NIPPLE LIGHTS!
…
…
…
Well it seams one piece is back to being as crack filled as before! I am extremely sorry for the unannounced haitus this was put on. There is no real excuse except schoolwork draining my will to live…
Chapter 12. Beware the Jester Who Treads in the Night
The cards were recollecting slowly in an outstretched paw. The crippled marine ship was in a sorry state. It's crew lay about the decks, mostly unconscious, some dead. Qwerk hovered over the nearest burg. The Sunny-go was proceeding towards the horizon. When the final card, Scritcher's large Surfcard Ace of Spades returned to the deck, the purplish glow faded and she dropped down onto Qwerk's head.
"I almost didn't make it. That bullet really surprised me..." Looking up, Scritcher found the world swaying slightly. She shook her head, trying to clear the fog. I've never been shot before... I thought it would hurt a bit more... Her shirt felt sticky on the back. Slowly she lay down on Qwerk's head, meeting the gaze of reproachful eyes. A rumble echoed from the deep chest.
"Heh... guess I got a bit careless this time," she breathed. Qwerk looked away from her. As she closed her eyes, the loud swoosh of wings unfurling and powerful draught told her Qwerk had taken flight. In a few beats, they were soaring high, high above the bergs to wards the shrinking ship. Far in the distance, rose a wall of white.
A single white feather lay upon the desk, along with two short knives held in red sheaths and a deck of cards contained within a red leather case with a tattered brown strap. The deck was open, and the top card, the Little Joker, was being flicked between two small white paws. Scritcher stared at the perpetual smile of the card. If she relaxed her eyes a bit, and tilted her head, it looked as though the figure was dancing...
"Scritcher?" Chopper's timid voice broke her trance. She jerked her head back over her shoulder. The two were sat up on Chopper's deck, while he treated the bullet wound in her shoulder. To do so she had been forced to remove the white shirt she wore, exposing her back.
"Yeah, Chopper-san?" she asked stiffly.
"I know you might be sensitive about it, but do you mind me asking where this scar came from?" he asked, touching her back. Without her shirt, a large scar stretching across her shoulders was revealed. It was obviously very old, as fur mostly obscured it and the skin was dark but supple. With her uninjured arm, Scritcher reached over her shoulder and touched it.
With a strained voice she replied, "It came... it came from home." Although Chopper prompted her after, she shook her head and turned tight jawed. I don't want to tell them really... North Point will always be my burden...
His mind felt like it was swimming through some kind of soup. All of his senses were jumbled up, making him feel dizzy and nauseous. Rising slowly through the fog, Luffy began to hear the voices of his crew around him. He was resting against something warm and solid, and wrapped up in a blanket, though he felt shivery as though he had a fever.
"...Damn, this is just getting more and more complicated..."
"It appears to be some sort of crystal..."
"I'm not looking forward to getting to Yamishima..."
"Nami-swan, Robin-chwan! Your lunch is ready! Oi shit heads clear the table..." Luffy jerked his eyes open. Lunch? They'd better not start without me! He sat up quickly, and instantly regretted it. One, it made his head hurt, and two, he head butted somebody's chin, who turned out to be Ace. Luffy whined loudly and clutched at his head. U-wah! I feel like Nami's been stomping on me for an hour!
"Luffy, you're awake!" Chopper came trotting across the galley floor with a thermometer in one hoof. Luffy stopped rubbing his head and looked around at the crew. Nami was bashing Zoro's head in for breaking her favourite quill. Usopp and Barnet were doing something with a toolbox- fixing Usopp's goggles probably. Sanji was laying out lunch while kicking Brook and Qwerk away. Franky was missing, probably in the engine room. Robin was examining a small spherical object with Scritcher, whose upper right arm had a bandage on it. Ace was grumbling loudly.
"If you're awake, get off me, I want to eat..." he unceremoniously pushed Luffy off his lap to the next seat. Chopper hopped up beside him.
"Chopper, what happened? I don't remember a battle!" Luffy asked.
"Something weird happened when you touched the map. You collapsed and went all still and cold. Then you sort of woke up, and voices started coming from your mouth. They babbled a bit, then said something really weird about reviving a star. Then you coughed something up. Robin's got it right now." Luffy blinked. He'd had that strange dream, about a light underwater. Scritcher sat opposite him, flexing her bandaged arm.
"Oi, Scritcher what happened to your arm?" He asked, before grabbing a hunk of meat and stuffing it in his mouth. Nami gave Zoro one final smack and sat down at the table. The green haired man looked up slightly, looking a bit like a kicked puppy.
"A marine ship showed up. Our newest recruit decided to show us her stuff and sank it herself," Nami said with a smile. Scritcher sucked the flesh clean off a fishbone, before giving a sheepish grin.
"You guys could have done it way faster then me," she said. Touching her arm gingerly she added, "And without getting shot." Luffy pouted.
"Why'd I miss all the fun parts?" he huffed. One of Robin's many hands appeared before him, holding something the size of a large marble.
"You were busy coughing up this, Luffy," she said, uncurling her fingers. Something round, something sparkly and something interesting appeared. Unlike any other jewel, it had its own light that came from what looked like a star at the center. The glow pulsated weakly, though, almost as if it were dying. A weak cry echoed around the galley, like the mournful sigh of a distant lonely dolphin. Luffy started. I heard that sound in my dream.
"Did you guys hear that?" he said quickly. Ace and Chopper blinked at him.
"Hear what Luffy?" Scritcher asked, ears twitching back and forth. To the rest of the crew's surprise, instead of swiping the thing out of Robin's hand, Luffy picked it up almost tenderly, like a baby bird. The sphere looked to be made of glass, but it felt warm and almost as if it were breathing. As he held it in his hands, the light grew stronger and pulsed more violently. Luffy gazed into it with heavy eyes. I can here that music again... hoshi wa , yozora ni , karera wa uta~tsu te iru takai . His body began to feel light again, the same feeling he had had underwater. Warmth spread up his arms, over his shoulders and down his back. This feels sort of nice... His vision was full of the softly pulsing light. A hand, slender and dark-skinned, reached towards him from the glow. Slowly, Luffy raised one arm, and dropped the sphere. The brightness vanished. Suddenly his nausea returned like a kick to the stomach. His head began to spin wildly, and his lungs seemed out of control. The sounds of his crew faded as Luffy fainted into Ace's lap.
Zoro felt the soft strands of raven hair beneath his fingers. Luffy's hair was like combed wool, fluffy and soft and warm. He wasn't too sure of the time, he couldn't see whether the light had yet to fade, but it felt like he had been there for hours. Sanji had been in with a couple of plates of dinner, that lay still uneaten. A lot of odd feelings had been going around today. First he woke up with Nami beside him. That led to a lot of misunderstandings. Although it'd been a shock, it'd felt alright. Her face had still been stained with tears from weeping on his shoulder, he had felt them there. Luffy, like the little brother he was, had curled tightly around them, face buried into Zoro's side. Sleeping next to Luffy wasn't new. Luffy regularly climbed into one of the other boys beds, most frequently his and Usopp's. He never told them why, but Zoro had a rough idea by the tear tracks that he had nightmares. If it had been anyone else, he would have been unnerved a little, but Luffy had a special way of coaxing a cuddle out of people just by looking a little sad. Hehe... my cute little brother. And look who protects who. His shoulders were painfully tense, and popped with even the slightest movement. Having as much muscle as he did meant when his shoulders did cramp up, they cramped up bad. He jumped slightly as a pair of elegant slender hands landed on them. Dexterous fingers were working the strong slabs of muscle.
"You two are such high maintenance sometimes. Poor Chopper's going to have to give himself medication soon." Nami's words were somewhat harsh, but their tone was soft. Vaguely he wondered if she had always been so kind.
"Like you can talk about being high maintenance. Did Robin find out what happened?" Leaning back, he accidentally put his head in her rather ample bosom. Nami's hands stopped moving. He could feel the blush rising to his cheeks, and hear her quickening heartbeat. He sat forwards again whispering an apology. Her hands carried on massaging his shoulders.
"She's not sure but she keeps murmuring to herself about the 'Sea Children' while she's reading some of her older books. Somehow I think we've got ourselves into something much older then perhaps even Skypiea." Zoro let out a low moan as she worked out a particularly tight knot in his shoulders. Damn she's good at that... Her hands paused again.
"Did I hurt you?" He shook his head.
"No... It feels nice... how'd you get to be good at this anyway?" Nami's hands clenched into fists on his back. Don't tell me...
"Arlong used to make me give him and his men massages. If I didn't, they'd pull some child from the village and beat them. Often they were younger then Scritcher or Chopper." Something in the way her hands trembled and her voice cracked told him it hadn't just been massages she had been forced to give. Zoro let out a low growl. If I ever meet that fish bastard again I'll kick his ass all the way to hell.
"Nami, I'm sorry," he said in a voice as soft and gentle as his naturally rough tone could manage. A soft hand bumped the top of his head.
"You didn't know." Again he let out a rough groan. His shoulders thoroughly massaged, her hands draped themselves around his neck. As if on cue, his face flooded with blood. Damn woman, why does she have to make me get so bothered!
Cause you're in love with her, idiot! a small inner voice chirped in a suspiciously Chopper-ish voice. Leave me alone! he yelled back mentally.
Not until you come out with it! However whatever small part of him that was retreated quietly to recesses of his mind, leaving him mumbling, It would never work...
Outside the window of the small room, a flash of red and purple disappeared upwards.
With the softest of clinks, a pair of pointed jester boots landed on the roof of the watch room. Beneath them spread a shadow, vague and inconsistent with the figure above it. Like a living thing it swirled clockwise, then anticlockwise, pulsing in and out.
"Be calm, little siblings, we're to do Father, Lord Servipol's, bidding to the letter aren't we?" The voice was smooth and calm, but filled completely with hunger. Bells jingled as the figure shifted his position, raising claws of steel across his body in some sort of macabre dance. The face of a pearly white mask turned from left to right, scanning across the deck of the ship, abstracted by shadows creeping in across it's moonlight paled surface. The tang of melancholy was sweet and strong on the forked tong that darted between the dead lips with a hiss of pleasure. Swordfinger raised his left hand in a large circle of blades.
"One dream for the mother," The claw of the smallest finger was engulfed by a shadow, before flying as a writhing snake towards the library of the ship. "Another for the son." The ring finger's claw darted under the door of the surgery. "A third dream for the rival." The middle finger crept into the kitchen. "And fourth for the brother." The index fingers claw was larger then the previous three. It snarled as it crept into the boy's dorm. Now only the thumb was left. Tilting it downwards, a great tongue of shadow leapt from the pool at his feet. As it gathered around the claw, it writhed into different shapes, before settling as a cold, black sphere, that lazily floated in pursuit of it's comrade to the boy's dorm. Swordfinger continued, "The last dream is for the lovers, for together they will die."
Nami watched perplexed as a variety of expressions fluttered across Zoro's normally pissed-straight face. Surprise, irritation, embarrassment, then a vague hint of sadness. Big grey eyes fixed on what may have been a memory of his sight.
"It would never work..." his voice was almost inaudible, but had returned to that same childish quality he'd spoken with that night in the medical bay. His expression was the same too. Confused, bitter, even a little scared. Nami was about to ask him about it, when Luffy interrupted yet again by waking up. She'd almost forgotten about her sick captain. Zoro had all his attention focused on the younger boy the moment he let out one soft word.
"Help..." The voice that came from Luffy's mouth didn't really sound like Luffy. It was too weak and young. The scar under his eye twitched as he turned his head to one side. Zoro placed one large, clumsy hand on his forehead. And sighed. Since he passed out, Luffy had been oscillating between as cold as a corpse in the icy water, and burning like the rocks in Alabaster. At extreme fevers, he'd thrashed wildly, while at almost hypothermia, he curled up and whimpered. In between he just lay still and limp. Now he was almost normal. A small smile flicked at his lips. Nami smiled in return at the half open brown eyes. It was odd, seeing Luffy ill. He, Zoro and most of the crew seamed above small things like sudden illnesses. Zoro slipped shakily from his seat to the bed. Taking Luffy's deceptively thin arms one in each hand, he pulled the boy into a seated position against himself. Luffy buried into the strong muscle of his chest and for a moment Nami thought he'd fallen asleep again. Then, a weak moan emanated from his normally grinning mouth.
"Zoro… You know I don't get headaches right?" He nodded. One shaky, pale hand tightened on the white shirt, until it's knuckles matched it's colour.
"Then why does it feel like my head's exploding?" Nami touched his shoulder.
"We don't know yet, Luffy. Robin says that it may have something to do with Yamishima," she said quietly. "What ever is happening on Yamishima is a lot older and a lot more dangerous then what Scritcher knew when she asked you to help. Or at least what she told you." Getting up from the low bunk, Nami reached for the two cold, plates at the side.
"I'm going to get you two something warm okay? And I'm going to feed you this time Zoro, you still make-" she was cut off by the materialisation of two tall, harlequin suited figures, both with blank white masks and both with those demonic glowing green eyes.
At least it's up there yo?
on a side note, for those who love crack, boy love (and yaoi), consitent innuendo, and belly laughs i strongly recommend "Hetalia" IT'S AWESOME!
