Lying against the flickering control panel, muscles spasming and eyes refusing to gain focus, Franky let loose a string of mental curses as he tried to reassess the situation. The pain wasn't all that terrible, something he'd dealt with time and time again since his body had been ruined all those years ago, but it was the complete lack of response from his cybernetic parts that left him furious. He'd designed this body in order to let himself keep moving through whatever would come, not to keel over from some wimpy short-circuiting. Raw electric force surged through the metal winding under his skin, systems frazzled as he strained to take even the slightest control.
"Franky!" Nami's voice called from the stairwell, and he cursed himself further. The crew didn't need to see him like this, a useless lump of flesh and metal. He needed to take care of this design flaw without their doubting him. Regardless, he could hear the click of heels on wood as the navigator drew close. "Where the hell was that Coup de Burst I wanted you to make? Don't waste my time, we could have been out of that storm ages ago if you'd-"
Her complaints came to a sudden stop, and Franky would have sighed if he'd had the control. "Chopper!" Nami's footsteps turned back again, quick up the stairs to find the doctor. "Come quick!" To be fair, he must have been lying there for at least half an hour, in a room filled with sparking electronics and flashing lights, without any real ideas as to how get himself up again. Whether or not he liked the others helping, or whether he thought they could, they might as well give a hand at it.
It was a matter of seconds before hooves sounded on the stairs behind him, Chopper's squeaking sounding out as he approached. "Franky! What happened, are you-ah!" A quiet zzt cut the reindeer off, and more footsteps came thundering down behind him.
"Chopper! What's wrong? Fix him!" That was Strawhat, stomping his foot in impatience.
"What happened?" And Usopp's voice, the tremor of nerves ever-present.
"I… I can't get in," came Chopper's desperate gasp. "There's ungrounded electricity charging the room, I can't get near him. That bolt that struck the mast, it must have acted as a lightningrod and sent it all into this room, where…"
A lightning bolt. He should have figured that out. Damn, now he'd need to repair the whole room. Straining his focus, Franky tried to summon up the power to say something, twitching jaw stuttering the sounds beyond recognition. "Dn-nn-t-t"
They went quiet at the sound of his attempt at communication, and Usopp murmured, "He-he's still conscious in there! With all that-you think he's hurt?"
There was a twinge of irritation that they were still going about him in the third person. "C-c-cnn-"
"I think the real problem has to be his parts," Chopper was saying. "He must be short-circuiting, but even if I could get in there, I don't think I could help… there's got to be charge insulated under his skin, too, I wouldn't be able to touch him, and…" The little guy sounded on the verge of tears.
There was the sound of sizzling electricity, and Chopper and Usopp both made a yell of protest before Franky felt hands set on his shoulders and pull him off the useless control panel. His eyes refused to focus in on the face that moved in front of him, but he didn't need to. "Don't worry, Franky," Luffy assured. "We'll get you better."
"L-Luffy, I don't know if he should be…"
Chopper's protest went unheard as the rubber boy shifted, and Franky felt the kid hoisting him up onto his back, and came to a quick stop as Luffy stepped towards the staircase, the shipwright slumped over his shoulder. "Usopp." The sniper sputtered at his name. "You know about metal stuff, right? Come on, you'll show me what to do." And he started his way up.
Franky had always known that Luffy was powerful. That was why he had agreed to build him the ship, to trust the boy with his dreams. But it wasn't until he felt just how small the captain was beneath him, dragging a cyborg twice his size up the stairs, sparks fizzling useless against rubber skin, that Franky started to realize exactly how much strength the kid had inside of him.