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+--- Thread: Men, Ale, and New Beginnings (/showthread.php?tid=1171)
Men, Ale, and New Beginnings - Belle - 04-05-2015
The air of the seaside town had sunk into everything, but Joseph could still smell the fear on the man as he wrestled him to the ground. The floor stunk, the walls stunk, he stunk, but the tang of cold sweat was like nothing else.
The three remaining members of the man's crew - those that hadn't fled in the first few moments of the fight, anyway - lay sprawled in varying states of unconsciousness across the room. The one that had been guarding the door, a young fellow with short brown hair, lay face down in the thin puddle of blood that oozed from his broken nose. The next two – big, burly fuckers with piggy slits for eyes whose only separating features seemed to be their hairstyles – lay on top of each other a few steps further inside, two pieces of a splintered wooden pole on either side.
The captain himself was nothing remarkable: an aging, balding man with a salt-and-pepper mullet and a dirty comb-over, a rum gut, and dull, slate-gray eyes. Were it not for the tattoo of an angry dragon snaking up the left side of his neck, he could have been mistaken for just an ordinary sleazeball. Perhaps that was how he had defeated so many.
Joseph pinned him to the ground, putting his weight on the arm pressed across the man's shoulders while the other kept one of the man's hands pulled behind his back. “'Firestarter' Avery,” Joseph said. “Nice to finally meet you.”
“You crazy bastard,” Avery growled. He punctuated his sentence by spitting out some blood; Joseph had clocked him pretty good after dispensing with the terrible twins. “Just who the Hell are you?”
“I don't think that really matters, do you?” Joseph asked, and illustrated his point by pulling upward on the man's trapped arm, eliciting a scream of pain as he forced it to go a few degrees further than it was designed to. “But since you asked: I'm here to take you in.”
“Son of a – ARGH! - bitch!” Avery yowled, then stilled, his head turning a little to get a better look at him. His eyes narrowed, then widened. “That hair! Wait, I know you. You're 'Broomhead!' ”
“Heh.” Joseph smirked. “I'm flattered that I'm so well known among the scum scraping the bottom of the bounty board.”
“Navy lapdog,” the man spat again, his brows furrowed in anger, eyes flashing with distaste. “Bounty hunters like you, you don't get to criticize me. You hear me?! At least I've chosen a side, you bristle-haired bastard.” He laughed. “Oh, that pissed you off, did it?”
Joseph thought he was pretty good at keeping his self-control, but this guy was really pushing it. “Tsk,” he muttered under his breath. “You've got some balls, old man. And if you don't shut up, that's ALL you're going to have.”
With that, he dislocated Avery's shoulder. The man screamed again, then stopped. “Moron,” he heard Avery chuckle, and with a bodily shove, the man rolled over, his flopping arm sandwiching between them. Joseph had just a moment to register what had happened before the elbow of the man's other arm drove itself into his side.
Joseph grunted. “You fat bastard. Get off me!” He shoved, wincing as Avery threw another elbow. Straining, he managed to snake his legs upward, enough to plant his feet on the man's hips, and kicked.
Avery flew off him, sputtering and yelping as he tumbled, rolling repeatedly on his injured shoulder until stopping with a thud against the line of ale casks against the wall. As Joseph rose to his feet, so did he, one side slumped until Avery rammed it against one of the stacked barrels. There was an unpleasant sounding crack and another scream as the pirate relocated his shoulder. The wood of the barrel splintered, and a dribble of its contents spilled forth.
Joseph rubbed his side. That was sloppy. Of course Avery wasn't going to be taken down that easily. “Heh,” he smirked. “Looks like you've still got some spunk in yu, old man.”
Avery was breathing hard, but grinned back, his eyes uncomfortably wide. “I've got a lot more than that inside me, brat.” He lifted the hand attached to the recently reseated arm and held it up to the dribble of ale, letting it run over his fingers before he brought them to his lips, licking it up. “Ah, Sunset Isle's finest! This brings back memories.”
“I'm sure,” Joseph said, slowly sliding one hand behind his back to start loosening the straps of his weapon.
“It's where I decided to become a pirate! The world is so large, I thought, surely there must be ale even better than this!” Avery laughed.
“Seems like kind of a weird career path,” Joseph said conversationally, loosening a second strap. “Haven't you ever heard of wine tasters?”
“I'm a greedy man, Broomhead,” Avery practically purred as he licked up the last residue on his fingers. He cackled. “I don't just want some of it. I want it all. That's why the fruit came to me, I'm sure of it.”
Fruit? Joseph paused. Abandoning all subtlety, he ripped the last strap free. The smooth wooden handle of his weapon fell into his palm.
“That's right. I ate the Suikomu Suikomu fruit, and became a Drinking Man!” Avery patted his belly. With a flick of his wrist, his fingers ducked into his belt and pulled out a match, striking it against his skin in the same motion. He brought the flame up to his face. His features flickered, cast into light and deep shadows. “Let me show you … how I earned my name!”
Joseph spun the handle of his broom, bringing it in front of him as Avery opened his mouth. There was a thundering shudder in the man's body, a glimmering of something wet inside his gaping maw, before a torrent of stinking black ale spewed forth. The light of the match caught the edge of the flow, flames catching and blossoming as it flooded towards Joseph.
“'Firestarter.' Heh.” Joseph smirked. “That figures.”
And then everything went black.
Quote:~+~+~+~+~
He awoke in a deep, dark void. There was a grinning silhouette there. He found he couldn't speak, but somehow it seems to know what questions he wanted to ask, even without him asking.
“My name is Omni. This is not the world you know. This is the Omniverse. You interest me, so I have made you part of it. The Omniverse is a place that reflects the wishes of those who are part of it. But! There are rules. I will explain them only once, so listen carefully.”
Omni handed him a glimmering orb in which all the colors of the rainbow coalesced. “This is Omnilium. It’s what ties the Omniverse together. Without it, you are nothing. With it, anything you desire can be yours. But you will need more than this. If you desire it enough, you will find it. You will find that using it comes naturally. Just think of what you desire most.
“You will not be alone in the Omniverse. There are others. Of course, they, too desire Omnilium. Do not fear death. For as long as you interest me, you will be reborn.
“That’s all you need to know right now. You’ll figure out the rest soon enough. I’ll be watching … and waiting.”
~+~+~+~+~
Joseph opened his eyes and sat up. At first, he thought he must have gone blind. Then he realized that if that were true, he would probably be consumed in darkness, not the light.
The second thing he thought was that he must be dreaming. He pinched himself. Ouch. No deal on that.
So was he dead? He didn't feel dead. He felt unusually heavy if he were supposed to have shed his mortal shell. He put fingers to his neck, and felt a steady, if rapid, heartbeat.
Probably the devil fruit, then. Was all of this inside Avery's stomach?
He stood up and looked around. On all sides he was surrounded by white. The landscape seemed utterly featureless, save for eight gates that loomed in the far distance. Each was of a different design, and seemed to have been arranged, evenly spaced, around his location, as if each marked the direction on a compass.
The only other feature, of course, was the weather vane.
Joseph stared at it. Standing up out of the white 'ground' below him, stuck in a single patch of green grass that seemed to have emerged out of the ether, was a metal rod. It rose to chest height before fanning out horizontally into four directions – North, South, East, and West. The central bar continued past this, rising a foot or so, before ending in the base for a metal rooster that had a very, very familiar haircut.
The weather vane slowly creaked, swaying one direction, then another. Joseph felt no wind, but that minor detail didn't seem to bother the vane in the slightest. It aimlessly searched, one direction, then another.
“Tsk,” he muttered. He wasn't going to get anywhere just standing here. If this was a fruit, there had to be a way out. Every power had its weakness. Maybe he just needed to find a way to give Avery indigestion, and he could ride out in style – or whatever counted for style when you're being vomited out of a man's throat. Weird, though, about the dream.
He checked his back. His broom wasn't there. “Omniverse, huh?” he said aloud. “Alright, old man. I'll play along. Let's see where this goes.”
Re: Men, Ale, and New Beginnings - Belle - 06-06-2015
A thorough examination of his surroundings confirmed his earlier impression: there was nothing there. Not just an absence of anything notable, but literally nothing else besides the gates and the squeaky weather vane.
Creeeak.
Joseph glared at the latter. “Got any hints for me?” he asked.
Creeeak.
“Is that so?”
Creeeak.
“Fascinating.”
…
Creeeak.
“Well, you're no help.” Reaching out, Joseph flicked the tip of the vane's arrow with a finger. The top span wildly, eventually slowing and coming to a halt, pointing towards the southwest. Two palm trees bent towards one another to form the gate. If this was part of Avery's fruit, is was a bizarre one, to say the least. “I guess I could use a little fun in the sun.”
The walk to the gate took nearly two hours. The trees towered above him as he stared up at the tops, then back down to the shimmering portal between the trunks. Past the air that rippled like heat snakes was a town. The entrance in front of him promised an exit onto a wide road that cut down a main thoroughfare, running steadily down and away from him. In the distance, crystal blue waters lapped at white beaches.
Joseph fished in his pockets. Clasping one of his coins, he pulled it out, rolling it between his fingers as he contemplated. Deciding, he shifted it to rest on top of his thumb, then casually flicked it through.
His one beli note passed the lip of the gate with a faint shump. It landed on edge on the brick-paved street beyond, glittering and jingling before coming to a stop face up. Joseph adjusted his armor, rolled his neck, and made to step through.
The portal offered no real resistance. Instead, he felt like he was stepping through several layers of bubbles, the colors of the other side becoming clearer and sharper. His foot landed on solid ground, and the rest of his body followed. One of his ears popped from the pressure difference, and he worked his jaw in circles, trying to do the same for the other. The familiar smell of the sea filled his nostrils, the bustle and clatter of merchants trying to ply their trades not far off.
“Name?”
Joseph turned and stared. The request had come from a man dressed from head to toe in thick white armor. It wasn't any kind of armor that Joseph had ever seen, however. So much of it was angular, clearly manufactured somewhere. The helmet was the strangest, though. It had clearly been modeled to look like a face, similar to the masks the samurai from Wano kingdom would wear into battle to appear as a demon to their enemies. Perhaps the goal had been the same here, but whoever had designed it had botched the job badly. Instead of threatening, it looked like an overweight caveman with a bad case of underbite.
“Name?” the voice repeated. The flat black eyes of the mask stared at him as a hand impatiently tapped the front of a clipboard with a pen.
“Uh,” Joseph stared for a moment more, then straightened. “Hebi.”
“Hebi,” the man repeated, looking down at his board and tapping it. Looking closer, Joseph realized it wasn't a clipboard at all. A screen glowed on the front of it, and the man was scrolling through the list using the 'pen' in his hand. Joseph had seen projector snails display images before, but that had always been relaying footage that was real. This technology, whatever it was, was far beyond anything even Vegapunk had ever dreamed.
That settled it, then. This was not Avery's fruit at work.
“Hebi, Hebi... No. You're not on the list.” The armored man looked up. “Recent arrival?”
“I guess you could say that.”
“All new Primes seeking to enter Costa Del Sol must register themselves with the Empire,” the soldier – Joseph assumed he had to be with the mention of the Empire – stated. He turned the pad around. “Please place your hand on the screen. After that you can go.”
“And what if I don't want to, eh?” Joseph asked.
“Then my men will be forced to remove you from the verse.” The trooper pointed up and back with his pen.
Joseph followed the direction. In the windows of the buildings flanking the street were more of them, armored figures manning posts, some with large black – what he presumed were – guns pointed in his direction.
“Hmph,” Joseph grumbled. He must still have been groggy from the trip to have not noticed THAT. Putting his hand out, he placed it on the pad's screen. It burst into a flurry of color, flashing squares appearing at his fingertips. A green line swept from the top of the pad to the bottom.
There was a soft 'beep'ing sound that must've been the indication that it was finished, because the soldier nodded and pulled the pad away. “The Empire thanks you for your cooperation. Enjoy your stay in Costa Del Sol, Prime.”
“Uh, right,” Joseph said. “Just one question?”
“Yes?”
“What the fuck is a Prime?”