Arc 5: Midnight: Part 1

AN: I'm going to be taking a break after this one. I have a quest burning in my think-meats that I have to get off the ground and watch crash before I can move on.

XoXoXoX

Turns out, I like the ocean. A lot. Lots of fresh air and the constant swaying motion of the boats felt pretty good for my stomach. The sun was still being a bitch, but there wasn't anything I could do about it. Except have Gurry spit on me every day so I didn't suddenly combust. Stupid sunlight...

The nights were really cool on the ocean. We all took watches as we sailed torwards Diz-Harmony and I didn't need that much sleep to begin with. I pretty much said I would take the midnight shifts, and they moved aside and let me, which were great. I liked the midnight shift. It would just me and the occasional guy sleeping out on the decks instead of inside the cramped cabins inside the boats. I slept in the captain's quarters when I did sleep instead of with everyone else. There was a bed in there. An actual bed! It was so weird seeing one. I couldn't actually bring myself to sleep on it so I just slept on the floor instead. I put all of my loot we could fit in the room on the bed instead.

The night shifts were my favorite part about sailing. I know absolutely nothing about sailing so I decided that I would do my part of contributing by being a lookout. It's easy being a lookout. You just scream out and wake everyone up if something is going horrifically wrong. Otherwise, you get to sit around and look at things. Let me tell you, the ocean at night paints a pretty picture.

All the stars are out, lighting up the sky and I could easily make out ribbons of color that were otherwise indescribable. I asked Gurry and he told me that it was star-stuff. It was the same stuff that made up stars strung up and lighting up the night with color. I don't know if that's what it was for sure, but it definitely looked good. The moon was the brightest source of light there was. I watched it slowly change as the nights went on, it started as a crescent put slowly grew fuller. The moon gave enough light so I could see the rest of the ships sailing with us silently, with the odd exception of the guy on the 'That Ship Looks Like A Shoe' who broke out into song randomly. What's his name... Bent Cabal? Something like that.

I tried to join him a few times, but when I did I ended up waking everybody up in the entire fleet. They were upset to say the least. After the lawyers rowed from their boat to mine, they calmly and legally explained to me why I should stop. I tried arguing with them, but their case was just too strong and the attorney they gave me to help me out wasn't useful at all. I ended up promising to never sing while everyone was sleeping again.

Even though I loved how serene the nights were, I still did my self-assigned job seriously. I was constantly vigilant, hoping I would always be aware of my surroundings. It payed off too.

On the fifth night I saw something in the water. It was dark, but I've mentioned before how great my vision is. I could see a great shape moving alongside the boats in the center of the fleet. It was huge, at least thirty times the size of our largest ship 'Damn, This Is Boat Is Big'. I could tell because it was swimming alongside it. That's right, swimming. It didn't take long for me to figure out that this giant shadow I was seeing must had been one of those Sea Kings I had heard so much about from Gurry. He said he used to blindly worship them as gods in his youth along with moist of the world at the time.

They were giant sea monsters that attacked everything they saw in fits of blind rage. I imagined they were like the monsters found on Level Two, but larger, and aquatic.

When I saw the Sea King I thought about waking everyone up by yelling at the top of my voice, but I realized that wouldn't be useful. If I woke everyone up, they would panic, and if they panicked they would raise a fuss. Then the Sea King would proabably do what I've seen all predators do when their prey panics. Attack mercilessly when their prey seems weak. It's what I did on my brief stint on Level Two when I was young and hunted.

So, instead of sounding the alarm and waking everyone up I did what I did best.

I took action.

I walked over to a barrel someone had set up on the deck and filled with all manner of weapons. I shuffled through them briefly but I decided that it would just be better to take the entire thing with me. I had a plan, a damn good one if I say so myself. It was inspired by something I had seen of one of the men do with some eggs to entertain everyone during breakfast. I was interested and I asked him to teach me. I learned the skill quickly and the man said I must had been a natural, or that I knew the skill in a past life or something.

I set up the barrel for what I planned to do, but realized that there weren't enough weapons. This was a large monster, and I didn't want to take any chances with the damn thing. So I went and grabbed every other nearby weapon barrel as well. We had a large surplus of swords, maces, pipes, daggers, shivs, guns, you name it. We had everything the men had brought with them from Impel Down, plus one of the ships was stocked to the brim with mass produced weapons. It was an arm trader's ship who was going to resupply the Marines after they fought their war with Whitebeard.

Oh, by the way, did I mention that the Marines won that war? Yah, Whitebeard was dead. Some guy named Blackbeard killed him. I don't know either of them, and I didn't really have a stake in the whole thing, but I thought it was kind of funny. Blackbeard killing Whitebeard? Almost poetic. According to some men who read some newspapers these seagulls wearing hats brought to us, Blackbeard ate a Devil Fruit that gave him the 'power of darkness'. Makes sense that darkness would win to me.

It's faster for one thing. Oh sure, light is said to be fast, and it is, don't get me wrong. Problem is, it still takes time for light to travel. Darkness on the other hand, is literally everywhere all the time. We just can't see it because the light is covering it up. So, while light is possibly the fastest thing there is... darkness is instant.

But, I digress. Back to the issue at hand. When I had all the weapon barrels I began. I pulled out a sword and threw it up in the air. Then I grabbed something else in the barrel and threw it up as well. I repeated the process until all the barrels were empty, catching weapons that fell and throwing them back in the air again. I was ready.

I took a deep breath and yelled at the huge monster in the water at the top of my lungs, "HEY UGLY!"

That shout was all the prompt the monster needed. It reared it's ugly head out of the water. I mistook it's size, it was probably five times as large as I had originally estimated, it being submerged threw off my guess. It was all scales, teeth, fins, and ugly as far as I was concerned.

I didn't care how it looked though, with my new move it was dead no matter how ugly, or big, it was.

"Moa Moa Hundred-Fold Juggling Barrage." I spoke out. The second I did, I began chucking everything that fell into my hands from the juggling at the beast. Some stuff I increased the size of, other things I increased the speed, it really didn't matter. What mattered was that I kept throwing weapons at he monster that made the mistake of thinking it could make a meal out of me, or the men traveling with me.

I was juggling... eighty-ish random weapons. When I was done, the monster had been turned into chunks of meat floating in the ocean. It's blood had sprayed everywhere over the decks and made the ocean appear red for a minute before it finally dispersed.

The noise had woken everyone up and they came out from their sleeping quarters rubbing the crust out of their eyes. When the saw me and the massive monster dead in the water, their jaws went slack. The only person not surprised was Gurry.

He walked right over to the railing and leaned over it so he could get a better look at the carcass. He whistled, "Damn. That's a big one. I bet there's some good eats on it. Want me to dive in with some of these good for nothing's and see if we can scavenge up a feast? I bet one this large has all kinds of delicious bits to it."

I nodded. "Sounds good to me. Well, I guess I better go back to my watch in the meantime. As you can see, I take look-out duty very seriously." I thought it over for a bit before asking, "Does anyone have a towel? Better yet, how about one of those delicious durians. I feel up for a midnight snack."