This one gave me a bit of trouble! I'll always get them done eventually! :D thanks for reads and comments as always :)


"A ship?" Nami hissed.

They had been ushered over to the treeline by Van Augur, preventing them from knowing about Luffy's progress. Presumably, the Blackbeard Pirates had done this in order to ensure that they would not be able to see the end of the string attached to Luffy, meaning there would be no trouble if he failed to overcome some obstacle. If so, it was a pointless tactic: almost as stupid as using the string in the first place. Nami was already resolved to getting into that tunnel by any means necessary.

"It fits," said Robin quietly. "Maybe a little like Thriller Bark, only more complex? I'm not sure how it might move, but it would explain some of the strange things that we've discovered here. I'm not saying that it's definitely a ship, but if the island is some sort of machine it would explain the shifting terrain and the lack of wildlife."

Nami pondered the idea for a few moments. It would definitely make sense for the island to be man-made, especially since the ground seemed to be able to change shape at any moment. There had to be some subterranean mechanism behind that, and the same was surely true of the water level of the lake. It was all easily explained if it had been designed that way, but the explanation raised questions of its own.

"Who would have built it?" Sanji muttered, anticipating one of them. "Who could have built it?"

They looked at each other, stumped.

"At the moment it doesn't matter," Zoro stated after a couple of moments, his voice blunt and strong. "Right now, we need to think of a way into that tunnel. Or have you forgotten?" His eyes settled on Nami. "You had something in mind when you told him to put those handcuffs on, didn't you? Don't tell me you did that just so we wouldn't have to fight them!"

"Of course not!" she snapped. Looking over at Blackbeard and his crew, she felt a pang of nervousness at the sight of them feeding out the string. "I was worried about him doing the trial alone. From what that Dark Luffy said before, I'm pretty sure that they can't be finished solo." Uneasily, she added: "I don't think we're going down that ladder, though. They're all clustered nearby…"

The others looked over at it, and she could almost hear them individually considering the odds of making it into the tunnel without being struck down. Given how far away they were, and the power of Blackbeard and his crew, it would almost certainly be a useless exercise. Even at full strength, fighting the whole group without Luffy would have been extremely difficult. It would probably be something close to suicide to attempt it without any weapons or Devil Fruit powers.

"We have to try!" Chopper declared. "If Nami's right, Luffy's in trouble!"

Everyone was quiet again, and then Sanji said: "I agree. Who knows what's down there? I believe in Luffy, but we should be there with him." Looking frustrated, he cast his gaze balefully over the Blackbeard Pirates once again. "But how are we going to get past them? A distraction?"

"I don't think they'll fall for something like that," Robin replied ponderously. She leant against a nearby tree, bowing her head. "However, it seems like our best chance of reaching the ladder. At the moment, we can't engage them in battle. We are outmatched."

A light wind trailed through the forest, rustling the leaves of the canopy. Though gentler than the touch of a feather, it was fiercely cold. In a way, it felt as if death himself was trailing his skeletal fingers across the surface of the island, and Nami shivered at the thought.

"I doubt they will much happier if we attempt to distract them instead," Zoro muttered, his words apt counterparts to the chill wind.

"We have to try," Nami said quietly.

"I don't like this..!" Usopp half-whispered, half wailed. "Chopper..!"

The reindeer promptly buried its face into his chest, its fur visibly trembling as it shook with fear. In contrast, Zoro's eyes were steely with resolution, just the same as Sanji's. Brook was gazing over at the Blackbeard Pirates, his sea prism stone handcuffs rattling ominously against exposed bone as he shifted in anticipation. Robin's eyes were closed, her head bowed to the ground but her lips set in a determined frown, and though it was always difficult to tell what Franky was thinking, Nami was pretty sure that he was feeling irrationally confident.

"I can fire my laser once," the cyborg stated lowly, drawing everyone's attention. He dragged out the syllables in the word 'laser' as if he relished each one. "It might take them by surprise and if it does, you'll have a chance of getting into that tunnel."

"If that shield is a dome," Robin's objection was immediate. "Your laser might not be able to reach them. They're standing under that rubble, remember? Not even Pluton's weapon could destroy that area of the island…"

"We'll have to take the risk," Sanji said bluntly. "Franky's weapons are probably our biggest and best distractions, they'll definitely capture their attention. Franky has the ability to be the flashiest of us all."

"Like a firework!" Chopper blurted out. Everyone winced.

Realisation dawned in Franky's robotic eyes. "That's… not OK…" he commented sorrowfully.

As she thought about the plan, Nami had to admit that it left a lot to be desired. She had serious doubts that even a distraction as huge as Franky's beam would be enough to give them the time they needed to get everyone into the tunnel. The most optimistic scenario would probably involve only a few of them making it in, with the rest being casualties of some kind. The sheer power of Blackbeard and his crew made that the likeliest outcome. She closed her eyes briefly.

"We have to try," Zoro said, repeating her earlier words. A solemn silence ensued; as good a demonstration of consensus as anything else.

Nami sighed quietly. "OK. Is everyone ready?"

"Always," Zoro replied immediately, baring his teeth in a victory-or-death grin.

Sanji nodded. "Ready."

Chopper and Usopp looked at one another in terror one final time before chorusing not-altogether-convincingly, "R-ready!"

"I'm ready," Robin said softly.

"As am I," stated Brook.

Finally, "Super ready!" Franky exclaimed.

And just that simply, it was settled. They were really going to do it. After all the times that Luffy had almost sacrificed himself to save them from their enemies, they might finally have found the chance to do the same for him.

Perhaps there was no more apt place to lay their lives on the line than here, at the end of the Grand Line itself.

"OK," she said again, taking a deep breath, "Well, let's-"

"Aren't you going to ask if I'm ready?"

Nami froze mid-sentence. For a moment she could have sworn she had heard a voice; an impossible voice, asking her a question which it could not possibly have been asking. Her head swivelled of its own accord, her gaze drawn to the treeline.

There, beneath the shadow cast by the swaying leaves, a figure was standing. He was smiling, his wide grin bright like a crescent moon in the darkness.

Nami's heart thudded slowly, beating a drumbeat in her head as she suddenly began to realise that they might have been wrong about Raftel all along. Through the entire time that they had been on the island, she suddenly saw that they had been presupposing one thing. Only the strongest came to Raftel, so they had believed that it would be a test of strength; a problem for their collective power to answer. Even when she had convinced Luffy to put on the seastone handcuffs, she had done so to try to make it easier for them to stay together, thinking that obstacles were easier to conquer when they were at each other's sides. They were a crew, stronger together than apart.

But maybe it was not a test of strength at all.

You won't get far on just your own power here.

Suddenly, those words held an altogether different significance. It had been a warning, but not the warning that she had anticipated.

It had been his way of telling them that the island's power was greater than theirs.

"Well?" Dark Luffy emerged from the shadows, the grin eerie and unchanging. "No answer?" He glanced at Nami sharply, his eyebrows rising. "Oh, not bad! Close!" His grin widened. "But still not quite there. At least you have faith now, though. You were right before, too… about the shortcuts."

"You," Nami croaked. Wait, could he have just-

"Read your mind? Yep! Oh!" He suddenly exclaimed, his gaze flitting to Robin, who was staring at him intently. "Nearly! But again not quite. I'm not the island itself, but," He smirked, as if he was sharing a private joke with someone. "We do have something in common."

"What the hell…" Zoro began, but Dark Luffy held up a hand.

"Hold on! No questions yet, I'm afraid. They'll have to wait. For now," He grinned. "Let's reorganise."

The change was immediate.

The earth began to shake, the trees trembling as titanic forces were brought to bear, the whole island suddenly shivering with the power surging through it. Hearing the Blackbeard Pirates cry out, Nami turned around just in time to see the ladder slam back down into the earth, vanishing as soil rolled over the top of the entrance to Raftel's underbelly. The rumbling grew more intense, the vibrations soon making it almost impossible to stand. Before long, Usopp was clinging on to Chopper, screaming for his life, and everyone - even Zoro - had been forced to the floor, unable to withstand the extraordinary strength being used against them.

Was it a test? As she lay there, the ground thundering beneath her, Nami curled into a protective ball. A trial?

A wild laugh caught her attention, and - with difficulty - she looked up. Dark Luffy's glee was evident as he looked into her eyes.

"Neither! But," He leaned closer, his face shaking in front of her eyes so that it was impossible to discern his expression. "Does it matter? Your friend's in trouble, after all." She saw him look up, hearing him say wistfully: "There we go. The clouds are out, and its starting to rain…"

He held up a single finger and the shaking stopped instantly. As she lay there, stunned, Nami could only watch as he pressed his middle finger against his thumb. It was almost as if he was shaping his hand to…

"Wait," she said automatically.

He just grinned again, and clicked his fingers. "Good luck, Straw Hats."

The ground vanished. Or rather, it might have been more accurate to say that everything within a radius of about ten metres vanished, including the trees, rocks, grass, sand and undergrowth. All of a sudden they were falling, dropping into a chute which had opened up in the ground and rocketing sharply into the earth, sliding at extraordinary speed through narrow, low-ceilinged passageways. Above, the surface soil promptly knitted itself back together, leaving no indication that anyone might be hurtling sightlessly through pitch black tunnels.

Nami was too terrified to even scream as she shot through the darkness, swept from one side of the cylinder to the next as gravity forced her one way and then the other. At one point, she struck the wall with such force that she almost blacked out, roused only by the swooping feeling in her stomach as the tunnel pitched her immediately in the opposite direction. She was not sure how long she spent surging through those dark serpentines, but it was long enough.

And then, without warning, she was in freefall; but only for a moment.

She hit the water so hard that she was momentarily sure that she had been snapped in half. Only when she had sunk several metres, something roaring in her ears, did she recover her senses enough to instinctively kick for the surface. Her tortured body screamed at her as she forced it into desperate action, her lungs soon burning for air as she paddled desperately through the black depths, dizzied by the fall and disorientated by the constant onslaught of sound. She began to second-guess herself, suddenly unsure whether she was struggling to swim up or farther down, and then she panicked, screaming into the water.

Suddenly, an arm circled her waist, dragging her rapidly through the torrent. When they broke the surface, Nami gasped for breath, filling her starved lungs with oxygen even as tears streamed down her face, mingling with the rest of the water. Clinging desperately to whoever had dragged her out of the abyss, she coughed into their shoulder, still struggling for air despite no longer being submerged.

"Are you OK, Nami?" said a voice close to her ear, sounding panicked. Usopp had saved her, she realised. "You're not hurt, are you?"

"N-no," she managed shakily, between coughs. "Ugh, s-sorry. I- I thought that was the end for me there."

"It's alright, I've got you! Hold on!"

Blinking blearily, she managed to lift her head from Usopp's shoulder long enough to note that they were in a large domed cavern, encased by rock. Several metal pipes, high above, clearly marked the places where they had individually exited the tunnels. Squinting up at them, Nami was amazed that she had managed to survive striking the water after flying out at such incredible speed. The roar that she had heard - she realised - had been the rain. Rain, inside the cavern. It was falling fast, drumming violently against the surface of the water, and in such volume that looking upwards was extremely difficult.

There was a jolt, and then suddenly she was clinging onto a meshed metal walkway, her tired arms - combined with Usopp's watery struggles - pulling her out of the water onto the platform, where she lay on her back, utterly spent, still struggling to catch her breath. He surged out of the water in her wake, the walkway clanging when he bashed one of his knees on it.

"What… is… going… on," she heard Usopp gasp, between breaths, as rain surged down upon them. "This… is… crazy…"

Dragging herself upright, Nami looked around groggily. The others, she was relieved to find, were also lying on the walkway; some motionless. Even Franky had somehow managed to haul himself onto the surprisingly sturdy mesh atop the underground reservoir.

"HOW IS SO MUCH WATER FALLING?" a voice roared. More clanging told her that Zoro had approached her: he was utterly drenched. "WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?"

"I don't know!" Nami shrieked through the cascade, her words quickly snatched away by the endless roaring of the water. "But we need to get out of here quickly!"

The water was rising rapidly, beginning to pass the level of the walkway, and some of the crew still weren't moving. Before long, they would be submerged. Chopper, Robin and Brook were prone, but Franky was busy - with the help of Sanji - attempting to scoop them all into his huge arms. Beyond them, the walkway stretched a little further before passing into the cavern wall, becoming a tunnel stretching off into the darkness.

"There!" she cried. It was their best chance. "Come on, let's go!"

"Alright!" Usopp's shout was loud enough to reach her ears. "But," he gasped, rising to his feet. "What's with all this seawater?"

"I'm not sure, I-" Nami began, and then it hit her.

Seawater.

She froze on the walkway for a moment.

Dark Luffy's voice reverberated in her head: Your friend's in trouble. The clouds are out and it's starting to rain.

"Oh no," she whispered.

It was simple, now that she thought about it. All of the water that the island had drawn in from the coast, feeding the lake at the centre, needed to go somewhere.

This was the 'where.' They were underneath the lake, and the liquid was filtering through the rock down to these underground tunnels.

If the water kept falling, then the caverns would flood. And if Luffy was still inside…

"There you go! You've got it!" a voice yelled suddenly, giving her her unwanted confirmation. Spinning wildly to face the sound, she spotted a figure standing on the surface of the water some distance away. Dark Luffy waved, the torrential rain obscuring any of his further movements. "You'd better hurry, there's not much time left."

After that final remark, he vanished. For a moment, all that Nami could do was stare, horrified, through the downpour. Her fears had not been irrational after all.

Luffy was in serious danger.

They had to find him.