Moon's Birka, Living Machinery and Plight

_________ POV Narration_________

Enel in lightning form travelled through the vacuum of space with ease.

He burnt the space around him and propelled himself with extreme heat at speeds many could only dream of.

Without the air providing resistance, he was able to reach greater speeds without even turning into electromagnetic waves.

But after breaking through the atmosphere of the planet, he didn't travel as a lightning bolt for long.

He did want to reach the moon as fast as possible, so he turned into electromagnetic waves regardless.

The speed of light was still hard to control, but a lot easier than before. Enel was sure that he had full control over it in his awakened form, but he didn't really feel like using it for travel of all things.

'I'll still have to practice with it, see what else I can do thanks to that boost in power... But I don't want to get a headache after travelling to the moon...'

In the first place, Enel didn't even know if he was going to have trouble breathing there or not.

On one hand, there used to be an entire civilization there.

On the other hand, that civilization had been gone for quite a while. The city he was going to find there was bound to be ancient.

Enel also didn't remember how his journey to the moon was originally supposed to go within the One Piece story, as it hadn't been all that explored.

But he did remember that the Original Enel was said to have reached the moon.

The moon itself was also gargantuan. It was big, at least a quarter of the size of the planet it was orbiting.

Enel was still able to explore it rather quickly, still in elemental form. He did pass through a thin layer of resistance, which signified that the planet also had an atmosphere of its own.

The Gravity there was not quite as strong as the one of the world it was orbiting, but that much was to be expected.

And when his feet touched the ground, he noticed that he could indeed breathe. At least to some extent.

The oxygen in the air was significantly lower, he could feel it being faint, but it was still there.

'I guess the civilization that lived here was adapted to the low oxygen levels... It's a bit annoying for me, but I should be able to bear with it.'

Enel then walked around the moon for a bit, before he reached a large mountain, a crack in the mountain formed a cave, and inside that cave, Enel felt the city of the Moon.

There were actually more settlements built on the moon, but only one seemed to be intact, and it was by far the biggest.

Enel walked into that cave with confidence, unafraid of anything that lay beyond.

And he immediately saw it, a beautiful city carved out of the inside of the mountain, structures reminiscent of the City of Gold.

The old ancestors of the Skypeans and Shandians, the Moon People, had built their homes there, now the city lay empty, but still lived in, and it was to be explored by one of their descendants.

It was a fascinating thought to Enel, who was still an archaeologist at heart.

But there was also a slither of worry in his mind.

'Birka is the name of this city on the moon... The same name of the city that Enel grew up in and subsequently destroyed...'

Was there going to be some sort of connection between the two islands that he was now not going to be able to make because the Birka on earth was no more?

It was unlikely to be the case, the Ancient Moon People were far removed from the Sky People already. But as a true overthinker, Enel couldn't help but consider the possibility.

Searching his mind, he could only see a few images of Birka from the Original Enel's memories.

The former God of Skypea had likely repressed them for some reason or another, and now they were more or less just fragments.

'I'll have to think about that at some other time... The Original Enel's memories have always been a bit foggy, although they did still affect my personality plenty...

At the very least I also got his mastery of his devil fruit and observation, as well as his skills in engineering.

But he had acquired those after Birka had already collapsed, that was seemingly one of the first things he did after gaining his Devil Fruit.'

Enel ended up just shaking his head and stepping into the 'dead' city.

As soon as he did so, hundreds of small beings popped out, running out of their homes and circling him with a strange mechanical sense of curiosity.

Enel was able to tell they were there the entire time. Robots, all of them.

They were animal-like creatures, similar in appearance to each other, all with the same face and moustache. They also all had small white wings on their backs.

Size-wise, they only really reached up to Enel's knee. The Emperor could feel the cogs turning into their bodies, ancient bolts and whistles jumpstarting as soon as he stepped foot into the city.

But strangely enough, they still had curiosity and thoughts, despite the fact that they had no souls. Enel could still feel emotions such as curiosity and hostility radiate off of them.

'The moon really is colourless...'

Enel shook his head as he did his best to feel the aura of another living being on that barren land, but in the end, he only gave up and shook his head once more.

It was still void of life. No matter how alive they looked and felt, the robots in front of him were just that, robots.

And they seem to have been programmed with specific orders... To protect the city from intruders.

Almost as if on cue, Enel had small spears pointed towards him from all directions, as he stood in the middle of a large cloud of animal-like robots.

"Outsider! State your business within the Grand Metropolis of Birka!"

One of the only robots dressed differently spoke up. The mechanical being was dressed in what looked to be a Lieutenant's uniform within the military of a somewhat modern country.

It was jarring for Enel to see, but he didn't comment on it, instead, he simply decided to speak up.

"I am a descendant of the Moon People, I have come here to visit the remains of my ancestors and reconnect with my grand heritage." Enel decided to just go with that story.

It wasn't fully a lie either. His passion for history drove him to want to know more about his ancestors.

Although, the possibility of the Moon People being a piece of the puzzle that was the Void Century still acted as the main reason for Enel's visit.

"Descendant? Moon People?! Speak clearly, outsider!" The Robot Lieutenant was seemingly quite displeased with Enel's response.

The Emperor wasn't offended however, he merely crossed his arms and sighed.

"Yes, a lot of time has passed. The people that used to reside in the city you are protecting are long gone.

We used to call the residents of this place 'Moon People', since we call this planet the 'Moon'.

I am one of their descendants from the other world, born of their blood, and came to visit the city they had built here."

His longer explanations seemed to do the trick, as many of the robots around him lowered their weapons in confusion.

The sergeant himself also looked a bit confused, his moustache trembled a bit as he then turned to look at the ground.

"H-has it truly been that long?..." The sergeant's voice sounded truly discouraged, but could it really be blamed?

It seemed that all of the robots were turned off before Enel arrived in their city. Enel had been able to feel a few mechanisms moving, but they were minimal, only to keep the place clean.

They felt like glorified Roombas that ran sparingly.

Most of the other robots were likely turned off to preserve power inside the city.

Enel could feel some sort of strange battery somewhere within the city, which was powering up all of the robots, filling them with electricity every time they touched the ground with their feet.

It was a strange mechanism, but Enel, as a mechanic and inventor, could appreciate it.

But it also meant that most of them were unaware of the passage of time. They likely had no real way to track it either.

"A very long time. The ones that created you have long since passed... But there is no need to be saddened by this, such is the nature of human life."

Enel looked down at Lieutenant Bot with an understanding gaze as he spoke to it in a kind tone.

Even if the thing in front of him was soulless, he still saw no reason to be unkind to it, especially because it somehow still had feelings.

"T-thank you, kind descendant, for looking at us with sympathy... We Automata are not worthy of it..." The Lieutenant teared up slightly, further surprising the Emperor.

'To think I'd see robots even more advanced than the ones Vegapunk has built thus far...

Well, they're at least advanced in intelligence, firepower is a bit lacking. But these are remnants from a much older civilization.'

It only rose questions of why exactly there were no traces of such technology on Skypea... The Dials were certainly impressive on their own, but it was nothing like what he was witnessing now.

"Why do you deem yourselves unworthy? Is it because you were left behind?" Enel crouched down slightly to speak to the Lieutenant on an even level.

"Left behind, forgotten, forsaken... We know not why our masters decided to leave us here. We were only given a mission, and we are unable to disobey..."

Enel's eyebrows arched slightly as he heard the Automata's words, the others around him also seem to gain a gloomy expression when hearing their Lieutenant's speech.

It made him feel that the situation was indeed incredibly cruel...

Were the moon people truly so callous? To create a fully sentient automaton race and leave it behind in their barren wasteland of a former home while they went on to explore a new world?

Apparently, they were.

"But you were not forgotten... Not by me, not by those like me that seek to find their history in ancient roots.

Your creators may have forgotten you, but people like me won't."

Enel's words seemed to soothe the robots. They seemed almost infantile in their thought process, naive, to trust the words of a strange so quickly, but at the same time, they were not allowed the time to develop.

They were instead forcefully put to sleep, only awakened to fight some unknown threat.

Now, Enel was someone they didn't expect to run into. A man carrying the blood and ancestry of the True Birkans, the people of the Moon.

So, a slither of hope appeared in all of their eyes, at around the same time.

"Thank you Grand Descendant... Say, would you be able to take us with you? To command us to follow you?

Even if our power cores are tied to this place, I am sure all of my brethren would love to follow you and see the other world with their own eyes before shutting down completely..."

'It's certainly a much better fate than wasting away, protecting a city that was nothing more than a relic of the past.'

The last part was left unsaid, but it was clearly conveyed by the hope in the eyes of the Automata.

Enel was taken aback by the request. The last thing he expected when going to the moon was allying himself with a race of sentient tin cans.

But their story and plight did resonate with him. He could feel their sorrow, their desperation... Their hope.

Did he truly have it in him to refuse their request?

Not really. In fact, since was helping them anyway, why not go all the way?

"Instead of following me and dying... Why not follow me and live alongside me and the other descendants of the Moon People?"

Enel slowly stood back up to his full height, the gazes of the Automata followed him with hope and curiosity as he looked over the city.

"I will help build a new core for you all on my ship, while I do that, I want you all to bring me every piece of writing there is in this city, and point me to any monument of historical importance."

In the end, he chose to just have them as his guides in that large ancient city.

He would focus on helping them build an energy source to sustain them anywhere. It was going to be a rather trivial task for someone like Enel.

He did also have the best fruit to charge such an energy source as well, so all he needed to do was copy what he could and apply his previous knowledge to build something new.

The Automata were obviously excited at the prospect.

The very first thing the Lieutenant did was request a strand of hair from Enel, before running off and putting it in some sort of machine.

It looked similar to a cash register or ATM. A computer most likely, a primitive version of one anyway.

A positive ding sound was heard, and a green light emerged from the screen.

Later on, Enel did learn that it was a machine made to test DNA, and he was confirmed as a true descendant of the people in Birka.

Thanks to that, his orders could now overwrite those of the Moon People.

So they all quickly got to work.

Enel's work was a lot easier than expected, as the robots also decided to help him with building the schematics for their own power source.

It seemed that they had inherent knowledge of that which powered them, and all Enel really needed to do was follow their schematics while creating a ship to sustain them.

He would also have to create a site similar to Ancient Birka within the Sky Archipelago, but that wasn't going to be all that hard either.

Overall, the entire process took one day.

And Enel had a lot of monuments to visit within the Ancient city of Birka, he decided to leave the texts to study on the way back home.

Most of the writings were in the world's common language, but some were also in a different, unknown language. It was a bit confusing, but the Archeologist noted down all that he could.

The task of gathering metals was a bit more tricky. The moon was mostly barren.

But thankfully, by dismantling the cogs and motors that allowed the former power source to work, the Automata scrounged up enough metal for Enel to build a huge boat.

It was around that time that they ran into the Space Pirates... A group of 'Moon Scavangers' that Enel had somewhat forgotten existed.

They were mostly fodder though, they tried stealing the materials, only to get turned into charcoal by the Emperor for even attempting it.

After he disposed of the trash, he got to building the most practical boat he could.

'The Ark Maxim Mk2'

Enel decided to name it after the ship that was originally supposed to sail to the Moon. The design was also very similar to it, but it was mostly made out of metal.

It was also not as large in height, and it also didn't have Enel's face moulded onto the deck. Instead, the Emperor made it simpler.

Not as beautiful maybe, but it was certainly going to do its job.

When the Automata stepped into that boat for the first time, they seemed unsteady, as if getting used to a new environment.

And when they started sailing, they all couldn't help but look back towards the cave that was their former home.

Enel, by that point, already saw the little robots as humans, so he didn't even blink when he felt melancholy rolling off of them.

But even so, melancholy was only a small part of what they were feeling.

"W-we're really doing it..." "Finally, onto the footsteps of our masters!"

Various Automata voiced out their excitement for the journey ahead.

"Onwards to the other world!" The Lieutenant also smiled childishly, waving his small hands around as the boat left the Moon's weak atmosphere.

Enel only smiled at their antics, before shaking his head and heading for his throne, where he supplied the ship with power endlessly.

He sat down and immediately got to reading.

'Now then... I wonder what the Moon People were up to...'

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