Chapter 118: Unexpected Sophistication
Chapter 118: Unexpected Sophistication
Luffy was more than a little surprised at the moment, and trying very much not to show it, as he would struggle to explain to the others just why he was surprised. With the full crew available to draw from, for once, and Dorinda Harkness’s information to plan from, he’d elected to do this ‘expedition into dangerous ancient ruins’ thing properly. He’d had Perona give the place a look through her Hollows before anyone else stepped foot inside, getting a report from her about what sort of trouble they might run into.
The biggest sort of trouble was the ‘Vault Guardian’ that Dorinda had warned them about.
Somehow, despite everything, given the ‘theme’ of the island, Luffy had been expecting clockwork of some sort. In reality, as reported by Perona, what the Guardian actually was sounded more like some sort of Earth Golem. One that took the form of a fourteen-foot-tall, rough-hewn humanoid, with glowing lines of green energy that reminded him of a much amplified version of the Tonal Resonators the ‘Cog Witch’ had shown them. If that was honestly what it was, some sort of Earth creature empowered by the Tonal Technology, or if it was just a shell hiding a more tech-like inside he didn’t yet know. Nor was the Guardian what was disconcerting Luffy now.
No, that was the recognition that he really was looking at something like an early computer mainframe. In fact, unless he was way off base, the very room they were passing through now had tape drives installed in cabinets he was sure were meant to play them. None of them were in remotely good enough condition that he’d expect them to work in any fashion. Yet he could recognize them as disturbingly similar to old Apollo-program-era equipment he’d seen in a documentary once. The fact that these ruins were verifiably, by Robin, from at least Void Century or older…it raised questions for Luffy.
Lots of questions.
Ones he sadly suspected that he wasn’t going to get very many answers to. Computers, even somewhat primitive ones, meant that a lot of the on-site data had likely been stored electronically and was no longer recoverable. Something that would no doubt frustrate Robin if she even had the frame of reference to understand what she was seeing. Assuming, of course, that he was right about what he was seeing. He supposed the existence of cyborgs and robots in this reality meant they had to have some sort of stand-in for computing. Yet, he’s expected it to be a work around or stand in, not to see signs that someone, somewhen, had possessed actual computers of some sort.
Doing his best to shake of how wrong it seemed to see what he was seeing in this world, he focused on their ‘mission.’ With an initial scouting done by Perona, he’d brought along those of his crew most capable of stealth and controlled damage to when it was time to actually enter the ruin. Robin would be very cross with them if they damaged this place, but according to Dorinda most of what remained worthy of salvaging was beyond the Guardian, in the area she called the ‘Vault.’ The rest of the ruins had been stripped over the years of anything obviously useful, something which annoyed both Robin and Luffy now. He might well have been able to make more out of the things people ran off with than anyone native to this reality.
Then again, Dorinda Harkness had apparently managed to work out a clockwork computer of sorts just by seeing some of the concepts here. So maybe not.
Regardless, they needed to get past the Guardian, which meant either sneaking by or disabling it. Hence why Luffy had brought those with the best chance at doing both, depending on which method proved most viable. Nami was an obvious choice, as was Vivi who had spent a fair bit of time learning to sneak while she went under cover with Baroque Works. Robin would have strangled him if he tried to leave her, and was more than passably decent at sneaking herself anyway. Trying to round on the team with heavier hitters had been harder, since the likes of Zoro or Yamato tended to cause lots of collateral damage.
Ultimately, he’d decided on Kuina and Kaya.
Kuina was likely the third most powerful on the crew behind himself and Yamato, yet focused more on precision than raw power like Zoro did. Kaya, meanwhile, was their ultimate wild card, having a wide variety of skills and options that might prove useful. Not to mention being arguably almost as stealthy as Nami, if for entirely different reasons. To be honest, Luffy himself would likely have been the least stealthy of the group…except that he’d taken on the form of a regular house cat with nearly midnight-blue fur. He was a firm believer in the idea ‘if you’re not cheating, you’re not trying,’ and had long ago specifically picked out forms that made him ludicrously stealthy in a wide variety of environments.
Also, low-light vision was nice, and part of the reason he was able to make out what he was seeing.
While, according to Dorinda, the various Guardians of this place primarily reacted to sound, they could react to obvious light as well. Meaning that the only source of it present was what little natural light was filtering in through holes and cracks and a dark lantern Nami was using carefully. It was high noon outside the ruin, so the top level had been fairly well lit. But whatever this place had once been, it was deep, and five levels down there was very little ambient light left. It was as if something, in the distant past, had stabbed multiple times into this place with the thrust like a giant lance. The result rent holes that went quite a few levels down, providing a bit of diffused light, but it was fading at this depth. As it was, they’d already passed the point where the damage was smaller than a person in diameter, meaning the amount of natural light leaking in was minuscule and Nami had started to use the Dark Lantern increasingly often.
Speaking of their navigator, Nami stopped their slow procession through the ruins to examine a spot on the floor. After a moment or three she gestured for Robin to take and hold the dark-lantern, its shutter pulled back just a bit more to give Nami slightly more light to work with. The extra light was enough for Luffy to make out what Nami had spotted, if only just barely. A set of slightly raised spots on the floor the likes of which they’d already run into twice before. Pressure plates of some kind, though ones that set off audible alarms, rather a more violent sort of trap.
Given that the first one, which they’d triggered on purpose to find out what it did, had woken a Lesser Guardian that had attacked them, they weren’t keen on setting off more of them. That Lesser Guardian had fallen quickly to Kuina, but not before it had blasted them all with some sort of sonic cannon. The only reason they hadn’t been deafened by the attack was Luffy instinctively countering the sound waves with his own Devil Fruit abilities.
Partially, at least. They’d still ended up with ringing in their ears.
Now that he knew to be alert to that sort of attack, he was certain he could do better, but didn’t really want to need to. As it was Kuina had carved the Lesser Guardian in half and they’d scrambled forward before the noise of that woke more of them. Sadly, its destruction hadn’t answered their questions about what the Guardians actually were, as it had proceeded to meltdown into a pile of mud and bits of metal. From what they’d been told by Harkness, eventually such Lesser Guardians would actually reform, though it took a long time for them to do so. Personally, Luffy thought it was more likely they were being reconstructed entirely by an automated system. But the difference was largely academic.
This time, Nami worked deftly to disable the pressure plates. Frankly, he’d be the first to admit he didn’t have a clue how she was managing that without setting them off. Particularly since these weren’t mechanical systems. Yet, after examining the first one they’d set off on purpose to the point of destruction, his lover had somehow figured out a way to disable them. He was just as confused as he was proud of her, to be honest. Her sheer talent as a thief certainly explained how she’d originally managed to reach nearly 100 million belli in the East Blue of all places. An ocean that, along with being the weakest, was arguably the poorest as well.
Well, at least the one with the poorest pirates, who had been who she’d stolen most of her money from. The rest had come from corrupt nobles and the Marines, and in the East Blue those groups were also poorer than their Grand Line counterparts for sure. Frankly, given the higher tech levels he knew the North and South Blue both boasted, and the historical presence of exceptional islands like Ohara in the West, Luffy suspected the East Blue had a lower average wealth period. Though only the World Government was likely to know that for sure.
“Done. Careful to pass over just the center two plates.”
Nami’s voice was barely as whisper as she took the lantern back, leading them deeper into the ruins…
… … …
Kaya had set up a ‘zone of silence’ that, instead of silencing everything within it, kept any noise from passing beyond it. Luffy had to admit he was curious about what else the seal tags she’d made it from might be useful for, but he could talk about that with her later. For now, it meant that they could all properly speak and plan, despite being just a stone’s throw from the room where the Vault Guardian was restlessly patrolling. Nami had guided each of them to take a look, with Kaya again having come in clutch by providing a temporary ‘sickness’ that enhanced the low-light vision of those who lacked it. It was a bit annoying to his crewmates that it apparently caused skin-sensitivity as a side effect.
Luffy wasn’t complaining that all the girls had ditched anything more covering than a bikini to help deal with the sensitivity. He might have complained if he’d ended up bringing male crew with him. As it was, his only worry was that Zoro might try to kill him for seeing his girlfriend in nothing but a very skimpy bikini and sword belt. Hopefully, Kuina would fail to mention that little detail when they retold this story later. Pushing that thought out of his head, he addressed the group.
“Right. We’ve all had a look. First thing first. Robin? Is there anything critical in that room we need to avoid destroying?”
Thankfully, Robin shook her head instantly.
“No. I checked the room with a number of extra eyes and most of the walls are bare. Some signs I was able to read indicate Ms. Harkness wasn’t far off in considering this a ‘Vault.’ More accurately, it was long-term secure storage for the facility. The storage area itself might well have things of immense historical value, but the large area outside of it was just a security checkpoint of sorts before entering a secured area.”
That was good. Excellent even. Aside from not getting Robin pissed at them for destroying something with historical significance, it also meant that the ‘challenge’ part of this could be handled more directly than he’d feared. With the way the Tonal Technology seemed to work, Luffy had to admit part of him had been expecting some bullshit like an RPG level, with puzzles to solve and immortal monsters you couldn’t fight successfully via normal means.
“Right, that just leaves how to deal with the Guardian itself. All indications are that it is literally powered by sound. Which means any prolonged fighting is likely to supercharge it. At the same time, it’s hard to say just how tough it is. Kuina, thoughts?”
Kuina, as the one who had dealt with the smaller Guardian, had their only real point of reference. Now, she frowned and spoke carefully.
“When I sliced into it, there was a…resistance…of sorts. Almost like cutting through a bubble coating. It was only for an instant, but if the larger size creates a comparatively stronger effect, we might have trouble dropping it quickly. A potent opening strike, one that makes little noise, may be our best bet. It not for the risk of damage to the surroundings, I might say Yamato had the best odds.”
Luffy didn’t protest that statement. His First Mate was right, after all. Despite Luffy’s own power, Yamato’s Gears and her choice of weapon both made her better at doing a ton of damage all in a single blow. Unfortunately, she was also extremely destructive when she used her higher-end attacks. As in, there would be a good chance of bringing the ruins down on them if she tried one down here.
“Hmm. My own precision strikes are mostly lightning based. A creature made of Earth is likely to resist them to an extent, particularly while in contact with the ground. You’re probably the one with best attack that is both precise and highly damaging, Kuina. That said, I think there’s another option to consider. Specifically, removing the fight from here. Have Vivi set up an Air Door on a wall, and then have your attack aim to push it through the Air Door if it survives. If you destroy it, well and good. Should the attack fail, though, it will remove it to the surface when more of the crew can fight it.”
That got blinks and head tilts of consideration. Mostly, Luffy thought, because they were surprised he was accounting for the idea it might be strong enough to give them pause. Which, to be fair, was an understandable surprise. After their training so far, all of them were monstrously strong by Paradise standards. If not for the marker on this island indicating this might be a legitimate challenge, he wouldn’t be half so cautious.
As it was, he was stuck wondering if it was only a possible challenge. Did his System account for the fight they would get, or the potential worst-case fight. In this case, if their guess about the Guardian was right, it would get a lot stronger if exposed to a great deal of noise. So, did the map consider its ‘Final Form,’ fully powered up by sound? Or its starting level of difficulty? Luffy didn’t know, this being the first time he’d even attempted to follow the Symbols on the map like this. Half of the point was seeking information about just what they meant, at this point.
Eventually, Vivi shrugged and spoke.
“I don’t see a reason why we couldn’t. Robin could even be prepared to form a giant hand or foot to toss the Guardian through the door, if Kuina’s attack doesn’t do the job of pushing it through.”
Robin nodded at that, and everyone looked between each other for a moment for more suggestions. When none came, Luffy nodded decisively.
“That’s the plan then, Kuina opens with an attack, Vivi with Air Door, and Robin with a giant limb ready as a backup. Assuming it has sound attacks, I’ll be prepared to counter them if it gets one off.”
As soon as everyone acknowledged the plan, they began to leave the Circle of Silence and sneak forward, positioning themselves to pull it off…
… … …
Kuina had waited carefully for her moment, observing the patrol pattern the Guardian followed. Once she was sure she knew it, she’d waited until the Guardian was pacing away from her, so she could step out into the open. There, she glowed, drawing on a lot of Spiritual Power. The glow was something that would have given her away immediately had it been facing toward her, forcing her to rush an attack she’d only recently mastered. Even with the Guardian facing away, it seemed to notice and started to turn. It was too late, however, as Kuina whispered the name of her attack and Dashed forward with speed that only Luffy could follow.
“Kuzuryūsen!”
The move had, to the unenlightened, some similarity to Zoro’s Kiki Kyutoryu: Ashura. Yet, while Zoro had leaned into the raw power of his spirit, including just a touch of Conqueror’s Haki, to create spiritual duplicates that struck physically…Kuina’s move was pure speed. Nine attacks, all enhanced with Infused Armament, performed so fast that an afterimage of all nine strikes hovered in the air. Even to Luffy, whose eyes were greatly enhanced by the lightning aspect of his Devil Fruit, the insane speed of the attack was such that it blurred a bit. He could and had blocked it in the past, but only barely, and only when heavily drawing on his Devil Fruit for a boost.
It utterly obliterated the Guardian in a way that only pebbles flew through the Air Door Vivi had formed. For a stunned moment, no one said anything, then Nami barked a laugh.
“Overestimated it, I guess~! Eh, Captain?”
For just a moment, Luffy was sheepish…then they all froze as their Observation Haki went nuts and the room shook. A deep, groaning noise surrounded them, and they were abruptly rising. Luffy, eyes wide, picked up Kaya and Vivi and tossed them at the Air Door, just in time for the walls to crack and more Guardians to climb out of the walls. The walls that were moving with them as the enormous version of the Guardian that they had thought was a set of ruins, began to tear itself out of the earth. Kuina, Luffy, Nami and Robin all smashed through more Guardians as they made for the Air Door themselves, downing several more before slipping through. With Vivi preverbally slamming it shut behind them.
Outside, with the very startled other members of their crew, they watched as a golem nearly as large as the Discovery pulled itself out of the ground, hundreds of Guardians of various sizes pouring out of it and beelining straight for them. Swallowing as he realized he might have miscalculated, Luffy’s voice was apologetic as he addressed Robin.
“Sorry, Robin. But I think we’re going to have to break the ruins a little bit, so they don’t break us…or the town.”
Robin looked…annoyed, but nodded acceptance.
“Understandable, Captain. But I would very much prefer you at least try to leave the storage area intact so I can attempt to recover some information.”
Sighing, Luffy nodded and started giving orders.
“Usopp, Kaya, Nojiko. Containment. Don’t let any of the smaller ones past you, we don’t want them attacking Tide’s Watch. Kuina, Zoro, Yamato, pick a limb and try to cripple it. The rest of you, try whatever you can to see if your respective attacks can slow it down or chip away at its body.”
Knowing his crew would follow him the moment he started, Luffy picked a limb himself. The left leg in his case. Target locked in, he drew his own sword and charged…
… … …
‘Well,’ Luffy thought as he looked around at the devastated landscape, ‘the map wasn’t lying about this still being a challenge.’
He was extremely thankful that the ‘ruins’ had been well and truly away from the town of Tide’s Watch, or any of the other small family settlements of Hightide. That distance meant the locals had never been in danger, and hopefully wouldn’t be too pissed off about their…landscaping project. A few of the local hills were a bit shorter than they had been before, and the valley the ruins had been in was a bit deeper. Nami, thankfully, would be able to fix the water flow with a bit of help, once she recovered. She’d gotten swatted at one point by the surprisingly fast giant golem, but in her hybrid-form and reinforced with armament, she’d been able to take the hit with no more than full-body bruising that Kaya was currently healing.
That had actually been the most serious injury they’d faced. All of them being capable of using Haki at this point had prevented any serious harm. Yet, there was no question that the fight had pushed them. The Giant Guardian had powered up with every noisy attack, generating shields of glowing green energy and repairing damage to itself, causing his entire crew to need to both break out the ‘big guns’ and get creative in ways that didn’t involve brute power. The whole reason that Nami had been close enough to get swatted, for example, was that she’d figured out creating geysers in cracks other attacks opened caused the golem’s attempts to regenerate to falter. If she got enough water into the mix, it turned the reforming earth into a slurry of mud, which weakened an area for follow up attacks.
Yamato had gotten experience fighting something even bigger than her in Gear 3 form. Kuina and Zoro had needed to push their respective spirit-infused attacks to the next level and apply them creatively. Robin had proven to be an MVP by being able to create limbs under that weird shield and, in doing so, found ways to disrupt the thing from the inside.
Something weird had happened with Sanji, where he gained a burst of power that seemed to disturb him greatly, but that was something to deal with later. Brook had been particularly critical after the shield had gotten too strong, by proving he could counter it with his own odd music-and-spirit based attacks. That one Luffy really wanted to sit down and talk to Brook about, as his own sonic attacks hadn’t done much at all and he wasn’t sure what the difference had been.
One way or another, most of the crew had found themselves pushed hard over the course of a six hour fight as they whittled away at the giant guardian. A fight that saw some of what they’d learned or developed on Rusukaina solidifying in a way that it hadn’t against either the beasts on that island or in sparring with each other. Overall, he was honestly quite pleased with the end results…though he was also quite sure they’d be digging through the giant, now-limbless, body of the Guardian for days. It hadn’t been wholly destroyed, and he knew Robin was going to insist.
Oh well, at least it would give them time to recover and unwind a bit after an unexpectedly intense battle. Besides, he was interested in what could be learned from any records inside himself. Not to mention being interested in Tonal Technology overall, if they could recover more of it from the…corpse? Remains? Scrapped bits? Hard to know what to call the thing really. He was very curious who had created it, how, and why. Though he wasn’t at all sure they would find answers inside to any of those questions.
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A/N 1: So, Luffy doesn't know about Emet, the Iron Giant. Which means he can't connect the 'competing project' as being Emet. Not sure how many readers will make the connection either :-).
A/N 2: The lack of computers of any kind in One Piece (outside some of Vegapunk's stuff, maybe) bothers the hell out of me. There are a LOT of things, like Franky's cybernetics, that shouldn't work without some sort of computing ability. Worse, even completely uneducated people like Luffy seem to have the concept of a robot. Meaning SOME stories about them have got to be incredibly wide spread. Even if the stories are just fictional ones. Luffy stumbling on some primitive computer systems here is sort of a patch for that. An indication that at some point in the past, the world might have known what they were.