24 Where It All Went Wrong

This is my worst chapter in the book. I struggled to come up with a conclusion that would actually make sense but I'm sure I failed. Gimme your suggestions on what I could have done right in the comment section. Like always, I have advanced chapters in my patréon at patréon.com/Saintbarbido

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I was coughing out blood as I lay weakly on the ground. Not even my green was active. How could you fight an enemy with the ability to negate your powers? My physical body couldn't keep up with the onslaught and after unsuccessfully fighting at my final dusk form, I had still not managed to put a scratch on him.

The slim menacing form, appeared in my vision, it's red-ringed eyes studying me with curiosity. A disgusted feeling rose from the depths of my soul at the stare. This thing wasn't human. Not even close. Back in my previous life, there had been speculations about the nature of the being that sat on the empty throne. The being who even the Gorosei took orders from. The being who many had believed to be a demon. All of them had been wrong, it wasn't a demon as much as it was a god. Im. The collective consciousness of the One piece world, corrupted by humanity's endless war for supremacy.

"You are an interesting human."

I heard a voice inside my head. It was hard to focus on any of my colors so blue wasn't active. My injuries were getting worse and not even my Bio-kinesis was going to do anything about the hole in my chest. I had been such a fool. Believing myself to be strong based on the war at the Marineford. My overconfidence had led to this.

After I had declared war on the world government, a naive move by the way, Shanks had shown up and stopped the war, though it was only because the Marines had lost the will to keep on fighting and Whitebeard's death as well as the many fallen pirates had given them enough face to pull back. I saw that in Sengoku's eyes the trade-off hadn't been enough but he swallowed the bitter pill.

I hadn't stuck around after that for I had a man to look for, Monkey D. Dragon. After searching for any of their bases I had finally come across a clue and after pursuing it, Dragon himself. We had talked and I had tried to convince him to join me for an attack I would be launching upon mariejois. He had called me a fool.

I hadn't understood it at the time but I had still been upset at that. Why couldn't he see that I was essentially giving him a way to win the war once and for all? But…looking back at it, I was never the type to jump into things. As I lay on the ground with a monster staring down at me, I figured out that something was wrong with me. My judgement had been too hasty. It wasn't my way to seek out trouble actively without a good reason and fighting against the world government without a proper plan was stupid, no matter how much power I had.

My plan had been easy. It would have ultimately succeeded with or without the Revolutionary army. At the end of the week, my yellow would recharge and using it on the black I could luckily draw a power I wanted and use it to end the threat of the celestial dragons once and for all. Getting to Mariejois had been a matter of just flapping my wings. Suspended up in the air without anyone the wiser, I had dropped out of the sky and crashed through a roof into the room of authority. I had half expected to see the Gorosei there but it was empty.

Within a minute, Pacifistas had poured into the room and surrounded me. Beams of laser energy had fired at me from all sides. I let down all my shields, leaving myself wide open with only the black active. A split second before the beams hit my body, I had activated yellow upon the black and chose reality manipulation.

My mind had expanded to cover everything on the planet. The world felt like clay that I could mold into whatever I wanted. I simultaneously knew everything and everyone, Kaido's brain felt so chaotic I had to pull back, Big mom's mind was like a sugar paradise filled with nothing but sadistic glee, Shanks felt like a warm sunset and Mihawke's was like a million sharp swords. Everyone's mind was like an open book. It made me start wondering if what I had drawed was actually reality manipulation.

I copied haki training from Rayleigh and found something else in his brain. Turns out that the One piece is a globe like artifact with the power to change anything about the sea the user wants. The last time it had been used was to fragment the world continents into islands. I copied the mechanics behind all the six powers and seimen kikan from the CP agents and many other race specific skills I wasn't sure I could do. I also noticed something inside my soul that was faintly sucking off its light. I traced it's energy and found tiny roots taking hold on my core. This had been what had been affecting my judgement.

I figured out that it was the last remnant of the attack from ROD when I had been fighting Enel. The black had gotten rid of most of the thing but it seemed that it had managed to survive. Fear had started to grip me as I rationalized about what would have happened if I hadn't activated black. I really needed to do something about Rod. Next time he attacked me with something like that, it would undoubtedly be my end.

I had used reality manipulation to will the thing inside me into non-existence. Right after doing that, my mind felt clearer. Even With all that power, I still couldn't make out any details on two places however. One was at the very end of the Grand line, which I guessed was Raftel and the other was down below me. I knew I was on a limited time scale, so I did what I had been planning with some changes. Now that my common sense wasn't corrupted, killing only the celestial dragons wouldn't have been the right move as I had initially thought.

Doing so, would only cause massive chaos and ruin the power balance. Including the pirates on that list would also be dumb as not all of them were evil. The same thing applied to the Marines and celestial dragons. Not everyone from all groups was bad. So I had decided to go about it differently. I willed the deaths of all full on evil and irredeemable people in the world.

As the temporary reality manipulation ended, I could feel the panic ensuing as Big mom, Kaido and other evil characters had started to disintegrate. My mind was pulled back and I had dropped on the floor, a little overwhelmed by the feedback. Fortunately, my shields had been surrounding me from the start, protecting me from the continued assault by the Pacifistas.

A quick chain lightning had gotten rid of the Pacifistas and I had been about to leave to do some deep thinking when infront of me, a shadowy figure instantly appeared. I had frowned in confusion.

"Im. How are you still here? It doesn't matter. Things have changed now. I have evened out the playing field and there's nothing you can do about it. This world needs a fresh start without the dictatorship hidden behind a veil of democracy that the world government presents."

I told him. I had of course remained vigilant because from what I knew, for someone to resist my reality manipulation, they either had to be good or at least not mass murdering evil or have more power than I. Dread started to fill me as he had walked on to stand in front of me and I had tried to move but found myself frozen in place.

Activating any of my powers had done nothing. I couldn't do anything else but blink my eyes. The force holding me in place was too strong for me to do anything in my base form. I activated final dusk and in the split second the force weakened, I had already shot forward in blitz avenger. Aiming to decapitate him and fry his corpse with 200 million volts of lightning.

The Katana had dissolved on contact with his neck. The lightning attack had done nothing to him. Not to mention him, even the floor he was standing on, at 5 meters around him there was no soot or marks or anything. I had thrown a punch, used shockwaves, kicks, death by a million and still nothing had hurt him.

He gripped my neck once he had grown tired and stabbed me on the chest with his hand. Having channeled the black before hand, the injury was absorbed and Im was swallowed by black leaches that left acid marks on the floor but did nothing to him. I had tried to fly away but the force that had been holding me before came back with a vengeance. The leaches dissolved into nothing and he cocked his head to stare at me again.

He touched my forehead with his forefinger and I instantly dropped out of final dusk. All of my powers were now completely supressed. I couldn't even do anything as he speared my chest with his hand again. I coughed out blood as unimaginable pain assaulted me. The force holding me up stopped and I had fallen down on the ground.

That was where I was now. I knew death was emminent for me. I mean, what could I do? I had no strength left and I had a hole through my fucking chest. It was a miracle I was even still alive.

"You know me. Or at least of me. I felt you come in uninvited from the void but adopted a wait and see attitude. Do you know what you have done? You have ruined plans that have been in motion for the last 400 years. But, I am not mad. My full awakening needed something powerful enough to be sacrificed as the core of my new body. I couldn't get the one piece due to Joyboy that insufferable fool, but…I sense something just as powerful inside you. The good thing about all this, is that you brought yourself to me. I couldn't leave this place. Holy Land of Mariejois it might be called but it's just a prison!"

For some reason I was still coherent enough to listen to him speak.

"Years ago, this world was a true paradise. Located in the middle of the nine realms. The world was inhabited by god alone, it was his resting place after creating such a wonderful thing, life. As god was asleep, humans the greediest of all creatures journeyed from their realm and managed to reach god's realm. This prompted some of the other races to do the same, thus upsetting the delicate balance god had put in place. Life died on the abandoned realms as all races flooded god's realm. A war for supremacy began and god's consciousness was sad and angry at his creation desecrating his own home so he formed a sliver of consciousness to try and stop his children from fighting. I am that sliver of consciousness."

"Unfortunately, all those races, banded together under one banner to oppose me, led by a man called Joyboy. However, they knew they couldn't hope to match my strength so they created 3 weapons with the power to barely match mine and 1 super artefact to change the outcome should they fail. They failed. Joyboy resorted to using the One piece, an artefact made from the essence of 8 realms to hurt God's realm. The red line is a bruise that has never healed because of that war. I sustained injuries that put my main body in indefinite hibernation and can only interact with the world on a limited scale. So I decided to lord over the few that remained from the war and erased any mentions of the war including information that might harm my interests. I have been stuck in Mariejois for so long but now no more. With you, I will start a new era. A real one. You might be wondering why I'm telling you any of this. The answer to that would be, dead men tell no tales."