Chapter One: Here We Go Again
A common misconception about fishmen was that because they were an aquatic race that they must also enjoy humid weather due to the great volume of moisture in the air.
Those people are mistaken, Frosty suffered every moment he had to hack and stumble his way through that godforsaken jungle. He grumbled and griped and slashed his way through foliage and fauna, both of which tried to eat and delay him every inch of every step he took. Sweat rolled down his back in waves and his breath came in great gasps. He'd been at this for hours, but it looked as if he was finally nearing his destination.
Which idiot decided to give this prehistoric hellhole the name Little Garden anyway?
He stopped for a moment to catch his breath against a vine covered tree. There was a soft rustle of movement behind him. The fishman turned just as a fanged plant sprayed a glob of purple acid on his arm. With a strangled yelp he hacked the leafy predator apart in a flurry of mulch cursing this godforsaken place with every slice of his sword. When he was sure it was dead he took a deep breath and sprayed a jet of water on his arm to rinse it off and stop that awful burning. The arm was slightly blistered, but his pride was wounded more.
"Flynn, you better be here or I'm going to murder you straight in the face," he growled.
After another hour of trudging a high-pitched growl sounded from somewhere in front of him, though it rang a little on the squeaky side he'd learned not to underestimate the calls of anything in this horrid place. Not after what he assumed to be the calls of small birds ended up in him being ambushed by a flock of vicious, scaly lizards a few hours earlier. He brought his twin great swords to bear in front of him as he broke through the last of the dense foliage with a wild cry. He was sure he cut an intimidating sight wielding the two massive swords as if they weighed no more than rapiers.
The first thing he saw was a lot of felled trees cut in a perfect circle around him to make a wide clearing. The fallen logs were stacked in a makeshift perimeter that, though broken here and there, was still serviceable. In the center of the clearing was a smoldering campfire lazily trailing smoke underneath a kettle, a patchwork and well worn gray tent with a simple sleeping bag inside kept watch in the middle of the clearing, and a small, worn stool attached to an equally worn table made up a spartan campsite.
However all of these were in the back of his mind as he looked on at the spectacle laid out before him.
There was a scaly reptile about the size of a small cow with it's snout buried in the belly of a tall young man with long black hair and a lean build. The fishman vaguely recognized it as a dinosaur, a young rex if he recalled correctly, it had a long body with two stubby arms, a blunt head, and a set of vicious looking jaws. Frosty was about to rush forward, whether to save his friend or stop the beast so he could have something to bury he wasn't quite sure, until the man turned around to reveal he had the overgrown lizard in a headlock with one arm and using his free hand to clamp it's jaws shut. The man wore a rake-hell grin on his face while his prey tried to desperately shake loose and take a chunk off of him.
"Bad lizard!" he yelled at it as it tried to squirm free, "No biting! Ah ah AH! NO BITING!"
Quick as the eye could blink he released his grip on the dinosaur's jaws and brought his fist down solidly on the top of it's head. The young tyrannosaurs' eyes crossed for a moment before he was released to stumble off. The beast received a kick to it's backside in order to hasten it's pace as it disappeared into the jungle.
"Next time bring someone bigger!"
Frosty sheathed his great swords and shook his head.
"You damn near gave me a heart attack Flynn. I thought that thing had you for a minute there."
Flynn rolled his eyes and examined his shredded gray top and grumbled, "No, but the little bastard owes me a shirt."
Frosty took seat on the only piece of furniture and looked over the remains of his friend's dinner and took a cautionary sniff. Flynn's cooking was legendarily infamous. What was left to congeal in that pot looked barely fit for animal consumption, let alone humanoid. He dropped the spoon in disgust.
"Until I thought dinosaurs existed only in books, but I'm guessing you'll have to skin him before he pays you in anything but animal carcasses. Also, speaking of carcasses, what in the hell have you been eating?"
"I get by," he shrugged enigmatically after sitting down next to the seahorse fishman.
Frosty ran a hand through his long ragged hair, shuddering at the thought of surviving out here, let alone on Flynn's cooking, for any length of time.
They two old friend's settled in a comfortable silence for awhile, happy to be reunited after four years. Only the sounds of predators and prey to keep them company. Though these two had little to fear, the sea taught them long ago that they were the former.
In truth they couldn't have been more different. Frosty was a swordsman where Flynn preferred hand to hand fighting. The fishman had light blue skin and a long mop of black hair partially covering the crest that ran from his head down his back, when Flynn merely wore a faded grey bowler hat that was miraculously undamaged. Frosty stood a good two and a half feet taller than his friend and favored loud Hawaiian shirts, but Flynn was fond of the fancier vests and suits.
The last time Flynn and Frosty were together was at the base of Reverse Mountain on the border between The East Blue Sea and the Grand Line. That hellish sea tempered, but nearly broke the two lone pirates after they had set out on their own with the blessing of their previous captain. Frosty wanting to carve his own path and determined to keep his friend out of trouble decided to throw his lot in with Flynn as well. So they made a pact to strengthen their resolve, keep an eye out for promising recruits, and to meet again one day after their eye opening journey.
That was three years ago. Then one day, Frosty received a map and a letter bearing only two words.
"It's time."
Flynn Tiberoa reached into his pocket and drew out a broken cigarillo. Grumbling again about bastard lizards, he pulled out two more thin cigars before coming across one that was intact. A moment later he drew in a lungful of fragrant smoke, then he was all business.
"How have the last few years treated you?"
"Well," Frosty replied with a roll of his shoulders, "you'd be amazed how well a three year training sabbatical will do you. Then again," he looked around at the felled trees and the unmarked skin beneath his torn shirt, "maybe you wouldn't."
The nearly crew-less captain laughed, "No, I don't suppose I would. I can promise you I haven't been sitting on my thumbs all this time."
"I don't know, does lizard wrestling count as training or leisure?" he laughed uproariously at his own joke, right up until the stool collapsed under his muscular build.
Flynn rolled laughing at Frosty's turn of luck, "I'd say both," he smirked, "Karma sucks doesn't it blue boy?"
The fishman glared a moment, then joined in laughing with his friend.
"So," the human wiped a tear from his eye, "I can't saw I found any prospects among the locals here. What about you?"
After a moment of silence, Frosty nodded, "I didn't exactly spend all my time training. Spent a lot of time on Cherry Island, a little place in the East Blue. I found a couple of promising kids. Full of dreams of adventure. One's a winged swordsman and the other, believe it or not, is an honest to goodness Kuja warrior."
Flynn let out a low whistle, "That's a strange combination. How'd you manage to come across them?"
Frosty puffed out his chest and thumped it twice with his fist.
"We mighty of the mighty fishman race are far luckier than you unlucky humans," he said proudly.
Flynn punched him in the arm causing the mighty fishman to yelp.
"Mkay, try not lying to me now," he grinned.
Frosty rubbed his sore arm and grumbled out a reply, "Found them both trying to cash in on a bounty that was way out of their league-"
"Hold up. You're telling me their bounty hunters?"
"Wannabe bounty hunters yeah. Are you going to let me finish or what?"
"...go ahead."
"So I swooped in with my mighty fishman abilities and beat down the bounty and they practically begged me to train them." Flynn flexed his fingers again, "Hey, hey it's the truth. The boy, Stratus, barely knew how to wield a sword let alone how to cut someone properly. The girl, Iris Dawnbloom, all she had were her skills with sneaking around and the snake bow of hers but little else. So I split my time between training them and focusing on my own skills. Now he's a pretty darn decent swordsman and she can peg a deer at a hundred paces without making a sound."
"And you?" his captain inquired.
The fishman placed his hands on his swords, "I can cut through stone now as easily as air, but steel is still beyond me for the moment. Yourself?"
The young man tapped his nose, "Now that would be telling."
Flynn and frosty were silent for a long time. The sun began to set on the horizon covering the jungle in twilight. The nocturnal beasties would be waking up soon. Flynn rose and dusted himself off.
"Well worse comes to worst and we just knock 'em down a peg and move on. There's plenty of fish in the sea. No offense," he said with a grin.
Frosty sighed at the simplicity of his logic and the terrible joke, but before he could call him on it an ear splitting roar cut through the air and rumbled the ground.
A massive reptilian shape broke it's way through the tree line and through the feeble wooden barricade Flynn had set up. The beast towered over them both well above twenty feet, with a pair of shriveled arms, and a broad head filled with dagger like teeth. The beast's leaned down to stare at them both and breathed a rotten breath of air over the campsite making them gag. Behind the massive dinosaur was a smaller one.
The same one that Flynn was wrestling earlier. Flynn would later swear that it was smirking at them.
"Crap..." Flynn slipped into a fighting stance, "Well I did ask for bigger didn't I?"
A small bead of sweat rolled down Frosty's temple as he drew his swords.
Right before he snorted with laughter.
"Hey Flynn?"
"Don't say it."
"Karma sucks doesn't it?"
:::::Cherry Island, Icarus Forest :::::
The twelve point stag craned it's head down and to munch on a tuft of grass, oblivious to it's impending fate. Iris Dawnbloom sat perfectly still high on a tree branch and blended completely with her surroundings. Her partner was across the field in another tall oak cutting off the deer's escape route, but compared to her he might as well have been waving a brightly colored flag. He was good, but she was better.
She felt a presence slither past her face and a soft hiss in her ear.
"Good timing," she murmured wrapping her hands around the scaly form of her Kuja snake who immediately took the shape of a bow. Tying a string his neck and tail she then notched an arrow and drew it back. The sturdy snake made no sounds of protest, having been trained from birth for warfare and companionship.
The young woman drew in a long, slow breath, and let fly her arrow.
The stag only had time to raise it's head at the sound of the whistling arrow before it struck him. The arrow pierced straight through his side and right through the heart. The shaft was fired with such force that it tore clean through the animal and straight into the ground.
Iris immediately dropped soundlessly to the grass and walked over.
Stratus dropped down across the way with a muffled thump and the rustle of wings.
"Took you long enough," he said as he worked a kink out of his back, "I damn near fell asleep waiting on you to take a shot. Thought for a minute there I was going to have come down here and stab the thing to death myself."
"Shut up you drunk," she smirked and her snake hissed out laughter.
Stratus glared at the snake, "You shut up before I make a pair of boots with you."
The snake immediately unhinged his jaw and engulfed his hand sinking his teeth into Stratus' wrist.
"Yeeeooowww! Leggo ya bastard!" he flailed his arm and flapped his great white wings as he whipped around the six foot long snake.
Iris was doubled over with laughter.
Then they heard the growling.
Immediately Stratus drew his longsword and pistol as Greg Jr. assumed the rigidness of a bow just as she warrior notched and drew another arrow.
The silence was deafening as the scanned the trees.
Two massive tawny cougars burst out of the bushes full of sound and fury.
Before the first one even landed an arrow pierced it through the skull just as a trio of bullets pierced the other. They fell in a heap before they even knew what hit them..
Stratus grinned at her, "Oh hell yeah. Extra cash! That's drinking money right there babe!"
She struck him on the back of the head with her snake bow.
"Only after we clean the deer and return it to Ms. Grunder. Or do you really expect that old woman to hike all the way out here and do it herself before hiking back with the extra deer meat?"
"Hey, it could happen. She's a tough old biddy."
Iris rolled her eyes, "Get to work. One each and we'll be out of here in no time."
"Yeah, yeah."
The bounty hunting team worked quickly and cleanly, but it still took them another couple of hours between them to skin and clean the four animals. By the time they were finished the sun was starting to set and the forest was bathed in twilight, but their packs were full of meat and the pelts of the two big cats. The cougar meat was tough and slightly gamey, so they packed what they could for themselves planning to dry it out when they returned home.
Suddenly he heard quiet snickering behind him and his first reaction was to sigh, "What did you do now?"
He turned and was greeted by the sight of Greg Jr. wearing a gleaming white cougar skull for a helm. The fangs protruded past his jaw and his yellow eyes gleamed at him through the eye sockets. Iris had removed the bottom jaw to make it easier to slip on and off her companion's head. After she stripped away the meat from the skull she set about cleaning and polishing it thoroughly. She tried a few fittings before she got it right and it now set comfortably on the snake's head making him, if possible, look even more fierce.
Stratus let out a cry of fear and stumbled back landing on his backside.
"Why in the hell did you do that for? Like that overgrown suitcase wasn't bad enough before!"
Greg Jr. seemed to preen for a moment in his new attire.
"Because it makes him happy," she deadpanned.
Stratus groaned.
:::::On an Island in the East Blue:::::
Flynn tore off another chunk of roasted dinosaur meat and leaned back with a sigh of contentment. Frosty had, for some reason, insisted on cooking after making him clean the kill. Ah, who was he kidding. He was a bad cook and he knew it.
"Hey! Are you almost done back there?" he hollered at his reluctant worker.
The massive form of the Tyrannosaur lifted it's lumpy and bruised head and growled at him through a fallen log, "Good now get back to work!"
The beast lowered it's head as it placed another log on the makeshift barrier it had broken.
Frosty sat beside him, having cleaned his plate a few minutes ago.
"So what's the plan captain?" he belched.
Flynn set aside his own plate, "Isn't it obvious? We're going to go back to Cherry Island recruit those kids."
He rose and threw the last of the meat to the baby rex who gulped it gratefully. Flynn walked over and scratched its head.
"You ain't so bad are you lil guy? No you're not. No him not."
Frosty slapped his head against his palm and sighed.
"Maybe...I should have stuck with the old crew..."
Edit:Added some content and fixed typos.