Eye Opener (Oreo)

[Mikan]

8 years ago

"Come on slowpoke. What if somebody's already there?" the voice of a young boy echoed into the bottom of Grove 30. 

"I am hurrying. Just wait for me", another young voice answered back to the older boy. 

Both boys made their way out of the hill-like bottom of Grove 30, an amusement park, into Grove 29 of the island where the lawless area is located through a wooden bridge that connects the two groves. 

The older boy stopped in his tracks and waited for the younger one. The older one is called Santos Cloke and is known to the archipelago as a trouble-making kid, the child of the Cloke couple who lives infamously in Grove 18. Santos is five foot two and is much taller than the younger boy and the rest of the ten year old kids around Sabaody. He is eleven and is one year older than the kid trudging slowly down the slope of Grove 30. He was wearing a baggy cargo short paired with a blue tank top with wooden sandals to cover his feet. The thing that stands out about his attire is the red bandanna splayed across his forehead. 

The two boys lived in Sabaody Archipelago, the "island" before the Red Line that divides the Grand Line, and the entrance to the New World. Sabaody Archipelago is called an archipelago because it is not an island but a collection of mini land subsets connected to a giant-like mangrove tree in the center as its base structure that let it float in the middle of the ocean. Sabaody is an iconic island for its coating services. For a pirate crew to pass through the Red Line that divides the Grand Line and the New World, it would need to be coated so it could pass through the Fishman Island hundreds of feet underwater. Thus, the archipelago has a designated group of mangrove islands for pirates called the lawless area. It is marked by groves 1 to 29 and is feared by the local civilians because of the rumoured slave auctions and the rampant pirates that are set free because of the lack of marine presence. 

The two have just met in Sabaody's famous amusement park located in Grove 30. After Santos gave Oreo the horsie seat in the merry-go-round, they went through the amusement park together. After hanging out with each other the whole afternoon, Santos decided to leave the park and unto a place he told Oreo was his secret place. Oreo curiously asked to come which prompted them to leave the park and unto the lawless area of the island.

The younger boy reached the bottom of Grove 30, and slowly made his way to the center of the wooden bridge where he met Santos' smiling face. 

"Oreo, you gotta stay next to me. I'm finally taking you to my secret spot but we're going to go through the lawless part of the island" Santos explained with a wide smile, excited to show his only friend a secret he has been keeping alone for a long time. 

Oreo, on the other hand, looked apprehensive as Santos explained the lawless part. With a quick glance to Oreo, Santos sighed and offered his palm for Oreo to take. Oreo, after a few seconds, took this small hand which started to drag him into the bottom of Grove 29. 

"Oreo, there's this mangrove island full of stone building ruins. What's weird is that it's not being supported by a mangrove tree" Santos looked back at Oreo with wide eyes. 

Oreo only looked at Santos waiting for him to explain what this really meant. 

"This means that this small patch of ruins I discovered isn't associated with a mangrove tree and so, no one knows which area it is in this island. Only I know of its existence. And now, you will too!" 

Santos was too excited. He was talking with no pause, and only at the end did he exhale. Oreo looked at Santos with wonder and adventure in his eyes. He was only ten but an older kid was taking interest in him. Not a lot of the kids in his class found him fun to be around with because he was a quiet and reserved most of the times. Not Santos, though. 

Oreo gave only a small smirk that signals Santos he's happy to be here with him. Santos smiled back as they trudged across Grove 29 and into the secret spot. 

It was at this moment that Oreo found a big brother, and a best friend. Finally, he didn't have to be alone.

Present Time

Oreo sat atop the ruins of one of the stone buildings in the secret independent mangroves located in the sides of grove 29 and 27. It was eight years ago when he discovered this secret from Santos. He has since used this small unnamed mangrove of ruined stone buildings as a place to meet up with his only friend, Santos. He was here all the time that the marines and his family discovered that he was not in fact in the middle of the lawless part which caused them to worry less about his well being. 

Oreo is part of a family that is closely connected to the marine headquarters in the island. This is only possible because of Oreo's mother who was once a high-ranking marine who quit her job because she had found a husband. Today, Oreo's mother along with Oreo's older sister, Aria, lead a classroom where she teaches the basic of knife and sword wielding. When Oreo was twelve years old, he would often run over to the ruins and the marines would be dispatched to find the famous kid. After forcing her mother to stop teaching her knife wielding, Oreo has found himself often in the company of Santos and some kids in the lawless area usually pick pocketing pirates and some unfortunate tourists. 

Oreo sat in a plastic chair that he brought over from Santos' place waiting for his friend. He wore his signature look - blue jean shorts and a tank top. He was usually around the area at this time. However, Oreo wasn't worried a bit since sometimes people are late. Maybe the guy was feeding his pet snake. He sat in his plastic chair chugging the rest of his soda and throwing the tin can away to the ground behind him without a care in the world. 

After finishing his soda, he looked into the direction of Santos' house and wondered what's keeping him late. His friend was usually ahead of him and seem to inhabit the area that he thought Santos lived in one of the abandoned stone buildings. After a couple of seconds of gazing into the far off direction of his friend's place, his den-den mushi called for his attention. 

"Hello?"

"Is this the knife-wielding friend this punk keeps talking about?" a deep dirty voice came out of the den-den mushi. The voice felt aggressive and cocky. 

"Who is this?" Oreo replied to the voice, curiously wondering who would call him a knife-wielding friend when he didn't have a lot of friends nor was he an expert in knife-wielding. 

"You see, we have this guy named Thantos? or it is Santos? in our place. Come over, we'd like to ask you a few questions" the deep voice replied with a hint of giggling at the end, an evil giggle that sounded like a pirate. 

"We're at Grove 19. Come over to this warehouse at the end of the grove. We just wanna speak." The voice continued. Then, complete silence. 

Oreo hastily stood up from his chair, sweating. It was a beautiful sunny day in the mangrove, but the young man felt cold and afraid. He was alone and he had no idea what to do. He plopped down into the seat below him and thought of what to do. 

What can he do? Should he call his mom or his sister or the marines? How are they gonna help Santos if they come? It was these type of questions that plagued the mind of young Oreo in his seat. He looked above the sunny mangrove tree in the other grove nearby looking at the peaceful bubbles that floated into the sky and above the trees. 

"What am I gonna do?" he asked himself out loud as he stood up, jumped down from the stone building, and tripped because of the gravity. Dusting off the sand and small rocks that stuck in his knee, he started to slowly walk into the end of the small mangrove and into Grove 19. 

SPOILER: Click to show

Dear Virus,

I'm giving you full control of whatever the voice is in the end of that line. You could even create a better villain and make the voice one of your villain's assistants or something haha. Santos will be in your full control for the meantime. Have fun. If you have any questions, feel free to private message me! You do not have to post more than the minimum words. I just felt like posting big to introduce the thread.

Regards, 


Mikan

[viruswithshoes]

Niels "The Nihilist" Henriksen well and truly wished he'd gone to the amusement park instead of work. Get something over-priced and deep fried to eat, tie a few on and go ride the ferris wheel. Then at least he'd want to vomit for fun reasons rather than the prospect of having to deep six some kid with more curiosity than sense.

To a slaver, murder was like burning money. Despite his epithet, Niels "The Nihilist" liked getting paid and getting through his day with a minimum of trouble. Not having to slit some idiot's throat to make a few million beri meant he was having a good day. Unfortunately, a couple of ill-trained subordinates seemed determined to make a Marineford style battle happen in his nice, cozy hide-out. While pirates gravitated toward big, flashy battles slavers like the irritated man with the stringy blonde hair liked his obscurity. There were no famous living slavers for a reason. They were one of the few groups both Marines and pirates could hate together. After all, to a man like The Nihilist both groups were only worth what a Celestial Dragon would pay.

"It's like this, Niels...I mean Mister Henriksen..."
No names, no witnesses, no problems. Niels thought it was a simple code to live by. It seemed fool proof, but there was always a new improved fool and those new breeds of super fools always seemed to find their way into his employ.

As far as the leader of his particular slave ring was concerned his subordinate had just killed everyone in that room. The man with the blonde ponytail and throbbing head was, naturally, an exception. Niels rubbed his forehead with the barrel of his flintlock pistol, closed his eyes and sighed.
"We thought we could get two slaves for the price of one, ya know?"
If the young man who had been in the slaving business since his teens had learned one thing it was that it was best to cut his losses and move on. That went for staff as well as hideouts and in this case he had to burn both to the ground.

Inside a small black case rattling around the pocket of The Nihilist's black overcoat were a collection of pills of different color. Some were vitamins, some to calm him down, some hallucinogenics and some cyanide. While he detested stupidity combined with pro-activity as the man who gave out their location displayed, Niels liked to cultivate a kind of simple ignorance in his men.
Often they'd see him taking a vitamin or something else innocuous before Niels would do something "amazing" such as standing nonchalantly when someone shot a blank at him or take down a man who had more size than fighting ability. As such, the imbecile who somehow found out his name seemed excited to be accepting one of the pills from black case.
"Come on," Niels told the future corpse. "Let's go collect another slave."

[Mikan]

Santos lived only a couple of minutes away from his secret hideout. His house is located a couple of groves away that would require some running if he wants to be there on time, especially when he's only about to leave his house, like right now. Before he left though, he took a machete-looking knife and stuffed it in a sheath that is hidden inside his baggy pants. Everyday, he would have this machete knife to arm himself, if he's ever in the middle of a confrontation. Usually, he is.

He lived in the lawless part of Sabaody Archipelago for as long as he can remember so he was used to the pirates, and the slave traders around this particular district. In a normal day, Santos would normally avoid getting into trouble with guys that look unsafe and cruel. However, sometimes you can't avoid them forever. He took the risk of taking a known dangerous shortcut route on his way to Grove 29 where his hideout, and likely Oreo, is located. In this road, located in Grove 19, is where most slave traders hang out, or so he heard from his dad. Unlike pirates though, slave traders are much more scarier as they would kidnap anyone - kids to old adults - and make them into slaves for a couple of beri. They're comparable to most pirates in terms of cruelty, but slave traders are known to be evil as they see humans as livestock, or chickens to be sold. For some unknown reason, he just wanted to see the deal with slave traders. He promised to be careful when going through this street and would only go through this when accompanied by someone with a weapon. This time, he was alone.

This street that runs through Grove 19 is full of metal warehouses that seem to house some traders headquarters. It has plenty of space to hide or run around if trouble comes looking for him. If anything, he can always call on the marines or anyone with his den-den mushi if he gets into something he can't handle himself. But would he really need it? The 20 year old thought to himself. He's pretty much an adult. He's fairly athletic and he can outrun Oreo in a race. The worst thing that could happen is for a couple of traders to find him and try to capture him for money. If that happens, his machete can do something before he can outrun anyone to get away.

Not this time.

Santos used the metallic rectangular rooftops of the warehouses of Grove 19 to get through this road, running as fast as he can to get to his hideout. While running and jumping warehouses in this part of the grove, he got sidetracked a little bit as he notice a young teenager-looking man with a blonde ponytail wearing a black overcoat standing seemingly alone in a small area between two warehouses. For some reason, this man gave Santos the heebie-jeebies, the opposite aura he'd get from Oreo, innocent and young. He gave off a cruel aura as he stood there in front of an open warehouse with the blackness of the inside metal door enveloping this man like a blanket from the distance, as if darkness seem to orbit around him.

This image of Niels stopped the tracks of Santos in the roof and stood there, waiting.

Santos looked over the man, and suddenly, that was all he remembered before the darkness around Niels completely overtook his vision.

[viruswithshoes]

Niels' head ached which made the sound from the bubbles that naturally sprang up from the roots of the mangrove trees even less tolerable than usual. The throbbing abated a little when his companion took the pill Niels had given him and ceased to make any more noise via talking or breathing.
Sadly, the rest of the trip Niels The Nihilist could only think of how he now had to kill the rest of his subordinates since they were a dangerous combination of kidnappers and loudmouths. It was a pipe dream but the blonde-haired slaver dreamed of a crew of a mutes then he could work in serenity. It was a common dream of men in the industry of crime. Mute workers who died upon sight of a Marine or other law enforcement officer. Alas, he was stuck with men who kidnap random young men without thought. It was like they were picking up shells on the beach rather than appraising potentially valuable resources.

"Pirates, bandits, merfolk," he told the crew of men he would eventually have to kill due to rank stupidity on their part. "We kidnap these people because they have no recourse as well as being collector's items for rich weirdos. Who do we take?"
"Pirates, bandits, merfolk," The hired goons of The Nihilist said with a painful lack of enthusiasm which the slaver, in hindsight, should have punished. Branding the rules regarding names on one hand and the criteria for slaves on the other started seeming like a good idea.

In a way Niels was glad for this setback, annoying as it was. He learned a few lessons about being a slaver and dealing with the people under him which would have eluded him had he spent the day at the amusement park. At best, he would have learned if cotton candy could be deep fried.

He longed for the simpler days of earlier morning and sat upon his former employee and thought about how for a few minutes this day things were going quite well.
He just wanted to look into his empty warehouse and confirm that there was no stock to sell in the human auction and that Niels Henriksen had a day to himself. What he found instead was a young man tied to a chair being roughed up by men with more blood lust than sense.

The young man spouted the usual things headstrong people did when tied to a chair in a warehouse. He had friends, he had connections, they would all be dead, it was just white noise coming out of a scared person. Niels was not frightened by white noise and knelt in front of Santos before gently wiping some of the blood from the prisoner's face. That rare act of kindness from Niels Henriksen did seem too little too late after his men had given him a beating. A blood-rich glob of saliva traveled to the young slaver's smooth face which Henriksen dabbed up with the same handkerchief he had used to clean some of the blood from the face of his prisoner.

"If it's any consolation," he whispered into Santos' ear. "The men who did this will not live out the day." Niels was sure he could buy the kid off with a couple thousand beri and maybe a chance to kick the corpse of one of his tormentors. Kidnapping off of the list of acceptable targets required capital punishment, after all.

"Why is he here? If you see someone skulking around you don't drag them inside." Niels knew that Santos hadn't seen anything. It was an empty warehouse. All of their "stock" was now being held at the auction house. As far as any onlooker was concerned they were some shady looking fellows hanging around a warehouse. If Shabaody Archipelago had a flag Shady men in a shady place would have been on it.

"It's like this, Niels...I mean Mister Henriksen..."
And with those words an imbecile had murdered every player in the farce that was the day. Uttering the man's name in front of a witness held the same fatality odds as volcano hurdling or an all devil fruit user synchronized swimming routine.

The blonde slaver adjusted the black fedora on his head and began walking once again so that the chair that had once been a brainless dolt was out of his site. To relax he reached into his small black case of pills and popped one. He wasn't sure what is was, but it left him euphoric and optimistic enough to think things might work out. Perhaps the only murdering Niels needed to do was in the warehouse.

Smiling and waving at the first person he saw near the edge of Grove 19, Niels carried himself like a man who wasn't planning multiple murders in his mind.
"Hi, people call me The Nihilist. I'd ask yours but names are what brought us here. Name your price. How much for you to turn around and walk away from this forever?" To demonstrate Niels pulled a thick roll of beri from his pocket the sum of which exceeded fifty-thousand beri and showed it to the younger man.
"Just walk away and forget this. Hell, with this you can sail away and forget this. The sea has no memory, after all. Unlike everybody else, your future is behind you. To claim it you just have to turn around and not come back. It's a sweetheart deal. Just walk away."

[Mikan]

Everything happened fast. In one moment, a man spoke of someone named "Niels" and the next, he was gone. Ripped by something into two. The man exploded in blood and guts. Then, everyone was exploding in red and body parts. Santos closed his eyes as he hear one or two guttural shouts come from the murdered men. Then, silence. It was the silence that echoed across the dark warehouse here deep in Grove 19 that made him feel something basic inside him. Fear. It was pure fear that he was feeling as his hands and feet started shaking amidst the rope he was tied to. Santos knew the unlawful groves were full of dangerous people. He knew people die in these groves. He knew people disappear forever. As a teenager, he only laughed at this. However, this time, he was experiencing it first hand. The fear of the people who were once was.

He didn't even hear Niels' proposition of freedom with dirty beri to boot. He was sweating heavily from his hairline. The tough summer heat did not take effect inside the cool dark warehouse. This sweat was from anxiety. Anxious about his future. Is he even going to be alive? As his fear, his thoughts, his anxiety crept up in Santos' imagination, he never really give thought to Niels. He made him wait, standing in front of him.

It was about 10 minutes of waiting for Santos' answer when the warehouse light coming from the outside was blocked out by a dark shape. It was a shadow of a smaller build teenager. It was Oreo.

Oreo looked on to the surroundings keeping track of the cloaked man in front of another young boy tied to a chair. Surrounding this picture was a pile of red liquid and quiet bodies.

"I-I-I'm here. I'm Oreo and my mom is a Marine captain. You're all under arrest" Oreo exclaimed in a voice that seem to say otherwise. He looked at the cloaked man with a fedora. He's never seen a man like this before. He's also never heard of a criminal with such an attire. He was well versed of infamous criminals around these groves as he hear some snippets of names coming out of her mother's mouth whenever she chat with her marine officer friends.

Oreo stood blocking the light in front of the warehouse. Slowly, he took an item from his back. It was a steel pipe. He was not well versed on steel pipe battles but it would prove more powerful than his knives in this situation. He would need something bigger to protect both him and Santos.

"Mister, please leave Santos or you won't get hit by this" Oreo gestured to his pipe as he looked unto Niels waiting for an answer or a reaction from the man. He raised his pipe in front of him and held it like a sword. From the distance Niels were, it was harder to see the small shake of his hand.

Oreo was afraid.

[viruswithshoes]

The slight buzz that Niels had gained from the pill he had swallowed earlier had been been viciously murdered by Oreo who refused to do the sensible thing and write off his friend as dead. The weary slaver wondered why a person would refuse a reprieve from death as well as a wad of cash the likes of which a poorer person could only dream. Despite his willingness to kill underlings in cold blood, the black suited young man had a momentary lapse in sociopathy. He thought about sparing Oreo and going about his day but that moment passed when the teenager threatened him with a pipe.

The over-coat sporting slaver normally didn't take things personally but being threatened by a teen holding such a banal weapon felt like a grave insult. Niels didn't consider himself a tough man but felt himself at least sword worthy. The fact that Oreo obviously thought The Nihilist to be of such low ability made him hate the young man ahead of him. He was Niels The Nihilist Henriksen and he deserved to be treated like a real threat.

The human trafficker began grinding his teeth and grimacing at this latest annoyance. Oreo had made him feel small and insignificant. Normally, the black clad man would have shrugged such a empty threat off but he was having a bad enough day to warrant killing one more person.
"You are several different shades of stupid, do you know that?"

Niels non-nonchalantly put his hands in the pockets of his black coat and pulled out a red pill out of each and squeezed them until the capsules broke and the red dust inside was released into his palms. His left hand flashed to the side leaving a toxic pink could in it's wake which in the past had incapacitated people much stronger people than this idiotic child who strayed too far from safety.

Concealed in the red cloud was a straight punch aimed directly at Oreo's nose.



THREAD ABANDONED.