Chapter 2:
"Hey! Are you gonna let us out of here anytime soon!?" Usopp shouted at the black sky. There were some unfavorable memories happening on either side of him, with a few crew members watching each one, but neither was taking up a lot of space and ripped themselves to shreds before becoming full blown ones like some of the others.
"No," for the first time since they were dropped through the ground, they heard a response from the little girl who sent them there. Her voice sounded so cute, and as they thought about the three foot tall girl with short pink hair, she didn't seem like a menace. "I'm going to wait until you go mad, then I'll release you into the world."
"Believe me," Zoro growled and looked up where he heard the voice coming from. The evil glare he gave the sky received a high pitched shriek as the girl saw his terrifying face and panicked, "I'm already mad."
"I mean mad as in crazy, not angry you baka! Bakaaa!" This only made the swordsman more furious but the girl wasn't finished, "Once you start fighting amongst yourselves, that's when the real fun will begin."
"Why would we fight between us?" Luffy asked and just heard fading laughter as a response before the girl was gone again. "Hello?"
"I think she's gone Luffy-san," Brook offered and the rubber captain stopped looking up.
"Oi," they all looked over to Luffy and the captain continued, "let's go."
"Alright."
"Let's do it!"
"SUPER idea!"
"I'll give it a try," Robin crossed her arms as the others started preparing to escape.
Nami, Brook, Chopper, and Usopp all stared with open mouths as the other five got ready. They ducked for cover as the group started.
Zoro removed his swords and started sending flying blade attacks up in the air, trying to blast a hole in the roof.
"Sanji," Luffy called out.
"Gotcha," the chef understood and grabbed the captain by the shirt collar before moon-stepping over and over in the air.
Franky was shooting missiles and finally his laser-beam into the same area as Zoro's attacks, but they seemed to be doing almost nothing except break through some wisps right above their heads.
Robin shouted, "Cien Fleur," and grew two wings out of her back made of arms. She flew herself high up, having trained hard in the last two years, she was able to hold onto her ability without a time limit now and she caught up to Luffy and Sanji who was jumping on air.
"How high does this go?" Luffy asked impatiently.
"We fell for a long time at first," Sanji reminded him and they kept going. As they got farther and farther, it seemed like they might actually be close to the top.
"I can feel it," Luffy shouted and the other two smiled as they were almost home free.
Suddenly three different images appeared in front of the pirates. One was an old man with funky hair, blood spurting out of his back and his chest. The second was a little blonde boy with blue clothes and a top hat. The final image showed what looked like a woman, but had a huge head and hairy legs.
"Professor!" Robin's wings disappeared and she fell, unable to tear her eyes from the old man getting shot in the chest.
"Elizabeth!" Sanji screamed in disgust and tripped in the air, plummeting down below after Robin.
"Go back up, I want to see Sabo!" Luffy reached towards the memory but his hand swiped right through it and it tore apart. He accidentally swiped into Robin's memory and destroyed it which made the woman falling shout angrily at her captain, "Sorry," he apologized to the woman before all three of them hit the weird black ground.
Sanji shivered and took a long puff of his cigarette before taking it out and flicking it to the ground. I had hoped never to see her... him, again, the blonde haired man closed his eyes and tried to think of anything else.
Luffy seemed disappointed that he didn't get to see more of Sabo, but Robin was the most upset of the three. The people down below were too far to see the memories, but they got the gist of what happened by their fellow members' reactions.
"Robin, are you alright?" Nami bent down to her friend and extended an arm but she shrugged her shoulder and knocked the younger girl's hand away.
Clover, the woman looked down at the ground as she had yet to get up off her knees after falling. The World Government is worse than you imagined. I wish you were alive to learn the things Dragon has taught me.
"Why'd you fall?" Luffy asked the chef angrily who spun with a flustered look on his face.
"Did you see that monster?" Sanji asked.
"What monster?!" Chopper shouted, looking at the arguing crew members.
The captain looked back up at the sky but Sabo was no longer there. He shot his chef a pouting look and the man just turned away, not wanting to deal with Luffy's selfish attitude.
"Oi, look ahead morons," Zoro scowled and watched as a memory started to surround them. They were high above the water, but they were surrounded on all sides. The ground beneath them turned brown and bumpy and the crew looked around, figuring that they were standing on a rock.
"Whose memory is this?" Franky asked, looking around and not seeing anyone.
Nami suddenly gasped and a few others looked in the direction the woman was. The girl with orange hair was looking down to the left, off the side of the rock face they were standing on.
"Ohh," Sanji said as he looked off the side. A pained look came over his face and he turned and walked away from the side as the other crew members walked over.
"Yow!" Franky shouted as he looked at the little boy climbing up the rock.
The kid looked young, no older than ten. His blonde hair was a mess and covered part of his face as he dug his hands into the rock and tried pulling himself up one hand at a time. The horrifying aspect of the kid however, he was only skin and bones. His skin looked loose like there was more meat on his bones at some point, but now he was beyond malnourishment.
"Sanji-San?" Brook asked, looking down at the kid climbing the rock. The boy reminded him of his skeleton self, his body so thin and brittle that he looked ready to break.
He didn't seem to care about how he looked, or anything else except for climbing up that rock. The boy got to the top and the crew watching parted ways as he poked his head over. His eyes widened and they followed his gaze to the other side of the rock.
For the first time, they noticed that their adult version of Sanji had already walked across the rock and was standing next to the man who was sitting over there. "Is that Zeff?" Nami asked and Luffy pointed and yelled.
"That's the old man who made me work at the restaurant!" The others saw the man sitting next to a large bag tied at the top.
"Is that... food?" Chopper asked softly, looking over at the bag in horror. He looked back at the boy who was literally dying of starvation next to him and he became huge. His sudden transformation surprised Franky and Usopp who fell down next to him. "HOW DARE HE?!" The large reindeer roared.
"There's still so much left."
The crew stared down at the little boy and were stunned as he pulled out a cooking knife and held it in his right hand.
"He's going to kill the man and take his food," Robin observed.
"No," Usopp shook his head, "this can't be right. We met them together; he was like a father to Sanji."
"No matter what, I have to get my hands on it."
Again the crew was shocked as Sanji looked more like a animal than a person. The crazed smile on his face grew as he put both hands on the handle of the knife.
"Can't really blame him here," Nami said as she looked at the child.
"Sanji," Usopp whispered. It was hard to see the chef in such a state. None of them had ever seen such an expression on his face before, and they never wanted to see it again.
"It's his entire fault to begin with. I want to live on!" The boy kept smiling wickedly as he started scampering around the rock face.
Chopper turned back to his normal-sized self and watched as Sanji crept behind a rock, and then ran to hide behind another that was right behind the old man sitting on the edge.
They looked over at the adult Sanji who cast a glance over his shoulder and watched his crazed face pop over the rock.
The kid made a break for it and started sprinting at the man. Unfortunately, because of his weak condition, he wasn't fast and slowed down, panting hard.
"Why are you here little eggplant?"
The old man spoke in a raspy voice and the crew stared at his back in confusion. The members who knew him didn't want to believe what they were witnessing, and the man's tone suggested he wasn't a heartless monster.
Kid Sanji stopped and stared at the old man's back.
"Perhaps you saw a ship?" The man asked, not turning to look at the boy behind him whose smile turned into an angry scowl.
"I came to take your food."
"Smart," Franky said sarcastically. "Tell the man you're about to kill that you've come to get him. Not the best plan," the cyborg stopped talking as the boy seemed like he was going to follow through with his threat. Child version of Sanji rose the knife in his hands.
"If you're gonna kill me, go ahead and try. Without anything to eat, I'd die anyway!" the kid froze and turned tail and ran from the man, instead he sprinted to the huge bag next to him.
With a slash of his knife he cut the bag open and everyone except for the adult version of Sanji gasped.
Nami's eyes turned to Beli signs and they glowed gold as she stared at the real gold on the floor in front of her.
"There wasn't any food?" Chopper asked and he looked over at the front of the man for the first time. The reindeer's eyes popped and his jaw dropped, unable to say a word and taking back all the horrible things he thought about the man in his mind.
"I thought we were not to contact each other until one of us saw a ship."
"What's this? It's all mere treasure."
Nami didn't even get angry at the child's sentiment towards one of her favorite things. The woman was staring at the boy with sad eyes as Sanji stared at the gold confused out of his mind.
The adult Sanji was standing on the side of the rock island. He stared out over the ocean and put his cigarette between his fingers as he spoke. "The old man pretended to have a whole lot of food, but the only thing he was able to salvage was one piece of bread. Which he gave to me," the man put the light back in his mouth. "We were shipwrecked here for three months."
"THREE MONTHS!" Luffy shouted. He tried to imagine what it would be like going without food for a week but it made his stomach hurt.
Zoro looked over at him and remembered back to when Helmeppo forced him to be tied up to a post for almost a month. He went without food for weeks, but even he didn't think he would have managed another few weeks there, let alone a couple months more. He didn't look at the chef, but he made a note of it in his mind, gaining a small shred of respect for the man.
"Having money but nothing to eat. Funny story don't you think?"
"So that's why," Chopper mumbled incoherently as he continued to stare at the old man sitting on the edge.
The child version of Sanji looked so wrinkly and old, despite his size. He looked up at the man in front of him, still not understanding what had happened, "Hey. This sack's just full of treasure." They thought that maybe little Sanji understood what had happened, but the kid had lost the one hope he had. "What's going on here? What about all the food?" He ran over to the man and started shaking his shoulder with his feeble arms. "Didn't you eat anything up until now? Hey, say something!"
Past Sanji walked in front of the old man and the majority of the crew looked to see what he was so shocked about. Nami put both of her hands up to her mouth as Luffy, Franky, and Usopp's eyes went huge, blood pouring to their foreheads.
Zeff's body looked even worse off than Sanji's. His skin had nothing between it and the bones and they could see the outline of his skeletal structure through his almost transparent, pale skin. He was missing a leg and the ground around him was soaked with blood, only a tight rope under his knee keeping the wound from bleeding out.
"What happened to that leg of yours?" The boy's eyes went wide as he thought back and remembered watching the man cut his own leg off. "Wasn't that just a dream? To have you saving me. That food you handed me, was that all of it?"
"Precisely."
Young Sanji had started to tear up and a few of the Straw Hat's crew members were tearing as well. Franky was bawling and shouting how the pirate was a true man.
"Without that leg, you can no longer be a pirate, can you?"
"Guess you're right."
"Why? You didn't have to. I don't remember asking you to treat me so kindly! Why? WHY?"
"You... you have the same dream as I do."
"All Blue?" the boy asked, getting to his feet in surprise. "But even your crew said that such a thing doesn't exist."
"But it does. When the time comes, set off for the Grand Line. All Blue is definitely there! I certainly can't be a pirate anymore. So this time you go there and find it!" The man started to fall back and the rock they were standing on started to tear apart.
"Wait, this isn't the end," Sanji said turning away from the water. He was waiting for the ship to appear, he'd remembered it had many beautiful women on board who he never fully appreciated as a kid.
"Looks like it's all we get to see," Brook said as the waves in the water below them started to splash harder and fade into the sky. The background sky was ripping apart as well and the crew tried to watch as Sanji talked to the old man.
"But this is right when we get rescued, look!" he pointed out into the distance and they could all see a small dot on the horizon.
The group smiled before watching the dot vanish like most of the rest of the vision. They looked around and watched the pieces of the memory scatter into the blackness around them.
"This is sick," Nami stated, her whole body shaking. "I don't want to be here anymore."
Although the previous memory wasn't too heartbreaking, many of them had things they'd rather leave unseen. "Let us out!" Usopp shouted at the sky and Chopper joined in with him but they received no reply from their torturer.
"We'll just have to act crazy and then she'll let us out," Zoro suggested, unsheathing his sword a bit and glaring over at Chopper and Usopp with a wicked smile on his face.
They freaked out at the swordsman's suggestion and screamed in panic. Now they were frantically shouting that the little girl let them leave before Zoro killed them, but Luffy was just rolling on the floor laughing like a buffoon.
"That was a good one Zoro," the swordsman looked over at the captain with a look that showed he wasn't joking but he still slid his sword back into its sheath.
At the same time, two wisps that were floating around them started to appear and the crew looked back and forth as the images grew and then pressed into each other. The memories pushed back and forth until the edges just seemed to merge and the crew was confused at where they were.
On one side of them, they were in the middle of an arctic tundra, snow all over the place and freezing wind blowing past, picking up the snow as it did. Even though they couldn't really feel the cold air, some of them still shivered subconsciously and crossed their arms per instinct.
The other side was much darker and it was night on an island. There was grass all over the cliff they were looking at, and over the cliff there was water spreading out for miles. But the thing that stood out the most, was the tombstone sitting on the edge of the cliff, with the little girl with orange hair sitting in front of it.
Nami saw the image and looked away, she didn't want to watch this.
They couldn't tell how old Nami was because her face was pressed against the grass, muffled sobs coming from her. She was small though, a child around the same age as Sanji in the last image.
The orange-haired woman looked the other way so that she wouldn't have to see herself but that direction wasn't much better.
Robin turned away from the frozen landscape to watch the other woman's memory, as she couldn't handle looking at herself in that state. The little girl with black hair in the memory was treading slowly through the snow in nothing but a sleeveless dress that barely went below her waist.
Her cheeks were red, starting to turn purple, and she was shivering as snow clung to her freezing body. "Robin-chan," Sanji said and then turned to look at the image behind him, "Nami..."
"Bellemere!"
The girl with orange hair shot her head up in the air and wailed the name before Robin's memory started to overtake hers and the outsides started closing in. Suddenly the entire crew found themselves surrounded by snow, and Robin was just walking slowly through the frozen desert.
Snow fell all around the girl and she continued to walk, all alone. She tripped and called out in pain, but no one was around for miles and she just lay there for a few seconds. The crew didn't know what to make of the scene playing out in front of them.
Even Zoro had his mouth lowered a little, he didn't understand what he was looking at. For some reason they all felt so sad looking at the girl, all by herself in the snow. It was her face that really broke them though, the lifeless, scared eyes worrying her nakama.
"Why are you only wearing that dress!?" Chopper shouted, "It's got to be way below freezing!" He looked at the adult version and stopped yelling at the woman whose eyes were frozen on her younger form in sadness.
The girl clenched her open hands and curled up some snow, pushing herself back to her feet and continuing to walk and the snow falling around them started to pick up. They were confused as to what was happening, but the snow started to pull in different directions, leaving black spaces between the air until the scene itself was actually tearing apart.
As the memory was ripping, just like Zoro's before, smaller fragments started pulling out of the larger one and scattering around the sky, large enough for the crew to see.
"Look at this bounty, if we trade her in, we'll be rich!" A few men were pointing at a poster but Robin was running away from them
"All you bring is death! The World Government came after us because of you!" A man wearing a pirate's hat and had scratches and bruises all over his face yelled. "If you're going to stay on my ship you'll need to earn your stay." The look in the man's eyes disgusted many of the crew members and Robin turned away, grabbing her left arm and squeezing it hard as she looked down at the ground and tried to drown out the noise.
A new image appeared with the little girl sitting down and smiling next to a small dog. She was laughing but her eyes were filled with tears and as the dog ran away she kept laughing. Even as the picture faded away from in front of them, the laughter that was echoing in the dark room made some of them feel unnerved and looked over at the strong woman who had yet to say a word.
"Monster!" the group heard a voice shout and turned around to see a different memory forming. It was small and shaky, looking like it was going to be torn at any second but Tony Tony Chopper gasped as he saw himself.
"MONSTER!"
"Shoot it!"
Past Chopper was running for his life through a forest covered in snow. The townspeople were chasing him and shooting and finally they hit, blood spurting from Chopper's back and the reindeer collapsing to the ground.
"Stop this," Chopper whimpered as the memory above him faded. "I don't want to watch this anymore, please!" he shouted up at the sky but there was no response.
"ACE!" the crew all turned to where they heard Luffy's voice and all they saw was purple. The purple started to become more translucent and they could see Luffy with little purple dots all over his skin.
Chopper and Robin were still on the ground, not looking up, but the other crew members all saw a man who looked like a huge vampire staring at their captain.
"I will save Ace!" Luffy in the vision shouted and jumped for the man.
"HYDRA!" the man shouted in response and a giant purple dragon came out of his body, engulfing Luffy and causing him to drop down to the ground, writhing in pain.
"That's the power of the Doku Doku fruit," Brook said with a gasp. "The captain of the men who attacked our ship had that ability. I guess it makes sense that fifty years later someone else would have it, but that man uses it so much better than the one who attacked us decades ago."
"That's the Warden of Impel Down," Robin muttered as she got to her feet and stared at the figure. "Magellen."
Even that memory started to fade fast as it couldn't hold on for much longer. "This is getting ridiculous," Sanji muttered, trying to ignore the fact that the one who had them trapped here was a cute girl. "Oi, let us out of here!" he called up at the black sky covered in fast moving wisps of memories.
"This is all your fault," Chopper whispered, still remembering how it felt getting chased by everyone on the island. His family didn't want him, the humans didn't want him, "Why did you have to challenge that stupid girl?!" the reindeer shouted at Nami who looked back at him surprised. He had tears coming down his eyes, Am I going to have to watch Doctor die again? The reindeer was scared and looked away from the navigator who started yelling at him that it wasn't her fault.
"He's right you know," Zoro said even though he didn't care to place blame and wouldn't hold it against her. "You can't let children get to you like that."
"Don't talk to Nami-san like that Moss Head," Sanji growled and lifted a foot to kick him. "What about you, getting all sad because you lost a duel to a girl?" Zoro pulled out a sword and angrily scowled at the chef before they started swinging and kicking each other.
"Guys," Usopp called out, trying to calm everyone down. "GUYS!" he screamed in a loud, authoritative voice. No one expected him to sound like that and everyone except for Robin turned to him and stared as he continued, "This is exactly what she wants us to do."
The other members remembered what the girl said about fighting amongst themselves and calmed down. "Look," Nami said, changing the subject and pointing at a wisp of a memory above them that started engulfing the other wisps around it and growing stronger.
"I don't remember what happened. I just ate three rumble balls and then nothing."
The crew looked over at Chopper again and the little reindeer was looking around as the scene started to form around them. They were surrounded by stone walls and many of them recognized it as the interior of the castle on top of Drum Mountain. The one hundred and thirty-nine year old woman sitting at his bedside lowered her glasses and looked down at the bed.
Chopper was lying there, looking much younger than he was now. He had bandages on his face and looked like a mess.
"Let's call it a rampage of your Devil Fruit." The woman pulled away her glasses and looked the reindeer in the eyes. "I don't care what happens, you can't let yourself go down that path. A power that destroys your foes, but turns you against your friends and your own body as well."
"She's talking about your Monster Point right?" Usopp asked. The little creature nodded and stared up at the vision as it started to get shaky, looking like it would tear apart at any second.
"It was the first time," the reindeer explained. "I was experimenting with Rumble Balls, and I wound up destroying a village," he paused and sniffled back some tears, "I hurt a lot of people."
"There's only one word for a creature like that,"
The entire memory started crumbling, the walls of the castle collapsing as the vision split and shredded itself.
"A MONSTER!" Doctorine's voice bounced around the room as Luffy's crew watched. They looked over to the little reindeer with sad eyes.
"It was good to see Doctorine again wasn't it?" Nami asked the little doctor.
"I wish it was, but she called, she called me a," the young doctor didn't finish his sentence and just looked down at his feet, ashamed of himself for his actions that day. When I see her again, I can show Doctorine the control I have over it now. He resolved to do just that and he calmed himself down a little.
"When are we going to get out of here?" Zoro grumbled, tired of everyone's sobbing and whimpering about their pasts.
"I don't see you coming up with any bright ideas," Nami scolded him.
"Whoa," Franky shouted and pointed as a strong wisp of memory was growing fast. Finally the memories all pulled together and merged, surrounding the group standing there and watching.
"Dogra! You went looking for Ace and Dadan right? They've both come home," the little boy in the straw hat called over to the short bandit in front of him.
"Dogra," Luffy said with a smile, looking at the mountain bandit.
"Why were you with bandits?" Sanji asked.
"I lived with them for ten years," the boy responded plainly and everyone's eyes went wide.
"Wow," Franky shouted, "so that guy's kind of like family?" Luffy thought about it for a second and then nodded with a toothy grin.
"Really, they have? That's great..."
"He sure doesn't sound too happy about it," Zoro commented looking at the man.
"That's because something just happened," Luffy said, his smile fading away. They followed Dogra and the child version of Luffy as they walked into the building next to them. They were in the middle of the forest and it looked like the house was meant to be well hidden.
They went inside and everyone turned to the short bandit, welcoming him back and laughing about how Dadan and Ace were safe.
In a quiet whisper, the man spoke, "Sabo died."
The room became instantly silent as everyone gasped.
The crew saw the young version of Ace and he looked furious, "You liar! Don't even joke about that!" The boy tackled the man from across the room and raised a fist over his face, his eyes filled with rage.
"Don't do it Ace." A large man behind him pleaded.
"It's not a lie, nor a joke." The man underneath Ace shouted for the room to hear him.
Sanji and Robin looked over to their captain, remembering the image of the boy in blue with the hat. "That was Sabo?" Sanji asked, realizing why Luffy wanted to see him so badly. The captain nodded, and then he told them that Sabo was his and Ace's other brother.
"It was so sudden, I barely realized what had happened. I doubted my own eyes! I wondered if it was just a dream or an illusion!
"Shut up! Sabo went back to his noble born parents!" Ace shouted from on top of the man. "There's no way he'd sail out to sea!"
"That's right, Sabo went home!" Flashback Luffy shouted.
"Wait, he was the son of a noble?" Sanji asked, his idea of all nobles being selfish, disgusting picks.
"Yeah, but he wasn't like them," Luffy defended his lost brother. "He didn't like the nobles and ran away to come live with us in the woods. He was good."
Robin was standing next to Luffy with a confused look on her face until she realized something that had never occurred to her before.
The man on the floor grabbed Ace's arms and shouted back in his face, "Outlaws like us understand how he must have felt. We all have places we really don't want to go back to!" He pushed a shocked Ace off of him. "Do you really think he'd go to sea, if he was actually happy? Do you really think he'd fly a pirate flag and set out on his own?!"
Memory Ace and Luffy stood there shocked until Luffy started wailing about how Sabo wasn't happy. Tears streamed down Luffy's face as Ace yelled at himself for not saving him.
"Where is the person who killed Sabo?! I'm gonna murder him!"
"Whoa!" Franky backed away a step after seeing the look of unadulterated hatred in Ace's eyes.
"The Celestial Dragon? There's no way you can do that!"
"A Celestial Dragon!" Nami shouted in surprise.
"You mean those bastards on the Saobody archipelago?" Zoro remembered almost cutting one to pieces when he got in his way. A thought occurred to him that maybe Luffy punching that bastard in the face was more than just for Hachi and Camie, but for his dead brother as well.
Dadan jumped up from the ground and grabbed the back of Ace's head as he ran for the door. She slammed him into the ground and the wooden floor broke, as well as causing Ace's forehead to start bleeding profusely from a wound he had bandaged.
"What happened to them?" Chopper noticed all the wounds covering their bodies and Luffy said they were caught in a fire and ended it at that.
"Drop it you damn brat!" the woman with long orange hair shouted.
Ace retorted by pushing her off of him, "Get off me, Don't get in my way!"
"You keep acting tough, even though you don't have any real strength! What the hell do you think you can do now?! You'll just end up dead! You'll die, and everyone will forget you by tomorrow! That's all you amount to right now. It wasn't this kingdom that killed Sabo, it was the world itself! What can you do?
The woman shook the boy's body over and over again while she yelled in his face, "Your father's death brought about a new era! Once you become a man of his caliber, then you're free to live or die as you want!" The memory started to rip up but they could all still see the young version of Luffy as he looked up and screamed his brother's name through tears.
The rest of the room started to break apart, much more violently than the previous times. The walls started to rupture and explode outwards, as if the memory version of the house was exploding and it made some of them think that it was part of the flashback. The floor started to rip apart next, and then the people. Watching the shards of the people in front of them swirl around was too much for some and the weaker members covered their eyes.
"Luffy," Robin said in a way too calm voice for the situation they were in. The captain was able to turn around and look at the older woman who smiled at him. "Sabo is alive."
"WHAT?!" Everyone except for Luffy and Robin shouted.
Luffy didn't respond to the woman, he looked into her eyes as deep as he could. Suddenly his own eyes widened and he asked in a croaking voice, "R-really?"
"Yes," the woman smiled at her captain and was glad that she knew about this now. She couldn't bear to see him saddened by something that she knew wasn't true, so she had to tell him, even if it went against what she'd promised Luffy's father. "I spent much of the last two years with him. He's very strong."
The rubber captain couldn't believe his ears. Many of the crew members were also stunned. The memory stopped breaking apart in a rough way and just fizzled out.
"You mean, you've thought he was dead ever since then?" Chopper asked.
"Luffy-san, this is amazing!" Brook shouted and the captain seemed to agree as he had begun to cry. The tears were streaming down Luffy's face as he sobbed, too happy for words to describe.
"S-Sabo!" the captain shouted.
"Quiet!" a loud voice shouted from high above them. Everyone stopped what they were doing to look around for the source of the voice, trying to find out where the little girl was hiding.
"You aren't supposed to be getting happy from this! These are supposed to make you break down and cry... In a sad way!" she added at the end as Luffy was crying. "Time to step it up a notch," she called out and the crew felt an uneasy sense of dread growing in their stomachs.
"Wait, how was this not the worst?" Usopp asked, fearing what memories could be hidden if there were sadder moments than the ones they'd been watching.
"Oh," the girl giggled in the sky. "I can feel much, much stronger memories hiding in you people. It was actually pretty difficult getting them to rise to the surface, but I'm good, I'm really good. Hehehehe!" she laughed and her voice faded on all sides, no one able to ascertain to where she was hiding.
"I have a bad feeling about this," Nami whispered as she looked up in the air around them.
All at once, the area around them started bursting with huge chunks of memories. There was one showing Zoro's childlike face, tears pouring down it. The kid hadn't shed a tear before when they watched his reactions at Kuina's funeral, and after, but in the small image they could see of him, he was crying his eyes out.
On another image, the young version of Nami was bent over a woman with maroon colored hair. Her chest was covered in blood and there were two little girls screaming at her not to die. One of them had purple hair and the ones who had visited her village recognized Nojiko.
A blurry image started to get more solid and everyone looked away from the other two to look at the new one. Their eyes went wide as they saw a small girl wearing a purple dress without any sleeves. She was standing on top of a rock and staring in front of her as fires raged across the entire island she was on. The huge tree in the center of the island was nothing but a pillar of flames, only recognizable by its shape.
Robin grabbed her head and closed her eyes, trying to shake the memory away.
There was another image that was larger than the others and started to push the others out of the way as it got bigger and surrounded the crew. They were all looking around and realized that Water 7 was behind them, they were back again and all went looking for Franky.
The boy was wearing the same clothes he had on the day the sea train hit him, so they figured it was the same day. There was screaming in the distance and fires on the water, but the teenage boy started yelling two names and running down the steps from Water 7.
The crew had no choice but to watch as Franky ran across the scrapyard of ships on his way to the shore where two figures were lying. "Iceberg! Tom-San!"
"We get to see Tom?" Usopp asked, feeling a small bit of excitement but at the same time dread, knowing what was about to come.
The cyborg didn't answer and they looked over at the large figure who they assumed was Tom since they recognized the younger version of Iceberg.
"Oi, both of you! What's going on?! What happened?!"
Iceberg started to stand, he looked in his young twenties and he glared at the younger man in front of him.
"Are you okay? Hey, Ice-" the older man slugged the teenager across the face and sent him flying into a crate, breaking it into pieces.
"What was that for?" Luffy shouted.
"I deserved it," Franky stated and everyone just stayed quiet and watched as the two people in the flashback argued.
"You idiot!" Iceberg fell to his knees and looked down, "Those government agents who came by, they used your battleships!"
"He was hit by my own ship?" Franky looked over at the fishman who had a huge spear sticking out of his green chest. There was blood pouring from the wound and it looked bad.
"I told you, over and over..."
"Tom-san was hit, by my own ship!" Franky's face twisted and everyone could see how much pain he was feeling at that moment. It was heart-wrenching just watching it but no one could turn away.
"Listen," Iceberg put his hands on Franky's shoulders, "It is our trade to create weapons. Even if it isn't your intention, weapons will always be used to hurt others! Even the people you care about! We've been had by the government. We'll be blamed for the attack on the judicial ship. Those guys want the blueprints."
"What attack, what judicial ship?" Luffy asked, unable to hold his curiosity back.
"It came to clear the charges against Tom for having built the Pirate King's ship." Franky explained as he watched his former self try to cry, but not be able to because he felt it was all his fault. "Because he created the sea-train, he was going to be acquitted of the charges... but," his face turned furious as he continued, "the government wanted the Pluton blueprints. They used my ships to blow up the judicial one and blamed it on us."
"They need to incriminate Tom-san so that they can investigate him as they please!" Iceberg shouted at him, "Can you really say it's not your fault?! If Tom-san gets taken away because of this, I'll never forgive you, Franky!" Both men started crying, one in anger and the other in frustration.
The screams Franky shouted started to die out as the memory faded and the crew looked over at their robot shipwright. The scene around them was still tearing, but he was standing perfectly still, until his whole form began to shake violently.
"Franky it's not," Chopper started but the cyborg looked down angrily at the doctor, making him stop in his tracks.
"Iceberg told me," he started, "he told me over and over," his face looked pained as he clenched his metal fists. "That I had to take responsibility for my battleships," he slammed his fists down onto the black ground as it replaced the scrapyard. "Don't tell me it's not my fault, because I got Tom-san taken away. If it weren't for me, he would have been cleared of his charges," the man scowled and looked away from his crew.
Franky started walking away from them and when he got about fifty feet away, he stopped moving. Luffy took a step towards him but Zoro put an arm on his captain's shoulder, "He needs to be alone right now." The swordsman warned and Luffy looked over at his shipwright, unable to think of anything to say if he went to talk to him anyway.
The captain's excitement over his brother being alive was crushed by the sadness of the prior memory and everyone was in a bad mood again.
"Good," a voice cackled from up above them as the girl saw all the frowns and scowls on their faces. "Now time to have some real fun. Tehehehe!"
A/N I'm amazed by all the positive feedback I got for this story so I got up this next chapter quickly. Thanks to everyone who reviewed and I hope you all enjoyed the latest chapter.
Guest
I love it! It's very good and I want th next chapter! ;) excuse me for my English but I'm french
Always great to hear my works are reaching different countries! Thanks for reading.
RedZoro
That id a great chapter you wrote , more I like Zoro so I love this chapter and I wish read all the others.
(sorry for the bad english,I am french ...)
I got what you were trying to say and thank you, again love to hear the French are enjoying my story haha XD!
Usagi
Great story :) i love straw hats watching sad memorys... i nearly cried when lysops mom died
*Sniffles* Yep, that part was a tough one. Hope you liked the newest memories, or disliked them considering how sad some were ;(. Thanks for reading and reviewing!
DangoCorn
Amgg this is interesting 8D! GOOD JOB!
Thank YOU!
mar9893
please update soon!
Here you go.
Black Night Wolf
This is a great start and I hope you update soon ;).
Thank you and two in twenty four hours is pretty soon right ;P
tarliteOracle
like
Nice. Again thanks for all the reviews, follows, and favs. See you soon.