26. Laboon's stomach
A/N: Thanks to those who fav/followed the story, and all the anonymous readers ^^!
-dog: Don't worry, Koga'll be okay! Or are you talking about his nightmare? Because in that case, he won't be okay xD And here's the next chap, enjoy ^^!
Disclaimer: I own nothing of One Piece and Soul Eater but my OC Koga and other Ocs that will appear in the future.
"… WE'RE SO DEAAAAAAAAAD!"
Great. Koga winced as he retreated his hands from his ears and stood from his crouched position, still feeling his poor eardrums protest at the loud roar the whale let out before swallowing whole. His senses were always acute, and in moments like this he absolutely hated them.
But what the hell? Why couldn't he see anything? Koga blinked, thinking his eyes were still closed, but the pitch black darkness remained there.
"Hey, everyone okay?" Zoro's voice sounded somewhere.
"I think so." Sanji answered.
"Yeah, I'll live." The chronicler also added.
"I'm not!" Usopp shrieked, his voice hurting Koga's still sensible ears. "We're in a giant whale's stomach! We're nowhere near 'fine'!"
"That's right!" Nami also yelled. "We're going to be digested!"
Ignoring the two's panic, Koga blinked a few more times to get used to the darkness, but to no avail. It was as dark as a moonless night. Of course, it worried him that they were about to be digested inside a whale, but nothing could be solved out of panic. That was what he was going to tell the others…
… When he noticed something alarming.
"Hey, where's Luffy?" He asked.
Everyone shut up at that statement. Then…
"That's right, where is that moron?"
"I think I've seen him grabbing one of the whale's teeth before we got sucked in." Zoro stated. "He'll be okay."
"Well then, but NOT US!" Usopp screamed again, and then wailed something about having an incurable disease before Nami shushed him.
"Hey… is that light?" She asked in confusion.
Not knowing where she was pointing at, mainly because it was so dark he couldn't see his own hand, the chronicler had to do a complete turn over himself before spotting said light. It blinded him for a moment, but he noticed that it was growing larger, probably because they were getting near it.
No, that wasn't right… They were getting sucked!
"Guys, brace yourselves!" Koga exclaimed, hand closing over Sankaoken.
Nami and Usopp yelled in fright, but the chronicler did his best to ignore them as he prepared for battle, or for whatever that was beyond the light. The white ray blinded them when they passed by, and when they got accustomed…
…
"What do I make of this?" Zoro mumbled dumbstruck, asking Koga and Sanji.
"Yeah, what's your explanation for this?" The cook replied. "I could've sworn we got swallowed up by the whale…"
They were afloat in some kind of odd-looking substance, green and smelly. Floating in the middle of the water was a house that seemed to be sitting on a small island. Over their heads there was the blue sky with a few clouds. Save from the strange substance, one would've thought they were outside, instead of in a whale's stomach.
"Are we just dreaming or something?" Usopp mumbled, once he and Nami joined the three stronger male members on the deck, looking around. "Yeah, we've got to be dreaming or something…"
"Hell of a weird dream it is then, and how strange that the five of us is having exactly the same dream…" Koga grumbled, still keeping his hand close to his weapon just in case.
"And what's with that house on the island?" Nami pointed to the house. "It must be an illusion…"
SPLASH!
Suddenly a huge squid jumped up out of the water right in front of the boat. Nami and Usopp yelled again at the top of their lungs as the other three prepared for battle; before they could attack, though, three sharp harpoons went through its head, killing it instantly.
"Seems like there is a person here…" The swordsman muttered.
"Let's hope it's a person." Sanji smirked, but it was a dangerous one.
The squid fell back in the ocean as it started to get dragged towards the floating house by the harpoons that had stabbed it straight through it. The door suddenly opened, and the sniper whimpered something about getting prepared to open fire in case they were enemies.
But Koga didn't feel any kind of animosity, and his intuition remained silent, so he relaxed his stance slightly.
"IT'S A FLOWER!" Sanji exclaimed, pointing at the house.
'A flower killed a squid?' Koga thought in confusion, but then he looked at the… man, he supposed, and he couldn't help but think that the enormous petals that grew on the back of his head gave the impression that indeed he was a flower.
He had a rather stocky and muscular body, was bald on the top of his head, but with white hair with yellow flower petal-like things, that have purple near the bottom of them, and a white beard that splits in two parts. His lower lip was noticeably larger than his upper. He wore a pink shirt with a yellow and green stripe with purple circles in the yellow along with blueish-grey shorts with sandals. He also wore glasses, a seaweed necklace, three gold bracelets, and a green-gem bracelet on his left wrist, and sported a scar on his left arm.
"No, it's a man." The chronicler deadpanned.
"What's with him?" Usopp murmured to himself, but everyone in the ship heard him. "That old man just took out that giant squid with one blow! Was he just fishing or did he do that to save us…?"
The old man lifted his head abruptly and shot an eerie glare at the pirates, and the air seemed to become even tenser.
A few seconds passed…
…
… And the old man simply walked away and settled down on a beach chair, picking up a newspaper as he did so.
"SAY SOMETHING!" Sanji and Koga snapped at the same time, who only earned a blank look as only response.
"I–If it's a fight you want, t– then you've got one!" Usopp cried angrily, one hand pointing at the old man while he hid behind the chronicler's body. "We have a cannon on our side!"
The man again shot another icy glare of his at the crew, who grew tense again.
…
… And he finally answered:
"Don't, or someone might end up dead."
"Oh?" The cook hissed moodily. "And just who would that be…?"
"Me."
"YOU!" Both chronicler and cook snapped at him again angrily, but Zoro put a hand over their shoulders, trying to chill them.
"Now, now, don't get so worked up. "Hey, old man. Would you mind telling us who you are, and just where is this place exactly?"
"It's common courtesy to introduce yourself to others before asking questions, you know?"
"Oh, right, sorry about that–"
"My name is Crocus, the lighthouse keeper of Twin Capes." The old man interrupted the swordsman. "I'm 71 years old, Gemini, blood type AB."
"NOBODY MINDS IF I KILL HIM RIGHT?!" Zoro suddenly roared, pissed off, going to pull his sword out.
"Calm down!" Sanji put a hand over the green-haired swordsman's shoulder, though Koga didn't mind him killing that annoying flower-man; he pissed him off too.
"You're wondering where this place is? First, you trespass in my private resort and then start mouthing off with that attitude." Crocus frowned at them. "Does this place look like the stomach of a mouse?"
"So then, we must have really been swallowed by a whale…" Usopp commented as he walked towards the railing, stepping out from behind Koga's body.
"What do we do?" Nami hissed. "I don't want to be digested by a whale!"
"If it's an exit you want, the exit is right over there." He pointed behind them and sure enough, there was a large pair of double doors that looked just like an exit.
But… if there was an exit, why was the old man here? Ignoring Nami, Koga looked at the flower-man with a quizzical glare in his distinctive eyes, not knowing what to think. If they really were inside a whale's stomach (and judging how the others found out that the sky and the clouds above them were simply paintings made by Crocus), then he was there by choice, not because he had been involuntarily swallowed by the whale, like themselves. He couldn't be a whale-hunter; if he had really painted that sky on the whale's stomach, then why would have he done it if he was going to eat it later? And surely he had been living in there a long time. There had to be another reason, but what…?
"Looks like you have a couple of questions in mind for me, young one." Crocus' voice brought him back to the present, suddenly realizing he had been observing the old man actually almost unblinkingly for a few minutes now.
"I have, but I doubt you would answer them anyways." Koga grunted, not used to being caught observing someone.
The boat suddenly began shaking, along with everything around them. Acting quickly, he grabbed the railing with one hand and the other caught Usopp just as he was going to be thrown overboard.
"What's that?!" The sniper yelped in shock, gripping Koga's hand with all his strength.
"Look!" Nami pointed to the small island the old man was on. "That's no island either! It's a ship! An iron one at that too!"
"So then this ocean is actually stomach acid! If we stay here any longer then our ship will be dissolved! Hey, what's going on?! Give us an explanation!"
"The whale," Crocus breathed out, standing up and crossing his arms over his chest, "has started bashing his head against the Grand Line again!"
"WHAT?!" Zoro and Sanji screamed in unison, and the chronicler ground his teeth together. What reason could that whale have to bash his head against a mountain?
"Now that he mentions it… I remember that the whale's forehead was covered in scars…" Nami breathed out, eyes wide. "And he was bellowing up at the sky!"
"What does it all mean?" Usopp asked.
Something tingled inside Koga's head as all the pieces of the puzzle coincided.
"It means that he is suffering." He answered gravely before the navigator could.
"He must be trying to kill this whale from the inside!" The red-haired girl pointed to the old man, who raised an eyebrow at her.
"Now then, that's a nasty thing to say."
"I don't think so, Nami." Koga shook his blond head at the navigator, who turned a confused look at him. But there wasn't any time for explanations right then.
"AH!" Usopp yelped, just as Crocus jumped into the gastric acid. "That old man just jumped in! What's he trying to do?! He's gonna get himself dissolved!"
"He's swimming towards the exit! We should hurry up and make our way to the exit before the whale gets any more violent!"
Zoro, Sanji and Koga went to grab the oars, but a particular violent shake made the chronicler stumble and collide against the main mast with his injured arm, which made him hiss in pain and anger before going to help the cook.
BANG!
Everyone's heads shot up, alarmed by the sudden noise, just in time to see a smaller pair of doors hanging from the 'roof', so to speak, and three figures falling from those doors towards the gastric acid. A male, a female and the third one was…
"Luffy!" Zoro murmured, wide-eyed. What was that idiot doing?!
"Hey guys, you're okay!" Luffy exclaimed happily, waving both his arms over his head before suddenly realizing his situation. "By the way… HELP ME!"
"You idiot!" Koga sighed in exasperation, leaving the oar and going to grab a rope to 'fish' the two unknown people and their moron captain once more. Luckily –or not– it wasn't sea water but stomach acid, so Luffy wouldn't sink– at least in theory.
Once the three were aboard, the whale finally calmed down and everything settled around them. Koga sent Luffy to take a long shower to get rid of the reek, and then he examined the strange pair before them.
One of them was a young man who wore a golden crown on top of his red hair and had a number nine written on each of his cheeks. He was dressed in a green suit with white lace along with a ruffled red scarf. His attire made him look like a prince or a king, but Koga only thought that he looked quite goofy.
The other…
The woman had long, wavy blue hair in a ponytail in a very high position, leaving no strands over her face. She had a slender body, but her attire was far less revealing than Nami's; she had a light green coat over a blue-stripped top and white shorts with equally white knee-length boots with high heels. She had a dark expression on her face as her dark eyes scanned the pirates around her, but seemed to doubt when finding his, quickly looking aside biting her lower lip.
Koga squinted his bicolored eyes. He had a feeling he had seen her before, or at least her face reminded him of someone, but he couldn't quite place…
"Well, just who exactly are you guys?" Nami asked at the two new people sitting at the front of the deck, Sanji annoyingly flirting with the woman.
Luffy, after finishing his shower, perched on the railing behind them and the rest of the crew were spread out on the deck. Koga was the farthest from the pair.
"I won't let you lay a finger on Laboon!" Crocus suddenly cried out from the small set of doors that Luffy had come through. "For as long as I live!"
"Who's that old man?" Luffy asked in confusion, not having met him yet.
Koga opened his mouth to answer, but his intuition began tingling with alarm. He noticed the strange pair bringing his untied hands behind and under their clothes with a small devil smirk on their faces.
"But we are inside the whale now…" The strange man muttered.
And just like that, with that simple sentence, his body sprang into action.
"Kaizen Kaizen no Speed." Koga mumbled, and everything around him slowed down, like jelly. He walked calmly to the pair, took their guns from their grasp and stepped to his previous position, annulling the technique.
"– to blast holes in its–! Huh?" The strange man blinked and began searching through his robes frantically. "Where's my gun?!"
"I can't find mine either!" The woman exclaimed.
"Looking for these?" Koga cockily asked, raising their guns in both his hands, and the pair watched them with bugged eyes. "I'm afraid your whaling activities end today."
"You!" The strange man exclaimed with anger in his voice. "Those are our weapons! Give them back!"
"So that you could harm this whale?" The blond shook his head. "No can do. Luffy, if you please…"
And the chronicler smirked when Luffy stepped behind the pair and punched them both in the side of the head, knocking the two against each other and sending them to the ground. He then hastily tied them up with Zoro's help– and ignoring Sanji and his protests of how to 'properly treat a lady'.
Seeing as the Straw Hat pirates were really good people, Crocus finally helped them get out of the whale's –or rather Laboon's– stomach. All he had to do was to open a large door that lead outside, finally out and in a normal ocean instead of gastric acid threatening to dissolve their ship. Koga breathed in the salty air, delighted of the lack of that stink that was in Laboon's stomach.
"Now that we are outside…" He suddenly commented out loud, attracting everyone's attention, including Crocus', "I'd like to know what an Island Whale from the West Blue is doing here in the Grand Line, and why he is attacking Reverse Mountain."
"Oh, I'm surprised you know about Island Whales." Crocus blinked in surprise at the chronicler, who merely shrugged.
"I travel a lot, and I've seen one or two Island Whales in West Blue." He commented. "But don't avoid my question."
The old man hummed, before finally sighing and complying with the blond's request. He explained that Laboon was actually friends with a group of pirates as a baby whale. When they came down Reverse Mountain, they decided to leave Laboon with Crocus while they went to explore the Grand Line. In reality, Koga understood why they did that; even being an Island Whale, Laboon had been a baby back then, and that sea's dangers were unpredictable and certainly deadly. It hadn't been an easy separation for either one of them, but it was necessary, and the whale had understood that they were leaving without him for his sake.
The problem was, the pirate crew had promised to be back in two years, three at most, but fifty years had passed already, and no one had passed through to pick up Laboon again. This broke the poor whale's heart, as he considered the pirate crew as his pod members, his family.
"But to think it's been waiting here for fifty years…" Zoro muttered, seated in the table and sipping his tea. "Does it still believe his friends will really return?"
Everyone turned their heads towards the giant whale. Perhaps it was because he had heard his story, but to Koga, he looked… very sad.
"Those pirates sure are taking a long time…" Luffy noted.
"You idiot, this is the Grand Line." Sanji sighed as he pulled his cigarette out of his mouth. "They promised to be back in two, three years, yet they are still not back after fifty years… The answer is obvious. They're long dead by now. They won't come back no matter how long that whale waits…"
Koga sighed as he closed his eyes, interrupting his task of writing down on his chronicle. He sure wouldn't have used such harsh words, but reality was reality, and sugarcoating it wouldn't make anything easier.
"I hate to say it, but that's probably true." Nami agreed. "Back when those pirates sailed the Grand Line it was uncharted territory; way more dangerous than it is today."
"Why do you have to go and say such cold thing?" Usopp snapped in anger at them. "You can't say that for sure! They might still come back! Can't you appreciate such a moving tale about a whale who still believes in his friends' promise?!"
"But it is true, Usopp." Koga calmly stated, making the long-nosed teen divert his angry glare at him. "The Grand Line is cruel with its residents, and also with its visitants. If this pirate crew wasn't ready to face them, then they are long gone by now."
"The truth is far crueler, though." Crocus turned away solemnly. "Laboon's cohorts abandoned their quest; they left the Grand Line."
The chronicler's hand suddenly hesitated in his scribbling.
That pirate crew abandoned a friend, a nakama, without even leaving a sign to let him know that they were still alive. In his head, it was indeed much crueler than just dying in the Grand Line. Maybe they were still alive, but the fact that they didn't even tried to contact with Laboon, to let him know that, even if they couldn't come back, they were still living…
Sounds familiar to you shitty host? He could hear Sankaoken's voice in his head.
'No.' The rotundity of his negation only served to make the demon snicker evilly.
"So you're telling me these pirates were a bunch of cowards who cared more about saving their own asses than keeping a promise to a friend?" Sanji growled.
"How could they abandon such a loyal creature?" Usopp demanded, just as angrily. "That's just beyond cruel!"
Koga closed his eyes, clenching his jaw, trying to keep his tenebrous thoughts for himself.
"Why haven't you told Laboon any of this?" Nami asked.
"I did, down to the last miserable detail." Crocus answered, sadness tainting his voice.
Apparently, Laboon had refused to listen to him, and in fact, the first day the old man told him the truth, the Island Whale had gone mad and started to bang his head against the Red Line, blaming it for separating him from his friends.
Seeing that he couldn't concentrate on his task, Koga closed the logbook with a sigh and hopped off the rock, going to stand beside Nami and look at the whale.
"But if he keeps hitting his head against that mountain, he could die." He said to Crocus, who simply nodded with a sigh.
"We have an odd relationship, but he's still my companion that I have lived with for over fifty years. I can't just stand by and watch him die…"
"OOOOOOOOOOOHHHH!"
Suddenly, a familiar-sounding voice cried out and Koga raised his head to see something moving up Laboon's back; squinting his eyes and enhancing them slightly with his Devil Fruit powers, he noticed it was Luffy… carrying out something very large behind him…
"Hey, is that a mast?" Zoro dumbly commented.
"Yeah, I think it's our ship's…" Sanji answered him.
"Yup." Usopp added. "It's our main mast all right."
Koga's jaw dropped as Luffy reached the top of Laboon's head and slammed the mast into a recently-opened wound of Laboon's! His eye twitched angrily, unsure of how to react…
"BUOOOOOOOHHH!" Laboon cried out in pain, and the chronicler flinched as his sensible ears caught the sound. The whale started thrashing his head around as Luffy clung to the mast with all his might.
"WHAT THE HELL IS HE DOING?!" Nami, Zoro and Sanji exclaimed at the same time, horrified looks on their faces.
"Luffy, stop tearing up the ship!" Usopp yelled in frustration, tears running down his face.
"I don't know what to do with him now…" Koga sighed, before suddenly realizing something. "Oh no! The crow's nest! My stuff was in there!"
He promptly turned around to see the damage, but the next loud roar and the thrashing of the water –Laboon's doing, no doubt– made him stumble and grip the railing once more. Not having stability to safely wander around the ship to inspect the damage done to the main mast, he could only watch as Laboon took a flying leap into the air and slammed his head right onto the cape, throwing Luffy and the mast off.
"The boy!" Crocus yelled in horror. "He's dead!"
"It'll take a lot more than that to kill Luffy!" Though angry, Nami reassured him as everyone watched the titanic battle between the whale and the rubber teen.
Thankfully, the roaring stopped, and Laboon assessed Luffy as they began to fight. Zoro asked his captain if he wanted them to step in before he got killed, but it seemed he didn't hear the swordsman, so concentrated he was on the fight. He was thrown against the lighthouse, and the whale began charging him.
"It's a draw!"
That yell served to stop Laboon in his tracks, mostly due to confusion than anything else, but at least he had stopped. Luffy rose to his feet with his characteristic wide grin.
"I'm stronger than I look, but I have a feeling you knew that already. I can tell when someone's itching to fight; you miss sparring with your old friends, don't you?"
The whale's eyes began tearing up, and Koga brought a slow smile to his face, hiding it behind his blue scarf.
"How about this? After my friends and I travel the Grand Line, we'll come back for you" and you better be ready for a rematch!"
Though loud, this time Koga didn't feel the need to cover his ears as Laboon raised his massive head to the sky to let out a gentle call of happiness, nothing compared to the angry roars or the sad bellows of earlier. It was… a nice sound.
To make sure Laboon didn't bang his head against the Red Line ever again, Luffy painted a rather… horrendous rendition of the Straw Hat pirates' Jolly Roger upon Laboon's snout, right over his scars. Seeing as everything was good, Koga sighed as he jumped to the deck and began collecting his things, which were scattered after being thrown out of the crow's nest thanks to Luffy's idiotic actions.
He picked up the feather from their adventures with the Sennenryu, and promised himself to find a more appropriate place to treasure it with a smile on his face. He then gathered the many pencils and pens for his logbook, and the small notebooks he used from time to time to write down general ideas for the logbook. But then, he began searching around frantically, noticing something very important for him was missing…
"Looking for this?" A voice called out to him from his right, and he whipped his head around to glare at the person, softening a bit when he found out who it was.
"Yeah, that's mine." He rose to his feet and extended his hand, demanding the object.
Nami held out a black-leather covered book, with a distinctive Jolly Roger on it. The mark of a smiling skull with a scar over his left socket, that instead of a pair of bones, it had a paper airplane drawn behind.
"I didn't know you were a part of another pirate crew." She commented, handing him the notebook.
The chronicler didn't answer her indirect question, though, as he simply picked it and went to his bedroom to put it on the table with all his other things, resolving on putting them back at the crow's nest once it was repaired. He couldn't help but to stare at the small black notebook and the emblem drawn on it before going back upstairs and towards the lighthouse, where the others were gathered, waiting for Sanji to finish cook up the prize he had won in the Cooking Contest back in Loguetown.
As he got near them, a shrill scream from their navigator split the air and made the chronicler cover his ears with a cringe.
"The compass is broken!" She shrieked in terror, pointing at her tool's needle spin recklessly around and around the dial.
"It's not broken, Nami." The blond sighed, coming beside her and taking her compass. "The Grand Line has a powerful magnetic field surrounding it, causing not only its chaotic weather, but also all compasses to be useless. That's why navigators in the Grand Line use a Log Pose."
"It's good to see that at least one of you youngsters has a useful head on their shoulders." Crocus commented as he appeared from inside the lighthouse and stepping towards them.
"I was born here in the Grand Line, so I know this kind of stuff, more or less." Koga shrugged again, hiding his face behind his scarf to hide the blush and beginning to eat down the delicious fish Sanji had prepared.
"Hm, I see…"
"Um, what's a Log Pose?" Nami asked, just as Luffy's arm stretched to steal away some of the massive fish in front of them, attempting to grab Koga's plate but failing as he snatched his hand around his wrist. On it, he had strapped a wrist watch with a glass orb sitting on top, and a needle floating inside the middle of that orb suspended from the top by a thin piece of metal or wire.
"This is a Log Pose." Koga answered simply, showing Luffy's new ornament to the others.
"I see… Well then, Luffy…" Nami asked innocently, before her face turned furious in a split of a second. "WHY THE HELL DO YOU HAVE ONE?!"
POW!
"Ow!" Luffy protested, before answering while nursing his new lump. "I dunno, I found it on the deck… Those two weirdos must've dropped it."
'So, they must have escaped.' Koga deduced, seeing as they were nowhere in sight, and then sighed before continuing his explanation.
"A Log Pose reads the magnetic field of an island and then points towards the next one we have to go to… Which will eventually lead us to the Red Line… and sometime after that, our final destination… Raftel." He smiled at the last statement.
"Enough with this navigating talk!" Zoro protested. "I'm hungry, let's eat!"
"Alright!" Luffy cheered with a mouth full of fish. "Sanji's cooking is the best! Hey old man, want some?"
"Heh… Sure." He nodded with a smile and took a seat before they all began digging in.
A/N: And that's it! Probably this will be the last chapter I'll publish until mid-January or so, because of my college exams :'( Wish me luck, by the way!
Well, see ya later, love ya lots, please feed the hungry beast!