One Piece of a Battle Tactician [Discontinued]

The Trial by Orbs/Balls

Once we start this trial in our little boat on the smaller "Milky Road," we soon enter a giant forest, steering past posts that say, "God." Just then, huge blade pendulums start swinging at us, -and I mean GINORMOUS!- and we're doing our best to paddle and dodge all of them. As we're maneuvering past the blades, Luffy yells, "Gum Gum... BAZOOKA!!" as he hits one of the blades behind us and blasts us past the rest of the pendulums.

Then, a giant Lamprey Eel tries to attack us, but Sanji took care of it. "That was way too scary!" I exclaim while breathing heavily. Then, we see a stone statue with four openings with writing above each one. "Trial of Iron, Trial of Swamp, Trial of String, and Trial of Orbs?" Sanji wonders, "Which one do we choose?" "I doubt any of them will be easy," I suggest, "but the Trial by Iron sounds way too dangerous, and we're already racing against the clock here.

So, Luffy says that we should choose the "Trial by Orbs" mainly because it sounds fun to him. As we enter the tunnel for the Trial of Orbs, Sanji tells Usopp to open his eyes when steering, even though it's still pretty dark even with our eyes open, that is until I used my Fruit ability and made my head act like a Lamp Dial. Just then, Luffy suggests, as the three of us listening to him wonder what the flarg (A/N: My censored version of the "f" word.) he's talking about, "There were four entrances, right? Maybe some hit and some miss! ...If you miss... Oh! You'll fall off of Sky island." As Sanji and Usopp yell at him for saying that, we start to exit the tunnel, and I say to them worryingly, "Uh, guys!" while pointing outside. There we see that the path we chose goes straight down, and we went deadpanned and buggy-eyed at this. And then, we start falling from the cloud-fall until we splash below.

Sanji and I hit Luffy a whole lot for maybe saying all that misleading crap on purpose. Then, we look at our surroundings, and we see a lot of cloud balls or orbs. Sanji starts steering and tells the rest of us to be on the lookout from the other directions, although Luffy and Usopp begin playing with one of the cloud orbs. But get this, after touching the ball, a snake burst out from it. Luffy kicked it away, but when Sanji tried kicking one in front of us away, it explodes in our faces!

As the four of us exclaim, "WHAT THE HELL'S GOING ON WITH THESE ORBS?!!," we hear someone explain that these things are called "Surprise Clouds." There we see one of the four priests of this place, and he seems to be really happy about something.

Luffy tries to punch him with a "Gum Gum... Pistol," but the priest dodges the attack and somehow sends our captain flying into a tree with a smack in the face.

A little flabbergasted by that, I see Sanji go for a kick, but the dude predicts his movements, plus dodges it, and explains that it's because of something called "Mantra" before sending our cook flying too. The priest then does the same thing to Usopp, but thanks to my special gift, I predicted the priest's movements too, and dodged his "Impact," whatever that might be. Although, I had to get off the boat to dodge it. "The shock wave causes damage directly... inside the body!!!" he explains to the ones he hit.

I land by the other three and ask if they're okay. "That bastard... What the hell is going on...?!!" Sanji wonders as Luffy answers, "No idea! I just know he's really strong!" The priest then introduces himself as Satori and says, "The Vearth in the Forest of Illusions is under my control." plus telling us that our boat is an illusion too as the boat starts moving by itself.

"From now on, it will drift aimlessly on the Milky Road... and will eventually exit this forest by itself. I'm sure you already understand, but without this Dial boat, you can't get to the Sacrificial Altar. You have to get back on board before it leaves. Of course, these Surprise Clouds and I will not allow you to succeed..." Satori explains more, "Welcome to the forbidden holy land, Upper Yard... Hoh!! In this Forest of Illusions, the chance of survival is 10%!! It's the Trial of Orbs!!!"

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A/N: 806 words. Sorry for another short chapter.