Nami reached forward grabbing the knob to Sanji's paradise on the Thousand Sunny. Yet inside of the causal feeling she always felt when entering, her nerves were on alert. This wasn't the normal dinner where there would be laughter and jokes all about, but a special meeting hidden from their captain's eyes.
She gulped before pressed the door open, immediately greeted by the chef with a tray of desserts. Those sweets felt strange in this time and place, she kindly dejected them and headed past him.
Sanji with his shoulders slumped looked at the others, "Shitty boys," he added venom in his voice, "Here." He placed the tray down and hands started grabbing them. The chef didn't want to waste them since neither Robin nor Nami wanted a taste.
Brook quickly ate his whole, while the other two, Chopper and Usopp, only nibbled on it. Both were nervous about this discussion, feeling is completely wrong to do so in the first place.
Zoro stepped out from the corner with shadows covering his eyes. He looked at each one of them, wishing he was elsewhere. "Can we start now?"
Yet there was silence, no one knew how to start this discussion, and slowly the eyes started to turn to Nami, who was the first to organize this. She coughed into her hand and glanced around, before giving up. "We all came here concerning with Luka. Something has been up, and I don't like it. It's like she's been keeping secrets from us. This is why everyone's here." She took a breath, "We have been together for years, and something is definitely wrong."
Usopp slowly nodded at her words, "I don't think I have ever seen her like this." And he has known her for close to a decade.
Nami nodded, she too felt the same. She lifted up from her seat and crossed the room to a board that Franky fashioned for this meeting. She raised a pen to the middle of the board, glancing back. "When did you start noticing something was off?" She looked at Zoro first, since he was the first mate.
"Months ago, you know, when she started sleeping in her own room."
Usopp was next, he answered with, "Like three months ago." She waited on him to finish, "Well, when she kept running off out of nowhere. I just thought it was to the bathroom for that…monthly thing." He was trying to indicate something about that time of the month. He quickly scratched his hear, hoping to avoid the looks that he thought he was getting for a stupid answer.
Nami nodded, going to write it down before Robin spoke up. "Luka-san has been more abrupt since we left Drum Island. I can't help by believe that something must have happened when we weren't around."
"Drum Island?" Chopper's voice squeaked up, trying to think of all of the possibilities that could have happened on his home island. "We didn't stay there long, though."
"Hm," the noise came from Zoro's throat, "When we meet with Dalton, nothing upsetting was say or done. After that, we headed back to the ship before seeing that old hag."
"And that wasn't strange either," Chopper said.
"Anyone notice anything else that happened on that island?" Zoro looking around. When they went to Drum Island, only a few people went on land, Chopper, Sanji, Luka, Robin, and himself. He was pressing the question to those who stayed behind.
Usopp only shook his head. When the group left, everyone stayed on the shore and just hanged out. Another group followed them into the small town, just to see how Chopper's home island was like, but otherwise nothing happened that he could think of.
Brook raised a finger, "Oh my…"
Everyone's attention was on him now, wondering what the skeleton had to say, yet he only stayed there with an opened mouth. "Brook? What? What was that?" Chopper shook the bag of bones.
"I made a mistake," he gotten up from his seat and started to pace the room, gaining more attention from the crew yet he still gave them no answers.
"Brook," Nami said impatiently.
Finally he nodded and re-seated himself, "On my night shift, I heard a noise. Well, I wasn't for certain if I did or it was my imagination. I only checked the deck at the time, yet I missed whatever caused that noise, so I went back and forgotten about that until now. It's probably connected to Luka someway."
"Nice, we got a lead," Franky spoke out.
Usopp gave a small nod, but this didn't raise his hopes any. "But what does that have to do with anything?"
"We know that Luka's behaviors had something to do with Drum Island now."
Zoro shook his head, "She started acting strange before Drum Island."
"She has always been strange," Franky stated, "But he's right."
On the board, Nami wrote Drum Island in big letters, with a line sticking out that pointed to Noise at Nighttime. She moved back to look at Brook, "You didn't check the beds afterwards?"
"No, I headed back to the post. I was alert for the rest of the time, waiting to hear that sound again. Yet it didn't happen."
Robin took the information in, "She must have gone during his shift and came back later into the night, sometime during Sanji's shift, or when the two were switching."
"You're saying she left the ship?" Usopp's head snapped to her direction.
"That's the only clue we have so far, it would make sense for her to leave the ship at night than to sneak around the ship for an unknown purpose."
Sanji scratched his chin. Even if they spent all night on this subject, none of them would know what happened on that island with Luka. None of them were there with her. "Should we send a letter to Dalton? Or switch the course?"
"We could, but going back may be out of the question until the weather returns back to normal." While they were going back, they were ambushed with a storm from Little Garden. They were now on the course to the East Blue, something Luka was very upfront about. Everyone just thought she wanted to return home after all of those years.
Nami paused in mid-thought. "It could have been an important event to her."
Once again, Usopp was quick to say something. "We have been together for years; she has never shown any interest in the dates."
"We are returning to East Blue. She hasn't been home for years. Maybe, just maybe, she's going down memory lane?"
"Such as…thinking about Ace?"
Everyone paused when that word came out of Usopp's mouth. Though no one said it out loud, that word was a taboo. When they returned back from their training, no one say a word and neither did her. No one wanted to reopen those scarred wounds, even though they were right by her if she needed a shoulder to cry on. With Luka, it was unknown how she handled it, with remembering his name and such.
Everyone on this ship was helped by Luka and whatever gang she had at the time. Yet no one was actually responsible in helping her through her grief.
"Guess we will see what happens soon," Zoro added, sighing for how hopeless this felt. "For now, we can only wait. And watch."
