Chapter 8

Captain's Log, Day 211: We're lucky to be alive. A Sea King, a bloody massive one at that, decided that our ship, The Bloody Baron, would be a good snack. Luckily, we had just looted that cargo ship the other day, and discovered that Devil Fruit. I debated on what to do with it; sell it, eat it, or give it to a loyal crew member. I like swimming, and we have no shortage of Beri's right now, so I opted to go with option three. I gave it to my first mate Carver, a man I freed from slavery and have earned the undying loyalty from, and when he ate it, his arm turned into a cannon. Then a sword. And then a rotary gun. With his new abilities, we were able to scare the beast off.

...

Captain's Log, Day 218: Well, a few lackeys we picked up at Toroa decided that they wanted the fruit, and tried to mutiny. Sadly for them, I love a good mutiny. It keeps all the smart ones in place. So, eight men lighter means we can spread our supplies out a bit more, but it looks like this was planned for a few days, as some of the larder was tampered with and almost half our food and water is unusable. We'll keep an eye out for a civvie ship or village to raid before we make it to our resupply point. At least Carver was able to test his new fruit.

...

Captain's Log, Day 219: Carver just brought up an interesting legend in these local waters. Apparently the island of Manu, or 'Death' in the old West Blue dialect, was renamed to Paw Manu due to the monsters evolving the ability to think and act like people. Well if there are 'people', for the lack of a better word, then there must be a village. It's about a day's divergence away, and we still have enough to last us if this turns out to be a dead end. And if we need more food, maybe a few more 'mutineers' will be discovered...

-0-

"Another sunny day on this prison of an island." Everton said, sitting outside on the ground, watching the clouds roll by. Darcy needed to go down to the docks in order to buy tonight's dinner, so here he was, watching clouds, alone...

Everton has been feeling weird lately. Whenever Darcy is around, this terrible experience seems almost... worth it, in his very secret opinion. Only when he is alone and has time to think about things does he remind himself of his predicament, but every time he thinks about it, his stance and opinion has been slightly different every time. At first, outright disgust and trepidation for the lifestyle of 'peasants', soon it became disgust with the situation, but he had slowly softened his opinion on specific things, such as the food, but now, there's a ton of boredom, and a shadow of displeasure, but for the larger part, some sort of satisfaction.

He would never admit this of course, it goes against his nature as a World Noble.

Sadly for our pudgy friend, in normal circumstances, this is where his story would end. He barely survived annihilation at the hands of a deadly island after a shipwreck. Saved and then hated by the locals, forging his first real friendship with a young girl. After six months, he would be given the chance to go home, which he would gladly abandon all he had earned here, including his new friend, to take. Once home, he would go on to become a decent-ish person, far better and mild mannered than most of his fellow Nobles, and he would try but ultimately fail to change anything for the better, not that he would be trying that hard.

But these aren't normal circumstances...

-0-

Captain's Log, Day 220: We circled the island and almost gave up the search, because there is no way we are getting off the ship in order to search the most dangerous island in the whole West Blue for a village that might or might not exist. Luckily one of the men spotted a curtain of vines growing on a cliff face, and insisted that he saw them swaying back and forth, meaning that there is a cave behind. We checked, and yes there is, one less potential 'mutineer' in case things go south.

Behind the curtain was a trail of water going through a tunnel, just large enough for The Bloody Baron to squeeze through. As we turned the corner to exit the tunnel we found ourselves in a very large cove, and as we entered the cove, we were met with a village sitting a little bit away from the coast, but there looks to be a bustling dock in operation. I'm not close enough to make out any distinct features, but they are certainly not human. It's a fair sized village, around forty or so houses, meaning that there are probably one-to-two hundred 'people' living there.

Damn, my habit of over analyzing things is kicking back up... Anyways, time for some good ol' fashioned looting!

-0-

"Hmm? Black clouds? It's not going to rain, is it? I hate rain..." Everton grumbled, following the direction of the suddenly black cloud, only to realize that it was coming from the ground near the docks. He remembered the last time this happened was the second time he went to the village, when the village had a massive catch, and decided to have a barbecue, which Everton invited himself to, and complained about it the whole time. It was pretty good.

"How dare they start cooking without inviting me! I'll show those lousy upstarts what happens when you mess with a Celestial Dragon!" Fueled by indignant rage, he got up, which used to be a Marathon activity for him, and is simply a chore now, and clomped his way to the docks.

On his way to the docks, other Minks were running in the other direction as fast as they could, Everton figured that they had collectively forgotten to grab something. And when he finally crested over the hill and saw the docks, he was shocked. Men, human men, were grabbing things, breaking other things, and burning the rest. For a brief moment, as his eyes landed on the figures, there was a spark of hope, but Everton, in his infinite wisdom, obviously knew who these people were at a second glance.

Pirates. The mere word disgusted him. Those despicable lowlifes who stole his tribute time and time again. It was always swiftly returned, and with more than expected added to it, but it's the fact that these mongrels dared to disrupt the natural order of things for their own greed, disgusting.

If Everton knew the word 'irony', it would absolutely be lost on him at this moment.

Burning with self-righteous anger, he decided to give those scum a piece of his mind.

-0-

So, I left Evan at home and went shopping to get some fish, but long story short, pirates. Pirates are very rare here, due to the disguise on the entrance to our village, but they still occasionally find their way here. Due to what the people from Kano have said, we are currently living in the 'Great Pirate Era' started by the execution of Gold Rodger, the pirate king, around three years ago. So it makes sense that we've been dealing with a ton more pirate attacks than normal.

Well, now I'm in a bit of a situation. Sadly, unlike the other pirates that show up, these ones weren't scared of us, they even started to shoot at us with their guns! The pirates sailed up to the docks in a bright red ship with the name 'Bloody Baron' stenciled on the side, and I decided to hide instead of running. I'm fast, but not faster than a bullet. I peeked out at them from my hiding place, under a merchant's table that had a floor length rug draped over it. It's not a great place, but who's gonna want to steal a rug?

"Ooo, a rug! I want it." A man, presumably the captain based on how he's dressed and the fact that everyone was listening to him. Wait, a rug?

Suddenly, I no longer had a hiding spot, and many pairs of hostile eyes locked on to me. The captain spoke up, "Well, well, well. Look at this! I wanted a rug, and got a two-for-one special! Tie it up boys, we can always use a hostage."

I tried to struggle, I tried to run, but they were far too strong. So here I sit, bound by rope, with a fresh black eye (not that you could see it under my fur), waiting to be rescued.

-0-

As Everton approached the pirates, a few took notice of him, and while one slipped away to go talk to the man in a large red coat, the others pulled out some swords and pistols, and decided to challenge their god.

"All right, fatty, back off. The boss wants the food and nothing else, just turn around and walk away, because if you don't, well..." He trailed off, menacing glint in his eye.

Everton, master of subtlety, said, "Back off cretin, I only have words for this 'Boss' of yours. You people are infringing on the territory of a god!"

"Well, your funeral." The pirate said, pulling the trigger on his pistol and sending the projectile through Everton's heart. And through it.

Everton froze, disoriented from having part of his chest missing. The pirate froze, looking at the monster in front of him. When Everton's heart reformed, the pirate was quaking in his boots, dropped the pistol, and ran away screaming.

The man in the red coat looked over when he heard the screaming, and saw one of the pirates running away from a harmless looking fat man, so he snapped his finger and a buff man wearing a sleeveless shirt pointed his finger at the fleeing pirate. When looking at the man's finger, you could witness true magic as his finger morphed into a gun barrel, and fired a bullet that caused the fleeing pirate to crumple to the ground.

"Anyone else?" The man in red asked. Silence. "Good, that's what I like to see." He said as he approached Everton, "So, what brings you here?" He asked with false good will.

Everton answered him with honesty, "You pirates are infringing on my territory and authority as a Noble, and I demand you leave at once!" He said, looking his best to be disgusted.

The man didn't flinch, he started to bow, his hand slipping into his coat to grab his weapon, "Oh of course my lordliness of lardliness, I would never think to intrude upon your territory. Give me a minute to grab my men, and we'll be on our way."

"Goodie! I thought that this was gonna be har-" *KA-BLAM* Everton stood there, without a head. A smoking shotgun in the man's hand as he turned around and was about to instruct his men to continue, and then he realized that the body hadn't fallen over, and that there was a surprising absence of blood. He turned around and witnessed the dead coming back to life, as a bunch of what looked like sheets of paper were swirling together where the fat man's head was, and it slowly molded into the man's head. The icing on the cake was when it became flesh again.

A look of incomprehensible rage was on his face as he glared at the man in the red coat. He opened his mouth in order to give the man the rage of the world itself, and then he heard someone, "Hi Evan!"

He looked over at where he heard the voice from and saw Darcy, sitting on the ground, hands tied behind her back, smiling at him. His indignat rage was replaced by a more rightous one as he demanded them to let her go.

The man in the red coat was obviously shocked by this turn of events, but played it cool, "No man, that's not how this works, see? We use her as an, insurance policy, of sorts, and when we're done here, we MIGHT let her go, capiche? That's only gonna happen though if you cooperate, you get me here?"

"I don't cooperate, you do what I say, or you'll be wishing that your ancestors were never born." Everton said with steely determination, not really thinking that anything bad was going to happen, mostly because he didn't understand the subtle threat.

The man in the red coat then said, "Well, they don't call me Baron the Bloody for nothing, Carver, show him we mean business."

The other man, Carver then turned his finger gun to Darcy, and fired a bullet through her foot without any hesitation. She screamed in pain, as she had never felt anything so painful in her entire life. Hearing her scream though, caused something to click inside Everton after a small window of time that he was devoid of emotion.

'They hurt. My. FRIEND.'

While Baron was playing around with Everton for fun, he didn't expect to be tackled to the ground.

Everton, a slobbering mess of rage, tackled the man to the ground with all six hundred pounds of his weight, sat on his chest, crushing his lungs, and started wailing on his face.

Punch after punch rained down on Baron's face, and when the other pirates tried shooting or cutting him, they just slipped through, Everton paying them no mind. The only objective in his head was to make this guy pay. Carver though, turned his arm into a six-barreled rotary cannon and started shredding Everton's upper body, turning everything above his legs into scraps of paper.

Baron, now with significantly less weight pressed on him, took the opportunity to shove the man off of him and stumble away. His face was bloody and disfigured, his nose was flattened, eyes swollen and bleeding, ears ringing, and he was very dizzy. As he stumbled over, he was caught by Carver, and Baron whispered into his ear, "Kill that man, no matter what you have to do."

By this time, Everton's body had reformed, and he charged at Baron once more. Carver stood in the way of this charge, blasting his legs with a hand cannon, but for some reason, he didn't fall when he had no legs. He hovered in place, all his momentum lost, as a swirl of paper reformed his legs.

Everton's ire was transferred to the weapon-man and he began charging once again. Carver tried everything he could think of. Any weapon he knew of he tried. Any projectile or attack went through him, he even tried using a torch to burn him, because he figured out that over the course of the fight, Everton's body turned into paper.

When Carver hit him with the torch and set him on fire, it hurt, it actually burned, and caused Everton to snap out of his berserker rage, and remember a moment from when he first arrived on the island, a moment when lightning struck a tree and created fire. Everton then concentrated on the burning part, and ejected it from his body, launching it at Carver and forcing the man to dodge.

Everton had just discovered his first actual Devil Fruit technique, one that he would later name Paper-Paper: Eject, a move that absorbs all foreign effects or substances into one part of his body, usually a hand, and ejects it as a projectile.

Carver, running low on stamina was desperate for a solution, 'This man is tricky, harmless if you're not careless, but Captain wants him gone. I may have something I can do. This man is obviously using a Devil Fruit, and I don't know if I can do it, due to it being counter to the principles of a Devil Fruit, but try to remember. The chains, the cages. Remember the feeling of unbreakable containment. Imagine... Seastone. Not much, just a touch, over the whole fist. Slowly... Slowly... HURK... I-I think I did i-it... Oh god I'm gonna be sick... Seastone on the knuckles, possible, but only in extreme emergencies... LET'S DO THIS!!!'

Everton was running out of energy fast. Reforming your body takes a ton of stamina, and if not for his anger drawing out all of his latent stamina, he would be blacking out by now. When he saw the man in front of him, Carver, double over and look like he was about to vomit, Everton thought he had won, and went in for a final punch. What he wasn't expecting was to get punched in the gut. It hurt, and the unexpected hit winded him and made him double over.

What followed was a one sided beat down.

"Not, *Punch* so, *Punch* tough, *Punch* now, *Punch* are you!? *WHAM* Carver said while laying into Everton. Every hit was connecting, and Everton could do nothing but sit there and take it. Everton was covered in bloody bruises, and if it wasn't for the layer of fat on his body acting as a shock absorber, he would be dead many times over at this point.

Carver dispelled the Seastone knuckles, on the verge of passing out from the strain that put on his body. Baron, who had somewhat recovered at this point, came over and spat on Everton who was moaning in pain, and said, "I'm going to beat that kid, just to spite you. This could've been avoided, but now you get to suffer the consequences of your actions."

Everton twitched, and Baron took great pleasure in seeing the man squirm, "Carver, I know you're beat, but go wail on that kid first, I want to watch this guy as he hears her scream."

"Got it captain." But as Carver turned to walk away, he could feel a hand firmly grasp his ankle, locking it in place. He looked down and saw the bloody and brutalized face of Everton looking back up at him with just as much hatred and anger as he had before, the beating obviously not taking the edge off. In another place and time, he would admit that this spirit and will was astounding and very impressive, and that he would respect a man capable of such a feat, but this is now, and right now, this is very annoying. He tried walking away, and while he wasn't held in place, the grip never faltered, so he looked back down to see Everton's detached arm, still gripping his ankle.

Carver tried to shake the arm off, but whether it was due to poor balance or fatigue, when he tried to get the arm off, he tripped, plunging into the water below. He was now a Devi Fruit user and was introduced to their biggest weakness at this very moment, the ocean. It sapped the remainder of his strength, and he plunged to the floor of the bay, a few feet deep, and blacked out.

Baron heard the splash, and instantly knew that Carver had fallen in. For a moment, he didn't bother, and was going to make fun of him when he pulled himself out, but after a few seconds with no movement, he remembered that Devil Fruit users cant swim, so he jogged over to the edge of the dock and peered down, seeing the prone form of Carver, and a spare arm, just sitting there. Cursing, he threw his red coat off and onto the dock, then dove in, saving Carver, and the arm, by hauling them to the surface.

Back on the dock, Carver wasn't breathing, and Baron, not knowing how to resuscitate someone, just punched him in the gut (DO NOT PREFORM AT HOME), and it luckily ejected some of the water in Carver's lungs, letting his body kick back up, coughing the rest of the water up. Carver was awake long enough to thank Baron before passing out once again. Baron then cursed, put his coat back on, and then draped Carver over his shoulder. He glared at the mound of flesh that screwed him and his first mate up, and then decided to let it go. He would return someday to take his revenge, because The Bloody Baron will alwys take revenge...

"Let's go! We're outta here!" Baron shouted, signaling to the other pirates that they were leaving.

The only things left were a burnt, broken dock, Everton's unconscious body (With reattached arm), and a tied up Darcy. Speaking of Darcy, after she had enough wherewithal to ignore the pain, she shouted at Everton to leave and not get hurt for her sake, and at the pirates, begging them not to hurt him. Sadly all her words fell on deaf ears.

It was ten minutes later that they were discovered by the returning villagers.

-0-

Captain's Log, Day 227: After that disaster on Paw Manu, my crew no longer feared me and decided that it was time to strike. They poisoned our food tonight, and Carver died within minutes. Luckily, or I guess unluckily for me, I am very paranoid, and refuse to eat any meal until someone eats first. Long story short, I killed everyone in my rage. Not my brightest idea considering that I'm a week from the closest town, and a month from one that won't call the Marines the moment they see my ship. With no food, water, or people, I can say with confidence that this is my last entry. I regret very few things in my life, but messing with that fat guy is definitely one of them.

End of Log.

---- Signed, Baron 'The Bloody' Karsatz.