Heh. Well, the neat thing about One Piece is that the action seems to get split up quite often, with different crew members going to different places on an island or not really doing anything but watching the main fight(s) go on. We could probably get away with having a large crew if we do something like that. Cut from battle to battle across the island during each arc. =3

Oh yeah, allies will definitely be fun. And on top of those, I'd definitely like for them to start making alliances with other pirates in the distant future. Heh...and you're certainly not the only one busy coming up with Devil's Fruit powers and users. xP

Right right, I remember that. Although I was a little bit curious. How do we plan to transition from here to the Marine battle? I'm trying to come up with ways for Ryu to get involved...although the obvious power abuse is obvious I suppose, but I'm not sure exactly.../how/ he witnesses that abuse.

As for the fight itself, I think Ryu would more or less be capable of defending himself...but probably not actually winning. Especially not if the Captain also has his two Commanders with him at the time. In that case, he'd probably be losing the fight due to the numbers disadvantage. But if the Captain is singled out, it'd probably come out to a stalemate, with neither of them really able to inflict any major damage.