Hello everyone!
SOOOO sorry this took so long to come out, I don't think I can find a proper excuse to cover over my absence for so long, so let's just say I had problems.
Okay...minus the fact that I only recently got back into writing grove after having a HUGE writer's block for almost A FULL YEAR...
The touch is still not really back to me yet... That's why this one was kinda short...
I also need to re-watch One Piece...or at least, I think I do, or I'm gonna end up going Super-OOC without much effort...Too much random anime can do that to you...
Anyway, this would be the long awaited 6th chapter (almost 2 years since the last one OMG!) and its not even of decent length (I'm sorry again!).
Well, until I find that writing grove again, you all would most likely be stuck with this, so...
Happy Reading!
Disclaimer (I haven't done this in so long I nearly forgotten): One Piece, as you all should know, is drawn by a manga artist far away in Japan...Not me. (It belongs to Oda-sensei)
The front door was locked. Not that it was a big surprise, but it did prevent them from waltzing straight into the hut. And while Zoro forcibly restrained Luffy from punching the door ("We don't know what it's made of, you idiot!"), Brook pulled out his blade and cut a clean square around the lock. Pushing the door open revealed that the hut was practically devoid of any furniture besides the fireplace that was completely empty. Dark imprints on the floor suggested that there used to be some furniture, but it had been removed.
The group walked into the hut without much caution. Chopper then said, "I thought something was weird."
Usopp, who was already being spooked by the dark imprints on the floor, timidly asked, "W-what's weird?"
Hazel answered, "This hut has no windows."
"It's as if the person that made the hut purposely didn't want anyone looking in, even by accident," added Chopper.
Luffy, who was still looking around for secret openings and treasure, spotted Brook at the doorway, frozen.
"Brook? Why you standing there like a statue?"
Brook continued to stand there for a moment, before suddenly his body was flung out of the door.
"Brook!" Zoro and Chopper dashed out the door to him, with Hazel and Usopp following just behind them.
"No, it's okay... At least I think I'm fine..."
"What happened?" Chopper frantically tried to check his vital signs before Usopp knocked him on the head for trying that on a skeleton; Hazel meanwhile tried to find out what happened to Brook.
"No, it was nothing, my soul was merely ejected from my body..."
"What?!" Hazel and Chopper screamed in disbelief. (Zoro and Usopp weren't as surprised.)
"I think maybe because I'm capable of ejecting my own soul out it's easier for my soul to be pulled away from my body. As soon as I went through that door, my soul was pulled away from my body. It took quite an effort to force both my soul and my body out the door, I tell you..."
"But Brook, we didn't see your soul. Not like the other time..."
"I don't know why, but that's what I felt happen anyway."
"What the hell is in that room..."
"Ermm, shouldn't we get that stupid captain out of there then...?"
"Luffy, get out here! There's nothing in there anyway, right?"
"Coming!" Luffy said reluctantly, but as he did so, he spotted something in the far corner of the room.
"What's this...?" he said to himself, as he picked up the small blue crystal of the floor...
~O.O~
"So, is there anything else that you all can do? Like maybe mind reading or the sort?" Sanji was already wondering it since they met, so he put the question straight to him.
"That's a bit beyond us already. At best we could pick up your aura maybe, or some of the elders can feel the general state of your consciousness... Basically, that means that those old guys can actually check someone's general state of mind if they try hard enough, like finding out if someone's being controlled or threatened; whether the person has murderous intentions or is putting on a sincere smile. Picking up anything within the inner state of your mind like your thoughts or memories are things we are incapable of intruding upon."
"So that's why you said we were a nice crowd..."
"A couple of our elders told me to go welcome a bunch of 'seriously cheerful' folk, I was expecting something closer to a travelling circus..."
"Ah...we might be graded as crazier than that, with that idiot of a captain..." Sanji gave a look to Franky, who simply winked as he responded.
"Crazy eh...sounds like me back in the day..." Danny gave a slight glance to the far wall before looking back at them. Intrigued, Franky also looked over and spotted a couple of photos hanging on that wall.
"Hey, is that...?"
Danny and Sanji look up to the wall, at the 2 photos hanging side by side. One showed a younger Danny(?) with a large group of boys around him. The other showed a slightly older version with a group of 5 old men around him.
"Yup, that's me. 13 and 15 years of age. The boys are a group of us that gathered together when we were younger. The older photo is me with the then 5 great elders. These old guys were the leaders of the town then."
"Then?" Sanji was curious to the fact that he used past tense with the old men.
"Nothing big, they were getting too old for the job, so they gave it to someone slightly younger." Danny answered simply, so both Franky and Sanji were satisfied with the answer.
"Then, what about the other photo?"
~O.O~
As soon as Luffy came out, the group pulled him far away from the hut and told him what happened. Even though it actually sparked more interest in him rather than dissuade him, they managed to prevent him from going back into the hut without reason. Now, they were walking off in a different direction to explore the forest even more.
Besides the place which they left behind, the forest seemed to be filled with greenery and wildlife. There were many animals roaming about, and the forest itself was filled with plants that seemed intriguing to the doctor. Chopper, picked a couple of plants, before his nose found a strange scent in the air.
"Er... Guys, do you smell that, or is it just me?"
"Hmm...what smell?"
"There's a weird smell, it's coming in that direction..."
"Shouldn't we like, avoid following that. We still don't know what was the deal with the hut..."
"A weird smell? Chopper, let's go! Show us the way!"
"You knew that that wasn't gonna stop him right?"
"Well, I had to try, didn't I?"
Chopper followed the scent, with the rest of the group following close behind. Soon, he and the group came through to a small clearing. it seemed the same as the rest of the forest, but that there were several animals staring at them.
"This is where the smell was coming from..." Chopper said.
"What are those animals doing?" Usopp wasn't particularly scared, but the way the animals were staring gave him a chill.
"Actually, rather than staring at us, doesn't it seem like they are frozen on the spot?" Hazel remarked.
The group came closer, then realised that she was right. The deer that was in front of them seemed to have been frozen solid even though there was no ice around. Luffy came up close to the deer, and suddenly the deer moved, as if it had been brought back to life, and sprinted away in a hurry. The group looked around and saw that the rest of the animals had followed suit, as if breaking free from a spell they ran away.
"What was that all about...?"
The rest of the group could only shrug as Luffy looked to the deer that was running in the distance. Brook, seeking to break the silence, said, "Shall we get some food? We've been out for a while."
"But you don't have a stomach, where does the food go? Ah, did I do it again?"
"Nah, it's okay, the skeleton should learn to get used to it too."
"My skull joke was stolen again!*Sob Sob*"
"Oi, don't weep over something like that, makes me wonder where the water that make your tears come from..."
"But he doesn't even have a body, how can there be water..."
"NOoo, not again!"
"Hazel, you should actually stop commenting on him."
"Erm... I'm sorry?"
"Skull Joke! Skull Joke!"
"Okay, okay let's go back and have some food, eh? I bet Robin is lonely waiting for us like that."
"Let's go, Brook, let's go... Hey, Luffy, let's go! Time for food!"
"Okay..." Luffy turned to follow the rest back to the ship, not noticing the clear blue crystal in his pocket suddenly shining...
~O.O~
Franky and Sanji both looked at each other, before realising that the question hadn't come from either of them. They looked over to Danny, who was looking in the direction of the doorway. The previously empty doorway now had another young man standing there. The two of them looked over to Danny, before looking over to him.
"What are you doing here..." Danny's face had changed, he wasn't smiling, and Sanji sensed something close to hostility seeping out of him.
"What, you mean I can't visit when I'm around the neighbourhood? It has been a while, after all. About 7 years or so...?" The visitor answered in casual fashion, as if he didn't notice that Danny didn't seem to want him to be here.
"You know what I mean Sakamoto, what are you doing here...?" Sanji was going to ask something, but Danny was making it very clear that he shouldn't interact with this person.
"Hmm, what? Are you angry at the fact I came out of my little hideaway in the forest? Even though you were the one that banished us out of the town, I always maintained my respect for our former leader, after all..."
"Former leader...?" The question came out of Sanji's mouth before he could stop it. Danny gave him a look that made him realise that the conversation was not going where Danny wanted it to, but regardless he opened his mouth to answer.
"He is in the other picture. The one right next to me." Franky looked up and saw that the boy he was talking about did bear a resemblance to the person standing before them. Dark blue eyes, red-tipped brown hair and a chain around his neck, just that the colour of the chain in the picture was silver while his was black.
"In that band of boys, I was considered the leader." Danny didn't elaborate, and Sanji could tell that he was not keen to share anymore.
"Hmm, you aren't gonna say anymore? Hey, I can tell them more, right?" Sakamoto, though, seemed very keen on sharing. Sanji was also starting to get curious and wanted his share of answers too. Danny didn't say anything, so Sakamoto just kept talking.
"Hey, if you're not gonna say anything, I'm going to you know? Like our old adventures, our band of brothers and our grand experiments..."
"Experiments?" Franky wasn't intending to cut in, but couldn't stop himself from blurting the word out. Sakamoto, as if waiting for the response, replied him.
"Yes, experiments. We were hailed as the prodigies, so well-developed in the art of telepathy at such a young age that we naturally came together. And as young kids with great ambitions, what did we do? We wanted to explore more into the realm of telepathy beyond what the elders could do. and who else was there to lead us but the genius of our troupe, the youngest one to ever attain mastery of telepathy..."
"That was before I found out what you were doing behind my back." Danny cut in, almost clearly wanting the converstion to end. His fist clenched at one side, Sanji could somewhat feel the anger seeping out of him. Uninterrupted, he continued on. "The experiments that I thought of were nothing close to what you all were doing."
"Well, it brought results, didn't they?"
"What's the use of cheating on an exam if all you get is results?"
"That's a cruel example. We did hurt a few people, that's all..."
"Mental torture to the point of insanity is not something you would get away with even if you did it on one person, let alone kidnapping over 7 people to do your experiments on!"
"But it was only from those that we managed to get our best findings..."
"What findings? The fact that you considered torture in the first place was one of the reasons you got banished from the village in the first place!"
"Banished...?" Sanji voiced out the word, but the ongoing argument continued regardless.
"We were just trying to find out how telepathy worked with more extreme conditions. And honestly, we squeezed out more than we thought..."
"And ripped their sanity clean from them in the process, didn't you? How else would the elders have reacted? Hell, banishing you to the forest was already a soft punishment!"
"But that was probably a good decision..."
"...What...?"
"I mean, you seriously thought that we were going to chill in that forest for the rest of our lives, you were way wrong..."
"Sakamoto, what do you mean by that..." Danny's tone was still laced with anger, but it was clear Danny had no idea what they had been doing in that forest.
"Did you know, animals also make for great guinea pigs... the forest is also filled with a lot of resources and queer plants too..."
"What exactly do you mean by that...?"
~O.O~
Nami and Selena, on the way back to Sunny, sharing some silence. Well, was more like Nami was kinda refusing to talk to Selena while Selena was just walking quietly behind her trying to keep herself from smirking. Something that was making Nami not just agitated, but all the more embarassed.
"Nami-san, you are completely red..."
"Shut up."
"Ehhh...Nami-san, where's you're usual tsundere-like response, maybe like a 'Stop talking about that!' or an attempt to cover my mouth..."
"Shut up."
Selena, realising that Nami was in no mood to talk, followed her back to Sunny, where they found Robin waiting. Before Nami could prevent Selena from poking any more fun at her, Robin came down off the ship. Robin walked past Nami without even acknowledging her red face, which made Selena hesitate long enough to realise that Robin's face was one of anger. And that she was looking at her.
"Yes...? Robin-san..."
"I found out."
"Oh, about what?"
"About the crayons."
"Oh...what about them...?"
"Did you really think you could hide it from me..."
Selena was thinking hard of a reply for that, but she never had the chance to say anything for at that moment...
An explosion rocked the entire island.
~O.O~
At that, Sakamoto looked up at Danny and said, "And that, is the signal."
So how was it? Love it, Hate it?
Or is it a 'you're taking too long with this!'
Leave a review...or not, I don't really think it warrants a review...it's up to you...(Need to find out how bad my writing has become!)
(Anyway...)
Thanks for Reading!