Chapter 3
The Secret Cave and a Shocking Discovery!


After the Straw Hat Pirates arrived in time to save the kids from certain death (even though they could've solved things by themselves), everyone gathered around together to take a break and have something to eat. Thanks to the cook of the SH Pirates, they managed to have a food meal.

"This is delicious!" Ness commented after tasting his soup.

"Feel free to get extra servings if you're still hungry," Sanji told him while filling up Nana's bowl. "Here you are, little girl!"

Luffy then came over craving for more. "I want more, Sanji!"

"You had four bowls already! Leave some for the others!"

As everyone enjoyed his or her meal, Robin asked Young Link, "So all the grownups on your ship disappeared without a trace and you are here to look for them?"

YL nodded in response. "Yeah, but we haven't found anything so far."

"Who exactly is behind this anyway?" Zoro asked, looking up from his bowl. "Are the ones who kidnapped the adults on your ship the same people who kidnapped our crewmates?'

"That could be a possibility," Robin agreed.

"We better find everyone fast…" YL said. "There are still other kids waiting on the ship and who knows what might happen if we leave them alone for too long?"

"Don't worry!" Luffy said to him. "We will make sure that we rescue everyone and give the kidnappers a beating of their lifetime! You can count on us to rescue everyone from your ship!"

"Thanks!" Nana said. "You people are so nice despite being pirates!"

"All right, now that we all have eaten and are back to perfect strength," Luffy said, "let's get moving!"

-

After the meal, the group continued on their way to look for their lost friends. For the whole day they spent their time traveling through the jungle, but they failed to find any clue.

As evening slowly approached, the weather began to grow worse as one could tell from the strong winds. "The weather seems to be acting up…" Robin said.

"Oh, that's not a problem," Luffy said. "A little wind won't hurt."

BANG!!!

"A storm is coming, it seems…" she added.

The wind started to grow fiercer and raindrops started to fall little by little. "It's raining… Can we find someplace to hide…?" Popo asked.

"Hmmm… All right then! Let's find someplace to hide in the meantime," Luffy suggested.

The group quickly looked all over the place for a good hiding spot, and Luffy suddenly shouted out loud, "Hey, look what I found!"

"Did you find a shelter?" Sanji asked, going over to him.

Luffy spun around and showed him a beetle. "I found this oddly-colored beetle!"

"What is it with you and beetles?!"

-

Luckily, there was a cave not too far from where they are, so they went to hide in it. The rain continued for the whole day, so they had no choice but to spend a night in there.

-

Sanji was running alone through a pitch black place and was constantly shouting, "Nami! Where are you? Call out to me! Nami!"

Then there was a faint voice calling out to him, "Sanji! I'm over here!"

"It's Nami's voice! I'm here to save you!" He ran in the direction the voice came from and eventually saw Nami, but she was bound to a pillar. "I found you at last!"

"Save me, Sanji!" she cried.

"I'm here to save you, my love!" he ran over to her but suddenly gas came out from the ground in front of her. "What the?!" When the gas cleared, a person resembling Zoro was standing there but he had reddish skin and devil horns.

"Hahaha! You will never be able to rescue your girl!" the Zoro-lookalike said. "You shall die here!"

"You s---ty devil! I'm going to kick the crap out of you for kidnapping my Nami-san!" Sanji growled angrily. He jumped at the Zoro-lookalike who crossed two of his swords in front, but Sanji's kick was so strong that the blades were shattered into pieces.

"What?!" he gasped.

"Get out of my sight!" Sanji shouted before landing another kick into his body to send the Zoro-lookalike flying over the horizon.

KICK!

"REMEMBER THIS!!!!" he screamed.

After dealing with the villain, Sanji immediately untied Nami who then embraced him. "I knew you would come save me!" she said happily.

"Don't worry! I will not let anything happen to you! We will always be together!" he told her. Then they looked at each other in the face for a few seconds and then their faces slowly came closer and closer to each other.

-

"Okay… I didn't know he's into this…" Zoro said.

"And I thought he only has interest in girls…" Chopper said with a scared expression. "Now I'm scared…"

"Should we wake them up…?" Ness asked. "I can't look any further…"

What they were looking at was Sanji happily embracing Young Link and giving him a lip-to-lip kiss. YL was still sleeping but his face was red and sweating, and he was moaning for some reason too.

-

Shortly afterwards, the group continued on their way again, but not into the jungle; instead, they were heading deeper into the cave. "Heheh! I discovered this secret passage that goes deeper into the cave! I'm the first person to discover this!" Luffy said cheerfully. "I will call it Monkey D. Cave from now on because I discovered it first!"

"Congratulations, captain!" Robin said to him.

Toon Link turned around to look at Young Link and Sanji who were walking way in the back and there was a gloomy atmosphere around them. "Cheer up! Something good will happen in the future!" he told them, but they didn't seem to be listening.

"Are you sure that we should be heading in this direction?" Zoro asked Luffy.

"All secret passages will lead us to somewhere cool and mysterious," Luffy told him. "You can count on that, and following my way is better than following yours."

"He has a point," Chopper nodded, though Zoro was a bit offended by this.

The path led a bit downwards but at time upwards. It was pretty long walk and after several minutes of traveling through the cave, they saw something somewhat different. "Whoa… This one's scary…" Ness commented.

There was a narrow strip of land before them and all around it was a large chasm. When they looked down the chasm, they saw that it was a very long drop to the bottom but there was a river down there. "Falling down there would be worse than getting a scratch…" Diddy said.

"Unless we fall into the river," TL said. "But we don't even know if the water is shallow or deep. If latter, then it'll be fine."

"Don't talk like we will fall down for sure…" Nana cried.

"Is this narrow strip of land safe to cross anyway?" Popo wondered.

Luffy observed the strip of land and then walked onto it. He stepped onto a part of it and then jumped up and down on it, stomping the ground hard, but nothing happened. "It's okay. This land looks strong enough to carry us all. We should be able to cross to the other side with no problem."

Since there was no other place to go, they had no choice but to cross the narrow strip of land. They slowly walked across it and tried to balance themselves as not to fall down. "See? There's nothing to be afraid of at all!" Luffy said. "Just pretend that you are as light as feather and nothing will happen!"

"If something does happen though, we can blame you for jumping up and down on it earlier…" Sanji grumbled. The moment he said this, cracks started to appear all over the piece of land. "Uh…?"

"You just had to say that, do you…?" Zoro said.

Before they could react, the entire strip of land shattered and everyone found themselves plummeting downwards. "AAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!"

Luffy and Robin both reached for the land on the other side using their abilities. While Robin managed to grab firmly onto the land, Luffy only managed to grab a loose piece of land that broke and so he continued falling. "Damn!"

Robin then sprouted more hands to reach as many people as she could, and in the end, she only managed to grab Sanji by the legs and Zoro was grabbing him by the rest of the body. "Hey! Don't touch that place!" Sanji shouted to him.

"Like I have a choice!" Zoro replied. Both YL and TL were holding onto each of his legs too.

The others, however, continued falling down. Luffy tried another attempt to grab onto something above him, but a random piece of rock fell onto his face and caused him to flinch. "Ow!"

"WE'RE GONNA FALL TO OUR DEATHS!!!!" the other kids and Chopper screamed.

"Don't worry! I'm made of rubber, so I'll survive the fall!" Luffy told them.

"HOW ABOUT US?!" Ness shouted.

"On the bright side, there's a river below us," Diddy said. "But if the water is shallow…"

"STOP SCARING ME!!!" Nana cried.

And they all fell into the river.

SPLASH!

Meanwhile, the ones at the top managed to make it onto the land. Zoro looked down and said, "Looks like they fell into the river down there… Hope they're all right…"

"Even if our captain and the doctor cannot swim, the others should be able to," Robin said. "So I'm sure they'll be all right."

"So what do we do?" TL asked. "We got separated from them…"

"There's another path that leads deeper into the cave," Sanji said, looking at the path behind them. "You don't have to worry about them. As long as Luffy is with them, there is nothing to be afraid of. I'm sure we'll meet each other again."

-

Down there, the kids managed to make it onto dry land and save Luffy and Chopper from drowning too. "Phew… Thanks goodness the water is deep!" Diddy said. "I was scared for a moment!"

Luffy coughed out some water before standing up. "Thanks, guys… I owe you one…"

Chopper looked towards the top and said, "It's really long fall… I don't think we can reunite with them any longer…"

"Yeah, I don't know if I can stretch that long either," Luffy added. "Looks like we'll have to try other paths."

"Luckily there are still other paths to take from here," Ness said, looking at the various passages around the place. "Let's get moving then. I'm sure we'll be able to meet up with them again."

As they started to move, two people suddenly showed up from one of the passages. These people wore clothing similar to that of pirates, complete with bandanas wrapped over their heads. "Well, what do we have here?" one of them said. "Looks like some lost sheep wandered into this place!"

"Heheh! How unlucky of you to come into here!" the other pirate said. "You'll be coming with us and we won't hurt you as long as you cooperate!"

"Who are these people?" Popo asked.

"I don't know, but they don't look like nice people…" Chopper said.

"Hey, who are you guys and why should we come with you?" Luffy asked.

"You'll learn about everything if you come with us," one of the pirates said while approaching him with a gun in hand. "Don't try anything funny or else I'll shoot."

"Go on! I'm not scared of a gun!"

"You're asking for it, aren't you? Don't blame me if I'm being mean to you!" the pirate said in a frustrated voice before pulling the trigger. To his surprise, the bullet bounced off Luffy's chest and back to him, but it barely scraped his face. "What the?!"

"The bullet bounced back!" the other pirate said in shock.

Luffy pulled his cheeks to the sides as far as he could and replied, "I ate the Gomu Gomu Fruit and therefore a rubber man, so your guns aren't going to work on me!"

"A Devil Fruit user!" the pirates gasped.

"If you guys are trying to hurt us or something, then I'm going to give you a beating!" Luffy said. "Gum Gum Pistol!" He pulled back his fist and threw it forward and punched down one of the pirates in the face.

"Damn you!" the pirate cursed. He got out his sword and ran towards him to attack, but Ness quickly attacked by shooting a PK Fire into him and blasting him away. "YEOW!"

"That was easy!" Ness commented.

The first pirate got back up again and growled, "Dammit! I better tell the others about this!" He quickly turned to run but Luffy grabbed him by the back of his collar with an extended arm. "Ack!"

"You're not going anywhere just yet!" Luffy said to him. "I have something to ask you, so you better answer me… ACK!" He was suddenly pierced through the right side of the shoulder by what appeared to be a piece of glass.

"What?!" everyone turned around to see someone standing on a small piece of rock that was in the middle of the river.

The person was wearing grayish-blue long-sleeved clothing. Appearance wise, he looks like a teenager with short purple and he showed an expressionless yet stern face that had half-closed eyes.

"Who are you?!" Chopper asked.

-

Meanwhile, the other group continued traveling down the cavernous passage. "We've been walking for quite a while already, and we've yet to find something or reach somewhere," Zoro complained. "I knew we shouldn't have followed Luffy's way!"

"No use complaining over this now that we're here," Sanji said. "And even if we want to get out of here, we should at least meet up with them first."

"I think I heard something," Robin said all of a sudden. Everyone stood still and listened carefully.

"Yeah, I did hear something…" Young Link said. "Sounds like metal banging against rocks if you ask me…"

"And it's not too far from here either," TL added.

They continued traveling down the passage to track down the source of the sound and eventually saw a medium-sized opening on the wall. When they looked through it, they were surprised to see several people, all men, doing works such as quarrying, mining, carrying stuffs, and several other kinds of hard labors. There were also several people dressed like pirates keeping watch on them as well as whipping anyone who slacked off.

"What is this place…?" Sanji asked. "What's with the slavery here?!"

"I recognize some of them!" TL said. "I saw them on the ship!"

"Does that mean… all these people are the ones from our ship?!" YL said in surprise.

Robin scanned around the place and noticed a symbol imprinted onto the wall on the far side. The symbol was a skull and crossbone and to the left and right side of it were the letters 'A' and 'P' respectively.

Her eyes widened in shock and said, "I know that symbol!"

"What is it?" Zoro asked her.

"That is the symbol… of the criminal organization… AP Flums!"

TO BE CONTINUED

Not a very long chapter, but an important without a doubt as the villains of the story is introduced. Having made minor appearances in my previous stories, AP Flums are going to be major antagonists this time and going all out at that!