Fic: Like a Book, Prompt: Transparent
Sep. 3rd, 2012 04:51 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
summer-tempests.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
onepiece_300Title: Like a Book
Rating: G
Media: Fic
Characters: Caesar
Word Count: 1218
Prompt: Transparent
Warnings: Some heartless personification of facial features and this will no doubt eventually be AU.
Disclaimer: I do not own any part of the One Piece franchise.
A/N: This ended up much longer than I’d even thought possible; silly Caesar, it seems, is a lot of fun to write. Hopefully it might inspire others who are much better 300-word storytelling than I am ^^.
.ooOoo.
Like a Book
.ooOoo.
Put out.
No, no that wasn’t nearly strong enough.
Distressed. Yes that fit.
Caesar’s face-consuming Grin faltered a bit in his mild distress; the Strawhats had come up with some way to circumvent his gas abilities. Three of them had some strange, brilliantly green moss covering the lower halves of their faces and the other four had some clanking, humming metal contraption embellished with blue stars, on theirs.
But Caesar rallied! Never mind that they had him isolated and cornered! He’d just have to get his own hands dirty this time and physically remove the masks himself, and then gloat as they suffocated. Grin happily returned to proper dimensions.
With some quantum manipulation between his gas molecules and those behind the insolent red-head, Caesar reappeared, clawed hand already swiping at the moss-mask. Except . . . his fingers passed right through her head, and then her whole body shimmered then melted away. Caesar turned to the others as he caught similar shimmering in his peripheral vision. They were all disappearing! Grin wobbled uncertainly as Caesar whipped around in search of the pirates he knew were in the room. However, instead of finding one group of skulking pirates he was confronted with several iterations of them scattered throughout the space.
Caesar paused a moment, recalled that he was in fact a genius, and proceeded to probe his surroundings for the large displacement of air that would necessarily indicate the real group.
There! He faced the real Strawhats, threw out a hand that ended with his most menacing finger-point and shouted, “Ha! I’ve found you!” Grin recovered to tip-top shape, bolstered by his obvious prowess.
As expected, the fake bodies wavered then faded away and the air around the real pirates also flickered to slowly reveal several lumpy bags at their feet.
“Naughty, insignificant scum! Did you think you could hide from me, a gas man?!?” He yelled triumphantly at them. Judging by their medley of expressions, ranging from vacant to preoccupied, they hadn’t understood him. So he yelled it louder.
But his magnificently loud “DID-“ was chocked off and run over by a shrieked “WHAT?!”
Grin tumbled several notches in high distress.
“What are THOSE?” He elaborated in full aggrieved volume, unsure if this group of imbeciles could understand. Caesar’s hand lowered to point at what he’d thought were the lumpy bags at their feet. Lumpy bags that on closer examination were in fact lumpy, bent and broken bodies with suspiciously familiar clothing!
Red-head raised an eyebrow as she kicked one body over to reveal its face, and the man with the sword collection was radiating amusement. With a clear view of the body’s identity, Caesar’s uncomfortable hunch upon recognizing their tattered uniforms was confirmed. Grin struggled wretchedly to keep from collapsing under disbelief and anxiety.
How could this be? Those bodies belonged to his most successful and powerful experiments in his bid to weaponize humans! They were his elite! When the dramatic moment was right he was going to send them to annihilate the Strawhats! He was going to have them separate the group and then eliminate each pirate in one-on-one battles to the death!
“Oh, these idiots?” She asked. “We ran into them huddled together in the hallway; they were whispering about dramatic timing. Judging by their fancier uniforms we assumed they were your elite that you’d sent to annihilate us by first splitting us up and then eliminating each of us in one-on-one battles.”
“B – b – buh,” Caesar said intelligibly. He tried again, “WHAT?! HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?!” Grin had to take a personal moment to collect itself, leaving the helm temporarily to Uncertain Grimace.
Red-Head gave him that look. The look that Vegapunk would give him as if to say, ‘No Caesar, we don’t use that type of logic board for the Pacifistas anymore since I developed the self-governing nano-logic-chips . . . and you call yourself a genius . . .’ As if Caesar was some robot scientist! He was a virtuoso of biochemical weaponry! And if these simple-minded Strawhats thought they could mock him by claiming to decipher his devastatingly complex endgame . . . well, they just couldn’t. It wasn’t feasible. They were no doubt incapable of any mental acrobatics more complicated than putting one foot in front of the other.
Sword Collection snorted mechanically and the blond man (who Caesar just noticed was smoking through the metal mask – and how was he even doing that) said, “Tch, seen one, seen ‘em all.” They all nodded sadly at this!
Just what was that supposed to mean?
“Mhm, it’s like all you megalomaniacs follow some standard operating procedure under forceful-invasion conditions: unveil the island-destroying weapon; sabotage own infrastructure to impede 'hostile' forward progress; send in successively stronger fighters one-by-one; split up and attempt to kill the captain’s nakama; underestimate everyone’s intelligence but your own. Not always strictly in that order, but it’s pretty predictable.” Red-Head seemed to be emanating amusement now too.
This was unacceptable. Caesar sent the seven of them a malicious glare as he coaxed an unsteady Grin back onto his face for the sake of appearances. He swiftly plotted what his next course of act – wait! Weren’t there eight or nine or ten Strawhats, not seven? He eyed them with more focus and Grin began to swell with confidence.
Yes! Who cares how many there were because the captain Was. Not. There! No straw hat in sight! Oho! Grin swallowed his ears in full display.
“You can’t fool me little trash!” He trilled. “I see through your transparent ruse, you’re stalling for time with all this misdirection, hoping someone will come save you!” He thought for a moment he heard a muffled ‘you forgot to add that they speak redundantly Nami,’ but ignored it in favor of his pleasing realization of their motive.
But his exposure of their plan had as much effect on them as anything else he’d done in the last 15 minutes; they seemed oblivious . . . no, actually they seemed collectively smug? Grin was not accustomed to such turbulent moods and slipped fractionally.
“Interpret our actions any way you want you shitty gas!” Blond barked at Caesar while simultaneously herding the two girls away from a section of the wall; curiously, the other four shuffled away from that section as well.
Caesar caught the sound of some siren starting up in the distance and decided to finish things up here. Now that he knew where the real pirates were he could resume his plan to strip them of their masks and watch them claw pathetically for air! He’d make sure to give them a thorough lecture on the folly of their actions and assumptions while he was at it.
As he began to swap his molecules with those behind Vegapunk’s beam-thief the recently vacated section of wall cracked viciously, and then with a great wail of the siren that Caesar belatedly realized had been getting closer, the wall exploded into the room in a spray of concrete and plaster followed by a deluge of hysterical laughter.
A large reindeer came clattering into the room with that thrice-damned strawhat boy on his back.
Caesar had the briefest moment to succumb to horn envy before a fist plowed through his face and knocked Grin completely upside down.
Rating: G
Media: Fic
Characters: Caesar
Word Count: 1218
Prompt: Transparent
Warnings: Some heartless personification of facial features and this will no doubt eventually be AU.
Disclaimer: I do not own any part of the One Piece franchise.
A/N: This ended up much longer than I’d even thought possible; silly Caesar, it seems, is a lot of fun to write. Hopefully it might inspire others who are much better 300-word storytelling than I am ^^.
Like a Book
.ooOoo.
Put out.
No, no that wasn’t nearly strong enough.
Distressed. Yes that fit.
Caesar’s face-consuming Grin faltered a bit in his mild distress; the Strawhats had come up with some way to circumvent his gas abilities. Three of them had some strange, brilliantly green moss covering the lower halves of their faces and the other four had some clanking, humming metal contraption embellished with blue stars, on theirs.
But Caesar rallied! Never mind that they had him isolated and cornered! He’d just have to get his own hands dirty this time and physically remove the masks himself, and then gloat as they suffocated. Grin happily returned to proper dimensions.
With some quantum manipulation between his gas molecules and those behind the insolent red-head, Caesar reappeared, clawed hand already swiping at the moss-mask. Except . . . his fingers passed right through her head, and then her whole body shimmered then melted away. Caesar turned to the others as he caught similar shimmering in his peripheral vision. They were all disappearing! Grin wobbled uncertainly as Caesar whipped around in search of the pirates he knew were in the room. However, instead of finding one group of skulking pirates he was confronted with several iterations of them scattered throughout the space.
Caesar paused a moment, recalled that he was in fact a genius, and proceeded to probe his surroundings for the large displacement of air that would necessarily indicate the real group.
There! He faced the real Strawhats, threw out a hand that ended with his most menacing finger-point and shouted, “Ha! I’ve found you!” Grin recovered to tip-top shape, bolstered by his obvious prowess.
As expected, the fake bodies wavered then faded away and the air around the real pirates also flickered to slowly reveal several lumpy bags at their feet.
“Naughty, insignificant scum! Did you think you could hide from me, a gas man?!?” He yelled triumphantly at them. Judging by their medley of expressions, ranging from vacant to preoccupied, they hadn’t understood him. So he yelled it louder.
But his magnificently loud “DID-“ was chocked off and run over by a shrieked “WHAT?!”
Grin tumbled several notches in high distress.
“What are THOSE?” He elaborated in full aggrieved volume, unsure if this group of imbeciles could understand. Caesar’s hand lowered to point at what he’d thought were the lumpy bags at their feet. Lumpy bags that on closer examination were in fact lumpy, bent and broken bodies with suspiciously familiar clothing!
Red-head raised an eyebrow as she kicked one body over to reveal its face, and the man with the sword collection was radiating amusement. With a clear view of the body’s identity, Caesar’s uncomfortable hunch upon recognizing their tattered uniforms was confirmed. Grin struggled wretchedly to keep from collapsing under disbelief and anxiety.
How could this be? Those bodies belonged to his most successful and powerful experiments in his bid to weaponize humans! They were his elite! When the dramatic moment was right he was going to send them to annihilate the Strawhats! He was going to have them separate the group and then eliminate each pirate in one-on-one battles to the death!
“Oh, these idiots?” She asked. “We ran into them huddled together in the hallway; they were whispering about dramatic timing. Judging by their fancier uniforms we assumed they were your elite that you’d sent to annihilate us by first splitting us up and then eliminating each of us in one-on-one battles.”
“B – b – buh,” Caesar said intelligibly. He tried again, “WHAT?! HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?!” Grin had to take a personal moment to collect itself, leaving the helm temporarily to Uncertain Grimace.
Red-Head gave him that look. The look that Vegapunk would give him as if to say, ‘No Caesar, we don’t use that type of logic board for the Pacifistas anymore since I developed the self-governing nano-logic-chips . . . and you call yourself a genius . . .’ As if Caesar was some robot scientist! He was a virtuoso of biochemical weaponry! And if these simple-minded Strawhats thought they could mock him by claiming to decipher his devastatingly complex endgame . . . well, they just couldn’t. It wasn’t feasible. They were no doubt incapable of any mental acrobatics more complicated than putting one foot in front of the other.
Sword Collection snorted mechanically and the blond man (who Caesar just noticed was smoking through the metal mask – and how was he even doing that) said, “Tch, seen one, seen ‘em all.” They all nodded sadly at this!
Just what was that supposed to mean?
“Mhm, it’s like all you megalomaniacs follow some standard operating procedure under forceful-invasion conditions: unveil the island-destroying weapon; sabotage own infrastructure to impede 'hostile' forward progress; send in successively stronger fighters one-by-one; split up and attempt to kill the captain’s nakama; underestimate everyone’s intelligence but your own. Not always strictly in that order, but it’s pretty predictable.” Red-Head seemed to be emanating amusement now too.
This was unacceptable. Caesar sent the seven of them a malicious glare as he coaxed an unsteady Grin back onto his face for the sake of appearances. He swiftly plotted what his next course of act – wait! Weren’t there eight or nine or ten Strawhats, not seven? He eyed them with more focus and Grin began to swell with confidence.
Yes! Who cares how many there were because the captain Was. Not. There! No straw hat in sight! Oho! Grin swallowed his ears in full display.
“You can’t fool me little trash!” He trilled. “I see through your transparent ruse, you’re stalling for time with all this misdirection, hoping someone will come save you!” He thought for a moment he heard a muffled ‘you forgot to add that they speak redundantly Nami,’ but ignored it in favor of his pleasing realization of their motive.
But his exposure of their plan had as much effect on them as anything else he’d done in the last 15 minutes; they seemed oblivious . . . no, actually they seemed collectively smug? Grin was not accustomed to such turbulent moods and slipped fractionally.
“Interpret our actions any way you want you shitty gas!” Blond barked at Caesar while simultaneously herding the two girls away from a section of the wall; curiously, the other four shuffled away from that section as well.
Caesar caught the sound of some siren starting up in the distance and decided to finish things up here. Now that he knew where the real pirates were he could resume his plan to strip them of their masks and watch them claw pathetically for air! He’d make sure to give them a thorough lecture on the folly of their actions and assumptions while he was at it.
As he began to swap his molecules with those behind Vegapunk’s beam-thief the recently vacated section of wall cracked viciously, and then with a great wail of the siren that Caesar belatedly realized had been getting closer, the wall exploded into the room in a spray of concrete and plaster followed by a deluge of hysterical laughter.
A large reindeer came clattering into the room with that thrice-damned strawhat boy on his back.
Caesar had the briefest moment to succumb to horn envy before a fist plowed through his face and knocked Grin completely upside down.
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no subject
Date: 2012-09-09 12:10 am (UTC)It's a shame that this doesn't qualify for the challenge, but I definitely don't want this story to be any shorter! Thanks for a great read!
no subject
Date: 2012-09-10 05:16 pm (UTC)Caesar's facial expressions in the manga are so entertaining and over-the-top that, despite him being utterly dastardly, I couldn't help but picture his smile having gained some comical sentience.
Thanks for taking the time to read and comment :)
Cheers!