The McPuffin Part 8

The McPuffin Part 8

\____-o(X)o-_____/​

There's a lot to be said about playing as a kid again. To just run around and laugh. Also, to play big the big kid on the hill when you're actually the shortest. But now I was just running to run. I'd done all my chores, I'd gotten my training done, and I'd already read all of my books on the ship and Ami was taking a test so I couldn't hang out with her.

Gin-Mireniamu had a light Marine presence and we often came here for supplies.

And it was honestly beautiful.

Sweeping mountains, beautiful pine forests, a couple massive geysers that bordered on Grand Line scale silliness when it came to geography.

"Tchehehehahahaha~!"

Laughing all the way, I ran up the path of the mountain. I wasn't yet at the point that I could run for hours and hours on end, but that didn't matter. It was something to do while Ami took the test. She was barely over nine and she was taking a test to see if she'd get into the local equivalent to high school.

Because hot damn.

Thankfully, Ami's mom didn't seem to be giving her too much trouble for hanging out with me. At very least, Ami had come to greet me the last time the Patch had docked. She'd had a new book hugged to her chest that had just come in a week ago to the library on the development of Log Poses and she'd, rather correctly I might add, guessed that I'd be interested.

I launched up and grabbed a hold of one of the lower branches swinging off of it and simply parkouring off of the trees because I could. I felt far more like a ninja or an 'Assassin' than the pirate I was supposed to be.

"Hey!"

*Wham!*

With all the elegance and grace of a particularly drunk swan I face planted into a tree branch, tumbling through the air and landing flat on my ass.

I stared up at the tree branches above me and the dappled sunlight peeking through, "… ow."

"Oh crap!" the high, feminine voice rushed over with the sort of echoey sound of footsteps. A somewhat blurry face with two spots of green for eyes and brown hair appeared in my vision, "Are you okay?"

"Ow." I reiterated eloquently, raising a hand to pinch my nose with a cringe, "I think I broke my nose…" I gave it a little wiggle, the pain drawing tears from my eyes but proving that it wasn't broken, "No… just hurts like hell…"

"What the heck were you doing?!"

Her face was coming into view, a young girl-… okay, this is getting weird. I gave my hand a small wave in front of my face as I slowly pushed myself up to avoid knocking our heads together, "Playing until you made me miss…"

"I made you miss?!" the young girl demanded indignantly from behind where I sat.

"Yes. Yes you did." I let out a little grunt as I rubbed my nose with my fingers, I think it was… yep, it was bleeding.

"No way! I was just trying to get your attention!"

"With really bad timing," I pointed out.

"Idiot!" a hand slapped atop the back of my head and I frowned, "You shouldn't have been jumping between trees in the first place!"

"Hey!" I turned, my vision finally clearing. I scowled, looking up at the girl who had to be… heck, twelve? With brown hair in a ponytail. Yeah, this is getting weird now. She had her hands on her hips, a rather dirty outfit of just a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. And a pair of rose earings…? Yeah, little jewels in the shapes of roses… I remembered those.

She huffed, "What were you thinking?"

"That it'd be fun?" I said simply, looking up at her in confusion, rubbing my still stinging forehead with a hand.

The girl shook her head, "You're crazy."

"Good guess, but my name's Jacob, not crazy," I gave a cheesy grin for a moment before rolling my eyes and extending a hand up towards her, "What's yours?"

And if I had a guess… "Makoto." She said, grabbing my hand and hauling me up to my feet, "Makoto Kino. And I'm still going to call you crazy."

'Okay, I know I'm a runt for being just under seven years old, but if she's the same age as Ami how the fuck do I just come up to her armpit?!'

"Then I'll call you rosebud or something." I fired back with a raised eyebrow.

That one threw her for just a second, and Makoto blinked before frowning, wagging a finger in my face, "Don't you dare!"

I blinked.

'… okay, now I have to.'

My face split into a wide grin and I said slowly, "Rooooseeeebud."

"Oh you are so going in a trash can!"

"Tchehehahahah! Gotta catch me first!"

As I dodged away from her initial tackle, laughing as I ran through the forest, I couldn't help but be somewhere between concerned and curious. One I could write off as a coincidence in the strangeness of the One Piece universe, but two of the sailor scouts…? What was going on?

-oOo-​

"Fascinating…" I murmured, vibrating a metal fingernail to create a tiny vacuum scalpel and cutting open a line in the side of the hippo's head.

"What should I write?"

I was more than elbow deep into the hippo's head, my sleeves rolled all the way up as Jaime wrote behind me. He'd actually offered, and his calligraphy was actually amazing, far, far better than my own chicken scratch.

"Saliva glands are interspersed with what appears to be venom sacs, however…" I poked each of the sacs in turn, double checking what they released, "… these sacs generate mezkal to mix with the saliva… ratio appears to be one to one per saliva glands…" another incision, careful and deliberate, "Tonsils are hard and nearly metallic… uvula is hard and rough…"

Jaime looked up from my notebook, pencil in hand, "Yuu… vyu… lah?"

"U. V. U. L. A. It's the dangly thing at the back of your throat," my eyes narrowed as I looked at the thickness of the lining of the mouth, trying to discern the reason of the alcohol in its mouth, "… mmm… the lining of the mouth is thick…"

"One moment," operating on a hunch, I took a swipe of its saliva mixture and held out my hand, turning it into metal, "Testing."

There was a small clink as I snapped my fingers and oh boy my hand is on fire.

"Eeeee-?!" quick as lightning, I dunked my hand into the water and ho boy that didn't work! Still on fire! Still on fire!

… though it was just really uncomfortable rather than outright painful… huh…

I turned the entirety of my arm into metal just to be sure as my heart slowed down some from the near panic. Carefully, I raised the burning hand out of the water to look at it… it felt like putting your hand on hot asphalt… except all over. So… it hurt but… carefully I flexed my hand… and it moved easily. The flames began to gutter slowly… it was more like a grease fire than anything else… but I thought my weakness was heat.. ugh, I have got to test this better when we're not out in the field…

"Are… are you okay mi amigo…?"

"Yeah…" I stabbed my hand into the dirt, muffling the flames and finally feeling them subside before rinsing it off in the water, "Devil Fruit are awesome it seems…"

"What happened…?"

"I think I figured out what it's all for. This guy breathed fire. Or had a flaming mouth it seems, one of the two."

"Madre de dios…"

"Like I said! Fascinating! I'd bet its teeth are scorched black because of the flames… though why is it an omnivore…? Or is it an omnivore and I'm just misinterpreting the teeth… hmm… I'm going to need to cut open its stomach to figure out what this guy's been eating…"

"Ahh ahh ahh ahh ahh."

Jaime and I both glanced over at the suddenly far too close sound, the Hispanic man bristling and reaching for his rapier.

"What are you doing here?"

Now that is a hyena. I mean, them bitches be riding them bitches.

"At the moment? Discecting a hippo," I said with a little grin, standing and shaking the water off my hands. There were five of them, all with exaggeratedly long necks, nearly a foot long and covered in rings… reminded me of something from my past life… all women, all wearing some sort either leapord or cheetah hide bikinis, all riding hyenas that were the size of a moderate horse, and all of them carrying spears.

The woman in the lead, with several gold bands on her arms and a sash around her chest pointed her spear towards us, "And what are you doing in our lands?"

And by all of them, I meant all of the women as well as all of the hyenas.

Because, y'know, Grand Line.

"Looking for the McPuffins for our captain and to learn about the area for personal curiosity on my own part."

Mind you, the hyenas looked a little silly, even though their spears were more like kunai that they held sideways in their mouths, they looked a little silly with the saddles and all. The leader snorted, nearly sneering, "And what makes you think they're here?"

"No one would tell us anything, we're just looking. Anything you can tell us would be great." I said with an honest cheer in spite of their hostility, which was legit. They were pissed at us, their 'auras' rang with hostility to my Observation Haki, so… yeah, I'd have to guess that I'd done fucked up with the whole attacking the local wildlife. I'll deal though.

"Oh, certainly, we'd be happy to tell you…" No, they wouldn't, "There's just one little thing…" It's going to be pretty significant, "First…" of probably a huge number of things or maybe the only chance we'd ever get, not sure which yet, "You must prove yourself in combat! Against me! Enitan! The mightiest of the Fisi warriors!"

I beamed at them like a loon, deliberately playing up the naïve idiot, "Sure! When do we start?"

Jaime looked at me like I was an idiot, his hand resting on the hilt of his rapier even as the leader of this roving band grinned like a madwoman, rearing her spear back, "Right–!"

In an instant, the grin was gone, and I was blank, "Soru."

The spear thrust-!

"–now!"

I landed lightly in a crouch atop the saddle within inches of her, revolver already drawn and pressing against her temple with a small click, my other hand closing around her spear-wielding wrist.

"…"

"…"

"… eh…?" a drop of sweat slowly rolled down her temple and her mouth worked silently.

"So, do I win?" I nudged her temple with the barrel of my gun.

"W-W-W-Wait! S-S-Sure! O-Of course!" a small, slow smile spread across my lips as she rapidly waved her left hand about, "Obviously! You've definitely proven yourself in combat–! We'll tell you everything–!"

** Ball-check–**

Now, while I could have easily have dodged or just pulled the trigger… and that's what I would have normally have done since Tekkai wouldn't make my balls indestructible… I had a Devil Fruit. And I felt no real threat… so if I wanted to intimidate them to make them compliant and tell us what we wanted to know…

Her half panicked face became one of sadistic and vindictive pleasure, "–while you're on the floor writhing in pain!"

The leaders waving hand snapped forward as a fist, aimed straight between my legs as I crouched atop the front of her saddle, it wasn't like I was guarding them at all.

*Clang!*

There was silence by the river as my smile melted into a blank expression and I raised an eyebrow at her.

"… ah…" she began to sweat as her brain processed that before she quickly recoiled with a little yelp of pain, quickly blowing on her reddening knuckles, "Ah! Ah! What the hell?! What are those made out of?!"

"Steel." I said simply, unable to help the smirk on my face before I pointedly nudged her temple again with the barrel of my revolver, making her foot long neck tilt a bit as I thumbed back the hammer with a small click.

She froze, her expression instantly becoming one of a sheepish grin, "Eheheh… ehhhh… I was… kind of expecting that to work…"

"I can tell. Now, are we done or do I need to supplex you like I did the hippo, gator, and zebra all at once?"

"… all at once…?"

"Yes."

She glanced at Jaime over my shoulder, almost squeaking out, "… all at once…?"

"Sí senorita," Jaime said with the same cheeky naïve happiness that I'd used earlier. "I was most impressed that he was able to time it to get them while they were all together. I rather liked all of the spinning."

"… ah… n-now that you've proven yourself we'll happily tell you all that we know about the McPuffins!"

I grinned and stood, easing the hammer back into place before holstering the revolver, "Sure thing, let's bring these back to your camp, it'll save y'all some time hunting and it'll make it easier to comfortably exchange stories."

"H-Hey! There's no men allowed in our camp!" I looked at the long-necked woman as I dropped lightly off of the back of the leader's hyena, putting my hands on my hips.

"So?" I wasn't gonna just sit by while this Amazonian or Kuja warrior bullshit went on. Mostly because if they wanted to just attack random people like that they needed to learn how to deal with someone who could tell them to sit down and shut the fuck up. "We're not going to be there that long–" a tickle of threat danced at the edge of my senses and, without pausing in my sentence, I swung my fist upward quickly, transforming into metal halfway up before it slammed into the underside of the lead hyena's jaw with a small boom. Its head snapped up before it started to stumble as I continued smoothly, "–and we are bringing food as gifts."

Pointedly, I didn't break my gaze locked with the long necked warrior amazon atop the hyena as the mount of her leader collapsed behind me, "Uhh…"

"So why not?"

The women all shared a glance as I blithely smiled at them, hands on my hips, "S-Sure…"

"Great to hear!" I clapped my hands, "Now let's get these animals moving, don't want the meat to go bad or scavengers to get to it!"

---

The McPuffin Part 8