Khepri, A Shard's Proxy Heart (Worm AU/Alt-Power)

[TheMonotonePuppet]

A Tale Of Two Assassins! Tragic Death!
​

There is a cost in order for a powerful force like Queen Administrator and Taylor to enter this world. Especially one that is similar. Thankfully, not much was lost in the process.
In Mogara Kingdom…
There are two assassins…
On the road to a docked ship…
Heading for Dressrosa.

A fedora-wearing man of great bulk leans over a keeled-over figure, of smaller stature, coughing out his lungs.

"What's happening to me? Poison? Something tastes so terribly awful… like the most awful thing I've ever tasted," the coughed figure wheezes, wearing a perpetual scowl accentuated by a broad flat chin, clutching his bare upper body. Tattooed with pink stars, the considerably shorter man still looks ready to pick a fight on the footstep of death's door.

With his barrel-shaped chest, with more shoulder than upper arm, the fedora-wearing man may look like he is going to finish the job, but the reality…

"Brother, brother, what's wrong? Don't die on me, I can't be an assassin without you," Bobby Funk worries frantically.

… is different. Coward though this ogre-sized assassin may be, his love encourages him to subconsciously shield his brother Kelly Funk with his overly great bulk.

With a heaving hack, bloody chunks of unground charcoal spray from his mouth.

"Rocks? But I only ate meat today," Kelly gasps sickly.

Bobby covers his mouth, sharply intaking a breath in horror. "Did someone sneak an Devil Fruit into your meat?"

"How nasty. The bastards must've… already known… I'm a Devil Fruit user. Shit." He coughs up more blood. For a second, his vision swims while his brother clutches his shoulders to hold him up. 'He's wailing like a wimp,' he thinks, then his eyebrows sharply rotate inward.

"Wait!" The exclamation is too much for Kelly's health and he coughs repeatedly, until he starkly goes silent.

Eyes are rolled back, and he's foaming from the mouth like he has rabies. For a second, Bobby is certain he is dead, but he comes back from the brink. "You got this, brother. I believe in you. You're the fighter of us too," he whisper-yells, his pencil mustache flexing.

"I recognize that," he coughs out, wiping the bubbly spit from his puffy lips. "I'd recognize that fruit anywhere. That's mine. It's the one I ate!"

Bobby covers his timid gasp with both hands. "What could this mean?"

"Jack-" Kelly coughs. "Jacket-Jacket Two-in-A-Coat!"

Nothing happens.

"Brother…?" Bobby peeks through his fingers, small black glasses askew.

"My Devil Fruit, it's gone. It's rejected me!" his brother gasps out and his heart starts to palpitate, the realization hitting him hard.

Soon, all that is heard is wailing of left-behind family on the dusty roads. A once in a millenia moment, a Devil Fruit rejecting its user. It is unheard of. Perhaps this has never even happened before.

We shall never know whether this was the limits of the fruit or the limits of the user's imagination, one would never have thought Kelly Funk was a poor user. In fact, if it was the former, then he made the best use of the fruit one could possibly have, creating a lifelong partnership that kept his bond with his brother through thick or thin. Every pirate in the New World relies on at least one other, despite what they profess.

The Funk Brothers supplemented each other's weakness of mind and weakness of body with this fruit, ensuring the advantage of Bobby's body does not go untapped when fighting for survival in such a dangerous place as the Grand Line.

And yet, the will of the fruit rejected him?

Maybe it is something more, maybe a sign of something else, for the bloody chunks of his fruit, which should have long been digested by now, evaporate into wispy green smoke. The Jake Jake no mi, a Paramecia-type devil fruit that allows the user to become a jacket who, when worn by others, can control the wearer.

The wisps of green smoke circle in the air, invisible to everyone and everything. The will of the Devil Fruit, should be leaving to reincarnate in another fruit. Its user has passed away after all. And yet, strangely enough, but not sadly enough, it does not leave to go reincarnate in another fruit, ending what is the legacy of a dream. This is another peculiar departure of the norm for seemingly no reason.

This idling load screen of the inane hope of being a jacket simply continues on, circling round and round over the sunny blue sky until, for all intents and purposes, it dies. Completely, and utterly, dies.

With the death of a dream, a new one must take its place. Or rather, this dream dies because a new one is taking its place, something less arcane and more scientific, but no less [Possessive].

Something massive surges through, only to turn invisible, the trees still whipping around in hurricane-level winds as it passes by them. Or at least, seemingly so. This disappearance is, in fact, the result of dimensional manipulation.

It makes the sea around the entire kingdom churn unpleasantly, as if it were alive.

… Perhaps it is.

The Sea Kings know the answer. They hear its susurrus, its hateful whispers. They shake and shiver, these titanic beasts, for they are reminded of time long past. A disgust so great that it etched itself in their DNA, a genetic version of oral storytelling for the solitary sea monsters like these. Not even directed at them, their lineage still remembers the day the sea cursed the Devil Fruits.

Taylor Hebert, symbiotic with Queen Administrator, has stepped beyond the current state of humanity in Earth Bet, and arguably in this world as well, in spite of the many monsters in human flesh with no Devil Fruits. She is one who is like Icarus, having flown too close to the Sun, departed too much from humanity in the sea's eyes. She is like all Devil Fruit users in this way, being a potential of one line for human evolution straying far from the path on a lark of a dream.

One that, in the sea's eyes, is unnatural. This desire must be repressed. She must be struck down where she stands. Never again will she feel the sea's touch or face her end.

This is a landmark event that will shake all Devil Fruit users to their core.

… If this didn't happen on a random road in the middle of nowhere.

Adios, ridiculous jacket-man. Hello alt-power Taylor in One Piece.