Great Tree

The Great Tree is an island-sized, flora-based organism created by a now-lost civilization over a millennia ago for the purpose of electing future leaders through ordeals. An entity of immense power, she has the ability to host people's thoughts and produce presents without limits, the natures of which are decided according to the character of her candidates. However, she failed to live up to her purpose and was so thrown away to wander the sea, eventually coming to rest in the latter half of Paradise.
In the present day, the Straw Hat Pirates came across the Great Tree and accidentally reactivated her. Promising the crew a present if they were to clear her ordeals, the Great Tree produced islands with different ordeals on them for the Straw Hat Pirates to clear and created Gaburi, a companion for the crew, to record their actions. When the Straw Hat Pirates became qualified for their present and came to claim it, the Great Tree prepared to turn Gaburi into it, only to get frighten by the evil in human nature and turn Gaburi into the Doom Guardian. Although the Straw Hats Pirates managed to escape with the original piece of Gaburi, they soon returned to the Great Tree and had Gaburi reclaim the Doom Guardian from her for his own survival while making the Great Tree come to an understanding with him about humanity.
The Great Tree serves as the main antagonist of One Piece Unlimited Cruise 1: The Treasure Beneath the Waves and One Piece Unlimited Cruise 2: Awakening of a Hero.
==Appearance==
Before taking physical form, the Great Tree's appearance is that of a floating green energy orb at the size of Luffy.
In its physical form, the Great Tree is an immensely large plant. Her base is as large as an island, and her branches reaches high into the sky, far above the cloud covers on the sea. The Great Tree herself is mostly made up of massive red and blue vine-like branches with bark-based surfaces that twist and turn around each other. The vines at her base stretch out above the sea surface while those that make up her trunk head upward. The latter in particular have several smaller branches extending from her vines, forming a tree crown with pink leaves. At the base of her trunk, the Great Tree has a large doorway leading into a central chamber. Said central chamber has walls and floors made of large red and blue vines with glowing veins, and in the back of it lies the Great Tree's core. This core is made of the same material as the Great Tree, possessing a liquid chamber with a swirling and glowing orange sphere in its center, with the former being held in place by a red wooden frame. Said frame is as well held up by blue roots and has branches protruding from it at the top that have glowing orange and blue spheres hanging from them.
After Gaburi separated from the Doom Guardian, the Great Tree took on a more sinister appearance. Having shredded herself of all of her pink leaves, she would instead grow enormous and multilayered lavender flowers with red veins on their pedals along her branches.
===Gallery===
==Personality==
Displaying a thought process akin to a robot or computer, the Great Tree typically speaks formally and much like a machine using a systematic speech pattern and mechanical approach. When getting past her procedure protocols however, she would display a much more chipper and positive disposition while remaining informative and eager towards her chosen candidate for her reward. However, this front would turn out to be merely a user-friendly façade; when Gaburi returned to her with information on the Straw Hat Pirates, she remorselessly separated him from the crew who had befriended him (and vice-versa) in order to turn him into a present for the Straw Hat Pirates. Even after committing this amoral action though, she would maintain an unnerving positive attitude. The Great Tree is similarly someone who sees the world through facts, figures and numbers. As an example, she estimated her own defeat to be one hundred percent impossible during her second meeting with the Straw Hat Pirates, only to be soundly defeated by the crew's growth through her ordeals.
Due to being created to select a proper leader, the Great Tree was meant to be an administrator of justice. However, her artificial origin and objective ultimately made her see the world in a black and white manner, meaning she only saw people as either good or evil. As an example, she dismissed the Straw Hat Pirates as evil people simply because they were pirates. The complexity of human nature was an equally vague matter to her that she could not comprehend. She would also not stand for Gaburi's more empathetic understanding of the Straw Hats Pirates' morality, having deemed it an unacceptable manner in which to judge a person's character, which would prompt her to switch to a deep-level analysis of Gaburi's memories.
The Great Tree would have a high standard for what it meant to be a good person, believing such a person was defined as having a pure heart. Notably, for all her intended purposes, she never found one person worthy enough to receive a proper present from her since "people's desires saw no end". For those she deemed unworthy, she would utterly destroy, hinting a cold ruthlessness to her as well. 
For all her mechanical attributes, the Great Tree proved to have an emotional side to her as well. When she learned of the fear Gaburi felt after catching a glimpse of the "darkness" in humanity in the form of her own recreation of Marshall D. Teach, she got so frightened that she turned Gaburi into the Doom Guardian for killing the Straw Hat Pirates as a form of defense, much like how it is human instinct to be afraid of the unknown and reject it before understanding it. Even so, she would never react with outward emotionality, but instead maintain her robotic and systematic manner of speech. Initially, she would maintain her user-friendly façade after creating the Doom Guardian, but when the Straw Hat Pirates later returned to her for their next confrontation, she showed a more self-rightous standpoint based on her experience, having deemed all of humanity evil because there were those among them who would hate, steal, and kill each other for their own gain while dismissing the good in humanity as simple logical errors. Thanks to Gaburi however, she eventually came to an understanding about human nature and abandoned her fear of it.
==Relationships==
===Straw Hat Pirates===
The Great Tree first met the Straw Hat Pirates when Luffy busted open the seal that kept her contained. Upon her reactivation, she took Luffy as a candidate for her ordeals and so followed her programming by sending him and his crew off on their adventure around the islands she had created.
When the Straw Hat Pirates finally came to claim their present after clearing her ordeals, the Great Tree initially deemed the crew evil because they were pirates in spite of Gaburi's protests. When she later got corrupted by fear from Gaburi's memory of Marshall D. Teach, she became afraid of the Straw Hat Pirates, and so turned Gaburi into the Doom Guardian as a form of self-defense and tried to kill the crew.
When the Straw Hat Pirates escaped the Great Tree, only to later return to her, the Great Tree had come to the conclusion that the Straw Hat Pirates were evil by default because they carried human nature in them. Even when the Straw Hat Pirates told her of the good people out in the world, she dismissed their statements as logical errors. In the end though, the Great Tree abandoned her fear of the Straw Hat Pirates and laid down her arms when Gaburi made her come to an understanding of humanity.
===Gaburi===
The Great Tree created Gaburi solely as a guardian to observe and record the actions of the Straw Hat Pirates as a part of her function to determine the character profiles of the crew for the type of present she was assigned to bestow upon them. Robin has speculated that the Great Tree created Gaburi on purpose instead of having him in Orb form because it was a necessity for him to have experiences to shape his own opinions in order for her to fulfill her objective, and as such was not considered a nuisance to her. However, she held no sense of empathy for him or respect for his feelings as an individual. As such, she would remorselessly remove him from the Straw Hats in order to transform him into a suitable present for them despite the crew's objections. However, they soon found themselves at an impasse when Gaburi refused to acknowledge the Straw Hat Pirates as inherently evil while the Great Tree believed them to be so because they were pirates. Still seeing Gaburi as simply a source of data, she began a deeper analysis of his memories to get a definitive answer, only to be corrupted by fear when she saw Gaburi's own fear of Marshall D. Teach's malevolence. As such, she turned Gaburi into a weapon of her own to use against the Straw Hat Pirates, only for Gaburi to be separated from the Doom Guardian by the crew.
By the time Gaburi returned to her to reclaim the Doom Guardian, he tried to convince the Great Tree that humanity, for all its flaws, was not easily defined as "good" or "evil". At first, the Great Tree rejected Gaburi's notions, but they eventually managed to come to a understanding with each other.
==Abilities and Powers==
In her immaterial form, the Great Tree is able to teleport people into a form of private space. This space takes the form of a black void with the Great Tree's orb form in its center.
In its physical form, the Great Tree can grow an endless number of vines in all sizes that can reach miles in length. These vines are strong enough to hold back as large a vessel as the Thousand Sunny. However, they are not necessarily very durable, being easily cut by swordsmen of Zoro and Brook's caliber or blown apart by the Thousand Sunny's Coup de Burst. The core of the Great Tree on the other hand is much more durable, being untouched by Luffy's basic attacks. Her core can as well pull people like Gaburi into it via a form of tractor beam.
The Great Tree also holds a degree of power over creation. Notably, she can turn Orbs into living beings like Gaburi and then, based on the information they gather, transform them into a suitable present. This transformation can include anything from turning creatures like Gaburi into a hostile entity like the Doom Guardian to a being that can grant any wish. It can even evolve its own creations, such as turning the Doom Guardian into the Demon of Doom, by reanalyzing her data.
Said to be "host to people's thoughts", the Great Tree is able to scan and store a person's memories for the purpose of gathering data and information. Its ability to gather information from memories is not limited to only the memories of the participants in her ordeals, but also data on their associates from around the world and beyond. For example, based on the data the Great Tree could gather on Enel from the Straw Hat Pirates, she was able to collect data on the Automatas too, people that the Straw Hat Pirates had never encountered before. Based on this data, the Great Tree can recreate people, or even form entire islands, for her own needs. Notably, she can produce large seeds, which she can throw several miles, that can turn into entire islands customized to suit the purpose of her ordeals, complete with their own unique biomes. She can also produce Mud Puppets, shapeshifting drones that can mimic the appearance and skillsets of lesser entities.
As for the sake of her "ordeals", the Great Tree can create strange trees that can spit out special seeds that can turn into copies of more powerful individuals for combating her candidates. Such trees can spit out either a single or multiple seeds for producing up to two strong individuals, one strong individual and several weaker entities, or both. These copies possess the exact same powers and skillsets as the originals, as well as their memories and personalities. To make these duplicates fight, the Great Tree can instill an urge for combat in them that compels them to engage her candidates. However, these copies are nowhere near as powerful as the originals; notably, the Straw Hat Pirates were able to defeat copies of Admirals, such as Aokiji and Kizaru, before their two-year training period and subsequent journey across the New World.
The Great Tree can conjure up island-sized water cyclones around it as a defense of such magnitude that not even the Thousand Sunny can get anywhere near it. It can also grow seeds on its flowers that can contain the Doom Guardian and set it free when it is ripe.
==History==
===Past===
No one knows when the Great Tree was created. However, it is said to have been long ago (at least more than a millennium), and that an unknown, yet now-lost, civilization on an island far away was behind her. These people, fearing the moral decline of the world, used their ability to convert thoughts into energy from the Orbs to create the Great Tree. Her objective was to be a tool to select a future leader with and administer justice. For this task, the Great Tree was designed to gather information from chosen candidates to create "ordeals" for selecting the next leader with while the Orbs, which would be turned into creatures, would record their actions. When the time was right, the Great Tree would then unite with the Orbs for analysis of the chosen's character; if the chosen was deemed compatible, they would be rewarded, while those deemed incompatible would be destroyed.
Many were involved in the creation of the Great Tree. However, one by one, the builders would drift away, including Sealed, who would renounce the Great Tree as a "tool of justice". Eventually, only one man was left to finish the Great Tree. After being finished, however, the Great Tree could not select a future leader; because "people's desires saw no end" and the candidates had to be pure of heart, none were chosen by the Great Tree. This led to the conclusion that the "ideal world" had to be achieved differently.
In the end, the Great Tree was thrown away for failing her purpose. However, the builder who stayed behind chose for unknown reasons to seal the Great Tree instead of destroying it. This seal took the form of an area of whirlwinds and thunderstorms around the Great Tree's immaterial form. The Great Tree was then forced to leave its homeland to wander the seas, never to return, before eventually sinking into the sea and taking the animated Orbs with it. Despite having been thrown away, however, the Great Tree's systems would remain intact, even long after the civilization that created her ceased to exist.
===One Piece: Unlimited Cruise===
====The Treasure Beneath the Waves====
In the present day, the Great Tree's immaterial form was discovered by the Straw Hat Pirates, who mistook it for treasure, out at sea. Using the Thousand Sunny's Coup de Burst to reach the Great Tree, Luffy breached her seal with his Gomu Gomu no Gigant Pistol. Catching Luffy, the Great Tree sucked Luffy into a private space. There, the Great Tree's systems activated and confirmed Luffy as an intelligent lifeform. After then confirming Luffy's name, she offered him the choice of a "present", which Luffy accepted. Affirming his choice, she commenced with the data construction of ordeals based on information she gathered from Luffy and his memories and those associated with them from around the world. Shortly thereafter, the Great Tree emerged from the sea on the Central Island. Inside her, Luffy awoke to find the Great Tree's orb form and Gaburi, a guardian that the Great Tree had created from an Orb to observe Luffy and the Straw Hat Pirates. Welcoming Luffy to the "islands of dreams", she instructed him and his party to visit four islands and clear their ordeals to receive a suitable present based on how well they deal with the ordeals. She then provided him with an instruction parchment before grabbing Luffy and Gaburi with a vine and sending them flying along with a giant seed that would turn into one of her four islands.
Over the following period, the Straw Hat Pirates would complete the Great Tree's ordeals, which involved them tracking down her special trees on each island and defeating the people appearing from their seeds.
Eventually, the Straw Hat Pirates came to the Great Tree on the Central Island after clearing all of her obligatory ordeals. When the group found their way to her core, the Great Tree congratulated them for their feat, before Luffy began demanding their promised present. Complying, the Great Tree asked Gaburi to step forward. When he did so, however, the Great Tree pulled Gaburi into her core and explained the purpose of Gaburi to the confused Straw Hat Pirates. She then explained, much to the crew's shock, that she would transform Gaburi into a suitable present based on his information on them. Inside herself, the Great Tree came to the conclusion that the Straw Hat Pirates were not pure of heart. Gaburi denied this, insisting that though they were not good people, they were not evil people either. The Great Tree insisted otherwise, as the crew were pirates, and thus outlaws. Gaburi tried to tell her that the Straw Hat Pirates were people who makes one happy, but she deemed this an unacceptable response and so switched to a deeper analysis of Gaburi's memories. In those memories, however, she caught a glimpse of Gaburi's fear when he saw the "darkness" in humanity in the form of an ordeal's recreation of Marshall D. Teach. Getting corrupted by fear herself, the Great Tree decided upon a suitable present for the Straw Hats Pirates.
As Luffy smacked against the Great Tree's core to no avail, the Great Tree released Gaburi, now transformed into the Doom Guardian, to attack the crew against his will. Though the Great Tree enthusiastically introduced the Doom Guardian as her present to them, she had actually sent the Doom Guardian after the crew as a self-defense against them after growing fearful of human nature. Eventually though, after the Straw Hat separated Gaburi from the Doom Guardian, Gaburi made the monster retreat using all his power, though at the cost of being reduced to an Orb.
====Awakening of a Hero====
With the Doom Guardian gone, the Great Tree began making the Central Island tremble, prompting the Straw Hat Pirates to escape to the Thousand Sunny while she sent her Mud Puppets after them. As the crew began sailing away, the Great Tree attempted to get a hold of the Thousand Sunny with its vines. However, the crew managed to keep them at bay until they could escape with the ship's Coup de Burst. Soon after though, the Great Tree grew a huge seed on the outside containing the Doom Guardian, who would be released when it had been restored. In addition, she set up water cyclones around the Central Island to keep the Straw Hat Pirates from getting close to her for the time being.
Eventually, the Straw Hat Pirates and Gaburi, now restored to physical form, returned to the Central Island so Gaburi could reclaim the Doom Guardian for his own survival. As the Straw Hat Pirates approached the Great Tree's core, the Great Tree released the Doom Guardian from her core, having restored it by having it absorb the island's power while she had watched them all the while. Talking through the Doom Guardian, the Great Tree proclaimed its purpose to the Straw Hat Pirates and how humanity was evil for having people that hated, stole and killed each other among them. Though the crew agreed that there are humans like that out in the world, they also told her that there were plenty of good people out there too, and that they would not let her live if she would kill them for being evil as well. Gaburi added as well that Luffy and his friends had taught him that "good" and "evil" is something not a single individual can categorize, and that humans, for all their flaws, still try their best even when they veer off course and that they had no right to determine their fates. Dismissing their statements as errors, the Great Tree recovered its systems and proclaimed it could not be defeated after having analyzed all their data.
Proceeding to attack the Straw Hat Pirates with the Doom Guardian, the Great Tree eventually found its sentry overwhelmed by the crew's might. As the Doom Guardian fell lifelessly to the ground however, the Great Tree determined that its current form was insufficient, and so evolved the Doom Guardian into the Demon of Doom after reanalyzing her data and rebooting. Despite this, the Demon of Doon was soon defeated again. As it began restoring itself though, Gaburi saw his opprotunity and remerged with it. Inside it, the Great Tree insisted humans were evil, and evil had to be destroyed. However, Gaburi still stood in the defense of humanity, prompting the Great Tree to retaliate against him. However, eventually, the Great Tree came to an understanding about humanity with Gaburi, and so abandoned her fear. This allowed Gaburi to revert the Demon of Doom back to himself. This also made Gaburi the Great Tree's "true" present for the Straw Hat Pirates: one wish for anything.
==References==
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