Uh, yeah, sorry for the length of this. (5199 words ;^; I didn't mean to ramble on for so long, goddamnit. *Sigh* oh well.)

Chapter 2: Of Lighthouses and a Stowaway

I don't recall when I stopped falling, nor when I closed my eyes, but when the distorted feeling retreated enough for me to realize that I was lying on a flat terrain with a rock stabbing my gut and that my chest felt like it was collapsing into itself (a feeling that I recognised to go hand-in-hand with the process of lying on a hard surface for hours), I groaned and my eyes fluttered open.

I wasn't sure if I had been sleeping or not, but I treated the situation as if that was the case. I lay still and for a few moments, my eyes met with a pale blue horizon. I took a deep breath in through my nose, the familiar smell of salt in the air. It was at that moment I realized that what I was looking at was the sky, and the grey-blue below it was the sea.

And then the pain received from taking such a deep breath kicked in, and I pushed myself up from the ground with a groan. My ribs felt like they'd been crushed. I didn't know from experience, but I felt like I might now possibly know how a woman felt after escaping the bindings of her corset in the 1900s or something. Possibly. But, then, I was probably exaggerating…

Pushing myself back to sit cross-legged, I stared at the scenery. Where was I? This wasn't Wales… Directly in front of me, I could see for miles; the ocean going so far off into the distance that somewhere along the way it blended into the sky, which then blended into some kind of strange cloud cover. I knew that this wasn't Wales because the sea was blue. The sea around Wales is a dark turquoise-grey… To my right, I could see an earthy cliff, also stretching for miles. Closer - much, much closer - to myself, there was a sheer drop which gave way to some sort of raging river…

I scrambled away from the edge of the cliff, my thought process slow and my reaction speed slower still. Cliff edges were not good. Not good at all. Cliffs meant heights and heights meant falling and falling-

Falling was not good, nosiree.

As I pulled back from the overhang, my heart hammering, my hearing kicked back in full-force with a roar so loud and frightening it made me shudder.

Fear of the rock face had made me move, but the fear of this new sound made me freeze. My eyes searched uneasily for the origin, and found it along with the sight of a gigantic mountain, the bottom of it starting not too far away from where I sat. I wondered how I hadn't noticed it before. Rushing down from it was the river that I had scrambled away from seconds ago - the water was quite literally frothing at the mouth.

Quickly getting over the fact that my life may have been threatened by a cliff, I moved my attention away from the humungous rage-river-mountain (as it would now be nicknamed) to what was now behind me. The view was practically a mirrored version of the earthy cliff on the opposite side of the river, except for the addition of a lighthouse that was looming over my head like some kind of long-necked ground-monster.

Deciding that twisting my neck around everywhere was becoming too much hassle, I stood up, spinning on one heel to face the building, my head craned back as I attempted to see the top of the lighthouse.

Which was, I thought, a decisively a bad idea once the blood rushed to my head. I staggered slightly, my head making a rather grumpy throb, and figured that seeing as looking up always made me lose my balance anyway it was probably about the right time to look at the views that were around my head level. Start low and build up. No use in being ambitious, obviously.

My curiosity piqued and my balance re-caught, I began to wander around the lighthouse wall, searching for an entrance. It was typical that I somehow managed to walk around the whole building to find the entrance only to find out that it had only been a few steps away in the opposite direction that I had travelled.

Once I'd finished glaring at the door for my own misfortune, I reached forwards and pushed the handle down, slowly stepping into the darkened building, careful with every step.

I don't think that my common sense had quite kicked in by this point, because a sensible person might have thought about knocking on the door first before just waltzing in. Perhaps if I had been in my correct state of mind I would never have gone near the building, for fear of axe murderers or tall faceless gentlemen.

However, my usual paranoia had, for some reason, decided to leave me alone for a few moments as I entered the building, eyes wide open in the awing size of the inside. There was something breathtaking about being in a tall, empty building that had an old, ruffian look to it. But what really made the lighthouse special was its lack of hundreds of ceilings or floors. This was just a gigantic tube with a spiral staircase lining the walls and a room up the top. I had never seen anything like it. It was one huge spiral, almost hypnotizing.

Craning my neck so far back soon began to make me feel nauseous, and so I was brought back to my own height of 5'10. I spun about the room on my heel, inspecting for any sign of life, or just generally anything at all. The building looked like it hadn't been lived in for years. I wondered if the searchlight in the top of the building even worked.

My spinning came to a stop when the open door of the lighthouse came back into view. I stared at it for a moment, the cogs of my mind grinding against each other at a painstakingly slow pace. I smirked to myself. I was probably trying to connect some kind of symbolism to the thing, as I usually did - I loved to try and make my life a storybook, giving each person I knew a characterisation…

To my surprise, a sudden gust of wind blew into the room, blowing my baggy shirt out behind me and my hair from my face - and slamming the door shut.

I gaped at it, making some sort of gagging noise, my mind running wild - all of a sudden my thoughts were screaming at me, 'YOU'RE NOT SAFE HERE, YOU DON'T KNOW WHERE YOU ARE, YOU'RE AWAY FROM HOME AND YOU'RE NOT SAFE HERE, GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT'

And as my knees ceased to function and I fell to the floor, my throat dry and clenching, my hands beginning to shake and my thoughts running wildly around my head, screaming of paranoias and doom; another set of thoughts started up, quietly and calmly. 'The door closing means you can't go back. It means you're stuck. That's the symbolism. You're not going to see your Mother again. You're not going to see your Dad again. You're not going to see your sister again. You're not going to see your cat. You're not going to see your rabbit. You're not going to see your friends.'

And the list kept going, and going, and going. Two people talking in my head, one screaming, one stating. I could hardly breathe through the lump in my throat. I could usually cry at anything, but I think that by this point I was in too much shock to do anything but the basic instincts to keep on breathing, keep on at it, there we go, it'll be alright, just keep breathing, keep breathing, you need it for the oxygen in your blood, and you need that to keep your body going, because if you can keep your body going then you can do something about this, anything, just keep breathing.

For a few, long moments, I sat there, unable to do anything else but let the front of my mind go numb and the back of my mind keep a-wandering. And then the wind outside wailed, whistling through a gap in the door, and the room was filled with wind again as the door was forced open the opposite way that it had been closed. The sky had turned a deep purple-grey, and everywhere had an orange tinge. For once I knew it wasn't from the street lights.

Rain started crashing down in torrents with a CR-ACK! of thunder, soaking the ground a deep brown. The front of my mind picked itself back up, silencing the other thoughts that had been marching around before it. I managed to smile fondly at the sight outside. Having lived in Wales for the last ten years of my life, rain was something I was used to. It was also something I was rather fond of, for as long as I stayed dry.

It was something full of familiarity to me, and the frantic pattering of the storm calmed me.

With a flash of lightening and another crash of thunder soon after, I felt a painful panging in my chest. My twin was terrified of storms. As much as I loved one, I could never fully enjoy a good thunder and lightening show because my sister was always in the room next door, petrified.

Before I could lapse into another depressing 'I'm-never-going-to-see-my-family-again' fiasco, I put some more symbolism into the open doorway. A doorway closed meant you couldn't go back the way you'd came. A new doorway opened, or a doorway opened another way, meant that you could go back another way. Surely. Was that the case? Or did it mean that I had to go on another way…?

If it meant that I had to start a new path or some other shit like that then there was going to be serious hell to pay for which ever God came to meet me at my death bed.

Siriusly.

Things over the next few days blended into a sort of blur. I stayed in the lighthouse for the rest of the night, after firmly closing the door to stop the rain and wind from getting in. I woke up melting, the inside of the lighthouse sweltering with heat, and once I'd stumbled outside to find that it was actually cooler out in the sun than it was inside with the shade I started to formulate the idea that the weather here was very temperamental.

Now, I still wasn't very sure what was going on. I wasn't sure whether someone had kidnapped me and brought me here and was going to come back, or if I was in something like a coma (although that idea was scratched out pretty quickly, as according to most TV programs comatose patients don't realize that they were in a coma until they wake up from one. TV programs aren't the most reliable information-sources, but whatever). Heck, for all I knew I was in some sort of flu-induced dream. I didn't know, I'd never had the flu.

However, also like most TV programs, I wanted out of my little confinement. The lighthouse was my shelter, but there was no food in there. After a thorough search I managed to find a tin bucket that had a strange orange tinge to it in the searchlight room (the light surprisingly working), but that was it. I had been right when I guessed that nobody had been living there for years.

While I waited for the weather to cool enough for me not to feel like curling up and dying after doing much more than walk around slowly, I wandered around where I had woken up the day previously, looking for clues. I was slightly annoyed with myself - the rain would've obviously washed away anything useful overnight. I did, however, find what may have been footprints before the rain had distorted them, leading from where I guessed I had been lying to the edge of the cliff. My own footprints followed my feet, and another set of marks - which I guessed were my own footprints from yesterday - led to and around the lighthouse. I wonder…

Once the temperature had lowered to my liking, I tried my hand at climbing the cliff behind the lighthouse. It looked tall enough from where I'd first seen it, having had to have craned my neck back while sitting down, but up close it looked impossible.

And impossible enough it had been. I'd only been able to climb a few feet before I slipped and fell all the way back to the bottom, jarring my ankle with my landing. Cradling my foot on the floor, I glared at the cliff as high up as I could, wondering how the heck I would be able to reach the top. It really was impossible for my physical health - I had the weakest upper-arm strength of anyone that I knew. I didn't have the stamina nor the muscles to scale the rock face. What made it worse was that if I started climbing and got tired halfway up, I'd have to climb back down to rest. If I couldn't climb back down then I'd have to fall, and as I'd just found out, that wasn't the most graceful way to get down.

I'd then limped-slash-crawled back to the lighthouse and propped myself up against a wall inside, leaving the door open to try and let some more of the heat that was still stuck inside the building out. I fell asleep on and off while devising a plan for my escape - I would continue to attempt climbing the cliff face as high as I could go before I started feeling tired, and then climb back down. I would continue this until I reached the halfway point of the cliff (thereabouts), and then after a good rest I'd try climbing the whole way.

At some point I woke to the sound of pouring rain. Suddenly wide awake and probably over-rested, I remembered the tin bucket and dashed up a few of the steps of the spiral staircase to grab it and then take it outside, already hearing the racket that the rain thrumming onto the metal made.

My food stores were completely empty, and man was I hungry, but at least now my water stores were going to be sorted. Despite my wide-awake status, I somehow fell asleep again to the sound of rain hitting tin.

When I next woke it was scorching again, and I was dismayed to find that most of the water that the bucket had collected had evaporated. I gulped down what was left and put the bucket back inside the building, the taste of metal stuck in my mouth.

Favouring my bad ankle, I started climbing the cliff again. Using it so soon after an accident probably wasn't the smartest of ideas, but I had always been a 'distract-pain-with-more-pain' kind of gal.

Three climbs up-and-down and one climb up-and-fall-on-ass with my arms and legs aching like they'd never ached before later, my foot was screaming at me and I decided that it was probably a good idea to stop. I rested myself against the rocky wall and fell asleep again, only waking when rain started picking down. Knowing that I wouldn't be able to get up and run and reach the lighthouse in time to not get soaked, I took the path of just glaring at the sky, thinking 'You dare. You dare.'

It dared.

Eventually, once I was completely soaked to my skin and I couldn't see a thing through my glasses, I picked myself up and hobbled back to the lighthouse, spending my time before slipping back into slumber massaging my foot.

I think the main problem of this whole situation was, because of my lack of sustenance, while my arms were getting stronger, my body was getting weaker. A vicious cycle.

By my third day, all I could do was massage my ankle some more and watch as the rain happily thrummed against my bucket. And wait for my now-damp clothes to dry. I didn't do much thinking. All I knew was that I was bloody starving, felt horrible unclean, not to mention that I was constantly tired, constantly thirsty, and I was constantly annoyed. This was the calmest I had felt for a while. I just needed to stop and breathe for a bit. Things would work out. Probably. I just needed to keep calm and carry on. As ya do.

By the fourth day I was up again, the ache in my ankle almost gone (or so I liked to tell myself). My determination driven only by the annoyance of an empty stomach and lack of ability in myself, by the end of the day I had managed to climb all the way to the half-way mark and back down to the ground, only slipping and landing on my good foot two or three feet from the earth. I don't know how, but somehow I didn't manage to injure my good leg with the landing, and my bad ankle hadn't worsened much from that morning.

My attitude considerably better, I decided that one last night of sleep should be enough resting time for a full-scale-cliff attempt. I waltzed back to the lighthouse in good spirits.

Upon entering the building I was hit by a sudden wave of nostalgia. Tonight was probably (and I had no doubt that it would be) the last time that I would take shelter in this tall, sturdy building. Tomorrow, I would be up and over that mountain, off to… god-knows where. Heck. Where was I going? Brushing the panicked feeling off my shoulders with a simple we'll-cross-that-bridge-when-we-get-there, I decided that for my final night I should take the full advantage of staying in a lighthouse and sleep in the top room.

A long climb up hundreds of stairs later, I could say that what I really liked about the top room of the lighthouse was that it was basically a room made of glass. I didn't have a clue how the massive bulb that worked as the guiding light kept working - there were no visible wires anywhere, nor any switches - but the stand it sat on provided for an excellent place to lean on while I sat myself down and made myself comfortable. The bulb itself only gave out a strong glow at the most, not strong enough to blind me (more than I already was, pfft), but once the beam hit the glass it seemed to strengthen.

I loved the view from the windows. The sun was setting by now, and the sky was a wondrous shade of orange. The brown dirt that lay like a pool of porridge below me was shadowed due to the setting sun, giving the ground an interesting look. The light glinted on the sea, dancing on the waves.

I fell asleep trying to think of some sort of poetic paragraph to describe the sight.

I woke up sometime during the next day with a feeling of panic, remembering some sort of dream where everything was shaking and there was a loud wailing, something like "BWOOOO", over and over again.

However, that feeling wasn't the source of my panic.

I could hear the sound of something like a rowdy crowd, and was hit by another wave of nostalgia as my usual maths classes filled with the hooligan boys in my year group came to mind. As I crawled to the window and peered down at the ground, I spotted a large group of people in dark clothing, lugging large wooden crates about and using them as seats.

From so high up, there wasn't much more than that I could see. Remembering that there was a small window (more like some kind of large peephole) a few flights of stairs down, I picked myself up and dashed down the steps, one hand on the wall to try and make sure I didn't fall to my sudden and untimely death. Getting to the window, I practically pressed my forehead to the musty glass, getting as close to the thing so as to get a good view without breaking my nose or my glasses.

From there I noticed that there was a pile being created in the middle of the sitting-crates, made mostly of what looked like broken crates and chairs, and even a few planks of wood here and there that looked like something had ripped them apart. My question of how they had arrived in my little area was answered as soon as I spotted a large, battered-looking wooden ship.

This perhaps startled me the most. A wooden cargo ship? Those weren't made anymore, as far as I knew. Most ships nowadays relied on machines and motor engines rather than winds and sails. It was like I'd travelled to the past or something…

I heard the door below me hit the wall with a thwack and I dropped to the ground - or, well, steps - automatically. I always had been a skitterish person when it came to loud noises, and there was something about this situation that gave me a bad feeling. I couldn't place my finger on it… which was typical, really, I mean, seriously-

"I'm storin' some of the crates in the tower, Gorn! Keep 'em outta the sun fer a while!" a rugged-sounding voice echoed up the building, making my pattering heart leap and begin to gallop. I was terrified. Bloody hell. (And, yet, despite this, some small part of my brain decided to pipe up "You're just like a spy~!")

A quieter voice that I assumed was coming from either the ship or the crate-circle yelled back something about needing to keep the food dry and cool while they fixed the ship, and then the man below me closed the door rather loudly behind him on his way out.

For a few seconds I sat back on my set of steps, leaning against the wall, breathing and sighing deeply in order to try and calm my heartbeat. The same part of my mind that had piped up earlier cropped up again with "Not even coffee makes your heart freak out so much, sheesh." I ignored it as I decided that it would probably be a good idea to crawl back up to the top room. The… well, whatever they were. The… people that had taken residence of the ground below me weren't interested in the lighthouse itself, so with any luck they wouldn't come up and investigate the higher parts of the building.

I didn't know what it was, but I took it as instinct - there was something really dangerous about these people.

Curled up with my arms wrapped around my legs and my expression in a scowl, I watched the people wandering around what I assumed they thought were their dwellings - in a day they had defaced the place. There were random planks of wood, splinters, cans, fruit peels and many other things littered across the floor from what I could see. My already low impression of them from what I was still calling my instincts had been confirmed and then lowered still during the time that I had watched them - scattered like ants. It reminded me of the times when all of the flying ants gather outside their nests, ready for 'the right time' to fly off and go mate with a queen ant or something.

Which then brought me to the idea of how much the men down there were probably slagging off women that they'd slept with, or some doll they'd seen in a pub somewhere. The thought brought a grimace to my face.

As far as both my sight and hearing had told me, none of the men had re-entered the building. Of course, relying on my sight was a terrible idea as I had awful night vision, even with my glasses. It was probably part of the reason why I was scared of the dark, but whatever.

I could've just waited in my little safe-room until the men left the next morning, but, hell no, my curiosity wouldn't allow that, what are you talking about. Going away from my safe-room and going outside was a great idea.

Knowing that the only light the people below me had was the firelight (the pile of wood in the middle of the sitting-crates had been a bonfire in the making), I felt a bit more confident about going out and snooping around. I wanted to know who these people were, damnit, and if all else failed I could just lie on the floor and pretend to be a log.

And trust me, I know how easy it is to mistake a person lying down at night for a log. I've played enough night-time games with my scout troop.

It's incredibly easy.

So easy that you can trip over them and mistake their quiet and muffled "ouch" as something else.

Easily.

My stealth radar on and my heart thrumming like a musician on their guitar, I quietly opened the door of the lighthouse and slid outside into the cool midnight air, softly closing the door behind me. I was in pitch darkness - I couldn't see a thing around me. All I could see was that in one direction there was a group of people illuminated by firelight, as well as a whole load of crates, the ground, and a little ways off what I guessed was their ship. It certainly looked like a ship.

Although it was a bit misshapen from a whole load of repairs, like a few planks of wood just stuck on. For the first time I caught myself wondering how the ship had sustained such injuries. It… it couldn't have come down from the mountain, could it? That would be insane… I didn't know why anyone would even want to try and survive that monstrous river. Not to mention how anyone would even be able to get a ship up the mountain in the first place.

Pushing the puzzling thoughts away, I slowly made my way towards the nearest crate, which, while not actually that far away from the fire, wasn't being sat on. I felt that it was the safest place to crouch behind and eavesdrop without being discovered.

Settling myself down comfortably behind the object, my ears instantly picked up the closest conversation to myself.

"…this girl's been requesting a wanted poster be made, Y'see. Says this person's dangerous, t'the marines mostly, but she also says the girl's a danger to civilians, too."

"'s that so, eh? What's this dangerous girl look like, then?"

"Dunno. The girl reportin' didn' have a photo. Wells, I say to her, y'can't have a wanted poster made if y'don't have a picture! She jus' gave me a look, like I was stupid, and then said somethin' about getting' a picture later. She didn' seem too happy, mind you."

It would have been easy enough to zone out of that conversation and zone into another, but something made me keep listening.

"Eh? Well, well. You seen this girl before?"

"Nah, never seen 'er around before. Said she'd just come from the Grand Line, needed a few things that were only sold in Logue Town, but was going along back that way later. I don' have a clue how she got back through reverse mountain, mind you…"

I furrowed my eyebrows and bit my lip. Logue Town… Reverse mountain… Why did those sound so similar? It was on the tip of my tongue. Mountain, mountain… They couldn't be talking about the mountain that sat behind the lighthouse, could they? Reverse mountain… And what was it that they had said earlier? A danger to the… marines…

…oh shit.

Marines.

Reverse mountain.

Logue Town.

Fucking Logue Town.

They were all place-names from One Piece.

And to think that I'd had the feeling that I wasn't anywhere near home anymore…

…But, no, wait. That's just… stupid. I couldn't just assume such a thing- that's- that's a stupid assumption to make - there could be a Logue Town in the world somewhere, surely, and, heck, reverse mountain could just be a nickname… Although I didn't know how such a nickname could come about.

Through my wandering thoughts, the conversation went on.

"What'd the girl look like?"

"Short. Didn' look too old, prob'ly in her teens. Brown curly hair, short dress, long boots. She was small and cute, I'd guess my sister'd say, but she didn' seem like a good person t'mess with. 'Er name was somethin' like Serenity, or Symphony, or somethin' fancy like that."

Still consciously listening to the conversation, I was jolted out of my thoughts by the names. Symphony? Symphony was around here somewhere? I hadn't really thought about her for the past few days.

But, then, to be honest, I hadn't been thinking about much other than getting out of my 'confinement' and how hungry I was.

"An' she didn' say nothin' 'bout the girl she wants on a wanted poster, eh?"

"Well, yeah, she tried t'describe 'er for a bit but got impatient real fast. Tall, blonde, green eyes, that kinda malarkey. I can't do anything with that little information, I says to her, that's next t'useless."

My stomach dropped.

Well.

Shit.

Okay.

I was screwed.

Symphony certainly seemed to know the word vengeance well - although I wasn't completely sure what it was that I'd done wrong that was against her…

And, hey, little (er, tall) old me? Dangerous? I mean, I liked to think that I could pack a punch if I ever needed to, but I never had needed to. I wasn't dangerous.

But, heck.

If this really was the One Piece world (which was something I was still hesitant to believe), then a wanted poster was some real serious business. I wouldn't be able to just hop up onto the red line and wander around…

Well, surely, when one finds out that they're in one of their favourite stories, they search for the main characters? It was often that I caught myself thinking of my own reactions in situations with the Strawhats…

Why couldn't this be my chance to actually act them out?

…But I was getting ahead of myself. I needed to get out of this area. Surely if I kept travelling along the Grand Line I'd meet the Strawhats along the way?

…Shit. I was on the Grand Line. No wonder the weather was so trippy.

I mentally shook myself. Get back to the program, Elmo! You've got work to do! Stowawaying to… get down to. Right. I was going to be a stowaway on a scary, not-very-safe-looking ship with a crew of what I assumed were bounty hunters or cargo men. Better get to work, then.

Well, uh, again, let me apologize for the length. My original aim for chapter lengths was from around 2,500 words to 4,000, but, ah, I couldn't stop writing and then when I proof-read it this morning I could only cut down one paragraph. I feel like the rest of it's kinda needed. And as much as I wanted to stop halfway through this at one point, I originally wanted to get from the point of waking up in a strange place to at least stowawaying on a ship, and felt that if I didn't get that far then I was just kinda stalling. I want to actually get somewhere with each chapter, y'know XD

So, uh, a fifteen-year-old me has kind of gotten onto a ship. I was going to go more into the whole stowawaying thing, but as I've said before it was getting ridiculously long. I'll move it into the next chapter.

Also, I'm going away tomorrow to Cotswald (try saying that without a posh accent) until Friday, wherever that is, and there's a good chance that I won't be able to get at a computer or the internet, so there's an even better chance that I won't be able to update directly on tuesday next week. I am going to take a notebook, however, so I may be able to do some traditionally written writing, so to speak, and then type it up onto the computer when I get home. Heh. Who knows. We'll see. Either way, by the next chapter I should have some concept art up for you to look at.

And because this Author's note is getting ridiculously long, I shall bring it to a close. I'm not putting disclaimers up yet because so far none of the characters need disclaiming. Also, same as last chapter, most people's comments are welcomed (of any kind), but trolls=pudding+face.