And behold, a second chapter.
Keep in mind that this is a major accomplishment for me. I never dedicate this much to a petty fanfiction.
Or anything, for that matter . . .
Oh, and I meant to apologize for the terrible cliché that is Nami's kidnap. I warned you this was just large-scale crap. Maybe it'll turn out good, though, just maybe. Cross your fingers.
Right, well, enjoy!
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chapter two: of Franky.
Splinters weren't Franky's thing. The wood he cut and carved was always perfect, no exceptions. He wasn't known as the best shipwright in the Grand Line for any slapdash work.
But it was admittedly tedious work, smoothing the rough wood out so that it glided under one's fingers. He was determined to finish the siding before the work day was over, and he was itching to go for a drink or six with Paulie later on. A carefully angled swipe of the sandpaper here, another there . . .
Franky decided he was done and admired his handiwork. He had to hand it to himself, he was good. Few others could boast of such expert craftsmanship and talent for the art of shipbuilding, where Franky himself was a master. He glanced in the direction of the train station, not seeing the Puffing Tom but knowing full well that the famous sea train was there. Next to the Thousand Sunny, it was his greatest achievement and he took great pride in it.
"Franky, the work bell's about to ring," Paulie called to him from down the shipyard.
In response, Franky rose his enormous hand, fist closed with the exception of his shiny, metallic thumb. He then got to stacking the smoothed wood back where it would later be used to build the ship that Dock One of the Galley-La Company was currently building. With his massive frame, it was easy enough to lift the heavy lumber back and forth. His job was done before the work bell rang, signaling the workers that it was time to lock up the dock and leave. Franky left and waited at the dock's entrance for Paulie.
The blonde was just catching up to him when a familiar voice cried out his name in such a tone of desperation that it instantly worried the cyborg. He turned to see Karasumaru Kaize dashing towards him, his normally professional appearance shot to hell; his suit jacket was unbuttoned, his button down white shirt was only half-tucked, his trousers were low on his hips where they were typically higher and tightly fastened by a leather belt, which he seemed to be lacking. "Franky-san!" he called again, reaching him and struggling to catch his breath.
"Kaize-san? What's wrong?" Franky asked in a concerned tone.
Paulie arrived, not saying anything but looking back and forth between the two with a mildly confused expression.
"It's Nami," he wheezed, "she's . . . she's been kidnapped!"
Franky's eyes widened, "Kidnapped?" What was he talking about? Who would want to kidnap Nami? More importantly, who in their right mind would want to kidnap Nami? Surely they couldn't have known who she was if they had taken her, unless they were really that stupid. There were undeniably some really stupid people in the world . . .
"She went to a play earlier this evening and never came back. My sister, she went with her, and my sister said that she went to the bathroom during the intermission and never came back, and there were reports of pirates kidnapping someone from the bathroom! It's obviously Nami!" he looked exasperated, and Franky didn't blame him. He was sure that by now Nami's husband knew all about what happened when you got the former navigator angry; she was definitely not a walk in the park when you got her steam blowing. He a hundred percent doubted that Nami had just let herself be kidnapped, and if she had put up a fight then she had to have gotten angry to some degree, and anyone who could handle an infuriated Nami was either very strong or very much out of his mind.
"Did you tell Iceburg about this?" Franky asked him.
The much shorter man nodded furiously, "Yes, yes, and then he yelled some stuff to a bunch of other people, and told me to find you and tell you about it."
Franky scratched at his chin thoughtfully. That was very much like Iceburg, he was probably ordering for the Marines to be called so they could hunt her down. "He also asked," Kaize was saying, "to inquire about any pirates that are around that could have been responsible for this."
Paulie spoke up, "Of course, there're always a helluva lot of pirates around! All pirates are suspicious!"
The cyborg eyed the carpenter wryly, but refrained from saying any of the various opinions he had on that statement and just ignored the comment altogether. "There are a lot of pirates around."
Kaize ran his hand over his face in frustration, "Any that look like they're capable of stealing an innocent woman away?"
Franky thought about this for a moment. Firstly, he wouldn't really call Nami an innocent woman, in fact she was far from it. He thought of the damage she had done in all of the various places they had been as a pirate crew, and "innocent" was far from the last word he would ever use to describe her. "Most of them, actually . . ." Franky thought of the pirates he had seen around town, and although none of them looked all that harmful, they certainly all reeked of the desire for fame, and stealing away the Pirate King's old navigator was a sure way to make headlines.
The young man in front of him looked beyond hope. Franky himself was nervous. Nami was one of his nakama, and the Mugiwara disbanded or not, a nakama once was a nakama always. He had a feeling that if Nami wasn't recovered very shortly, word would soon reach Luffy, and that would be the end of that. The pirates who had taken Nami would be wiped clean off the face of the earth.
"Go home, Kaize-san. We'll see what we can do. One way or another, we'll get Nami back," Franky told him, narrowing his eyes towards the sea to the east. He gazed at the unfamiliar masts of the pirate ships, jolly rogers raised in pride. He remembered seeing a certain jolly roger, years ago, in the docks of this very city, the straw hat emblem forever blazed in the back of his eyes.
Thankfully, Kaize obliged and left, leaving Franky and Paulie standing in front of the entrance to Dock One. After a period of silence, Paulie looked up to Franky and said, "So I guess we're not going for drinks tonight, then?"
Franky shook his head. "What I need right now is some time to think about this. And sleep."
Paulie nodded, "Being seeing you, then." He raised a hand in goodbye and shoved his hands in his pants pockets, starting his way down the street.
With a heavy frown on his face, Franky turned and headed in the opposite direction as the blonde carpenter. His heavy footsteps echoed along the narrow street, but Franky didn't notice. He felt horrible.
He and Nami were the only two that ended up staying on the same island together. Everyone else had gone their separate ways, some farther than others, and some never even staying in the same place. So out of all of them, they were the two who should run into the least trouble, right? They had each other. Franky and Nami met at least once a week, usually to go out for lunch or to see the occasional play, when Franky felt like he could manage sitting through one, (honestly, he regretted suggesting that play to her a couple years back, now she was hooked on them like they were some powerfully addictive drug.)
But now she was kidnapped? That sounded so terribly cliché to Franky that he almost wanted to retch. Who even kidnapped people anymore? He didn't think he'd even heard the word since the Mugiwara Pirates' run-in with Vander Decken on Fishman Island.
He pinched the bridge of his nose and made an exhausted sound. What was wrong with him? He was entrusted with keeping an eye on one lousy nakama, and now look what had happened.
His house — which was more of a garage, really — had never seemed so welcoming. He sunk into his couch and wondered what in the name of some entity should he do now?
Franky wouldn't contact the others without orders from Luffy first. When and only when his captain told him to would be the time to summon all of them. He gazed across the room at the mantel that was almost invisible in the shadows cast by the setting sun. On the mantel was the communication device that Luffy could contact him with. With the distance, it would too hard to have all the of the crew have a communication device of the same nature, so instead of that they got an alarm that would go off if they were needed. In that alarm was an eternal pose that lead not to an island, but to the Thousand Sunny. Franky had constructed them himself before they all went their separate ways and started new lives with their newly obtained treasure.
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He had no idea he had fallen asleep, but late the next afternoon, he awoke to the most obnoxious ringing noise that Franky thought he had ever heard in his life. He blinked his eyes open tiredly, thankful he didn't have work that morning, and searched for the source of the horribly annoying noise.
Across the room, sitting on the mantel, the communication device was blinking a vermillion red and vibrating with the intensity of the ringing coming from its speakers.
Luffy was contacting him.
Franky wasn't sure he had ever gotten up so fast. He leaped across the room and picked up the receiver without hesitation. "Franky here," he said, putting his ear up to the speaker.
"Franky?" came Luffy's voice from the speaker, so much louder than he thought that he jumped in surprise, recoiling from the speaker for a moment before returning to it.
"Yeah, I'm here," he responded.
"Nami's been kidnapped! The newspaper today said it, it says it happened yesterday," he said, a little calmer. Franky noted that his captain's voice sounded a little cooler, not as shrill as it used to be, but at the same time it was still just as he remembered it.
He scratched his head, "Yeah, she was. I was waiting for orders from you."
Luffy made a disapproving noise, "Well, my orders are to call the others there, immediately! We'll show them what happens when they hurt one of our nakama."
Franky nodded, unable to prevent the wave of excitement that ran through him, "I will."
Luffy must have cancelled the connection, because the line went dead, and Franky didn't hear anything, not even the static that gathered over the long distance. He hung up the receiver, then stood there for a moment in empty thought.
Suddenly, it occurred to him that immediately meant at that moment, and he ran out of his front door, and started sprinting to his special dock where the Thousand Sunny was sitting. His feet carried him fast, pushing past people and turning sharp corners when he needed to. The specially built dock wasn't too much farther from where he lived, but he found that he was hurrying as if his life depended on it.
No, he decided, not my life, Nami's.
Perhaps it was an exaggeration, but Franky knew that a small part of his thought was true. Pirates were for the most part all the same, the only exceptions were the greats, and since he hadn't recognized any of the jolly rogers down in the docks, he doubted any of them were considered "great." Nami was for the most part defenseless without her Clima Tact, which Franky assumed she didn't have with her considering she had gotten kidnapped in the first place. With that strange weather-wielding mechanism, any pirate's ass would have been laid out on a platter if they had tried to take her.
Franky reached the Thousand Sunny, and for once didn't pause to admire it. He dashed right inside and into the very small communications room. He examined the cupboards and drew a blank. He completed forgot where he had put the damn alarm trigger . . .
He sided with rummaging through all the cupboards until he found it, which he eventually did. He tore it out of the mess of unused wires and looked at it for a moment until he inhaled sharply and flicked the alarm switch on. Seven red squares began blinking, one for each of the Mugiwara Pirates, excluding himself and Luffy. They'd stop blinking when they got the message.
He exhaled deeply and started to the door of the communications room, ready to leave the Sunny once again. But, before he left, two of the dots stopped blinking, the third one and the last one — Usopp and Brooke. A moment later the first one stopped, so Zoro had gotten the message. The fourth one stopped blinking when Franky jumped down the Sunny's decks; Sanji. Robin's stopped blinking by the time he was halfway to his house, and just as he walked into his house, the fifth one, Chopper's, ceased it's flashing, and all that was left was the second light.
Nami's.
Guilt surged through Franky. He put the alarm trigger down on his coffee table and went back outside. His gaze landed on the handful of pirate ships gathered in the dock, and with angry determination, set off towards them. While he waited the long amount of time that it would take for them all to arrive there on Water 7, he could at least find out which of the pirates had taken Nami.
Dark was falling when he reached the docks. He examined them from a safe distance, they wouldn't be able to see his massive form from anywhere on their decks where he was. The one thing that Franky couldn't decide on was which of them had Nami, the most powerful looking of them, or the stupid-looking ones. It was either one or the other.
After carefully thinking out which was more feasible, he placed his bet on the dangerous ones. This far into the Grand Line, someone stupid enough to kidnap the navigator of the Pirate King would've already been conquered by the ruthless sea. It had to be the ones with the most power and strength. Or the biggest ego. The most powerful could be very humble and not think themselves to be strong enough to face Luffy's crew, while a weaker crew with an ego as big as the sea could think that they were the best thing since sliced bread and carried the attitude that they could crush Luffy in a nanosecond.
But humble? Who was he kidding? These were pirates.
He decided that the most likely crew would be the ones with the jolly roger of a half black, half white skull with double-edged swords crossing behind them. The jolly roger looked somewhat familiar, so Franky figured that he had read about them somewhere or something, and he had seen a few of their crew on the decks, and they looked like they shouldn't be messed with.
With some information gathered, Franky turned to return to Water 7's mainland and inform Iceburg of his judgment. But he took on step and all of a sudden, a warm, sickly feeling washed over him and he swayed back and forth on his feet. Then, a bag was pulled over his head, blocking his vision. He lashed out with his arms, but they felt heavy and useless.
He collapsed onto his hands and knees, his body shaking. He felt like he was getting weaker and weaker with each passing minute.
"Get Boulder, we'll need help bringing him back," a voice echoed around in his brain.
He shivered and fell, collapsing completely. He felt his breathing slow and his world spin as he closed his eyes for what he thought was for good.
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Oh, the suspense.
Hah, I'm sure you're just hanging onto the edge of you seat in anticipation. This'll get better, I swear.
And remember, I said better, not good. That'll be decided when it's all done. If that even happens.
Reviews are nice. :3
