Author's Note: I wanted to write many things here but at this hour of the night, I can't remember any of them. I'm tired and sleepy so if there are any mistakes in the story, forgive me...I wanted to put a new chapter because tomorrow – well, a few hours later, today – I am going to vacation. I wouldn't be able to write anything there so I wanted to put this longer-than-usual one-shot. I have prepared another short story, I hope to put in online if I could find internet at the vacation.
As for the story, it is more like my musings on the issue rather than a story with a plot and so on. Hope you like it...Damn it! I hate mosquitoes; I currently have one in my room...
The Buzz of Doom
Franky was in his weapon development room. Today, contrary to the name of the room, he wasn't developing any weapons in it. Actually the only reason he came here was because it was below the deck. It wasn't easy to reach here so any walking or flying creature shouldn't be able to reach to this room without difficulty.
He sighed, relieved. Sitting on his chair, he closed his eyes and listened to the silence of the room – as much as it can be in a ship such as Thousand Sunny.
It took Franky a few minutes to finally relax. He was taking a deep breath, with a smile on his face when he heard it.
The buzzing.
Damn it! This was the last straw; he was going to build a shield to protect the ship! A shield that only air was allowed to enter!!
What was the buzz about, you wonder? Well, actually...
It had all started when they entered the stable climate of a summer island. Their last stop had been a spring island in the middle of winter so to say that they had been drenched to bone would be an underestimation – and not only in Brook's case. Wet, cold and irritated, Nami's news of a summer island was a celebration issue in the crew.
Nami, being the expert navigator, was right. After a few days of unpredictable Grand Line weather, which always rained much to their luck, they came to the very-welcome burning sun and cloudless sky that indicated the summer island.
As her crew was happily drying around, Nami looked at sky thoughtfully. Yes, the weather suggested a summer island but where was the dry air? Humidity was still very high. Though after a while she dismissed the issue – they were on the sea anyway, of course humidity would be high – and began sunbathing happily.
One important factor Nami ignored was that the only summer island she had been was Arabasta's island, a.k.a. Sandy Island. As its name suggested, it was full of deserts under a torching sun. On the other hand, the island they were going to reach was full of jungles.
And jungles meant insects. Actually, jungles meant big insects.
Straw Hats leaned this fact very quickly.
The residents of the jungle apparently decided to send a welcome party to the ship because within the hour they entered the stable climate, those small, multi-foot creatures began to be seen on Thousand Sunny.
No body minded them at the beginning; they had been in Little Garden so some insects were no big deal for a brave and fearless crew such as Straw Hats.
Of course when we said 'big insects', it wasn't very literally. They were big but not human-sized or anything like that; they were only hand-sized bugs. Don't say that logically there wouldn't be human-sized bugs, we're talking about the One Piece world and such an occurrence would have disturbed the Straw Hats less, being the crew that got used to unnatural stuff and all.
Anyway, in the first few hours, the welcome party was ignored. Only Franky, who stared at them to see if they would damage the precious wood of the ship or not, and Sanji, who wasn't particularly thrilled to see bugs – especially spiders – at his kitchen, paid them any attention.
The welcome party, while welcoming the humans to their island, also wanted to be welcomed by them to their ship so the lack of attention from the humans annoyed them. With a signal to the island, they called the second welcome party. They were so tiny that none of the Straw Hats saw the bugs' evil grins but if they had managed to see it, the crew would have behaved very differently.
Anyway, in a few minutes, the second welcome party arrived to Thousand Sunny. Unlike the first group, they were not to be ignored.
The first one to notice them was Nami. It might have been Robin as well but she didn't voice it so Nami was the first one to announce the arrival of the second welcome group from the jungle. Of course her wording wasn't exactly like that; it was more like "Aiee!! There is something on my arm!"
No, no, the 'something' on Nami's arms wasn't a member of the welcome party; it was their gift to humans. A big, red and scratching swelling.
Of course Sanji was the first one to reach to her side to face the 'thing' that dared to touch dear Nami-san and console her if needed. As it turned out, Nami didn't need any consolation so Sanji called Chopper who identified the swelling on her arm with the speed of an expert doctor.
It was an insect sting. To be more specific, it was a mosquito sting.
As we said, the second group was not to be ignored or denied.
At this point, the welcome party was happy that they received the attention they earned from the humans. The humans, on the other hand, were not exactly happy for the arrival of the welcome party and it turned out that their attention was a bit on the wrong side.
In other words, Straw Hats declared war upon insects.
Too bad the welcome party didn't value the honour of Straw Hats' war declaration. Really, it was only them and the World Government so it was great nobility – not even pirate crews received such a credit – but the flying creatures didn't appreciate it. Though, maybe they didn't understand, the welcome party didn't exactly have a flag Sogeking could burn so probably the war cries of the pirates were not enough of a clue.
Anyway, here it is.
The Straw Hats vs. The Mosquitoes
In this fight chapter, as in all other fights of the Straw Hats, every individual member of the crew was assigned to a villain member who had similar fighting style, abilities and nearly-equal levels of strength.
However, there were some problems with this matching:
One, the number of pirates was nine while the number of mosquitoes was approximately one hundred. So instead of a one-by-one pairing, the fight was in a ten to fifteen-by-one pairing.
Second, the strength of all the mosquitoes were the same and was in ignorable amounts compared to any of the crewmembers. Though, since it wasn't their strength that made them troublesome to Straw Hats, this wasn't an important issue.
After a few minutes, the imperfections with this matching showed itself. The crewmembers couldn't identify the mosquitoes they were supposed to be fighting. They all looked the same.
"Oi! Love-cook! That one was my opponent!"
"What the hell Marimo? It was near the kitchen so it was one of mine!"
"Hey! Luffy, stop sending your enemy to my way!!"
"I keep punching but they fly away!!"
That sentence of Luffy explained the problem very head on. The Straw Hats, who fought against many enemies and beat them all, was used to fight with human-sized opponents, logically. So their special attacks that could send an enemy flying away didn't work on tiny mosquitoes, which were flying away anyway.
With a huge shock, the Straw Hats noticed that the monstrous trio was useless in this fight. Luffy's punches and Sanji's kicks were so powerful that mosquitoes flew away with the wind of the movement, before the attack could hit them. And Zoro refused to use his valuable swords to kill insects; his argument was that it would be hard to clean afterwards.
Similarly, Franky's attacks didn't work as well. Also he was so anxious anyone would damage the ship that he couldn't concentrate on his fight.
Usopp's attacks, which were generally used to deflect canon balls, hurt marines or blaze stuff in general, burned a bunch of mosquitoes along with the railings. He wasn't allowed to fight anymore – which was a boasting issue for Usopp, the fact that his attacks were powerful than needed.
Chopper's hooves were small so he could only attack one or two mosquitoes at a time; that was, if he was fast enough to catch them. Most of the time he was not.
Nami's thunder attacks were in a similar state with Usopp's so she was disqualified as well.
Brook's swordsmanship, which was effective and fast, was too fast for the mosquitoes so he cut some of them into two or more pieces. But again such actions damaged the ship so accompanied by Franky's curses; he left the fight as well.
The last resort was Robin, who could hit the insects with several arms. It required her to see every one of them and was a bit impossible. Not that impossible was a concept Straw Hats believed or anything close. However, after a while, in which she fought bravely and saved the her crewmembers' honour, her several hands and arms were so full of mosquito stings that out of pity and Chopper's insistence, she left the fight as well, befitting of a hero.
As a result, the Straw Hats did something they had never done in a fight before; they ran away. Each crew member ran to a closed space, hoping mosquitoes didn't invade the rooms of the ship yet.
Of course, by this point, most of the crew members had earned those red, itching swellings on several parts of their body. The only exceptions were Brook, Chopper and Luffy, who the mosquitoes couldn't penetrate through his rubber skin.
Yes, back to the beginning. This was how we found Franky in his weapon development room.
Kind of a sad story, isn't it? In the end, Straw Hats decided to spend all their time in their rooms until the Log Pose was settled and they were ready to leave the island. The unaffected trio could have left the ship to explore the island and get some supplies but that required them to open the room doors to get out. Such an action would have resulted in hundreds of mosquitoes – after the first one, a few more welcome or exploration or what-ever-they-were parties welcomed themselves to Thousand Sunny – entering the rooms, consequently nobody was allowed to leave the closed areas of the ship, even if they had to bodily stop Luffy from the act.
Luffy had declared this was the most boring adventure they had.
Franky had to take tranquilizers from Chopper not to have panic attacks thinking what those hundreds of mosquitoes were doing to the ship.
In a similar state, Sanji decided that the thread of a few hundred mosquitoes flying around freely was comparable to the thread of a starving Luffy in terms of their food supply.
And from that day on, Nami's news of a summer island was never a celebration issue again.