Scale 5.15
Bryce Kiley
2010, December 25: Brockton Bay, NH, USA
I had my doubts. Lineage factors, as explained by Dr. Vegapunk in One Piece, were very similar to DNA in some respects. And yet, they were also wildly different in others. They allowed the good doctor to do things that should be outright impossible.
I finally unlocked the strongbox and allowed Amy to peer inside. Even Sabah pulled her attention away from her new costume to take a peek.
Even "unflavored" as it was, the devil fruit looked like nothing else on earth. It was as large as a grapefruit and I knew from experience that it felt much the same. It was a sickly green, as if unripened, with whorls and grooves that drew the eye in mesmerizing patterns.
Sabah reached out and almost poked it but stopped, pausing as though she were afraid it might grow teeth and bite her. "So… This can turn you into a furry?"
I snorted. "Yes, Sabah, that's what we're talking about."
"And you're going to stick to herbivores? Like bunnies?"
"That's probably a safe bet, yes."
She looked at the fruit, then up at me with a disapproving frown. "Bryce, did you make this so you could make yourself a bunnygirl?"
Amy, who'd been reaching for the fruit, froze. She then burst into laughter, hard enough to damn near fall off her chair. "Hahahahaha! Bryce! You're a furry!"
I looked to the skies. Surely, if Christmas was the Lord's holy day, he'd deign to answer a humble prayer on today of all days? "God, give me patience…"
Sabah smiled apologetically. "Sorry, but that was too easy. I guess you could say it was… low hanging fruit…"
"I feel like your sense of humor's gotten worse lately, Sabah."
"It's because I've been hanging out with my little brothers more. They're on winter break too and it's now my problem."
"Ugh, whatever. I refuse to be ganged up on in my own lab." So saying, I did the only thing I could: I distracted the Amy with a fruit-shaped tumor. "Catch."
Amy.exe shut down. It was honestly a little freaky to watch.
One moment, she was snarking at me like the usual snark-goblin she was. The next, her hands closed around the devil fruit and her face went blank. If I carried her into a wax museum, no one would ever know she was human.
Sabah looked at Amy, then at the fruit in her hand. She asked nervously, "Umm, Bryce? Was that supposed to happen?"
I shrugged helplessly. There wasn't much I could do. If I took it away, Amy would probably try to bite me or something. And we'd be right back to square one whenever she got around to touching the fruit again. Better to just wait out whatever pseudo-tinker fugue this was.
"I mean, probably? Amy's Shard, the source of her power, is examining the devil fruit. And I guess she really likes what she's seeing."
"The source of her power… is a 'she?'"
"Kinda? I'm pretty sure Queen Shaper doesn't have a gender, strictly speaking, but the nomenclature is feminine. For example, the most important Shard is called Queen Administrator."
And wasn't that a doozy by itself. I'd been pushing back the "Taylor Question" for months now, partly because I genuinely had other concerns, and partly because I wasn't sure of my answer.
Sabah must have seen something in my expression because she said, "Bryce… Are you starting a cult? Should Sisi know about this?"
"No, I'm not starting a cult. I just happen to have a lot more insight into parahuman science than most, okay?"
"So… Why 'queen?' Are Shards like bees?"
"Oh, that's easy. It's because…" I raised a finger, then put it down. "Well, they're not eusocial insects…"
Shards didn't have genders; neither did entities. Strictly speaking, the Warrior's avatar, Scion, was masculine so his most important Shards should be "kings," not "queens." And it wasn't like Shards could be "trans" in the conventional sense anyway.
It took me this long to realize that I didn't know why they were called that. Eden's Queen Administrator analog, held by Eidolon, was called the High Priest. Meaning that at some point, Wildbow completely abandoned the royal nomenclature altogether.
Then again, the only person in-story to call Taylor's Shard "queen" was Glastig Uaine from what I could remember. It could have been that the Fairy Queen slapped the Shard with the royal epithet because she saw parahumans as avatars of the Shards themselves. That was how her "ghosts" manifested. Taylor was a girl, ergo her Shard must also be feminine. Likewise for Amy.
Or… Or was Amy's Shard a "queen" at all? I wasn't sure. It'd been long enough that there was a decent chance the notation came from a reddit post or something. My memory was good, but it wasn't eidetic outside of my tinkertech blueprints.
I hummed in mild confusion. It didn't matter in the end; I was thinking way too hard about an ultimately inconsequential subject. But I could hardly tell Sabah that the grimdark-loving, anarchistic author of her universe decided the names on a whim.
"Huh… You know, I'm not sure why either," I finally settled.
"So… Amy? She's okay?"
"She'll be fine. She's just having a nerdgasm about the grapefruit-shaped tumor on her lap."
"You make it sound so disgusting," she said, scrunching up her nose cutely. "Actually, do these things have a flavor?"
"Not really? Like apples, I guess? I'm not sure because I've never eaten one. Original devil fruits taste terrible, but SMILES tasted fine, so who knows?"
"Huh…" Sabah leaned forward. Her finger inched towards the fruit. I could see her twitching with curiosity. "What would happen if I touched it? Amy's wearing my bracelet."
"You'd probably zone out, too. Then again, maybe Shaper could use your power to increase the rate of analysis somehow? No, that's not right. It's not like the Shard's getting any new information because you happen to be touching the fruit as well."
"So… We just wait?"
"You can touch it if you're curious. It's not dangerous or anything. But yeah, I think the best possible thing for us to do right now would be to wait for Amy's Shard to finish analyzing the fruit. Amy should have her body back then and we can talk about what animal we should flavor the fruit with."
"It sounds so gross when you put it like that. Like, what if we input a banana?"
"A banana zoan?" I scratched my head. I couldn't recall a single plant-based zoan. Presumably, it wasn't possible. "No, I think a certain degree of autonomy is necessary from zoans. We can do non-threatening animals though."
"Like bunnies? I'm still not one hundred percent convinced you didn't do this to make yourself a bunnygirl," she said with a teasing smile.
"I'm not a furry, no matter how cute Carrot was."
"Who?"
"Nothing. You keep bringing it up and I'll be convinced that you want a bunnygirl."
"Definitely not!" Her cheeks darkened noticeably. Given her caramel skin tone, that I could see the shift at all was telling.
"Sabah, telling your best friend's little brother about your fetishes isn't appropriate," I said, clicking my tongue chidingly.
"Nope. No. Playboy is demeaning to women and takes advantage of models with exploitative contracts."
"But we're not talking about an adult entertainment company. We're talking about someone who's given the agility, acceleration, and heightened senses of a bunny. As well as the perky ears and fluffy cottontail, of course," I said, grinning like a shark. I smelled blood. "Let's call this the 'authentic, ethically sourced' variety of bunnygirl."
She took a deep breath. She exhaled slowly. "Okay. Truce. Let's agree that bunnygirls are cute and leave it at that."
"Sure. We'll never bring this up again. I should also scratch rabbits off the list of potential flavors."
"Now, hold on, I didn't say that. Like you said, the enhanced senses alone would be extremely valuable. How strong is the brute package this fruit gives again?"
"Very, but also, very variable," I replied, smiling at my unintended alliteration.
It was a little hard to quantify. One Piece's humans were built different. Alvida got punched by Luffy past the horizon in episode one. Sure, Luffy was a monster and the protagonist, but Alvida was the definition of fodder. Yet, she not only survived getting turned into a meatball-rocket, she managed to find a devil fruit and show up in Loguetown shortly after.
And that was without any "buffs." No devil fruit prior to launch. No secret marine-exclusive martial arts training. Certainly no haki to speak of. Alvida was just a heavily obese woman who walked off an impact at terminal velocity. Point being, even "baseline" humans were wildly superhuman by the standards of a more grounded reality like Earth-Bet.
Sure, Lucci and his cohorts in CP9 were nuts. They did things that would make even Alexandria pause. But how much of that was their martial arts training and the unique constitution of humans in their world? How much of their combat abilities could really be attributed to the brute package from their fruits?
"It's substantial. I would say that even a relatively 'weak' animal zoan like a rabbit zoan would be considered a mid-tier brute and mover by the PRT's standards," I clarified. This would be a vast understatement if my devil fruits also granted them the physiology to learn the Rokushiki or comparable martial arts. I simply wouldn't know until I had proper samples, though.
"Then… What if we didn't look for the strongest animal that doesn't come with predatory instincts? Because I'm pretty sure that'd be an elephant or rhino."
"They were on my mind, yes. I was considering dropping by a zoo one weekend to collect DNA samples."
"Well, the best case would be if we could make a bunch of these and give them to people who don't have powers, but would otherwise make for good heroes, right?"
"That's one possibility, yes. We'll have to talk about how to best decide who gets a fruit."
"Sure. In that case, shouldn't we determine the animal based on other gifts it might have? Like the rabbit's sense of hearing."
"You raise a good point. Hold on, I think Amy's waking up," I said. I nudged her knee with my foot. "Ames? You hear that?"
She looked down at the zoan in her hands and gently placed it back into the box. "That's… You have no idea what you made, do you, Bryce?"
"I do, I'm just not as crazy about biology as you are."
"Still, that thing's awesome! It's completely worthless on its own, but it's like it's been tailor-made to interact with animal DNA. Once it takes on the DNA of an animal, it optimizes that potential to almost comical ideals. I can see why you said I should think about it more conceptually. If we put in a tiger, it's not an apex predator we'll be getting back, but the idealized, perfected version of whatever can be found in the wild, with a ridiculous brute package tacked on top."
I smiled and popped open a bottle of coke. Sabah made a come hither motion so I handed over the bottle and reached for another. We leaned back in our seats and listened to Amy nerd out over the devil fruit.
Eventually, even she had to peter out at some point. Once she did so, we finally got to talking about the fruit and what it could be used for. Alongside the humble bunny rabbit, we also considered dog, squirrel, and chicken for animals we could acquire without me having to leave the city.
We got a little sidetracked when I explained to them that my specialization had once presented itself to me as a series of Japanese comics. Therefore, the fruits' names were silly, and Japanese. Funnily enough, because "chicken" in Japanese was "niwatori," or "yard bird," and it was often referred to simply as "tori" for convenience, the chicken fruit would be called the Tori Tori no Mi, Model: Tori.
"Okay, so we're good on this?" I asked. I'd just finished tinkering with the strongbox's locking mechanism. Now, it'd open for Amy's thumbprint and passcode. "Amy gets the artificial zoan. She'll try flavoring it with something harmless first then report back."
Amy cradled the box like it was her firstborn child. "Are you sure I can't take it home with me?"
"Absolutely not. Your house is not secure," I shot down immediately. "You work on it here or not at all."
"Come on, I have a lock too, you know."
"You also have a sister who can snap said lock like a twig. If you zone out like that again, you won't be able to hide the devil fruit before Vicky barges in for whatever reason."
"Okay, fine. I want an invisible jetpack or something too, though. I want to be able to come here like Sabah can."
"Alright, I'll start on that. And if anyone asks why I made you tinkertech, we can just say The GOAT is reaching out to critical assets to offer them protection."
"I'm not sure if mom would go for that. She's kinda paranoid. I wouldn't be surprised if she still thinks Creed should go to juvie."
"Your aunt would, though. And if necessary, she'd overrule your mom. Photon Mom's the one who's really in charge of New Wave, anyway."
"True… Alright, let's do it that way. I'll send myself a PHO message as The GOAT then go from there."
"Alright. SAINT, can you take over after that?" I asked him. Amy could shitpost all she wanted as The GOAT, but for professional discourse, SAINT knew what I sounded like.
"Meanwhile, what will we be doing with this specialization?" Sabah asked me. "I think we should try for a bigger project. We have more than two weeks, right?"
"Right. Was there anything specific you wanted to make for your personal use?"
"The rocket dress," she said without hesitation. "Except, instead of a dress, we can attach a collapsable, hidden jetpack to my suit jacket. And Amy's costume, too."
"Should've known you'd go for the fashion-related one. Scarlet Overkill is pretty cool; I'll give you that."
"Right? I mean, I don't need the lava-nuke, or the bazillion guns she had in her dress, but a fold-out jetpack sounds pretty convenient. And I wouldn't need to learn how to do those crazy rollerblade tricks you do, either."
"Okay, why don't you draw up schematics for that? While you do that, I'm going to make all the different kinds of ray guns. I have the freeze ray, but there's also the one that shoots lava, the sonic keytar, and the shrink ray. The shrink ray will be my priority."
"Doesn't anything shrunk by that ray revert in a little while? The effect's duration is inversely proportional to mass, right? The Nefario Principle?"
"Exactly. The heavier the object, the less effective the shrink ray. Otherwise, it's an extremely versatile tool."
"Do I want to know what you're going to do with it?"
"I'm going to minutely shrink all of Sisi's pants and panties so she'll think she's getting fat," I replied with a straight face.
She snorted hard enough to dribble cola down her nose. Coughing, she slapped me on the shoulder. "Bryce! Don't do that!"
"Do what? Make you snort coke? Sabah! How could you? We're very anti-drugs on this team!"
"Don't wage psychological warfare on your sister! I can't believe I need to tell you that's wrong."
"Then stop laughing," I shot back.
"Ugh, you're worse than my brothers sometimes. I can't believe I thought Sisi had it easier than me."
"All little brothers are assholes to their big sisters and angels to their sister's friends."
"Ugh, whatever."
"Okay. We have our individual projects. It shouldn't take more than a week or so. While I'm at it, I'll work on setting up defenses around the lab. I can't rely on obscurity forever."
"But what about the materials? Wait, never mind. I forgot you can just wish stuff up now."
"Not quite, but close. It's why I want to establish our project pipeline now. That way, I can just make a long list of stuff we need and spend one night transmuting the metal around the ship into materials."
"Won't that destabilize the ship?"
"Don't worry, I'm taking the ship's structural integrity into account." I gestured to a nearby shelf, where a model ship rested in a place of prominence. "I built a scale model of the Thousand Sunny a while back. It's a ship made by an absurdly talented shipwright."
"That's a wooden boat. Galleon? Cravel? Whatever. Why would that help with a metal cargo ship like this one?"
"I didn't copy the Thousand Sunny because I wanted the boat. I copied the Thousand Sunny because I wanted Franky's expertise. His knowledge is worth way more than the ship could ever be. I know enough about shipbuilding to not have my base collapse on itself."
"Huh, clever. Okay, then what should we do with the final week?"
"I think we should work on a joint project together. I was thinking Dru's villain-mobile. If we work together, we could probably finish that in a week."
"Which one's…" Her brow scrunched up as she searched for the car I was talking about. Dru was Gru's twin brother and appeared in the third movie. "Oh, I know what you're talking about. Are you sure? Do we really need a supercar?"
I waved my hand back and forth. "Eh, kinda? It's a proof of concept. Eventually, I want to turn this entire ship into a mobile base. I've already started reinforcing certain key supports. The supercar is just a step up from my personal outfit."
"I see, so kind of like the wooden ship. You do want it to be full-size, right?"
"Of course, with all the bells and whistles."
"It stands out a lot though."
"We don't need it to look like a bright, golden racecar, Sabs. This specialization is all about inconspicuous things turning into lethal weapons."
"True. Oh, and the armoring on the car can take a tactical nuke! If we can repurpose that into something else later on, then…"
"Exactly. The car can also transform into a jet, boat, and even an underground tunneling rig. It can drive up vertical surfaces and has enough weapons to wage a war by itself. Hell, it's even a hybrid so I won't have to try very hard to outfit it with a soda engine."
"Maybe you can finally use a ramjet for its intended purpose then," she teased.
"That's the plan. While I'm at it, I have the Water Regalia. I might just turn it into a full submersible, too. Oh! And the Muggy Balls! I can rework them into proper missiles!"
Amy interrupted me. "Wait, hold on. Aren't those the super-bombs that can turn a high-end brute into chunky salsa even when they're the size of bullets?"
"Yup, they're about as efficient an explosive as I can make short of transmuting plutonium for myself."
"And you want to make them into missiles? How big are the missiles?"
I shrugged. "Eh, about the size of a person? It'd be more like a tactical nuke than a conventional–"
"No."
"But, Amy~" I whined. "An in-flight targeting software isn't that hard to code, really."
"Nope."
"And if we ever need to, SAINT can easily take over the targeting so it's not like I'll ever miss my target. I'll only hit things that I intend to hit."
"You just admitted that they're tactical nukes! 'Miss' is a very subjective word here!"
"S-class ordinance?"
She took a deep breath. "Alright, fine, but only S-class ordinance. As in, you better follow the law to the letter before firing one of those, Bryce."
"Yup. My missiles don't result in horrific fallout so they're much safer overall. Don't worry, I'm with you on this one. And I think even Sabah would be pissed with me otherwise."
"You'd be right," the older girl agreed. "It's kinda scary being able to build that kind of thing. I mean, I don't know what's inside a Muggy Ball, but I'm sure I can help you turn it into a missile and that's scary."
"See, Ames? Sabah can help you be my conscience."
Sabah nodded agreeably. Then, with a smile that wouldn't melt butter, she said, "On that note, wouldn't it be funny if our supercar could also spit lava?"
Amy groaned and threw her hands in the air. "Fuck it. Fine. Do what you want. I just want to know about any deployments."
"Yes, ma'am," we chorused, grinning like a pair of mad scientists.
Author's Note
I don't know where the bunnygirl conversation came from. I started writing this, realized One Piece had other sentients besides humans and fishmen, and then my mind went to minks. Which led to Carrot. It somehow ended up with Sabah being a furry.
No, it's not canon. It made me chuckle though so I kept it. I only realized after writing it that usually, the "horny lesbian" trope almost always gets dropped on Amy. Since we've yet to open that can of worms, Sabah gets to be the furry.
And yeah, I'm aware of Tamago, who ate the Tama Tama no Mi. But he's specifically the life cycle of an egg so I'm putting that up on the shelf with all the other "What the fuck, Oda?"s.
Animal Fact: Birds visit car washes. Well, kinda.
See, birds will sometimes pick up an ant and rub it against themselves. Some birds are known to lie flat in front of anthills with their wings spread, allowing the ants to crawl over them. This behavior is most commonly observed in the smart ones, like ravens.
This is thought to be because ants secrete formic acid. The ants will basically scour the birds' feathers, picking off parasites.
Thank you to everyone who paid for my groceries. I have a Patreon and Kofi with dozens of chapters written across my various stories. If you'd like to read ahead, receive more frequent updates, vote in monthly polls or even commission a chapter directly, check them out.