Decaying Seas

3rd POV

Resting for the night, Pythias tossed and turned as his stomach was in pain for the first time in a long while. He couldn't tell why, he thought that maybe it was the combination of the weird food he had eaten earlier and his grief or his sadness taking a physical effect on his body. 

In his dreams instead of the usual darkness, of the hopes and dreams he had, they had been replaced. Countless hands, maybe hundreds or perhaps thousands of them covered his dreams reaching out to him. He would scream and try to run, but the hands would grab him and start digging into him. He would scream, terrified about what was happening to him as they all dug into his body, becoming one with him. 

Yet at the same time, he could feel his body going into overdrive like it was full of energy and this need to...touch for some reason. Touch what he didn't know, it just felt like a weird urge to do so. 

Eventually, it all stopped and he was left with the same darkness his dream always had, only this time he could hear screams, thousands of them. They echoed all through the dream landscape, never leaving him alone for a minute. He felt as though the screams weren't just coming from all around him but from within him as well, as if all the despair in the world had crawled into his body and made him its home. 

Eventually, morning came and all the slaves got up, some getting a drink of water others going straight to work to get the day over with. Pythias however, was the last to get up and grab his pickaxe, feeling groggy as usual but it was ten times worse this morning.

{Why do I feel like this, was it that fruit I ate last night?}

{Or does my body still have tears left unshed from yesterday}

Oh, how could the boy know that his body was experiencing a new power coursing through his veins, ready to burst out and rampage across the island? The sadness, the despair of thousands, and all those poor souls crying inside his soul all condensed into a single devil fruit. 

While he would no longer have the ability to swim, he would gain a power no one else in the world had.

The Hokai-Hokai no mi, otherwise known as the Decay-Decay Fruit, and something that was capable of decaying everything the user touched into nothing but small particles blowing in the wind. A truly evil thing that some believe contained all the evil, all the despair the Marines, the World Government, and even the Celestial Dragons caused. 

Those who caused so much pain and misery in the world concentrated on one single Devil Fruit, a cry not to the one called Joyboy, but to another. What this being name was, has been forgotten by the history of this world. 

Yet those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it!

As Pythias, a boy still reeling in pain one of the marines came down, a familiar face and someone who grew a beard over the years, a long thin beard. It was Thorn and running after him was Leif who had become much fatter over the years and had actually somehow gotten shorter. They were coming down to deliver today's food but had noticed the painful look on Pythias's face. 

"Hey kid *yawn* why ya standing around for *yawn* ya need to get to work soon or we'll be forced to *yawn* punish ya."

Leif came strutting soon after having to catch his breath after running to his brother's side.

"Yeah kid, and if a little guy like you gets punished you would probably die from it."

Then Thorn put his hand on the kid's shoulder to try and shake I'm, to get any kind of response from the kid. Then he fell to his knees and the two brothers looked at each other a little confused as to why Pythias was acting like this unaware of the fact his grandfather died yesterday. 

"Listen kid *yawn* I'll be counting to three and by then you better *yawn* have your pickaxe in hand ready to *yawn* work alright?"

"1."

As he said that hands started growing out of his body, underneath his clothing left unseen. 

"2."

Then all at once Pythias was knocked out as thousands of hands rushed out of him, from every single corner of his body. Then hands started growing out of those hands, like a tree as Thorn/Leif starred in horror as the tidal wave of hands rushed at them. 

"Thre...Three?"

Then all at once, they were covered in hands, each one decaying their body at an extremely fast race. Yet it didn't stop there, it started spreading all over the mine, and Slaves and Marines alike tried to run up or into the mines. It didn't matter though, the hands reached everywhere in the mines, entering the holes like water rushing towards empty space. 

Slaves, Marines, anybody, and anything, it didn't discriminate as the arms started decaying everything they touched. The hands that didn't go into the tunnels rushed towards the surface destroying the stairs and killing the escaping marines/slaves. 

It eventually reached the surface where it started clawing at the mine's edges, trying to climb up but only destroying more and more of the ground as it did so. Seeing this the island's marines leader, a man of average height and build with the only interesting feature being his peculiar shaped head that looked like a drill.

This was Lieutenant Marsh Flora, a man who rose to such a position thanks to the favor of the Celestial Dragons and no true accomplishments of his own. He stared in horror at the clawing hands, that were firing a gigantic circle in the ground. Seeing this the marines not guarding the mines currently looked to him for orders. 

"Re-Re-Retreat!"

and he immediately ran to the stationed marine ships soon enough the surviving marines followed suit, boarding the vessel. They began to take off, leaving the horrors of the mine behind them alongside a few unmanned marine vessels.

All the while leaving the knocked Pythias behind as he killed any living humans behind, leaving no one to tell him what happened.

Once the marines make it back to the nearest base, they would report the incident and eventually form a dark and mysterious part of Marine history, the hundred-hand incident unaware of the child who started it all. 

Back on the island though the hands eventually receded, going back into Pythias's body, becoming one with him once more. Yet the damage left behind from his devil fruit power awakening in the boy's body left such devastation in its wake. It left a gigantic crater near the center of the island, a mark for this world to remember and a reminder to the marines who escape the power a devil fruit can wield.