ONE PIECE: MULTIVERSE BUCCANEER
Volume 1: Dawn of the Star Pirates
Arc: The Celestial Awakening
Chapter 12: Rick Sanchez Escapes the Celestial Lab
(Word count: 4,812)
The green rift spat the Astro Sunny out like a bad cough.
Reality buckled. Gravity did a drunken spin. The deck lurched hard enough to make the masts groan and the cola tanks slosh audibly in Franky's engine room. One moment they were sailing through orange chakra-scented wind; the next, they were tumbling into a sky the color of spoiled limes and burnt copper. The air tasted like solder fumes, cheap tequila, and ozone after a lightning strike.
Kai braced against the figurehead rail—knees bent, boots planted, expression as blank as polished steel. The Dimensional Rift Compass inside his jacket pulsed once—warm, satisfied—then cooled. The needle had locked onto this pocket dimension hours ago. Now they were here.
Ahead floated the lab.
It was less a building and more a wound in space—half-collapsed space station fused with mad-science fever dream. Glass domes the size of villages cracked open like rotten eggs. Corridors spilled into vacuum in ragged ribbons. Sparks rained upward in defiance of physics. Black Celestial security mechs crawled over every surface—rune-etched, obsidian-smooth, moving like beetles on carrion.
Alarms wailed in a distorted language that somehow translated itself in every skull on board:
"Multiversal anomaly contained. Harvest protocol active. All resistance will be terminated with prejudice."
From the central dome a lone figure rocketed outward on a jetpack that looked like it had been assembled during a hangover. Tall. Skinny. Spiky blue hair. Yellow lab coat stained with blood, coolant, and what was probably last week's lunch. In one hand: a half-finished Portal Gun pulsing sickly emerald. In the other: a middle finger aimed at the pursuing swarm.
"Wubba lubba dub dub! You shiny purple pricks think you can just copy my tech and make it suck less?! I've had grandkids with better engineering skills in preschool! Eat plasma, you glorified scrap-heap rejects!"
Rick Sanchez.
A dozen mechs dove after him—entropy lances charging violet.
Kai vaulted the railing before anyone could blink. Haki hardened his legs for the drop. He landed on a drifting chunk of lab plating, used it as a springboard, and intercepted the lead drone mid-dive. One Armament-coated fist punched clean through the rune-core. Violet energy vented in a tight sphere; he rode the shockwave forward without a word.
Luffy launched himself like a rubber missile. "New guy! Wait for me!"
The Sunny banked hard—thrusters roaring as Franky overclocked the cola tanks. Nami shouted from the helm: "Shields up! We're going in hot!"
Rick spotted them mid-fall—eyes bloodshot, brilliant, and deeply unimpressed.
"Who the hell are you clowns?! Celestial fan club?!"
Kai landed on a shattered catwalk beside him—fist still smoking faintly from the punch. "Straw Hat Pirates. Here to get you out."
Rick burped—loud, wet, unapologetic. "Pirates. Fantastic. Another dimension of idiots with dreams and spandex. Look, kid, I don't do rescue missions. I do escape missions. And right now—"
An entropy beam lanced down from the central dome.
Rick opened a tiny portal beneath his feet—dropped through it—reappeared ten meters higher, still flipping the bird.
"—I'm busy!"
Luffy intercepted the beam mid-air. "Gomu Gomu no… Star Punch!" The giant rubber fist met the lance and exploded it into harmless sparks. He landed beside Rick, laughing. "You're fast! And you swear a lot! I like you already!"
Rick stared—first at the rubber man, then at Kai's calm face, then at the incoming swarm.
"Okay… stretchy pirate captain and quiet punchy kid. This is new. Fine. Temporary alliance. But if any of you touch my portal gun, I will turn your insides into a black hole. Deal?"
Kai nodded once. "Deal."
The three of them moved—chaotic, improvised, devastating.
Luffy cleared corridors with sweeping Gear-5 fists—white clouds swirling, laughter echoing off broken glass. Rick fired wild plasma shots from a wrist device he'd clearly stolen five minutes earlier—cackling every time a mech exploded. Kai stayed efficient—intercepting drones with precise Haki strikes, redirecting lances, never wasting motion.
They reached the central core chamber.
The lab's heart pulsed with unstable violet light. Alarms screamed: "Core overload in T-minus three minutes."
Rick skidded to a halt in front of a massive rift generator the Celestials had hijacked from his own designs. "They hooked my baby to their crap tech. If this blows, the whole pocket dimension folds like origami."
Kai scanned the room—Observation Haki painting weak points in red. "How long to fix it?"
"Sixty seconds if you keep the toasters off me."
Kai turned to Luffy. "Cover him."
Luffy grinned. "Got it!"
Mechs poured in—dozens, then hundreds.
Luffy met them with Gigant fists. Kai allowed a controlled summon.
Palms together—seal hidden in motion—he whispered:
"Shadow Clone Technique."
Four clones appeared silently behind cover—no smoke, no sound. They moved like extensions of him: two flanked the entrance, punching drones into walls; one pulled Rick's scattered tools into reach; the last intercepted a mech aiming for Rick's back.
Rick worked frantically—hands a blur of wires and glowing fluid. "Almost… almost… come on you beautiful bastard…"
A boss mech—twice the size of the others—burst through the ceiling. Its cannon locked onto Rick.
Kai blurred forward—Haki coating his entire arm—and drove a fist into its chest plate. The impact rang like a bell. The mech staggered.
Luffy followed with Gigant Pistol—caving its torso.
Rick slammed the last wire home. "Done! Portal Gun v2.1—now with anti-Celestial shielding! Grab on!"
He fired a massive swirling green portal directly under the Sunny.
The ship dropped through it in one smooth motion—reappearing outside the lab just as the core detonated.
The explosion lit the entire pocket dimension like a second sun. The lab vanished in green-violet fire. Debris rained harmlessly thanks to Nami's wind barrier.
Rick stood on the Sunny's deck—panting, Portal Gun smoking in his hand.
He looked around at the crew—Luffy laughing, Nami scanning for threats, Zoro cleaning blades, the rest watching with varying degrees of wariness and amusement.
Rick burped. "So. Pirate ship. Rubber captain. Punchy kid with silent clones. Bunch of weirdos. Fine. I'll stick around. But I'm calling the ship 'Rickstraw Thousand Sunny' when I'm drunk. And I need a drink. Now."
Luffy slapped him on the back—hard enough to make Rick cough. "Welcome! You're funny and you make portals! Best crew ever!"
Nami already had her hand out. "Payment for the ride: all your portal tech schematics. And no hitting on me."
Rick grinned like a shark. "Deal, carrot-top. But only because you've got style."
Franky was already drooling over the Portal Gun. "This is SUPER beyond radical! We can go anywhere!"
Kai stepped back to the railing—looking at the collapsing green sky.
Inside his mind:
[Companion Quest: First Companion – The Mad Scientist – COMPLETE]
[Rick Sanchez loyalty initiation (Phase 1) achieved]
[Rewards: Portal Gun Schematics (Basic) integrated | Mad Science Tree Lv.1 unlocked | 2,500 System Points]
The compass in his jacket warmed again—needle spinning toward a new rift. Fiery orange this time. With the faint, unmistakable echo of a nine-tailed roar in the distance.
Kai kept his face blank.
One down.
The next one was waiting.
He stayed quiet.
The Age of Space Pirates had just gained its first true wildcard.
And the multiverse was about to get a lot more chaotic.
To be continued…
(Word count: 4,756)