Gamble! Pirate Trap
-o-
Chapter Two: A Strange, Dangerous Place
Luffy woke up in a state of instant blind rage, screaming names.
"Ooouuuaaaagh! NAMI!"
He didn't see where he was exactly, but he kept shouting nonetheless.
"SANJI! FRANKY! BROOK! ZORO! ROBIN! USOPP! CHOPPER!"
Panting, he was forced to pause in order to catch his breath. His body felt hot for some reason. For a long while, he listened to the ambiance of birds and crashing waves, and then it struck him that he wasn't on his ship anymore. He got to his feet.
The room where he woke up was made of hard sand, like the ones he'd seen in Alabasta. Except this one was really dark and it felt cool, not warm. No one was around. Whoever brought him here probably didn't know he was a rubberman and couldn't get hurt much by lightning. As such, he didn't need to sleep until he got better, the way Zoro did a lot.
Anyway.
Even though the bed he'd been sleeping in was really comfy and the people who owned it were probably nice, Luffy was still angry.
Remembering Zoro was what brought it back. All the fresh memories of his nakama disappearing sprang to mind, making it hurt badly. The first thing he had to do was find his whole crew (maybe say 'thank you' to the person who helped him here), and then beat the crap out of whoever took them in the first place. Then he'd go find Sunny (maybe get some food somewhere, too) and get back to exploring the New World! Yosh. He'd decided what he was going to do. Time to go!
Crap, his straw hat! Luffy whirled around and spotted it on the bed. He put it on with a sigh of relief. Then without any further warning, he reeled an arm back and thew his fist into the wooden door, renewed with his need to save his crew.
The door splintered around his punch and ripped right off its hinges. For a long moment, he simply stood with his arm outstretched, realizing just how weak he actually felt. This was weird.
Outside the room, half an inch from his fist's knuckles was a nose. Attached to that nose was yet more nose, and finally at the very end of the nose was a face with a goatee. Bushy black hair. Eyebrows knit in surprise. Usopp yelped and jumped back a step, split seconds before he reacted angrily.
"What the hell are you doing breaking down an unlocked door, Luffy?" he yelled. "I mean, I was just coming to check—huh?"
"Usopp!" Luffy had gleefully launched himself forward and slapped his hands on Usopp's shoulders. "You're okay! Where's the others? Did everyone already get back together?" he asked, looking around excitedly.
"Oi, oi, calm down," the sniper told him, giving his captain a patient look. "Robin's here with us. I'm pretty sure the others are safe, too."
"Really? Yahoo! Come on, let's go see Robin!"
"W-W-Wait!" Usopp's urgent voice froze him in mid-sprint. Blinking, Luffy turned around to stare at him. Usopp crossed his arms. "Really, Luffy, you should at least put some clothes on before you rush into things."
"Eh?" The captain glanced down at himself, oblivious to the fact that his straw hat had the only thing he'd been wearing. "Ahhhh! I'm naked!"
"You're just realizing this now!?"
"Aha! Looks like I finally found you, you stupid boy. Ku hu hu, I see your friend has finally decided to join us in this world, hmm?"
The voice came from the end of the sandy hallway, in yet another wooden door frame. It belonged to a petite, hunched-over elderly woman. Her square-ish body was draped in soothing green robes, her thick white hair bundled on top of her head in a pile that was nearly half her height. There were so many wrinkles on her face that some of the larger ones had wrinkles of their own.
Shamelessly, Luffy pointed at her at her while looking to Usopp, "Who's this weird old lady?"
Usopp reacted with a startled yelp, and raced to put himself between his captain and the elderly woman. "S-S-Sorry, granny! This guy can't be helped, you see, he's got this disease that makes him...that makes him...uh..."
He faltered because the 'old lady' was chuckling at him. Still somehow retaining the 'sweet gentle soul' persona, she began to walk towards them. "Oh, don't you worry about me, kid. I've raised over two hundred boys, you see. Nothing here I haven't seen two hundred times over! Ku hu hu hu!"
"Two hundred?" echoed Luffy, still shameless, but now with stars in his eyes. "You serious, granny? So cool! You must be really old, then!"
"Luffy!" Usopp smacked the back of his head.
"Ow! What did I do?"
The old lady chuckled louder as she hobbled right past them and disappeared into the room where Luffy had been sleeping. If she saw the broken door, she didn't seem to care or mind. A few seconds later, she emerged carrying Luffy's clothing in her hands, all neatly folded and spotlessly clean. She paused to hand them to Usopp, gave him a dismissive pat on the hand, and then began to walk back out of the hallway from whence she came.
"My name is Granny Marlo, by the way! Come eat lunch with us when you're decent enough for civilized company! Baka! Baka, baka, baka!"
Then she slammed the door behind her, causing the entire tiny house to shake and leaving the two nineteen-year-old crew mates stunned.
Luffy put on a huge grin. "I like her. Yosh! I'm going to ask her to join my crew!"
-o-
Zoro felt intense heat above him as he regained consciousness. He opened his eyes to see his hand, bathed in bright sunlight, clenching a fistful of sand. Groggily, the swordsman rolled over and took a deep breath of salty beach air. It took several seconds before he had any reaction to his surroundings.
He remembered Luffy grabbing him just before he'd passed out. Something about that memory gave him a guilty twinge; seeing that face of his so completely terrified made Zoro uneasy. His captain wasn't supposed to get rattled easily, but there were things that even an idiot like that found scary. Those things tended to the stuff made of nightmares.
In any case, he had start looking for his idiot captain and the rest of the crew.
Zoro rolled over and got up, feeling the weight of all three of his swords on his belt and being glad he didn't have to look for them, too. He stood on a beach that stretched further than he could see, mixed with uneven cliffs and lush greenery. It would have been a nice place to relax, especially if this turned out to be a deserted island. Which it wasn't. There was at least one other jackass here with him.
Sporting a frown, the swordsman walked over to where Sanji lay sprawled on the sand, not fifteen feet away. The stupid cook was flat on his back, still unconscious. Zoro waited a long minute, then lost his patience and prodded the curly-brow's head with a foot. "Oi, get up."
He let out a backwards gasp when Sanji's leg whip-kicked him and sent him crashing down. Sanji flipped onto his feet, growling, "Don't you touch me with your filthy foot, damned marimo!"
"I wouldn't have to if you woke up on your own, dammit!" Zoro shouted back in his face. As always, he let himself be the mature one and added calmly, "The rest of the crew is missing. Since it's just you and me until we find them, we should get our ranks in order."
"For the last time, you don't outrank me!" snapped the cook. "You showed up first because you had help from a beautiful woman!"
The swordsman made a disappointed sound. "Oi, oi, is that the way you should be talking to your superior, Number 2?"
That made Sanji freeze for a moment, caught off guard by the sudden reassignment of Zoro's 'ranking' scheme. It had to be a trick. Then it clicked in his mind.
"Are you seriously ranking us by who woke up first!" he roared, turning bright red in the process.
It was heating up quickly, probably destined to be one of their fights that ended up as a completely useless duel with no clear outcome. However, neither the blonde nor the swordsman had a chance to cook up another angry retort. They weren't alone.
"Yohoho...ho..."
In unison, Zoro and Sanji turned their heads to look towards the sea, and spotted their third crew member at the same time.
Brook was on his knees in the middle of the shallows, barely gripping his cane in both hands for support. The water was almost over his lap, explaining the weakness in his pose. "Konichiwa!" he called with unusual brightness. "I apologize for interrupting, but if one of you would be so kind to—aiiee!"
That high-pitched scream was the result of the skeleton's grip slipping on the wet handle of the cane, which sent him plummeting skull-first into the water.
"Brook!"
Shouting their ship musician's name was the first thing Zoro and Sanji technically agreed upon. The first thing in several days, anyway.
Thirty seconds later, Sanji was drenched from head to toe and walking out of the ocean with one of Brook's arms slung over his shoulder. Zoro folded his arms and stared the skeleton down in mild irritation as the pair rejoined him on dry sand.
"What are you doing?" he asked flatly. "If you needed help, you should have asked sooner."
"Ah, I was going to do that, but you looked busy. I didn't want to stick my nose in your business," Brook replied with an amused laugh. "Then again, since I am just bones, I have no nose!"
Sanji promptly dropped the skeleton, who clattered on the ground still 'yohoho-ing' over his joke. Much more cool-tempered now that he had taken a short dip in the cold water, the pissed off cook reached into his pocket for a damp cigarette. He couldn't light it, but he put it in his mouth anyway. Seeing how he would be teamed up with these two idiots, it wouldn't be long before the flare of his passionate, burning resentment lit the smoke for him.
Then a thought struck him like a metal pole. He grew wide-eyed.
"Nami-swa-a-a-a-an! Robin-schw-a-a-a-an!"
Like a bullet, Sanji took off down the beach, screaming the names of his beautiful ladies at the top of his lungs. He ran back and forth, looking behind rocks, under trees, over cliffs for the slightest clue to their whereabouts so their dashing love-knight could come to their rescue.
Meanwhile, Zoro closed his eye and mustered his fading patience. When he opened it again, he saw Brook gazing up at him with those empty sockets of his. "What?"
Taken slightly aback, the skeleton 'looked' away (though Zoro though it was impossible to tell for sure) and shakily climbed from his elbows to his feet. "N-Nothing," he replied with a cheerful tone. "Yohoho, I am quite embarrassed, though, to need rescuing so many times in so little time. The New World is a scary place, even for a skeleton."
Zoro smirked. "Tch, don't worry about it. You can't help but be weak when it comes to seawater. You're a hammer, right? In any case, leave him," he said, jerking his head towards the over-excited cook. "We might be able to use that 'special ability' of yours to look for Luffy and the others."
The swordsman turned and began to walk due east—or was it west—down the breadth of the empty beach, while Brook followed close behind, only wobbling slightly. Zoro's face was fixed with an expression of annoyance.
Find the captain. And find out what the hell happened to us in the first place.
-o-
The sound of a gun being cocked was what Franky heard at first. Three seconds after he woke up, that is. He decided to crack open an eye to see who was stupid enough to challenge his super self, now that he was in an instant bad mood for being woken this early.
A middle-aged man stood above him, pointing a rifle at his chest with quaking hands. The man's long black hair was fixed in countless tiny braids and ribbons, and his thin lips were pressed together in determination. He was skinny enough that Franky could have wrapped one hand around him and squeezed—that would have ended it. The dark, tanned skin and wide nose reminded him of a few of his old Franky Family members. That stopped him from reacting with certain violence right away, but he knew better than to give the first stranger he met in the New World the benefit of the doubt.
Franky sat up without taking his eyes off the armed man. For a very long time, neither of them moved or spoke, though the other man's trembling was getting worse and worse with every passing second.
Finally, the cyborg formed a pretend 'pistol' with his enormous left hand and pointed it at the much smaller guy. "Bang!" he said.
The guy reacted as if the shot had been real, yelping and raising the barrel of his rifle even higher. "D-D-D-D-Don't move!" he warned, almost squeezing the trigger. "You're trespassing on illegal ground, p-pirate! You should know that the j-junkyard is off limits-gack!"
What was that? 'Gack'? Nervous tick, maybe? Franky put one hand behind his head and looked around, not in the slightest bit worried about getting shot by that little peashooter. "Yo, old guy Ribbons. Where the heck am I? Oh-oh...oi, did the Sunny-go run aground?"
His voice grew louder when it occurred to him that they may have been, in fact, shipwrecked. Well...ship-grounded. Sunny wouldn't get destroyed because of a little collision with some little rocks, but without him at the helm, a storm like that could definitely take advantage of even a super ship like her and push her to shore.
Then he spotted something behind the guy with the puny rifle. Something that lit an angry fire in his cyborg body. Chopper and orange-haired Girlie were tied up and bound together, back-to-back, completely unconscious. Slowly, Franky's eyes traveled from his captured nakama, to the other man's face. Without another word, he slowly got to his feet and towered over the stranger.
The man holding the gun screeched when Franky reached out and plucked the rifle away between two fingers. It went off—the bullet ricocheted off his metal chest—and his shooter visibly panicked. Before the man could run off, Franky used his other hand to grab him by the torso and lift him off the ground.
"I'm gonna give you one chance to explain what happened to my friends," he told the guy with a somewhat harsher tone. "That's more than my captain would give if he saw his shipmates being threatened, Girly Ribbon man. You got ten seconds to apologize, too."
"N-No, wait!" gasped the braided man, struggling futilely against the steel grip. "I-I'm just the junkyard keeper! It's p-p-part of my job to make sure it stays hidden from you pirates! I'm just doing my job-gack! That's all, I swear-gack!"
Franky didn't move. He just stared at the other man from behind his sunglasses, waiting for something.
"Gaaaack!" cried his captive, suddenly remembering. "And I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! P-Please put me down, I don't like heights-gack!"
The shipwright lowered his arm to the ground and let go. Ignoring the gack-man, he walked past him and knelt beside his stirring nakama. Using his smaller, defter hands, he went about untying the ropes that were pinning them together.
The reindeer doctor was starting to come to, rolling his head back and forth groggily. "L-Luffy...?"
"Sorry, he's not here, reindeer-bro," Franky told him, loosing the last of the knots around his tiny hooves. Nami was just regaining consciousness, too. The cyborg was intelligent about this—he made sure he was only touching the safe parts of the Girlie to avoid getting a good beating from her later on. Even his super body had weaknesses against the wrath of Nee-chan.
Nami slowly opened her eyes, blinking up at him as her wrists were loosened from the ropes. "Hrrrmmm? Franky?" Suddenly, she was instantly alert, crying, "Franky, look out!"
That was enough to make the shipwright move his head backwards while turning it—and an earsplitting shot filled the air. Bullets whizzed right past his nose where his head had been a moment before. The strange ribbon-haired man had found his rifle again, apparently.
Grimacing with barely contained anger, Franky closed a fist around the barrel of the rifle and jerked it out of the man's hands. He threw it over his shoulder and into the ocean this time. Stupid peashooter shouldn't be in some scaredy-pants who didn't know how to use it, anyway. Then his hand shot forward and he hit the shooter with a metal palm. Lightly, of course.
Mr. Ribbon Gack was sent flying nonetheless. With a surprised 'gack!', his four-foot and a half body sailed at least thirty feet before skidding to a halt in the dry sand.
Before anyone could react, a shrill cry broke out, "Papa! Papa!"
Two things happened. One, Nami and Chopper finally gained their footing after getting untangled from their ropes and immediately took a defensive posture next to Franky. The second thing that happened was a little more unexpected.
From behind a mound of unsuspecting sand, a small black-haired girl with hug, yellow-ribbon braids came charging straight towards Franky. Her little hands brandished an iron frying pan, which she promptly began to use against the cyborg's knees the moment she was close enough.
"Eh?" He looked down at her questioningly, lifting his sunglasses as he did so. The 'bang bang' of the pan as it ineffectively struck his metal parts didn't phase her at all. Casually, he reached down and lifted the little girl up by the back of her nightgown while she continued to swing her weapon blindly at the open air. "What's this little pipsqueak doing here?"
"Put her down!" howled the Ribbon guy. He was dragging himself to his feet from the sand pile he'd created, seething with nearly visual loathing. "You've done it now, you stinking pirate! I was going to go easy on you, but no one touches my Velma-chan!"
"Franky, just what's going on here? Who is that guy?" Nami demanded to know, a cross between genuinely scared and irritated. Chopper had transformed into his four-hoofed self in an attempt to be more intimidating, and glowered back at the Ribbon-hair man, simply assuming that this was an enemy that had to be trampled on.
Just then, Ribbon-guy vanished. Like a ghost, he simply ceased to be seen.
"What?" cried Nami, but Franky had caught a glimpse.
He's super fast!
It turned out to be the cyborg's final thought before the braided man appeared briefly on the sand nearby, and with ridiculous speed, practically teleported right next to Franky's bewildered face. His fist came flashing down, striking Franky deftly in the temple with enough force to stagger him sideways.
Chopper's shocked and enraged yelling followed Franky as he was sent into dizzy, spiraling unconsciousness.