In the middle of nowhere (II)

It was normal for him to wake up as soon as the sun started to peek.

He had been taught by his uncle and mother that getting up as one could, for slacking off back home was frowned upon as a moment wasted without doing something productive could mean death to their village.

A moment slacking off meant that the crops could be stolen, if not by the wildlife by people from one of the other three villages. A moment of slacking off meant that the animals that they could normally hunt would run away to their hiding spots and the bigger and bloodthirstier animals would start coming out of their sleep.

They were used to move in the first hour of the day, preparing the whole day their defenses against the usual onslaught of beasts from all shapes and sizes that happened daily.

His achievements... at two years old, he crushed the throat of a Laughing baboon in self-defense after being kidnapped and almost dropped from a large tree, making its pack mad at the death of their comrades, he killed five more before his uncle finished the rest, forcing the pack to escape.

Such achievement allowed him to become a hunter at the age of four, obliterating the possibility to have friends of his age as they all became jealous of how their parents talked roses about him, and the opportunity to have a childhood. Then again, for someone with an appearance so different from the rest, other children were already distancing from him.

At five, he had killed a Chimera goat, a beast with the spiked tail with a body covered in scales, the head, and the body of a goat, and the fangs and claws- instead of hooves- of a predator, silencing everyone who had doubts of why he was there and earning the jealousy of many hunters for reasons unknown to him.

At six, he had been forced to kill a human being, the desperation of another village seeing how his own was starting to thrive while the rest were hardly surviving with the eruption of the volcano. He had been forced to kill the entire enemy force as he had been abandoned by his fellow hunters, who had told his family that he had died and that they tried to save him but failed due to the dirty tactics of the other village to blow the only safe passages connecting them after having stolen their reserves, making it hard for them to cross without having to sacrifice half of their force in the attempt to bring his 'corpse'.

He returned home bathed in blood after an entire week of battling against the enemy village, the heads of the oldest members of the other village and his broken spear to his side, his entire body filled with arrows, several open injuries, and one of his legs in the wrong direction.

He had raised in ranks and became the right-hand of his uncle at the age of seven, and helping him unite all the villages in a single civilization.

And after three years of thriving, all of that progress was burned by the whim of a single man.

He had taken the lives of the strongest fighters, twisting their head with a single movement of his whole strength before being brought down by their numbers and by the one who was the most special person in his whole life, after she was used for buying them some time to beat him to the ground.

She bit the man's nose off his face before being shot to death.

... Hah... he- what should he do with all this anger?

His body had already healed, like always, it had healed these mortal wounds for a normal being in just a full night of sleep. And all he could with his recovered body was staring at the ceiling, not knowing what to do.

How long? He didn't know, but at some point, he decided to stand up and open the cave that they were in, only to find a giant face staring at him.

It took his all to not throw his weapon at the girl.

"You are awake!"

She stated the obvious with a big smile and he could only smile dumbly at her and nod.

"Oh, sleeping beauty is finally awake, huh?" He heard the familiar voice of Bonney followed by a voracious munch. "You slept for a whole day, I thought you were dead."

... Eh?

That was too much! How was it possible?!

He has never slept over six hours back on his home island, the idea of sleeping such an amount was so inconceivable that for a moment, he still felt like he was sleeping.

He raised to his feet in a single motion, stumbled a little bit, before forcing himself to go outside.

His throbbing head was a bother, it always was no matter how many times he felt it, but he was used to feeling like this.

"Good morning to you too."

"I left that piece of the ship to hide us, you know?"

"Yep." She answered unbothered to his words, irritating him slightly. "But I was hungry, there was really little food."

What? It was enough to feed them for a week, even with that giant girl!... Or at least that was what he thought.

... After an hour he could see why the food had been depleted so quickly.

It was Bonney's fault.

She had a small frame, hell, if it wasn't because they had a two-year-old child with them, she would be the one with the smallest frame. Bonney would be considered the thinnest of them all, considering she was practically a skeleton with a tissue when he had first seen her back in that ship, despite being the third oldest of them all.

Now she seemed to have a more healthy appearance.

"What?" She spoke once again, still with her cheeks filled with food, spitting out small pieces of meat, fruit, and vegetables at the same time.

It was an uncomfortable sight.

His stomach growled, but he ignored his natural response to hunger and looked at the only survivors of the shipwreck in this island of apparently strong beasts.

The girl who was forcing a strange looking fruit down his throat and in his focus- without considering the hunger that he felt in the moment-, he didn't fight back and started munching in the fruit of disgusting taste, eating it whole while his eyes were somewhat clouded by the tears that came out due to the nauseous taste.

It was amazing how small she was, she reached to his collarbone, or maybe even lower, and he was small in height, the average kid in his home island was a head taller than him, even most of the girls were taller than him. Bonney wore a dirty dress that may have possibly been white and sandals, her skin was dirty and so was her hair, but despite that, it still kept its vibrant colors.

Then came the child who was pulling down a part of the open skirt of similar design to the thing he wore on his chest, the short cape that didn't cover his sides nor his belly and the lower part of his back.

She wore a rather large shirt covered in filth and dirt, a shirt that was three times her size and made her stumble as she walked. He subconsciously reached out to the kid and took her into his arms. There he could see better her physical traits... she was large for a child, he could feel that she was barely two or so years old, her energy said so, the thing was that she was slightly tall for her age, reaching almost to the shoulders of Bonney, she stretched his cheeks showing her superior physical strength to the average that could hurt an adult if she was not careful. Her eyes were of a bloody crimson color with slitted pupils, giving her gaze the feeling of a predator, her skin was... bordering pale color and her hair was of a silverish gray tone.

She tried to snuggle too much, it reminded him of his cousin... it reminded him so much that it hurt, but at the same time, he didn't want to let go.

"Nahahahaha!" He heard the boisterous laughter of an androgynous voice, whom he identified as a girl because of her aura, which was strangely mixed with a wheeze. "Chip sure likes you, girly!"

His mouth twitched, those words really annoyed him, but it was for the best to remain calm, there was no reason to act violent just because she didn't know.

The one who had spoken just now was taller than him, he barely reached her shoulders and that was slightly standing on tiptoe, with a large smile filled with sharp teeth like the ones of a beast and a gaze of one, despite trying to hide it under a friendly expression, the appearance of her face made it look as threatening as the sneer of a bloodthirsty beast... he could win, but it would be a hard battle. She was of the same age as him, but her muscles were more defined than his... anyone's muscles would be more defined than his, yes, but hers were really defined. Her skin was darker than him, but her hair was dirty, but he could guess that her original color was a shade of white.

But what stood out the most of her was the tail in the lower part of her back and the fin found in the middle of her back as well, both were of black color, and on the underside of her tail was of white color.

"Fish?"

The word came out accidentally from his mouth to which she laughed harder.

"-Hahahaha, funny, I'm a killer whale, girly boy."

Huh... so she did know that he was actually a boy, that fueled his annoyance... maybe a few scars on her face would do-

Her slapping his shoulder didn't help at all in keeping himself calm, nor that her mocking voice made him remember of the ones who had betrayed him.

"Call me girly, one more time, and I will split your throat open, got it?"

He spoke before thinking of the words that had just left his mouth.

Her smile got wider and sharper at his words filled with bloodlust.

"Really~?" The whale girl said playfully, he put the little girl after a small duel with himself (The part that wanted to take care of the little girl rather than deal with the nuisance in front of him, the latter winning by a small margin) in the lap of Bonney before tightly grabbing his club, preparing to raise a cloud of sand to blind her before attacking her side... however his plans were cut short by the loud stepping of the giant girl, a step that raised so much sand that he was almost buried in it.

"No fighting!"

She said cutely while pouting at them, she was... stronger than many hunters back at home, the both of them could beat her with ease... he would feel as if he was bullying a child, and he could feel that the whale girl did not want to fight any longer.

He could hear her aggressiveness drifting away... until the girl of the vibrant pink hair decided to speak.

"Let them fight, Hreinn." The giant girl looked outraged at the girl who was devouring with ferocity the large bird she had burned to eat, she looked disgusted with the taste... but kept eating.

"Bonney!" Hreinn cried out with small tears of frustration, the girl sure did not like the concept of fighting... no, the child felt like she was a bundle of kindness, probably she wanted them to get along, not to mention that she had just killed a bird that was bothering her without batting an eye.

"It would be for the best for them to blow off the steam before this explodes on their faces... and we will have more food for us."

... The later part was her true reason to allow them to fight, but it seemed that the whale girl didn't care, raising her bloodlust once again without care like a beast that has been left chainless.

She made the first move, forcing him to raise his club for defense.

*Five Hundred Tile True Punch*

She screamed from the bottom of her lungs. Her intentions were really open, the attack was obvious and simple despite its incredible speed.

In other words, he had raised his club for nothing.

Her punch was capable of leaving an average human on the verge of death, but if somehow that human was saved in time, they would still be left paraplegic and with several internal problems... such fate wouldn't happen if someone simply avoided it.

Easier said than done, indeed.

Grabbing her by the hand, before throwing her a hundred meters into the sea, Atl won ten seconds, ten seconds to analyze how she fought normally.

In water, she was fast, such a thing was obvious to Atl, but he wished to see how fast she was.

The answer? Way too fast.

He had actually won three seconds and had granted her another source of strength apparently.

*Water Machinegun*

Several small drops of water, each with the strength to severely crack a boulder, came down raining on him.

Blocking the drops he couldn't avoid, jumping backward from time to time as the whale girl avoided his macuahuitl by a hair of distance.

... She had just become faster than him, fast enough to make him trouble even while predicting the intentions behind her actions.

An idiotic mistake, but he had never fought such a being, how could he know that they would be empowered in such a way just by a small amount of contact with the water. He had just expected her to launch herself with a little boost to her already impressive speed.

Then again, he didn't want to hurt her... too much, he just wanted to punch her out cold until she begged for him to stop breaking her skull with his bare hands... heh, he had split open his claws to create this thing in his hands and ended up not using. He found it amusing, but doing it with his fists always felt oddly satisfying when dealing with situations like this... and the giant girl would probably cry if he did too much damage to the fish girl and he didn't want to deal with it, she seemed the type to cry a lot and cry loud, it would be a bother, not to mention that they would be all wary of him and could kill him the moment he was weak if he showed to be a threat to them.

The dangers of having saved strangers.

An idea came to his mind, an idiotic idea even more so than launching an aquatic creature to the sea, but she acted more on instinct than on logic, it could work... perhaps, thus he threw his club filled with minerals cut sharp enough to make a wound in his skin, and like he thought she would, the whale girl wasted time in grabbing it.

"Ha! You lost this-!"

A hit to the center of her chest made her stumble a few steps back, she swung the club with outstanding strength and speed, but such an attack was still predictable... but he had also made himself predictable.

Or maybe it was her instinct that allowed her to block his next attack to the center of her chest, or maybe luck.

It didn't matter for she had caught his fist and gave him a headbutt that made him see stars for a moment before he returned the hit.

In an outside view... it was funny because they stayed like that for longer than they should, he was the first one to go with dirty tactics and spit to her eyes, before putting her face against the sand.

He was used for others to use such tactics against him, and curiosity got the best of him in this battle.

Time seemed to slow down when he noticed a single detail.

Spit shouldn't be brown... nor should his hand seem like a melting liquid.

This moment of distraction was used by the whale girl to gift him her left elbow and a hit with her fist, before being thrown away by another punch.

Three thick trees fell before his body was embedded in a large wall of stone that this beach possessed.

For some reason... he knew what was happening to him, why his body was melting like this.

His body was no longer made from flesh and bone, he could feel it. It was a foreign thing that forced his mind to accept that he was capable of more before forcing its blessing to the consumer of the fruit.

A Devil Fruit. A Devil Fruit that had made him into a man of some substance of deep brown color... he identified it as chocolate, what was chocolate? He... kinda knew and kinda didn't, he hadn't heard of it in this life, but memories of it showed a tendency of him having eaten that quite constantly in the memories that he could remember.

He had never heard of the concept, but for some reason, he knew about the mystical fruit that Bonney had forced was actually the thing which his mind was constantly calling Devil Fruit.

His first action with his newly given power.

Shoot his fist.

It cracked the ground as one of his normal punches would, it had maybe caused larger damage than what he would normally do while using this little strength.

The whale girl was already in front of him, the hit would land in the center of his chest, and considering how embedded he was to the rock and that he had been more focused on discovering why he felt different, it was obvious that he would be left at the mercy of the whale girl.

An idea appeared on his mind while the fist capable of destroying five thousand tiles got closer and closer, as the place where it would land started to separate, creating a hole for the fist to pass through.

The sound of stone being broke and a thunderous shockwave.

The sound was as loud as a clap of thunder, the sound hurt his ears and made them ring.

He saw many versions of the whale girl while seeing the same girl.

The whole world felt upside down.

But he had managed to lock her fist in his body, she growled and bit his body in an attempt to free herself, but all she could taste was not blood, but chocolate. Locking her fist in place while turning his whole body into chocolate to move a little to the side felt slightly odd, but at the same time, it felt natural.

With a grab to her free arm and a hand to her face, he buried her in the sand, cracking the sturdy formation beneath their feet before launching himself into the air several meters before dropping like a fallen comet... of chocolate, the image of a boulder falling came to his mind and he shaped his legs as such.

Yes, she avoided it by a short distance.

Yes, she still avoided his next attack. He had turned into chocolate after falling and moved like a mass of sentient liquid towards his target, turning his arms into hardened and sharp weapons that had just cut what remained of the boulder she had just turned into rubble into pieces as well several trees.

How was she faster than him?

His ability to hear the intent behind their attacks was not something he had mastery over, it only worked half of the time, and even that was being generous.

It was a great feat for him to have managed to use it so many times successfully.

A kick to her face showed that she was not as sturdy as him, but she was faster than him.

It was not the first time, there were beasts back in his home island stronger and faster than him, barely counted with a hand and considered legendary creatures or gods by the people, but there were and he usually ran away at the moment he noticed them near him.

She blocked several of his kick and even-

GRHG—

A weird sound like a snarl came from his mouth the moment he felt the massive damage on his chest and blood filled his mouth.

All the water in his body moved violently despite the fist not having made contact nor having felt any intentions to harm him. It felt as if his blood vessels would explode at any instant.

Blood became fire as his skin turned into a vibrant red, his pupils turned into the same bestial appearance and his hair turned spiky.

But Atl couldn't see those changes, as all his eyes were seeing was his opponent and nothing more, not even-

"You two-" The large fist coming his way! "Knock it off!"

The giant girl... was strong, he had to take his words back, she was strong enough to knock them out unconscious to the both of them in a single hit.

And from the first hour that the sun had peeked out, he had woken up at the time where the moon was in the center of the sky.

... "I won." "I won."

They both exclaimed at the same time the moment that they opened their eyes.

It was an outstanding feat that they both raised to their feet, locking their eyes against each other with gazes that loudly screamed of murder.

"I won!" "I won!"

Once again they both said at the same time, this time louder.

Grinding their teeth, they once again spoke at the very same moment.

"Stop copying me!" "Stop copying me!"

"No, you!" "No, you!"

Like two bulls, their heads clashed against each other, neither of them giving the other a breath while trying to push the other off balance.

"Oh? You two are really lively despite having fought so fiercely."

A new voice tried to catch their attention, they continued pushing their heads against each other but looked at the teenager. Practically wearing just a loincloth, with hair badly cut in many places to the point that it made Atl wonder if a beast had tried to eat his head only to tear his hair apart from it, not to mention the few missing teeth he could see and the few scars found in his neck that made him wonder... how was he alive?

"You!" They both screamed, still in the same struggle, their feral voice making him jump and start sweating lightly. "Who won?!"

"U-Um, I was-"

The ground shook, the light inside the cave was erased by the presence of a single being, a presence that had forced them to stop just by being there.

Her face was not threatening at all, if anything it was cute... but for both of the inhumanly strong children, her cute face was the most terrifying thing in the whole world.

"Are they giving you trouble, Sweet Berry?"

"N-no, thank you for asking, little Hreinn."

She nodded with a face full of suspicion, narrowing her eyes as she slowly walked away from them, as they were hugging each other with the fakest smile that has ever existed in the whole world... Atl couldn't help but think that the whale girl's body was strange, as her body felt both hard and smooth at the same time, the muscles that the girl had developed despite her age... she would probably end up smaller than him in a few years, for now, she was tall, for now...

"Can't you be any more feminine? You even smell of flowers." She whispered in mockery, he tightened his grip in the part he was holding himself from in an attempt to harm her while making strange noises.

"Can't you be more macho? Your body reeks of sweat." He countered, to which she tried to bury her fingers under his hard skin.

"... Truce until Hreinn sleeps, then we kill each other."

"Deal."

They both pushed each other rather abruptly, with as little tact as they could muster.

"..." "..."

They both stayed silent after that, a look to the thing that the teenager had left before running away... weird looking fruits.

"Hah?!" She cried out with a sneer at the fruits served to the both that called the most the attention of the whole bowl that they had been given. "They want me to give up my ability to swim or something?... Oh and I guess they want you dead too."

For some reason, he understood why she mentioned that he would die... not the whole concept, but something screamed that if he tried to consume a second Devil Fruit he wouldn't be able to see the outside of this cave ever again.

They both threw the Devil Fruits between them, before starting to devour the large bowl of food they had been given.

"Leviatan."

She spoke, it was obvious that it was her name, why she had given it to him? He didn't have a clue.

"Xoco Atl."

He replied after having swallowed the food, unlike the animal in front of him who simply had said her name while devouring her meal, spitting out pieces of fruits.

"Hey."

"Hn?" A noise in acknowledgment, he looked in the direction that she was looking to, the entrance... it was blocked by a large rock, and their only light source was the strange luminous moss all around them.

His ear twitched as he focused on the conversation on the outside, his face made a distasteful expression before looking straight into the eyes of the whale girl.

"Hreinn said that until we got along he wouldn't let us out."

"Does she not remember that we can break this boulder with ease?"

He agreed with the rude whale... but it would be for the best to try to be amicable with the whale, there had to be a reason why she teased him with his feminine appearance, not to mention that he had gone to the very extreme and tried to kill her just because her words- and only her words- reminded him of them, looking back at the memory... she did not have any ill will when she had said those words.

That made him feel stupid... but he had already gone and become enemies with her by trying to kill her... and he had won the battle.

"I will not apologize for trying so seriously to kill you, but I will apologize for having reacted in such a way after I had, childishly, insulted you by calling you a fish and a whale."

Leviatan huffed in amusement with the smirk never leaving her lips.

"And I suppose I should apologize for calling you girly... though it is the truth."

... He couldn't deny it, goddammit, he wanted to kick her for being so true.

He huffed and started to mumble.

"Rather than girly, I'm beautiful."

And that was a fact, he was completely aware that many people ignored his horns, claws, and inhumane strength the moment they gazed upon his face... they stared too much actually, to the point that it was uncomfortable.

"NAHAHAHAHA-" The girl laughed and laughed.... and laughed.

It got creepy after the minute, his worry overpowered his annoyance about her state after the third minute, she was pleading by the fifth minute.

"... Finally got tired?"

"He... he... he."

Her voice seemed to be rough thanks to laughing for so long.

"I would take offense, but I meant what I said." He said it with pride... and nostalgia. Yes, he missed her, he missed his mother, his uncle, and his cousins... the rest? He only cared about them because his uncle cared about them, their deaths didn't weigh any amount of significance on him. "I'm more beautiful than girly, I am my mother's child, after all."

"He... he... Mama's boy, hahaha-"

"I will punch you." He said despite having already hit her with his hand shaped like a mace, making a small 'bonk', never managing to shut her weak laughter, no matter how many 'bonks' he gave her.