Chapter 3

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*Slap*

That was the first sound heard once the Strawhat's ship, the Thousand Sunny, had finally hit the sea again after they had managed to escape from Onigumo by the skin of their teeth. They were finally in safe waters again, but the stillness of the water that surrounded them on all fours was a stark contrast to the unrest and turmoil each person on that ship was feeling at the moment. Of course, the ship's navigator, Nami, was none the better, as she realized that she was unable to hold in the swirl of negative emotions she was feeling at the moment. Without warning or any prior action beforehand, she let all her feelings burst out on her hand, in the form of the slap that she laid on the hardened face of the shipwright, Cyborg Franky.

Franky's face numbly moved to the side as he became aware of the stinging sensation on the right side of his face. He had been subject to Nami's outwardly violent behavior in the past, of course, but for some reason, the feel of her hand on his cheek was…heavy. It was a testament to what the orange haired girl was feeling in her heart at the moment. As he slowly shifted her eyes to meet her face, which was surely grief stricken at the moment, he found himself unsurprised at the tears that effortlessly made their way down her cheeks.

Nami was not quite done yet. With all the anger she could muster, she immediately grabbed the taller, bulkier man by the sides of his shirt. She pulled him close enough, where he could register the sad expression that manned her normally stoic face. Somehow the image left an oddly empty feeling in his gut.

"Why did you tell us to do that?!There were still plenty of chances to save Luffy! We left our captain behind!" Nami cried out to the cyborg, all her feelings welling up to the surface as she spoke with a tear laden face. She had reached her breaking point, the blue haired man realized, and any attempt to try and placate her right now would probably result in drawing more grief from the orange haired girl. So, he allowed himself to remain silent, all while she vented out her feelings on him. He hoped that it would do her some good when all was said and done.

As Nami held fiercely onto the shirt of Franky, she slowly came to realize just how grave the situation was. And in her heart, she realized there was a shattering sense of guilt. She immediately began feeling sick to her stomach, as she realized that she had chosen to repay the kindness of the straw-hat pirate with ungratefulness and fear in the face of an overwhelming enemy. Luffy would have never run away, no matter how the odds were against him. This realization finally springing up in her heart, she felt herself crying harder as the guilt and the sadness melded together in her.

"He saved my village! Two years ago! Even after I had left his crew to go back to my village without telling him, he came after me and saved my village! Even when he didn't know who I was!" She continued her outburst, shaking the man that was in her grip from time to time as the words poured out continuously from her palate.

Beside the two crewmates, a black haired man watched silently as the girl let out all her grief. "Nami….." Usopp said silently, as he remembered the silhouette of a young woman on the ground kneeling, as she stabbed herself repeatedly with the knife with which she was intending to stop the villagers. She repeatedly cried "Arlong!" as she stabbed relentlessly at the tattoo of the fish man that had been devastating her island for a long time now. Once Luffy had come to stop her from injuring herself any further, she feebly cried out for him to help her, and without saying a word further, marched on to the fishman's building and beat him, ending Nami's long years of suffering. Usopp at first had been amazed to why Luffy would do that for someone he hardly knew, but spending time with the straw-hat wearing pirate, he realized that there was probably no deep reason for what he did back then. Luffy did it because he wanted to. Now as he was watching the girl before he bawls her eyes out in distress, he could not help but understand what she was feeling at the moment. Silently, he closed his eyes, and muttered a curse under his breath, unheard of to the rest of the people in the ship with him at that moment, and clenched his fist in anger, as a feeling of helplessness washed over him.

A tan hand then placed itself over Nami's equally light toned hand, and weakly, the navigator turned her face to meet the face of her fellow female counterpart on the ship, Nico Robin. Her face held a currently unreadable expression, although it was obvious due to the currently gloomy aura around her that she felt equally as sad as Nami. Robin was never really one to show emotion, more so in such grave and extreme situations, choosing to put her mind to the task and bury her emotions. She shook her head silently once Nami had averted her gaze towards her, and Nami immediately realized that the girl was politely dissuading her from manhandling Franky like that, and instead refocuses herself on what was really important at the moment. The tears that were welling out of the girl's face immediately began to halt, and she slowly let go of the man before her. Franky, resuming his earlier posture, shifted his gaze to Robin, still wordless, and felt reassured that there was someone who understood his point of view perfectly on the ship. He allowed himself to calm down internally, and still chose not to say anything, as he now felt surer that what he had done was definitely not wrong on any account.

Once Nami had let go of the taller man, she immediately experienced a horrible sensation within her, and rushed to the edge of the ship, where she emptied the contents of her stomach to the sea below them. Clearly, she had not yet come to terms with her grief, so she still needed to let out what she was feeling at the moment. As she struggled with her current bout if sickness, she felt an oddly thin hand begin to run itself on her back slowly, helping her empty her stomach better. She realized the familiar bony feeling originated from Brook, the ship's skeleton musician, and for a moment, she thought that the man would take the chance to crack a skull joke owing to her current predicament, but she was too ill to do anything at the moment, choosing to relieve herself further in an attempt to make herself feel better.

Unknown to her and the skeleton behind her, however, the cyborg who she had been venting out on earlier watched her as she was vomiting, and realized that if it were any other time, Brook would have taken the chance to feast himself on a sight of her panties, owing to the dangerously low pair of shorts Nami was wearing at the moment. The duo of shipwright and skeleton were the most perverted members of the crew, plus another blonde cook, but he was a bit more restrained than them. Franky understood Brook' s perverted antics more than anyone else in the ship, and as he realized that the man had not taken advantage of the situation to sneak a peek at the currently helpless navigator, he realized that Brook too, understood the current grave nature of the situation. He found his sense of contentment and satisfaction growing with that, so he decided to put his mind to what mattered at the moment, psyching up the rest of the crew and handing them the morale they desperately needed at the moment in order to go save their captain.

As if mirroring his own thoughts, the green haired swordsman, who was still seated at the lawn on the foremost part of the ship, immediately bellowed to the rest of the crew, in a voice loud enough that even the birds that were currently soaring above them would hear, effectively breaking the silent atmosphere that had graced the ship at that moment. It was quite a rarity, finding the Strawhat ship queerly silent at any moment." Quit moping around you people! We already resolved to this back then when we decided to retreat from the Marines! Your hearts should have already been set on this!" He then shifted his body in order to meet the rest of the crew, who had turned their heads to face him, his face displaying the resolute nature that had been carried in his words just then. That's right. Zoro had pledged to his captain after his defeat at the hands of Dracule Mihawk that he would never lose again. That also involved losing to his heart, and that was one of the most principle things in being a swordsman. If he allowed himself to be caught up in his feelings just then, he would definitely regret it later. And Roronoa Zoro was definitely not one to carry regrets on his back.

Not waiting to see if they would come round, however, the swordsman immediately turned to the shipwright who was currently within his line of vision. "Franky! Do you have any idea what we should do next?" Zoro questioned the blue haired man, catching him slightly by surprise. Then again, Zoro wasn't exactly the brightest person around in such a situation. He was a bit like Luffy in that aspect, the only thing he was good at was definitely blasting his way through any horde of opponents that stood in his way. Normally, the planning and strategizing would be left to the smarter people in the crew, namely Sanji and Robin, but currently, one of them was in critical condition and in Chopper's hands. Robin still seemed distraught by the whole matter, so it would take some time to recompose herself and come up with a decent plan. The only option left was to leave the strategizing to the man who had suggested their retreat in the first place, Franky.

Fortunately, however, to both Zoro and Franky's increasing impatience and disappointment at the lack of coming up with a completely decent plan, Robin immediately spoke up, finally having recomposed herself. "First, I think we need to find a place where we can find information, in order to know where the government plans on taking Luffy. Of course, I don't think they plan to keep quiet over the capture of someone who has been a thorn in their side for a long time now," the archaeologist calmly explaining, finally regaining the cool aura she normally emitted. She spoke to no one in particular, keeping her gaze focused towards the air as she addressed all her crewmates.

Usopp, drawing confidence from Robin's calm aura at the moment, released the grip on his hand and allowed himself a small smile. All was not over yet, he thought determinedly, as he looked up from his previous downcast gaze. "That's our Robin! Well, that is a good idea, but what will we do once we find out what the government have planned to do with Luffy?" The sniper asked, keeping his eyes on Robin, as he patiently waited for an answer. He felt the confidence that had all but ebbed away earlier slowly returning to him, a show of the increasing determination that he was feeling to saving his captain.

Robin held up her hand to the long nosed man, telling him to wait as she had not finished her explanation. "Not just any island though. My suggestion was that we dock on an island of a person or people that we are on currently good terms with, or in a matter of speaking, an ally of ours, so that when we are finally ready to depart with news concerning Luffy, they will assist us in retrieving him," she concluded her explanation, turning her gaze to all the members of the crew in order to make sure that they all heard her loud and clear.

The reaction was delayed. All the eyes in the crew immediately shifted their yes to Robin, displaying disbelief at her suggestion. Even Nami, who by that time was already feeling better, and was currently recomposing herself in a slouched position on the edge she was currently on, looked towards the archaeologist in disbelief, her hand placed over her mouth. The sadness that had plagued the ship all disappeared at that moment, and it was replaced by mixed feelings of confusion, disbelief and dissatisfaction.

Again, Zoro was the first one to mirror whatever the rest of the crew were thinking at that moment, however, this time in a more subdued voice. He still had not believed that Robin would have made such a bizarre suggestion. "I think we're more than capable of saving Luffy on our own. Asking for someone else's help would be placing our problems on them, and Luffy would never forgive us if he learnt that we did that," the swordsman explained to Robin. Then again, there was the matter of Zoro's pride in question. He never allowed himself to ask for help from anyone; no matter how dire the situation was, even if he was hanging on to within an inch of his life at said moment.

However, to everyone's surprise on the ship at that moment, Usopp spoke again after Robin, having recovered from the initial shock of her statement. Robin's words held a lot of truth to them, plus logic, as he realized that not long ago they had to retrieve one of their own from the hands of the World Government by being aided by others. Of course, they had not asked for it, but still, they had to admit the help they received went a long way towards their success at that time. "Wait, Robin has a point; remember when we had to go to Enies Lobby a while back to save Robin from the CP9; we had to be assisted by the Franky Family and the Galley-La guys. We wouldn't have managed to enter that island if it wasn't for them, or even managed to escape. The situation this time isn't all that different."

In the back of his mind, he realized, with a slight sense of amusement, Luffy and Chopper, if he were with them in that place at the moment, would have probably added that they also needed Sogeking's help in order to save Robin. The two still had not pieced one and one together and realized that Usopp and Sogeking were the same person.

The green haired swordsman then opened his mouth to protest, but the words got stuck in his throat. With a sense of disgruntlement, he realized that if it weren't for the Sea Train, there was no way they would have accessed Enies Lobby from Water 7. Additionally, Zoro would not have gotten a chance to test his mettle before he fought the members of CP-9 against Captain T-bone of the Marines, one of their most renowned swordsmen. The Marine had amazingly cut up a Sea King in two before he had encountered Zoro and his little group, something that made Zoro's blood quiver in excitement at the prospect of meeting such a strong swordsman. But then of course, all that would not have happened without the help of their allies from Water Seven at that time, he realized with a sinking sense of shame. He bowed his head slightly in embarrassment as he finally realized the merit of having someone to help the save their captain, who was more or less in the same situation as Robin at the moment.

"Robin and Usopp certainly do make a valid point. However, the ally we decide on should definitely be someone who has no problems in fighting or encountering the World Government. We don't want to get anyone in trouble because of our antics," Franky chipped in, assessing what Robin and Usopp had both assented to. Vividly, he remembered his family back at Water Seven, and how their overly reckless nature often laid them to waste from time to time within the island. His boys had not been afraid to storm a government island in order to save their aniki, and while they were successful in retrieving him, Franky had subsequently gotten a bounty placed on his head, something that had meant that staying on Water Seven would be too dangerous for him and his family. If the government decided to storm that island at any moment, he realized that his family would by at a huge disadvantage and would probably end up being arrested for harboring a wanted criminal in their midst. There was no ways Franky was going to let that happen to anyone else. Besides, not everyone had the same mettle as his family, something he could admit being proud of.

Of course, this suggestion dampened the now rising mood of the people on that ship at the moment. That was definitely a tough call, since finding such brave people that had nothing to lose was a hard task. They immediately set to thought, trying to think of any of their friends who they could call on for help in such a situation.

"Well, I'm not sure if it will be any help, but maybe you should think about allies you've made while on your journey since entering the Grand Line. I was the last to join you, and when I joined, it was on Thriller Bark, so try to think of people who you met before coming to Thriller Bark," Brook said, his voice still holding the serious tone he had displayed since Luffy had been taken away. It wasn't something the Strawhats saw everyday, of course, but for once they were glad that he had not resorted to his skull jokes to cheer them up. At that moment, the skeleton suddenly spoke up again, an idea having popped up into his head. "Oh, I know! What if we ask Lola and her crew again? I'm sure they would be willing to help us out. They are pirates like us and they won't get into trouble for helping us!" The musician cheerfully suggested, adding a laugh to the end if his suggestion.

"I think Lola and her crew are already in the new World by now. There's a chance that they are in some deep section of the New World now, and we can't sail further without our Captain," Franky said, shooting down Brook's suggestion. It wasn't a bad idea, of course, but it wasn't a good idea.

"Franky's has a point. Even if we were to seek her mother's help, with the Vivre Card she gave us, we would take days to locate her. By then who knows what would have happened to Luffy," Robin added, and the matter regarding asking Lola or any of her comrades for help was effectively shot down.

"What about Alabasta kingdom? I mean we could ask Vivi and her dad to provide help in order to save Luffy, right?" Nami suggested after a few minutes of silence between the crew, nostalgia filling up in her as she remembered her blue haired friend from that kingdom. Vivi had been such an invaluable asset in the fight against Crocodile and the eventual salvation of Alabasta from the hands of the Warlord, so having her help this time would probably the key. However, in her elation of having finally found a solution to their current predicament, Nami forgot an important thing. Something that was very important regarding the blue haired princess.

"Hey, hey Nami, you forget that Vivi is a princess, and her country is a kingdom of the World Government. If she decided to help pirates, there's no telling what the Government would do to her country. We'd be putting her in an unbelievable amount of risk," Usopp replied to Nami's suggestion. He had also been in Alabasta of course, and was as grateful to Vivi as was the rest of the crew, but he realized that displaying any connections to pirates would definitely put her in danger. This was part of the reason why he had shut up Luffy when he was shouting goodbye to Vivi as they were leaving Alabasta.

That meant that the Strawhats had been denied the chance of an ally on two separate occasions, allies who would have proved invaluable to them. They decided to press on brainstorming, sifting through their memories as they searched for someone who could offer their assistance in such a situation.

"The Giants from Little Garden, Dorry and Broggy? Could we ask them for help?" Usopp suggested, as he remembered how he had been moved by the sheer bravery of those two large men, and how he had vowed to reach Elbaf, the home of giants, one day, so as to behold most of the giants.

"That's too far, and we don't have a means for the giants to cross the sea, so it's not a good idea," Zoro replied, shooting down Usopp's suggestion. It depressed the sniper for a while, but then, he realized that it wasn't a good idea and they needed someone who was available and within a nearby distance. Little Garden was too far back in the Grand Line, and after coming this long, they were not about to turn back, just as they were so close to heading into the New World.

The rest of the islands they had travelled to in the Grand Line were composed of most civilians than warriors, Nami realized, and the orange haired woman came to the crushing realization that their chances of saving Luffy had thinned by a large sum at the moment. She tried thinking of any characters over her head, but nothing came up. Not in the islands of Skypiea, Long Ring Long Land, or even Jaya. The small smile that had been gracing her face slowly began melting away, leaving in its wake a frown of disappointment and frustration.

Just as the rest of the crew were about to throw in the towel and decide to think of another alternative to Robin's earlier suggestion, the tanned woman spoke up again, allowing them to view the matter from another perspective. "What if we look at the islands that we each spent time on in the two years we were apart? Maybe we would find some allies there," Robin helpfully suggested.

The rest of the crew looked at her in amusement, realizing that amidst all that had happened; they had not even gotten a chance to catch up on how they had spent the two year break. It was a bit funny, they had to admit, but it was better than nothing, so they immediately set to think about who would aid their cause. Robin was the first one to start, and her mind drifted to a time she spent with her comrades during the break, the Revolutionaries.

Of course, if their leader, Dragon, knew that his son had been captured by the Marines, he would probably send someone to help in retrieving him, such as Ivankov. Then again, the issue was that at that point, she had no idea where the man was. The Revolutionaries changed their base of operations frequently, something that gave even the government a hard time in tracking them down, so Robin would probably be no different. She eliminated the thought of asking her former comrades for help, and refocused her attention on the people who were with her at that moment, her crew. She did not mention the existence of Dragon, however, or the fact that she had met Luffy's brother, Sabo, due to a promise she had made to both of them not to reveal them to Luffy since they wanted him to sail freely without worrying about his family. Besides, she believed in her crew, and owing to the way they had put their minds to the matter, something was definitely bound to come up.

Zoro reminisced to a time when he spent training with the baboons on the island that the Warlord, Dracule Mihawk inhabited, and with a sinking sense of defeat, realized that there was no way the baboons would even understand his request to save Luffy. A drop of sweat emerged from his forehead, and he narrated to the rest of the crew how it would be impossible for the Humandrills to assist them. The very idea was ridiculous.

Usopp was next, telling them about how he was the only human on the island he was blown off to, since the island mostly consisted of man eating plants, something that was obviously not going to aid them in any way or form. Just as Franky was about to recount his incident with the cyborgs he met on an island where Vegapunk was said to be born, the door to the hospital wing of the ship opened slowly, creaking on its hinges. Eyes shifted to the source of the sound, already expecting it to be Chopper, hopefully with good news regarding Sanji's current state. They were in for a shock, as they recognized the familiar black suit that adorned the body of the man that had just appeared, albeit struggling with difficulty as his body was crouched, a hand placed on his knee.

"How about…..Amazon Lily?" Sanji suggested, having caught wind of what the others had been saying behind his locked door.

A/N: To be continued.