter against an opponent like Barrick. If I jump around long enough, statistically speaking I have to hit him eventually. And speaking of the devil… IMPACT!
All breath escapes Barrick's lungs as his belly button is forcibly introduced to his spine by my boots, my momentum burying him deep into the ground. In my humble opinion, he's not getting out of that hole anytime soon. It's not a bad performance for my first fight. Not bad at all which goes a long way towards giving me hope that maybe I can survive this mess I found myself in after all.
"Whoo! Let's go raid us a ship, boys! My darling needs some new jewelr…Ack!" And there goes Sarquiss, folded in half by Lily's punch, who had seemingly taken offense at something. So while Lily leads the charge to the docks and Sarquiss lies groaning on the ground, I'm going back to my room.
I've got plans to make.
My part in the storyline begins whenever the Strawhats arrive on Jaya, which will have to be soon. Avoiding my canon defeat is simple. Just don't pick a fight with them, don't beat up Montblanc and don't steal his gold.
But what do I do afterwards? I don't know what to expect from islands the Strawhats didn't visit and frankly I'm not ready to face off against the other Supernovas on my own yet. Plus, the strawhats just come across all the opportunities in the world. Just take the dials from skypiea for instance. Simple shells but they had been enough to turn two lackluster fighters like Usopp and Nami into viable threats within mere weeks. And the gold just lying around for someone to pick up was a nice bonus.
So leeching off the Strawhats for a while is an idea, one which would allow me to use my canon knowledge to my advantage. But…Enel. My Crew and I are not ready to face Enel. I might be okay if I turn myself into a human-spring-lighting rod but the rest? Plus getting to Skypiea is a danger in and of itself. What was it? When you ride the knock-up stream, you either all make it or none of you do.
The unknown potentially safer path or the known dangerous path? Decisions, decisions…
Knock knock
"Captain?"
"Yes Eddy? What is it?" my navigator seems unsure, which is odd for him. Not that I've known him long but I do have Bellamy's memories…scattered everywhere. And from what I've seen, Eddy had a cocksure attitude all the time, much like the rest of the crew. So seeing him like this is new.
"The log pose reset…kinda."
"Kinda?"
"Thing is, it's pointing up."
Ah. Seems like my choice was made for me. Of course it fucking was.