THE FORGOTTEN STORY

(by Shiva Rajah and Claude Neix)

Chapter 2

Yo! Just three words: Read, enjoy, review! ^w^

I only own the translation. One Piece belongs to Oda and the story belongs to Shiva Rajah.

X_x

On the riverside of the Grove where was standing the Rip-off Bar, it was pretty hard to determine who was the most surprised or concerned: Hachi, Shakki or Rayleigh. When the children had rushed in to tell them that a sick man was outside, they've expected everything but that.

The three of them were now knelt beside Arlong's inert body, which seemed in a very bad state.

"Nyuh! H…how did he manage to swim as far as here in this state?" The octopus-man stammered. "We have to get him inside, nyuh!"

With Rayleigh's help, he carried his captain inside the bar and they laid him down on a blanket on the ground.

Arlong was panting with difficulty and a thread of black blood was dripping from his mouth.

"It's like he can't breath…" Rayleigh noticed as he moved him to the side to prevent him to suffocate.

"Hachi! Go to the Fishman Island and get Aladdin and Jinbei, hurry!" Shakki ordered.

"Yes, I'm going, nyuh!"

He rushed outside and the former pirate leaned over the wounded man. The remains of his prisoner clothes were barely covering his lavender-skinned body, once satin-smooth and spotless, now covered in bruises and obvious torture marks.

Shakki might never have agreed with Arlong's ideas or actions, but she had known him when he was a child, like Hachi, Chu and Kuroobi. Seeing him like this was breaking her heart.

"He really is in a bad state" She sighed and took a first-aid kit from behind the bar.

xoxox

At he Sunny bow, Luffy could barely contain himself.

"Who's that? Who's that?" He was harassing Franky since the moment Zoro had announced that a galleon was sailing straight ahead, from the crow's nest.

The giant adjusted his telescope.

"It looks like… yes, no doubt… it's Big Top."

The young captain's chubby face lighted up.

"The Big Top? Buggy? It's Buggy! Great! I hadn't seen him since Ace's death! I didn't even have the opportunity to thank him for having saved our lives, mine and Jinbei's!"

Franky raised an eyebrow.

"I thought it was Law who saved you that day."

Luffy nodded.

"Yep, that's true. But it's Buggy who made it through the battlefield with us while we were out. He carried us to Trafalguy's submarine. If he hadn't been there, we'd be currently feeding the crabs at the bottom of Marineford harbor right now. Shanks told me he had to zigzag in the air through Akainu's magma, Kizaru's light beams and cannonballs! Too bad I was sleeping! I wished I could have seen that!"

Franky smiled, unable to believe what he just heard for a second. Honestly! Safe for quasi-supermen like Rayleigh or Red-haired Shanks, who could be able to escape the attacks of Yellow Monkey or Red Dog? The poor Ace had tasted the answer after all! Especially when you carried two wounded men and that one of them was a huge whale shark man. Oh boy, Luffy was definitely naive!

"I heard he became a Warlord a little while ago."

"Seriously? Woah! So cool!"

"How can you possibly go into rapture over a nasty guy like Buggy?" Nami growled as her captain's overexcited squeaks woke her.

"What? Actually he is cool, big nose! And he is funny! And then, he was Shanks comrade, when they were young, on Roger's ship."

The young girl clenched her fists.

"Don't call him 'big nose', I remind you he hates this! Didn't you hear Franky? He is on Marine's side, now. Do you want him to send his little friends in uniform after us or what?"

"Mhh… Buggy would never do that."

"Yeah of course! And it's been almost three years you didn't see him, you fool!"

"I wonder if he changed!"

Nami face-palmed, disheartened.

xoxox

"Warlord Buggy! Galleon in sight astern!" A man screamed from the look-out post.

"I told you not to call me Wa…"

"It's the Straw hat! It's Straw hat Luffy, Warlord Buggy!"

Alvida frowned.

"Well, well…"

Buggy knelt beside her, on the ship's rail, and observed the approaching ship, which still looked like a tiny point at the horizon.

"The Straw Hat… Long time no see! Maybe this toad has some fresh news about Shanks?"

His companion studied him, surprised.

"Don't tell me that you're planning to ask for this little boor's help? Did you forget why we joined our strengths three years ago, you and me?"

The clown sighed.

"A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then. (Alvida scoffed) What? Do you still want to teach this pirate runt a flashy lesson? Come on, sweety, it's not worth the trouble! And, knowing him, I bet he won't even remember you."

"Sorry?" The beautiful pirate growled, upset. "All men aren't monoliths, Buggy the clown!"

The said man winced.

"And what is that supposed to mean?"

"It means what it means!" Alvida replied as she walked away sharply.

Buggy watched her as she crossed the deck, amused by her reaction.

He was probably the only male of the Big Top (not to say miles around) who didn't care about the seductive attempts coming from his beautiful partner and it annoyed her tremendously.

And yet she had tried everything, from the bra which unexpectedly come unfastened to the vain attempts to ignite his jealousy by flirting outrageously with every crew member! There was no use.

At first, she had even wondered if Buggy might have a 'little problem' down there but her fears had been swept quickly by the girls he kept bringing to his cabin every time they stopped to a port, especially when she could hear giggles and shouts of pleasure until the sunrise.

"What do those bitches have that I don't?" She kept wondering, not daring to ask the person concerned.

The clown captain had nothing to reproach her, by the way, because she was absolutely his type! But there was a catch: he knew her too well now to ignore what was driving his attractive partner. She loved to see the desire burning in the men's eyes (this desire that turned them into puppets in her fingers), and she never intended to answer it.

And so, by giving in, he would only sigh over attentions she never granted… it wasn't for him, certainly not! He was far too old for this kind of foolishness.

The sun pierce the horizon and he narrowed his eyes. Here we go for another rotten day…

xoxox

Jinbei was watching incredulously Hachi and Aladdin, the former Sun Pirates doctor, fidgeting around Arlong.

Their grave expressions were speaking volumes about the sawshark fishman's state as he spat blood continuously and gave out an horrible wheezing noise when he was breathing – if you could call his desperate attempts to bring air inside his lungs 'breathing'.

The first reaction of the paladin, when Hachi came to him to tell the incredible news, had been stupefaction, then incredulity and finally anger. A boiling anger, like one only this scoundrel of Arlong could ignite!

That guy… always causing problems! He would never change… and why did he have to escape precisely now, just when the Straw hat Pirates were about to come back here to take him with them?

"Damn scatterbrained hooligan! When will he stop making my life a misery?"

He had been too weak, back then. He shouldn't have only beaten him up, when he had announced he was leaving with his former crew, he should have destroyed his foolish resolve and making him renounce to act his own way!

"He is like your little brother, you saw him grow by your side, Jinbei. How could you risk killing him for a single second?" Aladdin had tried to comfort him back then.

His little brother… what a joke! A pain in his ass, and in Fisher Tiger's ass and in queen Otohime's ass on top of that! Yes, that young hooligan was only good to fight and pass hatred on to the youngest, like Hody, too naive to put things in perspective. Everybody witnessed the consequences one year ago!

But this time, Jinbei wouldn't miss the opportunity to give Arlong the beating of his life, no sir! In exactly two seconds, he was going to confront this moron face to face, to make him confess all the pain he'd caused to the little Nami and her village and then…

The former Warlord froze to the spot right after he pushed the door of Shakky's bar.

"Arlong…"

Ah, it was so easy to rewrite the past, to tell you could have done this or that and to keep in mind only the convenient memories you shared with those who'd walked by you side, whether they were good or bad, idealizing or demonizing them in order to feel praised or stop feeling guilty. But it wasn't easy at all to watch this very same past in the eye when you run right into it…

And when Jinbei's eyes plunged into Arlong's aquamarine pupils, the ground as well as his resolve seemed to crumble under his feet and an invisible hand gripped his heart.

Those eyes…

He had forgotten those beautiful blue eyes, this icy mint color, with pupils that could pierce your body like nails did, deeper and darker than the sea abysses haunted by creatures of nightmare.

How could he have forgotten such eyes, now domain of an excruciating suffering that made them shine and tremble like a tuning fork?

"It seems that something pierced his lung. Maybe it is a broken bone" Aladdin diagnosed, bringing him back on earth while he walked to their former nakama.

Hachi twisted his six hands.

"Nyuh! We have to do something! He can barely breath anymore!"

"What about putting him back into the water?" Rayleigh suggested.

Shakky nodded vigorously.

"Of course! That way he won't have to use his lungs anymore."

Aladdin shook his head sadly.

"Considering his gills condition, it's impossible. Not to mention he can't swim with a pierced lung. I don't even know how he has been able to arrive here without drowning. The most important damages shall have happened when he hauled himself up onto the grove"

(AUTHOR'S NOTE: except for the sedentary or "benthal" species, when a shark stop swimming it chokes (by swimming the water comes into his open jaws and is extracted by the gills to reject the oxygen). This is why a shark stuck into a fishing net by accident drowns.)

As if he was stuck into a living nightmare, Jinbei was unable to look away from Arlong's battered body and, gradually, his knuckles turned white under his boiling rage. A hatred he thought he had tamed after all those years, but he realized as he stared at his former brother-in-arms, visibly tortured relentlessly, this feeling was still there deep inside him, ready to burst out. A hatred feed by all the horrors the humans were able to perform.

Not a single inch of Arlong's skin had been spared, it was marked with burns, cuts or bruises. And those marks, Jinbei recognized them because he had experienced them himself, or seen them when he had been incarcerated: they were caused by tools used by the human torturers, clips, pincers, ropes, whips, brands and other horrors beyond the most abject imagination.

One of those monsters favorite amusement, when they had to deal with a fishman (and so they couldn't inflict the water torture, consisting in plunging the victim head first and pulling him/her back at the last moment, barely alive), was to pour vinegar, alcohol or boiling water into the branchial slits. And when he saw Arlong's gills, it was pretty obvious he had tasted this agony more than once…

Visibly, regarding cruelty, the prisons of East Blue had no cause to be envious of the Impel Down fortress.

Well, if you are a fishman of course; nothing more than an animal, in humans eyes… An insidious little voice murmured in the former Warlord's head.

"ARLONG!"

Shirley's scream made them all shudder.

Jinbei and Rayleigh intervened to prevent the young shark mermaid to throw herself at her brother and she collapsed in their arms, in tears.

"He's gonna be okay" The sea paladin tried to calm her softly. "Aladdin is taking care of him."

"My brother… what have they done to him? What have the humans done to him?" She sobbed as gripped Roger former second's shirt.

Aladdin made a discrete sign at Jinbei and the said man walked to him, leaving Shirley to Shakky and Rayleigh.

"I can't do anything" The doctor whispered as he brought him at the back of the bar, away from eavesdroppers. "He needs an operation and I don't have the required equipment."

The former Warlord turned pale.

"What? It can't be this serious."

"A broken rib is, it seems to me, deeply stuck into the left lung. I need to open, clear it and cauterize the blood vessels to stop the hemorrhage."

"So we have to bring him to the hospital. Who cares if he got arrested again by the Marine. Prison is better than death."

Aladdin sighed.

"Jinbei-aniki… we are on Shabondy archipelago. If they catch him there, he'll be sent to Impel Down. And in his condition, he will never survive."

Jinbei blinked, sickened.

"So, if I got it right, you're suggesting doing nothing, watching him drowning in his own blood, aren't you?" He growled through clenched teeth.

"I… I can make it quick and spare him more pain" The doctor whispered in a barely audible voice, turning away.

The former Warlord jerked back violently and his brain tried desperately to assimilate and come in term with what he just heard. At that moment, without warning, a flood of memories bombarded him, as if his brain had decided to turn back the pendulum in a few seconds.

He saw himself hitting Arlong's head, making all the Sun pirates laugh. He remembered their first hangover, the sawshark man was only fifteen. And he could almost feel the tickling of his small rostrum, still soft at that time, against his torso, when Arlong was only a small boy, barely a teenager, and used to snuggle up against him because he was fearing that the "mean human pirates" would kidnap him to sell him.

Jinbei felt his eyes water and a lump in his throat.

How could he have forgotten those little details when they all were so clear in his mind?

"Jinbei-aniki?" Aladdin insisted.

The whale shark man shook his head furiously.

"No way…"

"But…"

"No. We're going to find a way. We…"

"HI EVERYONE! GUESS WHO… Huh? What's going on here?"

They all turned around to see Luffy, who just came into the bar, with his whole crew and Buggy the clown.

The clown in question took in the place, whistled and raised an eyebrow.

"Oh boy! Why do I have the feeling that we turn up at the awkward moment?"

x_X

Remember the three words from earlier? Good. Now please think about the last one and act. Shiva Rajah would like to know if the story is good or not, makes sense or not, and why. So please be nice and voice your opinion, please? ^v^

Ah and... to LovestoryGirl: I'm afraid none of the pairings you've suggested are right, sorry. Expect the unexpected ^^