42 Chapter 6
The groups split up. As soon as they touched down on the ground, Markus slipped off to explore on his own. He had time to kill until the fight with Enel really kicked into high gear. Until then he planned to beat some Shandians and Skypians to get his hands on their combat Dials. It was going to be a fun day!
He heard Luffy shouting for him while laughing because he thought Markus had gotten lost already. Markus just smirked and used his Geppo skill to get up onto a high tree branch. From there he jumped from tree to tree while keeping his Observation Haki active to search for targets to beat down. He didn't care how many minor fights he messed up, it was only the big ones he didn't want to mess with.
To keep himself off of Enel's radar, he kept the noise he made to a minimum. No matter what the range of his Mantra was with the enhancement of the Goro Goro no Mi, he was still a human and would have to filter out the information he was being provided. As long as it wasn't something that jumped out and caught his attention he likely wouldn't notice it. At least, not until a lot more people had been defeated and the noise was significantly reduced around the island.
As Markus landed on a branch he heard the braying of a goat. Moments later, one of the members of the Heavenly Soldiers entered the range of his Haki. Markus jumped in the direction of his first target. At the same time, the soldier moved in his direction. When Markus finally spotted his prey he groaned. He honestly couldn't figure out how they even came into existence. They had the wings of a Skypiean but had bald heads with long ears that hung over normal human ears and small horns while braying like goats. Did a Skypiean make it with a goat and breed like mad, or something?
All of them looked pretty similar and wearing the same outfit just made it worse. When the soldier spotted Markus, it came to a stop on a branch nearby. The pose it took was full of openings and looked dumb as hell, even if it was somewhat practical. The soldier held its arms straight out with his palms facing out so the Dials hidden under his gloves could be easily activated. It brayed at Markus before speaking, "Under the order of God Enel, all shall be eliminated!"
Markus stuck his hands in his pockets as the soldier charged at him using the Breath Dials on his ski's to give him a boost in speed. The goatman leaped into the air and aimed his palm at Markus, "Prepare to taste my Axe Dial!"
Markus smirked and kicked his leg forward. A blade of compressed air was launched from his kick and sliced deep into the goatman's chest while he was still shouting. Blood burst into the air as a look of utter shock dawned on the man's face. His limp body fell to the ground with a loud crash.
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You have defeated a Divine Soldier, +5,000 experience.
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Markus hopped down from the tree and landed near the body of the soldier. He didn't bother checking if the soldier was alive or dead, he just stripped its gloves off and stole its two axe dials. Once he got what he wanted, he moved on. He wasn't opposed to killing during a fight but he also wasn't going to go out of his way to kill a random nobody. As he strolled casually through the forest he heard the sound of combat coming from all over the place. He stopped where he was and looked over at a tree as a Shandian stepped out from behind it and leveled a rifle at him.
Markus calmly held his hands up, "I don't want to fight you or your people. Don't pick a fight with me and I won't have to hurt you."
The Shandian growled, "If you're not one of us then you're an enemy and need to be eliminated!"
Without another word, he started to squeeze the trigger of his rifle. Markus activated his Tekkai just before the shot was fired. The bullet slammed into his chest and ricocheted off harmlessly. The next moment, Markus vanished and appeared behind the Shandian and slammed his fist into the back of his head knocking him out cold, "Idiot."
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You have defeated a Shandian Guerilla, +4,500 experience.
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Markus shook his head and continued his walk. He didn't want to pick on the Shandians. Honestly, they got the raw end of the deal when Jaya had been blown into the sky. Not only did their home end up in a place they couldn't leave but then the Skypians had stolen it from them. He stuck his hands back in the pockets of his shorts and started walking around while looking for more soldiers to defeat.
While he wandered around the forest in the general direction of the ancient city, he beat every soldier he crossed paths with and stole their axe and impact dials. Occasionally he was forced to defeat a Shandian but some of them were smarter than others and chose to retreat instead of getting stomped. On the bright side, when he found the milky road passing through the forest, he spotted an unattended waver modeled after a wakeboard. Naturally, he stole it. He'd replace the Breath Dials with Jet Dials later.
After walking for a while longer, he finally arrived at the ruins near Giant Jack. A somewhat fitting name for the giant beanstalk sticking up through the clouds and towering into the sky. The other priest he wanted to beat the snot out of was waiting on one of the upper clouds Giant Jack was sticking through. He smiled to himself and started moving toward the giant beanstalk. As he walked he thought about the events that would happen involving the priest Ohm. As he did, he paused and sighed.
He couldn't defeat Ohm. Not because beating Ohm was important to any members of the crew or anything, but because of other events related to the fights that would happen on that layer of cloud. Enel would show up and taunt Wyper leading to a chain of events that were necessary for peace to happen between the Shandians and Skypieans. Frustrated, he found the nearest group of Divine Soldiers and beat the snot out of them before stealing their Dials.
He still made his way closer to Giant Jack to pay attention to what was happening. As he got closer he sensed Chopper inside of his Observation Haki and walked in his direction to see what was happening. When he got close, he saw Chopper sitting on some of the ruins drinking from his canteen. It looked like he had just finished defeating Gedatsu, the single dumbest member of the Priests. He couldn't even cross his arms properly, rolled his eyes back in his head blinding himself, and bit his lower lip preventing himself from talking. It was honestly a miracle he'd lived long enough for Chopper to defeat him. After which, the idiot killed himself.
Markus looked over Chopper for a moment before moving on. He needed to figure out where he should wait for the final showdown between Luffy and Enel. After a minute he smiled and knew where he wanted to wait. He activated his footwork and took off at high speed. He kept his footwork and Observation Haki fully activated as he looked around the island at high speed. After twenty minutes, he finally found what he was searching for, a cave.
He moved into the cave and grinned when he saw what he was looking for, the Arc Maxim. It was Enel's pride and joy, a giant flying ship filled with chemicals that let him generate thunder clouds and control them to deal massive amounts of damage. He even completely destroyed Angel Beach with a single attack and created an attack large enough to likely destroy Upper Yard. The thing was... Markus had no clue how the damned thing even flew! The only visible propellers for vertical thrust were tiny compared to the rest of the ship. It did NOT make any sense.
He used Geppo to get up onto the deck of the ship and looked around. He was going to lay claim to this whole thing! Aside from the belfry above Giant Jack, the Ark Maxim contained every scrap of gold from the ancient City of Gold. There were literal tons of it. Hell, the whole front of the main section of the ship was a multistory tall face made entirely of gold. He walked through the door into the interior of the ship.
Gold was everywhere and seemed to connect everything together. He couldn't even imagine how much the ship must weigh or what all the gold it contained would be worth. Then there was the technology of the ship. To Markus, it looked archaic and wasteful compared to the technology of his old world. Still, for the One Piece world, this ship was downright futuristic. Too bad he was going to rip it to shreds and salvage what he could later.
The thing was, even though the ability for the ship to generate stormclouds was impressive it had three flaws for him. First, it took way too long to make sufficiently large clouds for use. Second, he had no idea what the chemicals in the vats were or how to reproduce them. Third, it was unknown if the cloud generator would even work at a lower elevation, even if it did it would take even longer to generate the clouds as they would need to rise higher in the sky.
There were things worth learning and taking from the Ark Maxim though. For starters, he needed to figure out how the damned thing even flew. That was the biggest piece of technology on the ship, in his opinion. He wandered through it and made his way deeper into the ship. As he got down near the hull he saw something unexpected. The interior of the wooden hull was lined with iron. Markus looked it over and nodded to himself. It looked like Enel had accidentally discovered electrokinetic flight using iron as a medium.
Markus looked it over for a bit before finding a place to sit down and relax. He planned to wait inside of the Ark Maxim for the end of the battle between Luffy and Enel. Once he was comfortable he closed his eyes and used a combination of his Meditation and Semimei Kikan skills to slow his breathing and heartbeat to barely above dead. With his breathing and heartbeat so drastically lowered, he should be practically invisible to Enel. Now he just needed to wait.
He didn't have to wait for very long. Less than an hour later the ship began to shimmy and shake as a battle broke out between Luffy and Enel. With the use of his Observation Haki, he could sense Nami, Luffy, Aisa, Pierre, and Enel were all outside of the ship. Aisa was a little girl with small wings on her back, a child of the Shandians. She wore a dress made of brown fur and a hat with fabric hanging down that covered her short brown hair. The most interesting thing about Aisa was that she was born with the ability to use 'Mantra' better known as Observation Haki. Still, like Enel and his priests, it was an incomplete form and seemed to rely heavily on hearing, though her range was pretty significant.
Markus remained silent and unmoving as he smiled to himself. It seemed that Enel had no idea he was sitting inside of the ship. Markus watched as Luffy and Enel engaged in their fight. Enel's shock at Luffy being immune to his electrical powers and getting kicked in the stomach was pretty hilarious to watch.
For a moment it appeared that Luffy had the upper hand, but Enel quickly changed tactics and used his ability to reshape his golden staff into a trident. Between its sharpness and the heat from the metal being melted, it became a threat to Luffy. As the fight progressed, Enel knocked Luffy down and approached the throne of the ship. He channeled electricity into the ship and powered it up. Soon the ship was shaking violently as it plowed through the rocks and trees surrounding the cave and took to the sky.
As the ship flew the fight continued. Things stayed pretty even though as Luffy started using different tactics to counter Enel's Mantra ability. Things like using his Shotgun and even two techniques he made up on the spot, "Gomu Gomu no Airhead" and "Gomu Gomu no Octopus." Markus hard to try hard not to laugh or roll his eyes at what Luffy was doing. Still, he used his limp 'Octopus' limbs to fire off constant ricochet attacks at Enel.
Markus had to fight the urge to leap up and charge out to the deck of the ship right then and there. He forced himself to stay put as he watched Luffy gain the upper hand on Enel once more. After taking multiple ricocheted blows, Enel was subjected to a full-strength 'Bazooka' blow from Luffy. The blow to his abdomen prevented Enel from being able to move as Luffy's arm stretched far back while twisting. Enel struggled to move as Luffy's fist started to retract while rapidly spinning. Luffy used as much strength as he could while shouting, "Gomu Gomu RIFLE!!"
The high speed rotating fist slammed into Enel and drove deep into his body. The force of the blow sent him flying through the air and bashed his body into the golden face adorning the front of the ship. As Luffy retracted his arm and blew air from his nose, Enel collapsed on the ground. He had been knocked unconscious, briefly. Markus fought the urge to leap out of his hiding spot and steal Enel's fruit from him right then and there. It was so unbelievably tempting. Only his desire to prevent further war between the Shandians and Skypieans prevented him from moving from his spot.
To distract himself from the goings-on outside and help the time pass, Markus decided to focus on his plans for the future. His original plan was pretty simple and straight forward; follow Luffy, steal Enel's fruit, ditch Luffy, go on his own adventure. Things had changed a bit though. Over time he'd come to consider Luffy and the others to be his friends and companions. Especially Nami. He wasn't in love with her or anything cliche like that, he just enjoyed her company and had fun with her. Aside from that, he'd taken her fist kiss so by the laws of anime she couldn't get married to anyone but him now.
All joking to himself aside, he wanted to change his plans a little. No matter what he did the crew was going to split up for a couple of years and do their own training. While they were off doing that, he could go out and do his own thing, build his own crew, and rejoin with Luffy and the others as a captain in his own right.
Thinking along those lines, he went over the information he could remember about what was going to happen in the near future while ignoring the fact that Sanji and Usopp had boarded and sabotaged the Arc Maxim. Just another incident that proved the weakness of Enel's 'Mantra'. If it was really as all-encompassing and all-powerful as Enel liked to claim, then there was no way in hell he wouldn't notice those two idiots on his ship, not to mention Markus who had been there from the beginning.
Enies Lobby would be a pivotal moment and once Markus thought about the incident there, he grew a large smile. Enies Lobby would be the ultimate stage for him to reveal himself and the power he would soon have. And once he did that, he knew that not only would his bounty skyrocket, but other interesting things might happen as well. The most interesting thing though would be the encounter with Kuma on Sabaody Archipelago. Kuma sent every member of the Strawhat crew to a different island, an island that was perfect for them to grow stronger. He wanted to know which island Kuma would send him to.
There were also a bunch of other things he could do to change the future to his advantage, things like killing Absalom and taking his Suke Suke no Mi. Having the fruit that grants its user invisibility could come in extremely handy if he found someone trustworthy to give it to. That person could become the ultimate scout and assassin. He also had no issue with killing Gecko Moria and stealing his Kage Kage no Mi. As far as he could remember Moria was pretty much out of the main story of One Piece after he lost his Shichibukai status. And if he wasn't... so what? He also couldn't forget about Perona. Her devil fruit was impressive and he could potentially leave an impression on her and recruit her at a later date.
He continued to think about the changes he was making to his plans. If things went well, he would be as strong as a Yonko by the time they met back up again. During his little distraction, a lot had happened outside. Nami, Usopp, and Sanji had been up to a lot, including sabotaging Enel's ship. Though Enel fixed it pretty quickly. Now things were getting interesting once again. Luffy was confronting Enel for their final showdown above the clouds. A smile slowly curled Markus's lips. In just a few more minutes he would have the Goro Goro no Mi and the Arc Maxim. There was about the be a drastic change in the One Piece world. A whole new storm was going to shake up everything.
