Oh hey guys. Er. It's been a while. Um. Yeah. Don't hit me with rocks please. ...Anyway yeah I'm going to try something now. It's called 'actually trying to make a schedual so that I have motivations to actually comlpete things by certain times'. Well, maybe it isn't a *real* schedual, but I'm going to try to get at least one chapter out a week, but try my very best to get out two. Or better yet three. So yeah. Woo! I'll probably fail miserably, but oh well. Not much else to really say other than sorry. Because I am. But if I manage to stop being lazy and write (which I am doing now, as I speak. I've already written like half the chapter (maybe a little less) as I'm writing this), maybe my new schedual will motivate me into getting this really going again. Momentum is surprisingly important when you're writing, I think. I got the first five chapters out in like a week and a half, I mean seriously. And then I was all "Eh I just did two chapters in two days, I'll take a break for a day or so" and then the break NEVER ENDED

EVERRRRRR

...except when that last chapter came out, but then I took an even longer break. Apparently it has been almost a year? Or maybe already a year, who knows.

In any case, though, onto the reviews.

DthehalfDragon: Thanks, an', well, here it is! Hope you like it.

FanficAA: You're welcome! I hope this brightens up your day, too, then!

Birdy: Unfortunately, I would probably deserve it. I hope you enjoy your cookie, though. And I think I let it happen again ;~;

Allycat: I think we all do, sometimes. Luckily for me, I've put up some... extra security measures, but I can give these to Anda later and totally not keep them for myself at all!

Silver Wolf Demon: Thanks, but I guess this wouldn't quite classify as 'soon'.

Chite: Yeah, uh, hopefully for longer now! Glad to hear it! Well, here's the new chapter, so, uh here we go, and I hope you like it!

RedXAlert: Well, I hope you've had a nice laughfest, then, because if you haven't it means you haven't seen a cookie since you made that comment and that would be terrible.

Joker: Yes, yes I do. I deserve every cookie. Every single one. But no not really because I keep making you guys wait :

NED: Thanks! I'm glad he isn't overpowered, and yeah, it's gonna take him a while to get as powerful as Luffy is currently, but trust me - I have plans that are both fantastic and plans. I have fantastic plans.

Bookworm: Thanks! Oh, those? Those cookies are totally magic, and not at all given to him because they were pretty sure that if they didn't Anda would escape somehow and murder all of them in their sleep. Definitely.

Luna X2 COMBOB!: Thanks! ...Crap, I'm out of stuff to say when people give me characters. Oh well.

Alright, that's it for the reviews, let's move onto the disclaimer, 'kay?

...oh wait, one more thing. Unfortunately, this whole beginning AN thingymabobber is gettin' pretty long at this point, as in tallways. The focus is, unfortunately, the story here, and not this. So it should probably get cut back a bit, you know, halfways. So now I'm gonna try to only answer reviews that are actually asking direct questions or stuff like that. But y'know, I'm a pretty cool guy and wouldn't mind a PM conversation, so yeah. But unfortunately I don't think I'll be able to respond to compliments or character apllications for now except through PM, but if I have something specific to say about your character or your compliment brightened up my day (most of them do, my mood swings way too easily :P) or I find your constructive critisism helpful (I usually do, by the way. Can't have enough of that!) I'll shoot you a PM inboxways. I'll still respond to your comment up here if it's a question or something I feel the need to answer, or I find something particularly funny to say about it, but unfortunately I don't have room for much else! But like I said I'm always willing to talk through PMs. So yeah. (Please note that this doesn't mean that you shouldn't leave reviews that I probably won't respond to, it just means, er, that I probably won't respond to them. Please keep leaving reviews, it lets me know you're actually reading this thing :P)

Disclaimer: I don't own One Piece. Nope! Not at all! And this definitely ISN'T me trying to bend reality using reverse psychology!

Launch of the Panda Kaizoku!

Chapter Six;

Sailing

Several bullets, cannonballs, and almost everything else later, Anda and Neelia were sitting on opposite sides of the rowboat that had somehow managed to survive. Most likely due to other prisoners stealing bigger ships and being extremely distracting to the few marines left going after them. Dion sat on Neelia's lap (apparently he counted as one of the many things that went under 'everything else'), eyeing the bag of what was presumably food Anda had clutched to his chest. Speaking of Anda, he was currently lying down in an attempt to lessen the pain on his legs; as you can imagine, this is rather difficult on a small rowboat, but he managed. Unfortunately, this meant Neelia didn't have much room, but she figured she could live with it. I mean, he WAS pretty injured, and besides, she wouldn't want him complaining while she was trying to sleep. She was pretty hungry, though; she should probably check what supplies Anda had on this boat anyway. "Hey, captain, any chance I could have something to eat?" she asked. Anda seemed to contemplate this question. And contemplate. And contemplate.

Neelia stared in disbelief while her captain thought about whether or not to let her have any food; as far as she could see the bag was stuffed, so why would Anda be unable to spare any?

"...Alright, you can have four things of your choice, but that's it." Anda finally answered, with a strict tone to his voice, as he carefully passed the bag to her. Neelia was fairly pleased; at least until she saw what was in there.

"...Anda, did you only bring cookies?" Neelia asked, the words accompanied by a meanacing glare and a clenched fist.

"Brownies, too!" he said enthusiatically, completely unaware of the looming threat that was Neelia's fist. Luckily for him, Neelia retracted her fist, figuring he had enough injuries for now. She'd just have to get him back later, when he was more or less fine. She supposed she would just have to deal with this for now, so she just grumbled incoherently while giving Dion a cookie (he danced with joy) and taking a few brownies herself; they would be more filling. Anda protested; "Hey! That's four brownies! You gave a cookie to Dion, so that makes six! ...Wait. I mean five! Yeah! That's right! You can't fool me!"

A few seconds later he was half hanging over the edge of the boat, probably unconscious. Neelia had apparently changed her mind about him being injured enough, as there was quite visibly a red mark in the shape of a fist on his cheek. It took a few minutes of eating cookies for Neelia to calm down enough to pull him back onto the boat, and a few more minutes for Anda to wake up and start moaning thjings like "What happened?" "Did you SEE that pink crocodile thing? It was HUGE!" and "Hey, where'd that flying banana go? He owes me five bajillion-zillion-jillion-grillion...illion...rill...n," Oh, he fell asleep. Okay then. You guess. You were almost looking forward to his nextcrazed rambling, but oh well. At least now YOU can get to sleep, you guess.

...But wait, what if something attacks? Or there's a storm up ahead? Gah. Wait, Dion is used to this stuff, and there's no way he'd be falling asleep if he were in the water. And so Neelia tossed the surprised penguin into the ocean, mumbling a single word - patrol. Dion was tired, but hey, if Neelia needed him he guessed he's better do it. Loyalty and all that (also she can get pretty scary).

Neelia rested; everything should be okay. Dion was trustworthy and had a good eye for trouble, plus he can handle himself well enough if trouble doesn't like penguins. Usually. Mostly. Kind of.

...Augh why are you worrying you need to sleep not worry, Dion is fast enough to escape from things anyway right? RIGHT?

...yeah you're pretty sure you're not going to stop worrying. Ever. Bluh. Maybe you should just stop thinking. Yeah, that'll work. Just... stop... thinking.

...

"You've got to be kidding me."

Anda had started snoring.

This was going to be a long night.

-A Few Hours Later-

It is slightly after dawn, and quite foggy, but still bright; you can see the sun clearly enough, and it seems like the fog is more or less leaving. Neelia fell asleep just an hour ago; eventually tiredness overthrew worriedness, as well as snoring. Somehow. Anda was still asleep, snoring loudly as always, and Dion wasn't back yet. He usually doesn't return unless he sees trouble or he is both hungry and tired. He had quite a few cookies (Anda would probably throw a temper tantrum later), and he catches fish down there sometimes, so he should still be good for another hour or two. Which is why it's odd that he's suddenly jumping out of the water and smacking Neelia in the face, screaming (er, gwarking?) the whole time. This usually means trouble. This time was no exception. Probably. Neelia got up with a start, yelling "YOU'RE ALIVE!" the second she saw Dion, hugging him tightly at the same time. Apparently she had a nightmare. In the meantime, Anda grumbled "Five more minutes..." before resuming his snoring. Dion squirmed out of Neelia's grip (not difficult when you're very wet and Neelia just realized she's being a moron) and stomped on Anda's face until he at least sat up to wonder what was going on.

"Dion, what is it?" Neelia asked in a professional tone; things like this have happened several times, as Dion was her base's best scout. Dion pointed his beak to Neelia's left and Anda's right; they couldn't see much, but some large bubbles were surfacing, and Neelia could just make out a pinkish blob in the water further in that direction. Nodding to Dion and handing him a cookie (while Anda was still turned away, of course,) she took an oar and turned the rowboat away from the blob. No reason to take any risks, here; who knows what that thing is. Getting Anda to row on the other side, the two of you moved quickly away from whatever it was. Probably a sea king or something. You are pretty sure you do not want to take one of those on in this... thing. You hesitate to call it a rowboat. Why couldn't Anda have gotten a better boat...?

Oh well. You guess you'll just have to deal with it. You'll have to get another one first chance you get. No, you can't steal it. That's usually a bad thing. Unless you're, like, stealing from a person who would use what you're stealing for evil. And all that stuff. You used to be a marine for a reason, you know. You have more morals than the avarage pirate, at the very least. But you're pretty sure Anda does, too, even if he DOES go stealing people's milk for no reason.

...actually yeah come to think of it you're pretty sure he's only slightly better than the people who go around stealing everything they can see and is not completely worthless or pretty much impossible to lift without superhuman strength (you would say nailed down but you've seen stuff being stolen despite this), but hey, good enough for you!

...wait, you can still see the pink blob. It's not moved much farther away, and you're SURE that you've moved pretty far away from it. Then it must be following you. Probably. Crap.

A few minutes later and it was still very, very close, and you had been paddling for your lives. It still hadn't surfaced or revealed itself dramatically or anything... you wonder what it is. You study it closely and...

...oh COME ON. You are not sure how you managed not to realize that the sky was pink, and more importantly how the fog was creating a pinkish blobby reflection on the surface of the water. You groan in disbelief; but this is odd. You were SURE you saw something actually under the water when you first looked at it... you guess you were wrong.

"Ugh... you can stop rowing, Anda. I made a mistake. ...I wonder how far off course we are?" you say, the first part to Anda and the second to nobody in particular. You then continue in even MORE disbelief; "...wait, we... we don't even HAVE a course. What were we thinking? We'll have to go back and get a map, or at least SOMETHING! That is, if we can even GET back! Where IS back? Augh! I can understand YOU forgetting a map, but I'm a marine! I shouldn't forget something so simple! Augh... well first thing's fir... wait, what are you looking at?" Anda was staring over her head, mouth agape and eyes wide. Neelia immediately turned around to answer her own question.

...She had thought Anda was seeing things when he said the thing about the pink crocodile. Evidently she was wrong. She was also wrong about being wrong before. Today wasn't Neelia's day.

In front of them was a huge pink crocodile, several times larger than them and the rowboat they were in. It didn't look too happy. It gave off a huge roar, diving underwater but a moment before it campe up again, jaws wide, from under the boat. Anda reacted quickly; flipping over the edge of the boat, folding his legs before "jumping" against the surface of the water, grabbing the back of the boat with both hands. They went forward just enough to escape the jaws of the beast, which snapped shut quickly. The pirates landed poorly but did not not turn over while Anda flew back into the rowboat thanks to his momentum and the sudden stop when the boat hit the water again. Collapsing, he groaned; he wasn't doing anything else for a while, though Neelia was surprised he could do that in the first place.

The crocodile began to sink into the waters once more, presumably to attack once more. Neelia didn't really want that; grabbing her pistols quickly, she shot at its eye several times, causing it to roar in pain and thrash about; turning around, a sweep of its tail fell slightly short of hitting the boat, luckily for them. Unfortunately for them, though-

*SPLASH*

-it caused a wave large enough to tip their boat over. Neelia was caught off guard and began to choke, but recovered quickly. Seeing Dion rescuing the drowning Anda, she grabbed the foodbag hopefully before it all went to waste. As she swam upwards, she pushed up on the edge of the boat, managing to flip it over more easily than she thought. When she surfaced, she threw the bag in and helped Dion to get Anda (who she was pretty sure needed CPR) in before getting herself in. The crocodile had, luckily enough, been too distracted with its eye to directly attack them as they were helpless, so Neelia had time to prepare herself for what she was going to do next. Stomping on Anda's chest caused him to immediately spit up all the water in his lungs; she had been quick enough not to need to do anything fancy. Good. You need to save all your fancy for what you are about to do. Which is going to either be awesome or fail miserably. It has only been the former once, and has been the latter at least seventeen times, resulting in several embarassing scars on your hands. These did not go to waste, however. Because when you manage to actually do this is feels awesome.

The crocodile is charging across the water; it is no longer distracted. You must act quickly. You put one foot on the railing of the boat, the other inside it. You take out your pistols. You spin them as they become more deadly with momentum; and, when the timing is just right, you leap forward, your foot landing on the enormous snout of the seaking. You cross your arms, and, as you continue running and reach his forehead, you slice. You're not usually one for naming attacks, but you cannot help muttering "Mantis Cross," as you skid to a halt, just as the crocodile does the same; a ridiculously hard to penetrate, large-as-a-person pink scale flies off his head, sparkling in the sunlight and revealing the green flesh underneath. It's already bleeding; even if tearing the scale off was what most of your attack focused on (even if you didn't really mean to), you still managed to do damage. You are going to practice this attack SO. MUCH. Of course, the thing isn't dead yet, but you've definitely revealed a weak point.

The crocodile hisses in pain as it changes directions and swerves around, in an attempt to get Neelia off its back. Neelia had already jumped, though, and its efforts were wasted. Neelias weren't, as she caught a glimpse of the crocodile's green flesh and shot at it, causing it to dive underwater, going after the boat.

Dion was waiting for it. With some swift swimming, he had slashed at the weakpoint once - twice - make that thrice with his beak before moving out of the way of its thrashing. It came up to the surface further away from the boat, where it saw Neelia swimming to. The penguin was protecting her, now, it seemed. It once again swam towards them before turning around, whipping at them with his tail. As the brightly-colored scourge came down, Dion grabbed the back of Neelia's shirt and tugged her out of the way. Apparently just enough as to escape the attack, though they were still blown away by the explosion of water it created. Recovering quickly they swam to the boat, getting on just in time to notice thwe pink monster charging at them. Neelia pointed at the weak point with her pistols and fired... but nothing happened. All they did was make a sound that usually meant "this gun is jammed." She had been in the water quite a bit, so this wasn't TOO much of a surprise but still really, really inconvenient. She honestly did not know what to do right now.

Then she got an idea. She could only hope Dion would know how to play along, and so would the sea king. She stood at the end of the boat once more; the crocodile appeared to notice this, and, remembering what happened last time, dove under the boat to attempt a manuver much like the first one he pulled. Neelia made a handsignal to Dion, taking out her jutte and eyeing the weak point of the monstrous reptile, which he apparently understood, as he dove underwater.

Swimming quickly past the crocodile's deadly jaws, he slashed at its soft green flesh once more. This made the crocodile rather angry, as it begun to chase the penguin (it had a rather short attention span), which swam just out of reach of it huge jaws. Dion quickly jerked to the right, swimming past the crocodile too quickly for it to react. Making an incredibly sharp turn, its back surfaced for but a moment. Just long enough for Neeila to jump onto the beginning of its tail. The penguin continued to stay just out of reach as the beast plunged downwards towards it, Neelia managing to keep a grip on one of the spiky scales jutting out from its spine. She gradually made her way down the tail, until she was practically at the tip. Luckily for her she was good at holding her breath. She watched as the crocodile began to surface again, and waited 'til the part of the tail she was on was completely above water before jumping backwards, the force of the tail suddenly jerking aiding her greatly.

Dion turned swiftly, just barely dodging the snapping fangs of the sea king. He knew what he was doing, though; he was in practically no danger at all. He could easily be much, much faster than this unintelligent beast, but he would stay close simply to aggravate it further. Swimming past it once more, causing it to turn around again, making it thrash its tail; it was almost like clockwork. Just barely skimming the surface of the water, he saw Neelia high in the air above him. Good. Now that the crocodile had completely turned around and its head was above water, it was all up to her.

Neelia focused her mass towards the point she believed the beast's head would be, pointing her jutte in the general direction. Luckily for her, she wasn't too far off even where she was then. Suddenly beginning to spin mid-air, her face still pointed towards the pink crocodile. She was, surprisingly enough, not dizzy. Possibly because she was only focused on one thing:

The weakpoint.

Bringing her jutte to her side and gaining momentum, the monster noticed her only just as she descended through the air just above his forehead. Her thoughts at the moment were essentially 'Yes. YES. FREAKING YESSSSSS,' as her jutte, gripped firmly, spun around one more time in order to hit the mixture of red blood and green skin on his forehead. With a yell of "JUSTICE BELL!", the attack connected; nobody nearby could concievably doubt it was a finishing blow, thanks to a loud,

resounding,

encompassing,

CRACK.

SURPRISE CLIFFHANGER ENDING! Actually it isn't because I made it pretty clear that was a finishing blow! Anyway, so, there are a few other things I should say. Joker-Maine (who is the person who submitted Neelia, in case you don't read the other reviews (I might have said this before but I'm too lazy to check)) made another picture and it's even better than the previous ones! Seriously, her stuff is awesome and you should totes check it out. The way I usually find her stuff is going to skins, search 'War P. Anda', find the first drawing she made of him, click on that and check out the other stuff she's made. Unless there's some way to search for artist's names on DeviantArt I haven't heard about, in which case I am INCREDIBLY SILLY and you can just do that. Anyway! After you check that out (YOU'D BETTER), you should know that I literally just found out that I have to go somewhere else for a week tomorrow. Like as in I found that out today. I mean COME ON. Oh well, I should still have access to both wordpad and the internet, so I should still be able to work on this (albiet slower than I should be). Also! you are all very cool, so I am going to try and document any not-normal animals for you at the end of the chapter! Unless we've already seen them! Here's how it will usually look:

Reverse-Watermelon Crocodile

A gigantic, deadly, razor-fanged and outstandingly pink crocodile. With extremely hard (near uncuttable), shock-absorbing shells (you can't do much with blunt weapons either!), this crocodile is incredibly tough to even damage. Your only hopes are to go for the eyes, or cutting off a scale. It is incredibly difficult to actually damage a scale, so simply tearing it off is usually the best option (if still incredibly difficult). If you somehow manage to do this, its flesh and bone is rather weak; a well-aimed cannonball would do it in. Its name is due to its odd coloring, as well as the hard outer shell and soft inner body. They are native to the Grand Line, but have been known to escape and roam the waters of other Blues from time to time, usually wreaking havok with the other native seakings. As it is not native to areas other than the Grand Line, you are to be rewarded for successfully killing one outside of this habitat. Aside from this, its scales are known to be quite valuable, so if you DO get one, you should definitely skin it! Its meat is considered delicious, just barely out of the reach of being served to Celestial Dragons. In other words, catching one of these is your ticket to fortune! Especially if you can catch one of them live, to be donated to a farm. However, one should surely note: these beasts are not a joke, despite their odd colors. They are listed as Agressive, and will attack most creatures, including humans, on sight, and they have the muscle to back it up.

...yeah that's about how it'll work, I can't promise you that I'll do every odd seaking we see in the adventure, but rather just the interesting I don't do one, assume it's because it's boring or I don't have time. Or I forgot about it, in which case feel free to remind me.

...so, we're back in business, here. Hopefully. I'll try to do things while away, but don't expect another one this wekk. I'll definitely try to have one up next week, though!

...OH! And I've chosen a doctor. They'll be here next chapter! So yeah, I don't need any more doctor applications. Speaking of applications...

Nakama Acceptance Status: ...I honestly have no clue, I don't think I really need anything right now!

AND THAT WRAPS THINGS UP, see you next week probably!