[Episode] Kaiju no Sumo

Quest Request:

The food chain is a brutal, merciless, and sometimes unpredictable thing; a triceratops munches at a bushel, and eats a foul, rotten-tasting fruit, and before it can even learn the nature of the power it has just devoured, it is eaten in turn. It was in this hunt that the cold, predatory, lizard would become something greater: a Kaiju.

Along its spine, rows of glowing blue crystals erupted from the dinosaur’s bones, protruding from beneath its thick and heavy scales. Its front arms, which would have normally been quite small and weak compared to the rest of the lizard’s body, grew in length and its talons were laden with jagged growths of the glowing crystalline material.

The rex was an adolescent, one who had ventured out from the Little Garden's more hostile and competitive center with hopes of establishing a “kingdom” of its own on the island's fringes. In the island's center, the adolescent tyrant would have to contend with monsters much stronger than itself; here in the forest near the Garden's South beach, the reptile was able to run rampant.

As the mutated monstrosity tramped through the underbrush, most of the forest’s smaller inhabitants fled away as quickly as they could; however one dinosaur stood proud in the face of the kaiju: an ankylosaurus with a thick, spiked, mace-like tail. Stomping its foot against the ground, the beast stood its ground and guarded its rightful turf against the strange-looking invader; the rex pressed onward without any regard for the lesser dino, with its new power the lizard knew itself to be the new king of this neck of the woods.

Swinging its tail toward the tyrannosaurus’ neck, the defender of the beach intended to bring the tyrant to its knees and crush the invader, but as the hammer came down on the spine of the creature – something unnatural happened; an attack that would have broken the neck of any ordinary tyrannosaurus was met with a resistant force that resounded out from the kaiju’s crystalline growths, the stones glowed bright blow, pulsing as the force was seemingly dispersed across the creature’s body.

The slashing of the rex’s claws and the gnashing of its gnarled teeth made short work of the mere beast that dared question its authority; having made an example of its greatest opponent in the island’s southern beach-bordering forest, the kaiju was quick to begin establishing its territory, gobbling up herbivores without second thought and stomping a nest into the forest floor.

Six Months Stranded

In the time that the pirates had spent trapped on the Garden of monsters, the land had changed them; where they had once worn the costumes of their various traditions, they now wore the tattered remains of their old wrestling uniforms, much of the pride and theatrics of being wrestlers had given way to survivalist savagery during their prolonged stay on Little Garden. A hefty chunk of dinosaur leg sat roasting on a spit, the scraggly-looking pirates sat at the edge of the firepit, their stomachs rumbling and their skin well-tanned from the bright sun above.

[npc=pirt]“How the mighty have fallen, eh Penelope?”[/npc] Satoru, the masked tiger, grumbled from beneath his lucha mask, slinking his shoulders over the log behind him and tilting his chin upward toward the ocean breeze.

The Shandian woman scoffed and turned away from her crewmates’ taunting, her nose upturned and her eyes shut closed, not even deigning his comment worthy of observing. She had led her crew well in their travels across the East Blue, they’d performed in almost every major city and had wrestled against some of the best; she’d known that she and her crew were ready to brave the Grand Line, and that it was only in this sea that they would be able to find more worthy opponents, greater audiences, and perhaps another shot at taking down the sky lord that had cast her out…

… what she hadn’t known was that one of the first islands that she and her crew voyaged to was a notoriously treacherous one: Little Garden, land of the dinosaurs, a deathtrap whose magnetic field ensured that it took an entire year to set the log pose to the next island. Ever since navigating here, she and her crew had been made to fight to survive.

The captain of the wrestling pirates remained silent, her first mate was quick to speak up on her behalf, “Satoru, you need not remind us time and time again of who is to blame for the situation at hand, we can only make the best of it.”

Standing almost nine feet tall, the man’s broad chest and burly shoulders were to be expected of a yokozuna, but the heft of his body had largely disappeared over his months of borderline starvation, now Sho was indistinguishable from an ordinary bodybuilder. The wrestler was moved to tears whenever he looked down to his toned, shredded, fatless, abdominal region; abs were a sumo wrestler’s shame.

Terry, a blonde, mustached, man wearing a pair of sunglasses, was honestly enjoying a break from keeping up the facade of being a wrestler. By allowing his more martial comrades to do the heavy lifting in putting dinosaurs into submissions, the “professional” wrestler had managed to carve out a niche of easy jobs for himself that made his stay on Little Garden feel like a tropical vacation; while the rest of the Wrasslin’ Pirates’ were eager to get a move on, Terry was content to rest and relax here for as long as he could.

[npc=misc]“I agree with Sho! Aside from the odd dinosaur bite here and there, things ain't half bad!”[/npc] Terry tanned and drank sweet milk from a coconut as he nodded in agreement.

[npc=pirt]“Of course you don't mind staying here Terry! You've barely lifted a finger against these things, let alone gone toe to toe with ‘em. I'm all for practicing and becoming better wrestlers but we aren't even in the same weight class as these things!”[/npc]

Before the group could bicker too much longer, a fearsome and horrible roar thundered out from the nearby palm trees. Sourced from some unseen creature the sound sent chills down the spines of the Wrasslin’ Pirates…

… yet still Penelope stood and walked toward the sound of the impending dino with a silent, proud, and stoic demeanor; with the strength of her colosseum-style wrestling she was certain of her ability to protect her crew.

King of the Monsters

Standing at the pinnacle of his dominion as he and his crew drifted onward into the Grand Line, Doji savored the air as he tied his crew’s flag to the pole at the top of the castle’s highest spire. Even the winds of these bolder seas were stronger, threatening to sweep the oni from his feet and send him plummeting to the ocean below.

“Alright! How does it look, Juri?!” The red oni called down to his adoptive sister.

“You put it on upside down dumbass!” The blue oni abandoned much of her typical politeness, frustrated that her brother (a blind man) had insisted on being the one to raise the flag.

“Yaha, yoops…” Doji stuck his tongue out sheepishly as a bead of sweat rolled down his forehead. After a moment he went about untying, and then retying one of the flag's tethers, “... is that better?”

“That's perfect! It's a shame you can't see it!” Juri cried, with a bit of mockery in her voice. Once her captain had secured the flag in place, she used the powers of her string fruit to bind it tightly to the pole; as long as Juri was nearby, the crew's banner would be nigh impossible to pull down.

Sliding down the rooftop, and landing on the walkway below, Doji descended to the same level as his crewmate, “Seems like the guys thought you did a good job with it!”

Doji beamed a wide smile toward Juri, he didn’t need to see his crew’s flag to know that Juri had managed to sew together something that had fulfilled the crew’s vision and given them a banner to stand behind; she’d even gone as far as to make use of the last red thread of Old Sutured Sail, the now destroyed fishing vessel that had carried him across the Blue Seas.

“Shut up Asakura-sama…” the blue oni blushed and turned away from her brother, she’d not received many compliments in her life and even now she hardly knew how to take one, “... I’m going back into the fortress, we’re getting close to that next island, the garden one? I hope you’re excited for plants I guess?”

“Hey, who knows?! Maybe they’ll be giant, killer, monster plants! Yoka-ka-ka-ka-ka-iii!”

Juri scoffed at her captain’s self indulgent cackling before descending into the hull of Gashadokuro, seeing the island on the horizon, she knew it wouldn’t be long before the castle landed and she had no interest in being on the exterior when it did so.

Doji was none the wiser as the castle drew near the land, whoever was working the levers within the ship, the legs of the walking fortress were deployed; as the sea beneath Gashadokuro grew more and more shallow, the vessel was eventually able to find its footing. The great and mighty footsteps of the thing were like that of a mechanical.colossus, miraculously they carried the enormous weight of the oversized castle, as well as all of the oversized pirates therein.

The red-haired oni hardly had time to react before the castle’s operator had settled upon an acceptable place to land the ship, holding on for dear life, Doji felt the weight of the structure trembling down into the earth below like a localized earthquake; each section of the fortress’ base that lodged itself in the earth shot tremors through the building, shingles flew down to the beach below, if the captain had not held himself tightly to the upper parapets, he too would have fallen.

Though the arrival of the Yokai was always tumultuous, it wasn’t long before the castle had settled in, and the sibling oni of the crew who were sent to scout out the island’s beach quickly began marching down along the island’s Southern shore.

Match 1: Lady Muscle vs. Kaiju

Though one of the virtues of her wrestling discipline was the mental conditioning it had instilled in her, Penelope was still astounded by what she saw leap out of the underbrush, in a rare display of fear the stone-faced woman’s mouth dropped agape and her eyes bulged out of her head. It took the wrestler a moment to regain her composure in the face of the monstrosity she saw: a tyrannosaurus rex unlike any she and her crew had fought up until now, glowing spines adorned its body like crystalline armor, and the thing’s eyes gleamed with an almost sapient intelligence as the giant lizard began charging toward her.

She was only a Shandian, smaller than most humans, but still her body carried an enormous amount of strength, as the kaiju snapped its jaws down toward her the wrestling woman caught its mouth and wrangled its snout shut. Turning the weight of the monster against itself, Penelope was able to suplex the dinosaur over her shoulders, sending it crashing down into the sand of the beach; in her time stranded on Little Garden, she had learned how to employ her techniques against creatures much larger and heavier than herself, she had been forced to in order to survive.

The ground trembled as the impact of the creature shot through the earth, in truth – the ground rumbled for a little bit too long; but the wrestlers were too invested in the outcome of the battle between their captain and the strange dinosaur to notice the massive castle that had appeared just over the treeline. Though the wrestler’s throw had been mighty and had thoroughly rattled the kaiju’s bones, she had not seized her opportunity to put the lizard into a submission, and as quickly as she had put it down the monster was back on its feet.

The adolescent monstrosity retaliated against the wrestling captain with a devastating swipe of its tail, as its crystalline spikes struck the woman a loud humm echoed out across the beach causing the sands to dance and ripple, the crystals on the dinosaur’s body glowed brighter and pulsed with a dwindling blue light.

The impact of the giant lizard’s attack left the woman with a broken arm and several broken limbs; while she wholly espoused the discipline of colosseum wrestling, at the end of the day she was still an athlete who fought in accordance with a set of rules, against the cold mind of the dinosaur the only rule was the law of survival of the fittest.

[npc=pirt]“Damn it! You’re not going to fail us now captain! Get back up!”[/npc] Satoru’s words of encouragement fell on largely deafened ears, the luchador wasn’t aware of the true extent of his captain’s injuries; the woman had wrestled with dinosaurs before, but this thing was different.

Penelope coughed up a mouthful of blood in her attempt to speak, if she could have mustered up the words she would have told her crewmate to bite it and fight the thing himself, as it stood she barely clung to consciousness. Summoning all of her strength, the wrestler hobbled back to her feet.

With only one of her arms still functional, Penelope’s only viable wrestling moves were risky – she’d have to find a way to wrap her legs around the giant lizard’s throat and choke it out. Glaring up to the dinosaur, the woman adopted a wide stance and prepared to attempt her greatest feat of strength yet; the creature’s cold eyes seemed to glare back at her as she squared up against it and defied it yet again.

Taking a deep breath, the woman steadied herself as much as her battered body would allow.

The tyrannosaurus lunged mouth-first down toward her.

Resting until her moment to strike, the wrestler flipped her body upward into the creature’s neck as it charged toward her, kicking its mouth shut and stomping a nasty-looking dent into the thing’s windpipe. The dinosaur was sent reeling, stumbling backward along the beach’s sands; the woman had managed to attack the kaiju in one of the few holes in its newfound defenses, though much of its body had gained the protection of the resonating crystals, its fleshier soft bits were still plenty vulnerable.

The kaiju instinctively knew that it could recover from the injuries that it had sustained, the prey had put up enough of a fight that the lizard knew it best to lurk around the wounded animal and strike when it was weakest and most vulnerable. With this, the large lizard retreated into the underbrush, absconding with the wrestler’s dinner on its way.

With the honorable contest’s outcome decided (though done so through decisively dishonorable methods on the part of the dinosaur), Sho ran to help his captain, picking her up over his shoulders and carrying her over to the wrecked remains of their encampment.

Beach of Giants

Not long after the strange beast had battered their captain and left into the woods with their meat, the Wrasslin’ Pirates were none too pleased as another group of giant monsters encroached toward their fire pit. These creatures were something even more dangerous and mysterious than the dinosaurs though, they were other humanoids; either the pirates might have a chance of escaping the island, or their journey was about to end at the hand of a pair of giant horned creatures.

Sho stood between the rest of his crew and the horned demons marching down the beach, if they had any plans of causing further harm to his wounded captain or the rest of the pirates then they would have to get through him; in his role as helmsman and first mate, the sumo wrestler served as one of the crew’s most steadfast defenders.

The man spoke up to the monsters with a calm tone masking his anxiety, “who are you people? Are you trapped here too?! If you’re looking for supplies you’re out of luck, a dinosaur just made away with all of the meat from our last hunt. I have to warn you – if you come any further you’re going to have to wrestle!”

A bit of bickering could be heard between the two large figures before one of them spoke up, a red-haired monster with pale, almost lifeless, eyes, “I’ve not wrestled properly before. Please enlighten me!”

Dropping his sheathed sword to the beach, Doji rolled up his sleeves and walked toward Sho before dropping his legs into a wide stance.

Sho smiled and punched his hand, if the oni intended to kill him, it was at least being sporting about it. As he readied himself to teach the brute a lesson, the sumo couldn't help but wish he had more weight to throw around.

“You've done well already boy!...” After throwing cleansing salts across the battleground, the wrestler revealed his empty palms to the blind man, proving himself to be weaponless, “... we fight with our hands, but don’t rely on anything as complex as striking or dirty tricks! No – wrestling is about something more pure! It’s a test of pure strength and who can best apply it!”

“Yaha! I've got more strength than I know what to do with, little man! That's why I had to come to the Grand Line. I'm searching for one of the only senseis who can help me get any stronger in the art of kenjutsu – but wrestling, I'm curious to see what this technique is that doesn't rely on the striking of the fist!”

“Try it then boy! Try to make me submit with nothing but your bare hands!”

“Okay…” Doji lunged down at Sho with his arms outstretched like the wings of some great hack, bringing them in toward the man in an attempt to wrap him up in a violent hug, “... how's this for ya?!”

The weight of the 17-footer was impressive even for a monster of his stature; though the red-haired amateur appeared lanky and skinny, it was as though his bones and muscle were made out of a dense, heavy, metal. It took all of the sumo’s strength to wrangle one of the oni’s incoming arms and throw it past himself, ordinarily this technique would have sent the target toppling to the ground.

But Doji remained on his feet, sliding his thrown weight along the sands of the beach below.

“Ha! Not half bad kid!” Sho threw himself toward Doji like a cannonball with the intention of knocking the brobdingnagian on his ass.

Catching the wrestler’s weight in one palm, Doji was able to deflect the tackle, “ya know, this is pretty fun! But why did you try to throw me back then! I thought you said this was a contest of pure strength!”

A crazed look filled the sumo’s eyes, he was starting to enjoy himself; his opponent was more like a curious (if not a bit arrogant) student, not a merciless invader trying to kick him and his crew while they were already down.

“It is a contest of pure strength, my boy! I never told you whose strength you had to use!”

“Yaha! So you chose mine!...” Doji chuckled to himself before comedically flexing his skinny arms, “... truth be told, I don’t blame ya! I’d choose to use my strength too!”

With this, the red-haired oni went in for another hug against his opponent. The wrestling match continued back and forth for hours, though the devil lacked any true skill in the art, the sheer strength and determination of the troll made him impossible to put into a submission. In his hours of disciplined unarmed combat against Sho, Asakura Doji came to understand the basics of sumo wrestling, and managed to impress the heavyweight champion with his unwavering tenacity. In the end, Sho was the first to collapse of the two as they both fell unconscious due to exhaustion.

Later in the evening…

As he roused back to consciousness, Doji was surprised to hear the sound of Juri, Nietzche, and a group of voices that he couldn’t recognize chatting amongst themselves. By the coolness of the air, he could tell that he had been asleep for quite some time, if it wasn’t for the nearby warmth of a bonfire he’d be quite chilly.

Coughing up a bit of phlegm and sputtering back to life, Doji made his presence known to the crowd.

“Oh good, he’s awake!” Nietzche rushed over to check on his captain.

“Oy – what are you doing down here, man? I thought you wanted Juri and I to make sure everything was safe down here…” the oni couldn’t help but trail off as he struggled to regain his bearings and wipe the sleep from his (permanently) cloudy eyes.

“Yeah, well then you went and passed out Asakura-sama…” Juri called over the human doctor’s shoulder as he checked Doji’s vitals, “... plus the rest of these puny humans started freaking out once they heard that I was going to get you a doctor. Their captain was worse off than either of you two, she got her ass beaten trying to wrestle some freaky dinosaur with crystals growing out of it.”

Though he had been the first to fall in their contest of strength, the sumo wrestler had returned to consciousness about an hour prior, his smaller body affording him a faster recovery time.

“We’d all be screwed if it weren’t for you and your crew…” Sho spoke to Juri before turning to Doji, “... and you, I’m proud to have wrestled against ya, boy! You’re a natural talent, with strength like that I’m sure you’ll be a fine wrestler!”

“Yoka-ka-ka-ka-ka-iii!...” Doji couldn’t help but laugh as he stood up to his feet and cracked his shoulders, “... you know, I’m not a wrestler, I’m a swordsman – but I’ll humor ya. What’s the deal with this crystal dinosaur? While we’re here on Little Garden, I’ll keep my sword sheathed and practice this discipline so that I never find myself lacking if I have to wrestle again!”

“That’s the spirit boy!”

Juri, still blushing from the sumo wrestler’s compliment, regained her composure before chastising her brother, “don’t you think we’ve helped these little people more than enough, I’m tired of taking care of these humans’ problems.”

“I’m not a human...” Penelope muttered up to the blue-haired xenophobe, “... not that it matters all that much, but do you think you can find it in the pit of your cold bitchy heart to allow your brother to help us?!”

She was not usually moved to anger, but the blue oni’s ceaseless slights against her human crewmates had long outworn their welcome.

“Ha! I’ll do whatever I want! What are you, anyways?” Juri shouted down to the Shandian woman.

Throwing the cowl off of her shoulders, the woman revealed her strange appearance to the oni, her upper body was covered in tribal tattoos – but more bizarrely, a small pair of wings sprouted from the woman’s back, as though she was some sort of vestigial angel.

“I’m Shandian, born of the sky…” a small, circular, shell-shaped, necklace hung from the woman’s neck as she spoke; a reject dial, a token that had been passed down to her by her ancestors, “... if your captain is a swordsman and wishes to put his blade down now and fight as a wrestler, then I can only encourage him to do so entirely; but regardless, any help that he can offer in dealing with that monstrous creature and perhaps freeing us from this island is greatly appreciated.”

“Tch – fine, but I don’t know who said anything about helping you off the island…” Juri turned away from Penelope before turning back to her brother, “... do whatever you want Asakura-sama, but don’t get us too caught up in these petty affairs.”

It was at this moment that a stampede of dinosaurs began pouring out from the underbrush toward the pirates’ meeting; the cascade of reptilian beasts consisted mostly of flying creatures such as archeopteryx and pterosaurs, but amongst the smaller terrestrial creatures that were headed toward the encampment was what looked to be a “family” of three dinosaurs of the same species.

The blue oni was overcome with a seeming motherly instinct toward the creatures as they stomped their way down the beach, sharing an empathetic look with one of the “parents” Juri reached her hand out toward the creature with tears in her eyes. It was strange, the girl had much more empathy for members of the animal kingdom than for any human; while humanity had been perpetually unkind to the oni girl, animals were innocent in the monster’s distorted worldview.

The mother fukuititan nuzzled the oni girl's hand, even the sight of oversized humanoids was a welcome reprieve in the face of the terror that the dino mother and her family had just been subjected to. Though she could not speak, the creature’s demeanor seemed to cry for help to the wrestlers and the Yokai.

Juri turned back to her brother and spoke informally, snot hanging out of her nose, her face covered in tears, “I changed my mind – Doji, p-please beat up whatever shitty lizard has been mean to these sweet, precious, babies!”

The girl couldn’t help but hurl herself over the body of the smaller fukuititan and hug it, it was so cute, and so sad…

… Doji found his adoptive sister’s sudden mood swing a bit curious, but he himself had always been prone to violent emotional changes, so he did his best to understand her plight.

“Don’t worry Juri, I’ll make sure that all of these creatures have a place to go back home to,” walking forward away from fire in the direction that the dinosaurs were fleeing from, a resilient flame roared in Doji’s heart as he readied himself to stand in the face of the scaly tyrant.

Match 2: Yokai vs. Kaiju

As the red-haired oni made his way into the Southern forest of Little Garden, the dinosaur that had been terrorizing the beachside quickly made itself apparent; stomping toward the troll that dared impose on its newfound turf, the Kaiju was ready to prove that it was ready to take a bite out of Little Garden and stand up against anything unwise enough to challenge its rule.

If the blind man could have seen the monster standing in front of him, perhaps he would have been frightened; but as things stood, Doji faced the monster head on. The feeling in the air recalled a memory in Doji’s mind, a childhood day in which he had ventured down to the mountain village to meet with his friend Ai, but on his way down the trail.the child encountered a wild dog.

The tension in the air was palpable. One of the creatures was going to bite.

In the human-oni’s childhood, he had struck the beast down with a clenched fist; but now that he was an adolescent he had grown tired of using the simplest approach to any given problem, if he’d wanted to he could have simply picked up his sword and likely dismembered the dinosaur, but this was just the beginning of his rampage into the Grand Line – to slaughter the beast so efficiently would be unsportsmanlike and artless.

Doji braced himself for the impending impact of the dinosaur, Sho said that wrestling is a contest of strength, but you don’t just have to use your own – I wonder…

As the t. rex charged him he emptied his mind of all distractions, and as though passing by the branches of a cherry tree Doji’s body seemed to glide in parallel with the monster’s attack, coming to the end of his evasive step the wrestler found himself in perfect position; with a turn of his wrists along the creature’s back and underbelly, Doji turned all of the momentum of the dinosaur’s lunge further beyond its intended destination and sent the kaiju hurtling into a tree.

… I wonder if I even have to use my own strength at all.

The foliage gave way against the large lizard’s weight, and the monster destroyed several more trees as it picked itself back up to its feet.

“Is that really the best you can do?!”

The reptile couldn’t understand what the horned humanoid was saying, but it knew in the deepest reaches of its soul that it was being disrespected. Even though it had gained a strange power, even though its opponent was likely not much older than itself, it was still losing to a mere ape?

Standing back up to its full height, the kaiju prepared to charge Doji again; in turn, the oni once more emptied the tension in his shoulders and readied himself to catch the creature in a throw. With its lack of tactical thinking, the beast fell for the exact same trick, and was forced to headbutt a large boulder.

The match unfolded like clockwork from this point onwards, the kaiju would stumble back to its feet and charge Doji before being thrown into a nearby object, and all the while the red-haired oni was hardly forced to exert any energy as he turned the dinosaur’s enormous strength against itself. For the spectators amongst the Yokai and Wrasslin’ Pirates that had gathered, the one sided assbeating of the creature that had terrorized them and stolen their food was cathartic to watch; for Sho in particular, he was proud to see how well and how quickly the lessons he had imparted on his student had sunk in.

Though all of the humanoids were happy to watch the fight unfold, there was one creature that was not…

… barging out of the forest depths, a smaller, cuter, tyrannosaurus interposed herself between the two fighters. She couldn’t stand to watch her lover kill himself against the graceful and skilled fighter for any longer.

Doji dashed back a couple of steps, anticipating an attack from the intruding lizard, but none came; it was as though the two creatures had begun gently fighting with one another as soon as the smaller of the two lizards had involved itself in the fight. After the couple’s dispute was put to rest, the creatures looked toward Doji with the best approximation of “puppy-dog” eyes that their reptilian pupils could approximate.

The oni was blind to the lizards’ plea for mercy and began walking toward the monster; if it had run out of strength of its own, then Doji would be free to employ his full strength against it without resistance.

“Wait!...” Juri cried from amongst the spectators, she was embarrassed with her affection for weird animals, but she couldn’t stand to see her brother destroy the funky-looking thing, “... that’s its girlfriend! You’re really gonna beat it up in front of its girlfriend?! Let him off with a warning this time little bro!”

All of the Wrasslin’ Pirates stared daggers at the blue oni’s plea for mercy; they all wanted to see the red-haired creature deliver an epic finisher to the creature, to restore their crew’s honor in one act of wrestling glory.

“Juri, I don’t know why you’re getting so invested in the love lives of these lizards, but fine.”

With a sweeping motion of his hand that caused a gust of wind to bluster in its wake, Doji pointed away from the direction of the beach; he didn’t know exactly where he was pointing but in truth, it was toward the center of the island.

Even in their primitive minds, the tyrannosauruses knew what the red-haired man’s gesture meant – he was telling them that they were no longer welcome to rule over the Southern beach of Little Garden, that this section of forest would not be a land in which they could carve out total and unchallenged dominance amongst the lesser beasts of the island’s coast.

Sulking, and hanging their heads low, the t. rex couple began their shameful return back to their “parents house” back in the center of the land of dinosaurs.

As Doji returned from the match victorious, all of the pirates cheered, even the fukuititans couldn’t help but bray in exaltation of the young wrestler’s expert performance; even in facing a monster like that, he’d hardly broken a sweat. However the news that his fellow pirate captain was quick to inform him of was more concerning, and just hearing it caused a bead of sweat to roll down the oni’s forehead.

“So you know you’ll be stuck here for a year right? We’ve been waiting for our log pose to set for about half a year now, that’s what’s really special about this island. If it were just dinosaurs that would be one thing, but no, it’s dinosaurs and you can’t leave the place. How ‘bout that?”

Penelope seemed a bit more at ease as she spoke with Doji now that the rex had been bested, it was as though a bright red star of hope had appeared on her otherwise dark and desperate horizon; but still, she had no idea how even her strange new allies could escape the island’s clutches.

“A year?! You’re kidding! I don’t have a year to waste beating up dinosaurs, I have to find my mother’s swordmaster and lead my crew into the New World!”

“Right, you’re a swordsman…” the Shandian woman spoke with a cold tone and a look of shame in her eyes, “... have you ever thought about a change in career path? You’d be a damn good wrestler.”

“Yaha! Thank you! But when it comes to swords I want to be the best!”

“Do you really mean that?”

An awkward silence passed between the two as Doji thought more deeply on his words.

“I do. I want to be the best.”

“You should give up on that dream now. All you’re doing is cutting yourself a pathway toward an early grave, you think there aren’t plenty of other swordsmen who want the same thing as you, to be the best? Not everybody can be the best, only one person gets to be. And the person standing at that pinnacle…” Penelope trailed off before Doji finished her sentence for her.

“... is gonna be me!” Pointing toward his face with a single thumb and a stupid grin, Doji walked back to the beach with the rest of the pirates, retrieving his sword and stashing it in his belt before beginning to brainstorm a way to escape the island.

“Doji, I believe our ship operates on a lattice of eternal poses rather than the traditional method employed by pirates not so fortunate as to have ehm – pulled a giant castle out of the ground…” Nietzche chatted up to his captain nonchalantly, he knew that he and his crew would be find, but he did have some sympathy for the pirates who had been marooned on the hostile island for an entire half of a year; he couldn’t help but wonder whether they would be able to survive for the rest of it, “... is there anything you suppose we can do to help these people?”

“Boo! Leave ‘em in the dust! We already solved their dinosaur problem, let’s just get a move on!” Juri hollered from down the beach as she began walking toward Gashadokuro. As she did, the dinosaurs that she had treated so kindly seemed to follow along with her; the nest of the fukuititans had been destroyed, and so they turned to the only home that they could see: an enormous castle fit for the giants.

“Do you think maybe we could just tow them to the next island? We have enough rope right?” Nietzche spoke the idea nervously up to his captain.

As soon as Juri was completely out of earshot, Doji turned back down to his crewmate and whispered, “yeah that’s fucking brilliant, let’s do it.”

And so it was, with a bit of stealth on the part of the Wrasslin’ Pirates, that they were able to catch a ride along with the Yokai Pirates in their impending voyage to Drum Island. As the crew departed from the island, they couldn’t help but feel as though something more terrifying than the monster they had faced in battle was eyeing them from below; if it could have, the true king of the kaiju would have tried to rip the Yokai to shreds, but it wasn’t long before the castle had departed from the derelict island and began walking out into the ocean.

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