Chapter 6

As always, if you could point out grammar or sentencing mistakes, it really helps. I don't have a beta and am very lazy.

*An undiscovered island at the Calm Belt, almost 8 years before canon*

With my eyes closed, I felt the thousands of roots spread across the island beneath me.

Connected to every tree or other form of floral life, the vast network of tunnels slowly let my feel throughout the entire island.

Feeling the blood seeping into the surface running roots as a large panthertail ate an unfortunate threerilla. Smelling the sex of eighteen gorillas apparently in an orgy. And seeing as a deathtoad took a crap by shitting out literally almost its entire digestive track... It's not always a great ability.

But ignoring that, I focused on the panthertail, creeping by, slowly coming ever close to my resting spot.

That being my name for the way too long and flat faced panther analogues. Because of their prehensile tails.

This one didn't seem very old, still had some room left to grow, she was healthy and somewhat hungry, my tree senses told me.

As she passed beneath the branch I was resting on, I sank into it, falling on the other side, turning mid air as I fell, I landed on the feline's back, arms around her neck.

She trashed for about a second, during said time I twisted myself out of her back, swinging the panther through the air as I did, stopping with my foot on the ground and the twisting neck of the feline breaking upon my shoulder.

With this hunt dealt with, I got up, and carried the corpse of the panther on one shoulder while making my way back "home".

I had already explored most of the island during my walks to the fights with Bob, already had a layout way before that through my roots, but I finished physically exploring the island, nothing interesting here besides the poneglyph.

Had finished working on the armor, with the fungi armor having the best defense/mobility/comfort ratio so far, it being constantly on. Also worked on various other, less used experiments as well.

Now, for example, I was once again working on something I had promised myself and whatever god is out there that I would never do it again. Zombiefying.

All my attempts of creating a sentient plant have failed so far, most ending up just as an greenish amorphous goo, a few actually having a general shape and sentience, they proved that it was possible, but they ended up the worst off, berserkers, being living in constant pain, whatever that twisting thing was.

So, I turned to zombiefying, that was proven possible in my first try. Traumatizing, but possible. If I can't create a stable thinking plant, I'll use this body's template to create a sentient plant from.

As I was thinking on this, a small -for the island- toad jumped in the path in front of me.

The silence stretched for a tense moment, I fell into a ready stance as my opponent "Groah"ed at me.

Though I've explored the whole island, fighting and eating one of each specimen of fauna of it, there was one thing I haven't been able to beat yet, my true arch-nemesis, the deathtoad.

It wasn't that I didn't try to prepare for it. I created toxic and poisonous plants of slightly growing intensity, taking them in increasing doses since my first encounter with the toad. Even made so the branches in my coat would have antivenom properties before facing it.

A bit after my first armorless victory against Bob, I had tried to face these demons a second time, after one and a half year of poison training with especially made plants and with a antivenom measure ready at my cloak.

*One year before, three days after the end of last chapter*

I stood in front of a toad, staring intensely into its cruel eyes.

"Groah"

"It shall not be like last time, beast. Today, I shall surpass you!" With that yell, I once again booped the face of death.

There was a silence for half a second, then a poof and the surrounding were once again covered in a green cloud.

As I once again felt my bowels giving up on me and my face hitting the ground, I cursed the fact that the poison immunity was just enough to avoid me passing out.

*Back to the present*

The antivenom measures on my coat were less than useless, as the coat itself died out in contact with the cloud.

After two hours awake but unable to move while seizuring in the ground on my on excrement, I decided to let the toads be... For now, I shall eventually surpass them!... Someday.

The strange wish to beat these toads is the only reason I left them alive really, as I could just order my roots to kill anything with less than one foot of height on the island and it would be a toad genocide.

Focusing on the tiny threat to my life, I looked at, it looked at me. I breathed in preparation for our epic battle, it groah(ed) in response.

With all the strength of my legs, I pushed myself and the two me long feline corpse off the ground, somersaulting in the air, falling on the other side of the frog, and running as fast as I could in my beachhead's direction. Screw that.

Huff, life threatening situation dealt with, I continued on, seeing the green walls that delimited my coast after a few more minutes of walking.

Being met half way by a lanky being made of vines in a humanoid form, with a face with no trace of mouth or eyes, simply being vines walking. This being one of my attempts at a company keeping talking plant, it ended up just a humanoid, not sentient, collection of vines.

Still, it was useful, with a simple thought, it took the corpse from, knowing where I wanted to keep it till the experiment, it stumbled of with the large corpse held by vines at its back.

Free of the almost a ton of flesh and bone corpse, I return continue walking back to my cubes.

Approaching it, I see me sparring with five young threerillas in front of my trifecta of cubes.

Dodging under and seeing me dodge under the blow of the first threerilla, then sliding to the ground to go again under the blow a second threerilla, getting up with a handstand kick to the chin of a third one that hoped to catch me while I'm down.

Yeah, that was also a thing. Though I haven't been able to create a sentient life, I discovered how to make clones of myself, it looked just like me, even if it was made of vines, wood and fungus. It kinda helped and kinda didn't for my lack of talking companionship problem.

On one side, I fortunately can hear a voice not coming from me, on the other side, I have to manually control my clones, meaning I'm both currently here walking to my showers while also being there, diverting a punch from a teenage monster gorilla the side and using the force from it to turn my wooden made clone body and give a back hand to a second incoming gorilla.

It also meant that I had to hold both sides of the conversation if I wanted to talk to it... I'm not proud of admitting it, but I did it. With a worryingly constant frequency.

As I controlled both bodies at the same time, I currently could only keep one clone really up and running, if I tried three, I could still work, but I tended to end up doing whatever I'm doing in one body with all three.

Bob was a liiitle pissed that time we were chilling and I suddenly kicked his nuts because one of my then two clones were fighting a panthertail on the other side of the island.

If I used four I would just straight up pass out from sensory overload, getting better though. Fighting with my clone body did help out being used to having two points of view, all while hearing/seeing the whole island through the plants.

No idea where the gorillas came from though. After my first party I woke half way into one my giant tree top most branches with Bob missing. He showed up three days later at the walls of my beachhead with a troop of gorillas, even though I was certain he didn't have one.

I tried questioning him, with not good results so far. I do know how he got the troop though, as since then he left the troop of gorillas at my garden while I sensed him leaving and fighting other threerillas from around the island.

No idea why that started, but I'm calling him Bob Wukong now, the Monkey King.

It also had the side effect of my garden hosting half of the threerillas' groups of the island, I made some more fruit bearing trees, to keep them satisfied and away from both the birds and themselves. Even if they all followed Bob after he went around gathering gorillas, most threerillas from different troops tended to fight amongst each other, many times to death.

From the angry toucans, I'm actually protecting the gorillas, not the birds. Those things work together well and are damn vicious, seeing a gorilla torn apart as if it had just jumped into a piranha full river was an... unforgettable experience.

Healthy repressing the unwanted image, I walked through the door of my cube, the pleasant smelling flowers already helping me relax. (Totally because of the good smell, not like I made them narcotic and somewhat hallucinogenic...)

One shower later I stood in the front door of my home cube. Looking at the expansive grasslands before me, the odd fruit bearing trees spread around, most surrounded by small groups of threerillas, the large lake between my home and the sea, a couple thre-

I stopped, sensing death so close to home, from the almost one hundred meters between me and the lake I could see almost as if just besides it, there was a damn toad in my lake.

With a thought, a trunk exploded into existence by the lake's borders, throwing a small sphere from the top of it in its rise, a second later the airborne sphere was covered in a cloud of death. All thankfully too high to have any effect in my garden.

Fucking toads, no idea how it got here, my wall has standing orders to kill any toad that comes close to it.

I turn to the sea upon hearing a large splash sound, watching as the turtle head the size of ten threerillas poked out from the water.

It stared at the multiple gorillas and me that were spread around the coastline before turning and munching on a large root of my main tree that I made come out from the ground by its head into the sea.

That was another thing that showed up recently, no idea what to call it, but for the last two months or so this turtle showed up to eat my roots. I first sensed it when it actually came up the shore, entering the island and eating two trees whole.

I managed to push it back by lifting it through multiple roots and hurling the giant back to the sea. Still sensed it eating one the roots poking out from the underground beneath the sea just after it though. Bored at the time and knowing the turtle wasn't a real threat, I tried making some nutritional moss to help along the turtle, because why not?

Probably because if I fed it, it would keep returning, as it had been since then. Thankfully, it never entered the island again, just staring expectantly at the giant tree until I give up and make more of its favorite moss.

Now, with my garden once more secure from the toads and my guest turtle fed I-

Holy shit, those are ships.

In the distance behind the titanic turtle head, so far I could barely see them, a formation of ships looked tiny in the distance.

"Those are... Ships... Ships, that means people... People... Company!"

With a scream of excitement, I made the gigantic tree shine, all of the leaves, each the size of a entire bush, bursting into a bright light show that temporarily blinded and scared most of the animals around. From large three armed gorillas to city sized sea turtles.

The tree itself was now about as large as the whole island, dwarfing everything around it, its canopy encompassed the whole island and the surrounding coastline, its roots visible through most of the ground level and I could feel it encompass all of the close surface underground.

Regardless of the second sun shining in the island, the small fleet continued going further into the horizon, I briefly made the tree branches spell out S.O.S, blinking in a shining light so bright they could easily be seen and attract attention despite being day time and the fleet being kilometers away. It was still ignored.

Not willing to let my first sight of civilization just escape like that, I rush towards the beach, ordering one of the largest tree roots to disconnect, go over the sea, and start to grow, as I ran, making a large and quickly expanding bridge towards the fleet.

A brief voice screamed at the back of my head that this whole thing was a terrible idea. Me briefly being able to coat my hand in purplish black to hit Bob harder, without using any plant, made pretty obvious where I was, and running towards a unknown fleet would always be a bad choice in One Piece. They're talking people though, who don't pick flies of eachother furs and throw shit, there was not a doubt I was going there.

I rush towards the coast line, passing by Bob sleeping under one of the fruit bearing trees, surrounded by a few threerillas.

Stopping by my oldest friend, I scream out a "How do I look?" while running in place from impatience, the ships getting a bit further away every second that I looked.

The lazy bastard slowly looks up at me, a female threerilla currently grooming his fur, picking at it and eating out... Something from it, my plant senses could probably tell me, but I probably don't want to really know.

It dead stared at me, my long brown hair looking more green from so many leaves and grass spread around it, my thick beard by now reaching my chest, in the same situation as my hair, only held be a three wood circlets.

He looked deeply at hobo looking me before doing something that I'm still not sure if he understood the meaning of or just understood that I would leave him alone if he did, pointing two thumbs up at me.

Screaming out a thanks, I continued running, quickly reaching the coast line, continuing to run over the sea through the floating root.

A large eel/snake thing tried coming up to take a bite of the root, thankfully I was able to feel its movements through the root sonar like senses, a spike meeting it mid way, piercing through its open mouth and into its brain. The corpse distracting any other gigantic see predator from my root bridge.

The small pause to make the Sea King killing spike gave me time to actually look at the ships I was pursuing in the middle of a monster infected sea.

And they removed whatever little doubt I had about where I was, as the vaguely familiar symbol of the World Government stared at me in every sail as the large Marine warships paddled along in the currentless, windless sea.

Hmm, for a single second I considered not engaging, my memories about the One Piece governmental authorities didn't say good things about them, it was forgotten in the next second though, shitty people or not, they are still people. And I need to hold a conversation with some that it's not myself in a wooden body.

I quickly ate a nutrient powered fruit grown from a branch that exploded from the root bridge, better to be ready for a fight at least. Finished with my energy pack fruit, I continued running.

"Ooooooi! Heeeeeey" I kept yelling out, waving my arms as I got closer to the fleet.

*Celestial Dragon Expeditionary Fleet*

Vice-Admiral Comil sighed for what had to be the thousandth time in this week alone. In the Greater Dragon, the preferred ship of Saint Tallir, the Vice-Admiral had to bear witness to countless actions that went against his moral code and made him question his decision to join the marines.

Having recently been promoted to his position, the third highest anyone could reach in the Marines, just beneath the Fleet Admiral and three Admirals, Comil had believed that he could now start making some large scale changes, truly help not just a couple of people, but the entire seas.

Instead, he just spent five months traveling around West Blue gathering... slaves.

The thought made him clench his fist hard enough to break the Adam Wood railing of the ship, his hands unconsciously covered in Haki.

More than a hundred times he had to repress the urge of caving in the head of the so called Saint, actually protecting the scum as he captured prisioners, pirates or just civilians out of the streets.

Comil wasn't a soft person, he had no problem killing pirates or even torturing criminals if they had truly important information. But never with innocent civilians, and no torture he was ever a part of reached a tenth of the cruelty the World Noble did for fun, regardless how many lives were depending on the information.

"Aah, not what you expected?"

The cold voice from behind him had Comil turning around to see the sour, serious face of his fellow Vice-Admiral, Onigumo.

Knowing he couldn't go into detail about how much he despised the World Noble inside his own ship, he answered with a simple and clearly frustrated.

"Yes."

Vice-Admiral or no, he doubted that the CP-0 agents around would let it pass if he said what he actually thought of his assignment.

"Hnf, it never is." He disliked the more experienced Vice-Admiral, always thought Onigumo was too cold to be on the side of justice. But they shared the companionship of having the same disappointing bosses.

Looking to the sea to try and take his mind of the innocent and not so much victims held in the cargo area of the ship, future slaves that he would in any other situation free, but now helped lock up. He diverted his eyes as a second sun suddenly showed up where a gigantic tree was in the horizon.

"What the hell..." Comil sounded out while covering his eyes.

"Let's just be thankful the Dragon is in his chambers, otherwise we would probably have to investigate what that was because he got curious" Onigumo told him, not taking his eyes off the blinding light.

Comil was thankful, strange weather events weren't unusual at the Calm Belt or the Grandline, but they were still almost always dangerous. He would rather sail away from it than to it.

As the light died down, Comil was finally able to look again. The first thing he noted was a large snake snaking its way towards the ship. Believing it to be another of the area's countless Sea Kings, Comil got ready to defend the ship, till he saw the small form running over it.

"Is that a person?" He asked incredulously to his fellow Vice-Admiral. Said person seemed to be waving his arms and yelling something that the distance and the sound of the sea covered up.

Unfortunately, because of the blinding light and his focus on what he believed to be an incoming snake Sea King, Comil didn't notice as a even greater threat approached from behind him.

"Oh-hohohoho, I do believe it's a person, how interesting." Comil tensed up, forcing down the reflex and wanting of turning around and caving in the face of the voice's origin.

Behind him and Onigumo, Saint Tallir, a Celestial Dragon, scurried between them. Forcing the two to take steps to the side lest he stumble into them and accuse them of attacking his Holiness.

"Oh-hohohoho, how interesting, how interesting." The fat, bubble helmeted noble sounded on. "To think we would find such specimen at the end of my hunt. How fortuitous."

Comil tensed even more, he knew the vermin enough to know what would come after this. A quick look to his fellow Vice-Admiral showed Onigumo kept the same serious face as ever, Comil knew him enough to recognize the tenseness around his eyes.

Onigumo might be ruthless, but he's still a marine, there's no justice in slavery of the innocent, and this guy is probably not a pirate. Not one that Comil knows at least.

"Well, what are you two waiting for? Grab me my new toy, go, chop, chop." The noble said, waving dismissively at them as he stared at the person running along the still growing... whatever that thing underwater may be.

With the thousandth and first sigh of this assignment, Comil got ready to do one more thing that he would carry the shame of for the rest of his life.

I know I said the MC would set sail this chapter. But I haven't decided yet between a floating island or a walking island for the MC's ship, so I decided to go with the first meeting before setting sail.

Next chapter, the first fight/interaction and meeting the first crewmembers.