One Piece Fan Fiction ❯ Cursed Island of the Devil Fruit Gods ❯ Predator ( Chapter 13 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Chopper raced frantically away from the village and into the jungle as the enormous saber-tooth tiger Zoan soldier gave chase. Panting, he transformed back into his tiny form and tried to hide somewhere until he could think of a way to fight such a beast. But as trees feel as their trunks cracked, Chopper knew that hiding anywhere would do no good as the predator stalked him and eliminated any obstacle in its path. "I have no choice..." Chopper sighed, pulling out a Rumble Ball. "But I don't know how I'm going to win..."
"Found you!" the beast snarled, slashing at Chopper. Chopper narrowly avoided being slashed in half by leaping away and morphing into Walk Point to run away more quickly. Chopper chanced a glance back at his humongous stalker and got a gauge of how big it really was; if Lucchi had been big as a leopard-man, this beastly predator was twice as large as Lucchi in his full Zoan form. Focusing now on running full-pelt until he thought of something, Chopper became grimly aware that he was going to run out of breath before he thought of something that would help him win over an opponent that much bigger than himself.
"You'll never escape me, the great Nagaikiba! I am the greatest hunter in the village! You'll never find anywhere to hide, my nose is the sharpest on the entire island!" the beast bragged. "And I haven't snacked on deer in ages...even more reason that you'll never leave here alive!" he cackled.
Chopper was used to the crew treating him like, as Sanji called him, 'the emergency food supply', but hearing that from a stranger horrified him. He was approaching a mountain, he noticed, and he hoped beyond hope it wouldn't end up being a dead end. A steep downhill slope was coming up that would lead to the foot of the mountain, and Chopper thought he might have been able to use Jumping Point to leap from the top of the hill to a ridge on the mountain. But in the split-second it took him to transform into his tiny form and ready a Rumble Ball, Nagaikiba was on him and slashed his back. Chopper cried out in pain and was sent forcefully falling down the hill, which he now painfully discovered was full of sharp jutting rocks and protruding dead tree stumps and dried-up thorned vines. Giving a loud, triumphant roar, Nagaikiba was about to descend and devour his prey, when the ground began to shake. The mountain at whose base Chopper was now laying limp was apparently unstable, and an avalanche began to shower down at Nagaikiba's roar, burying Chopper in tons of rubble that not even Nagaikiba could burrow through.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOO! My prey! My triumphant feast has eluded me!" Nagaikiba mourned. Giving another angry roar, he stalked off back towards the village, determined to devour one of Chopper's friends in compensation.
Chopper had miraculously landed in a small burrow beneath the mountain and although he had avoided being crushed to death by the rocks, he was trapped, and not one of his forms could get him out of there. But as he began to cry softly, he smelled something through his sniffling. A familiar scent that, although overpowering and threatening to make him faint, gave him a small hint of hope...

Chopper knew he was dreaming. He was staring into Dr. Kureha's face. "What are you doing, Chopper?" she asked him. Chopper heard his own voice respond, but he wasn't speaking, he was listening to his dream-self talk. This was more than a dream...it was a memory.
"I want to go exploring and find more herbs to make medicines!" he responded to the 139-year-old witchy doctor.
"Ha! Stupid. You'll get yourself killed by avalanches and Rapan and hunters, you stupid fool." she said, taking away the bowl Chopper had been mixing things in and heading toward the fireplace with it.
"No, don't!" Chopper protested. "Please! It's my own medicine for myself!"
Dr. Kureha looked at him appraisingly. She sniffed it. "There's a lot of dangerous herbs in here." she told him. "I can smell hallucinogenic herbs and some slightly fermented things...You're not planning on selling this stuff to kids, are you?" she raised an eyebrow.
"Of course not!" Chopper shook his head frantically.
"Oh well...could've used the money." Dr. Kureha sighed, chuckling to herself.
"That's terrible!" Chopper said, taking the bowl back from her. "This is to make the Devil Fruit I ate even more powerful! I've been studying my body and I think that if I combine certain herbs and steroids I can increase my strength and speed, maybe even change the shape of my body to be more effective on my travels!" he explained. "I want to be the best doctor in the world just like Dr. Hilruk wanted! And if I'm strong enough to travel the world over I will find a cure for every disease there is!" he said determinedly.
"Hmm...not a bad idea. Too bad an idiot like you has to rely on yourself to do it." she taunted him. "Well, good luck. Just don't expect me to show you mercy if you end up making yourself lose your mind and I have to stop you." she said, taking an axe off the wall and throwing it at him, purposely missing, although it came extremely close, and stuck in the wall behind Chopper.
"I won't fail! I'll live up to Dr. Hilruk's reputation and be the greatest doctor in the world! I'll invent medicines no one's ever seen before and cure diseases that have no cures!" Chopper shouted after her as she left the room. "I...won't fail..." he kept saying silently to himself as he worked frantically, mixing more herbs into his early Rumble Ball formula. "There...almost done...now...just have to grind this up into it." he said, tying a cloth around his face so the smell wouldn't overwhelm him. He'd collected an herb that, when consumed by Rapan, he noticed, made them even more aggressive and bloodthirsty, to the point where they would attack each other. He wasn't sure why but after researching it, he found that it was an ancient plant that had gone extinct, even in Little Garden, but thanks to the freezing climate of Drum Empire, it lived on there. It was an herbal plant that awakened the primal urges of animals, making even a timid squirrel think back to its monstrous ancestors and causing them to go mad with their ancient ancestors' killer instincts. He had to keep it in a glass jar or the smell would even reach Dr. Kureha and she would make him throw it out; she'd tell him it was poisonous or something, just so he wouldn't use it.
"Here goes..." Chopper sliced it up, ground it up, and mixed it into the Rumble Ball formula. Finally a pale while powder was sitting at the bottom of the bowl, the scent still very overpowering but with a different, less unpleasant odor. Scooping it up into a pill capsule Chopper carried it out into the wilderness and closed his eyes. "Dr. Hilruk...please...make this work..." he prayed. He popped it into his mouth. His mind went slightly fuzzy. He watched as he began seeing double of everything. But along with that, came a sense that he was flying; or, failing that, that he was staring at the ground, which was now much further away from his face than before. He dropped to all fours as he felt his body lengthening and it disoriented him severely. He stumbled around feeling like he was going to faint and yet every step he took, or that he thought he took, made him feel the ground shaking beneath him like a tremor. He tried to speak, to scream for help, but all that came out was a monstrous roar that triggered avalanches in mountains miles away. Chopper looked down at his body, horrified, and saw that his hooves were all the size of Rapan, his legs as long as the trees around him, and his body as long as a small ship, just a bit smaller than the Going Merry. He tried to scream for help again, but yet another monstrous roar was uttered instead, and he began to move, creating a monstrous earthquake and cracking the ground with each step. He happened upon a nest of Rapan, and the savage rabbit monsters fled for their lives as he trampled through their home and crushed any number of them; he felt his mind slipping away with each passing minute now and wasn't sure of anything at all anymore. He rampaged throughout the woods and mountains for how long, he had no idea, until he completely blacked out.
He woke up back in his bed; apparently Dr. Kureha had found him and brought him home. "Well, I can only assume that was you causing all those avalanches and earthquakes. If you went anywhere near a village, I wouldn't have brought you back here, I'd have buried you instead." she told him.
"I-I'm sorry..." he told her, unable to move at all other than his eyes and mouth.
"Shut up and rest. Here." she tossed a book at him. "I think that might have something to help you improve your formula." she told him. It landed over his face and he twitched his nose until it was no longer covering his mouth so he could breathe.
"Thanks..." he sighed, his eyes going out of focus because the book was too close to his eyes. But squinting and trying hard to view it, the open page over his nose was exactly what the thought he needed; he saw the picture of a less rare, less volatile plant and a short description of it. "That's it..." Chopper smiled softly and fell back asleep. Sure enough, once he got his strength back and continued to work on his Rumble Ball, he'd found that particular herb that was a substitute for the plant that awakened primal instincts and omitted the latter from the recipe. From there, his Rumble Ball experiments went smoothly until he reached the result he knew worked best.

Chopper woke back up. He was running out of air, he realized; the rocks had shifted and he was in a place with little oxygen. "Oh, no..." he gasped. Feeling around in the dark, he felt the plants growing beneath the mountain, the hallucinogenic primal instinct awakeners. Grabbing a handful, he pulled a Rumble Ball from his medical bag. "Here goes nothing..." he trembled. Wrapping the plant around the ball he crunched into it and waited for something to happen. Groaning as he felt his body beginning to change, Chopper miraculously felt his mind staying intact. "Wait...maybe...maybe I can learn to control it..." he said hopefully. He didn't know if the formula for his Rumble Ball stablized the mental shutdown from the plant, or if he'd just worked out his transformations enough that he was able to control it subconsciously. At any rate, he was increasing in size and he headbutted the avalanche of rocks, scattering them everywhere. "NAGAIKIBA! I'm here! Come get me!" he announced, his voice booming. And with senses like Nagaikiba's, it wasn't difficult at all for the predator to know that his prey was still waiting for him.
Chopper emerged, smaller than he'd originally been when testing the plant, but he knew that if he became any bigger, there was no telling what would happen to his mind. "Hoof Point!" Chopper stomped his feet, now on all fours, his hooves being proportionally the largest parts of his body. He was now slightly larger than even Nagaikiba, and as the saber-tooth tiger man approached him, Chopper feared not, and engaged him. Caught off-guard, Nagaikiba, in his surprise, did not react in time to dodge Chopper's assault, a whirl-around kick with both back legs striking him squarely in the face. Blood gushing from his nose and with one of his long teeth now broken, Nagaikiba feared for his life as he found himself becoming the prey. He staggered back onto all fours, glaring at Chopper, wondering just how that was possible.
"You...truly are the Animal King." he growled at Chopper, who stared down at him.
"That's right, I am." Chopper thundered. "And I am tired of people trying to eat me!"
Chopper was beginning to experience the mind-altering effects of the plant, which was making him much less timid, and much more aggressive than he'd previously been in battle. Chopper stomped down hard with both front legs, the helpless Nagaikiba shrieking as he dashed away to avoid being crushed, and trying with all his strength to escape while the ground cracked and shifted beneath his feet. His body made him much more agile than Chopper's, so he was able to run away more quickly. But Chopper was not about to let him escape that easily.
"Giant Point!" Chopper announced, now fully engaged in using his new powers. Increasing his size until he completely dwarfed Nagaikiba, he crushed trees beneath his massive hooves and chased the cowardly predator further into the jungle, now hot on his trail, until even Nagaikiba began to run short on breath.
"N-no, stop...!" Nagaikiba begged.
But Chopper could not hear him. He could not hear anything. He had fainted on his feet, the strain of the transformation being too great for his mind and body to handle. Chopper fell forward, and landed squarely on top of Nagaikiba. Minutes later, Chopper reawakened, in his tiny form, and found himself laying on top of a badly injured man who he could only assume was Nagaikiba, outside of his Zoan form. "Oh...uh...sorry." Chopper climbed off of him. He guessed that his Rumble Ball prevented him from losing complete control in Giant Form, but it also forced him to lose consciousness so his body could return to normal. "At least that was better than turning into that monster at Enies Lobby again..." he said softly.
"But Mommy, I don't want to eat my vegetables..." Nagaikiba whined, clearly in a sleeptalking daze.
"I better go back to the village and see how the others are doing..." Chopper backed away from Nagaikiba, morphing into Walk Point to go back and collect his medical bag from where he'd left it near the mountain; it fell off during his transformation, and still had a few samples of that plant in there. Perhaps if he worked it into his Rumble Ball formula now that it was more stable, he could learn to completely control Hoof Point and Giant Point. Putting his medical bag back on, he raced back to the village, wondering how long he'd been gone, and how his nakama was faring against their foes. His body ached and throbbed all over; he wouldn't be of much help to anyone right now, he'd maxed out the potential size of his body and now he was paying the price. But at least he was still a doctor, and could treat their wounds if anyone was injured. He just hoped that that wasn't the case...