I'm back! Are you happy to see me? With exams finally finished, fanfiction writing is back on track! On with it! Second last chapter of the set!
Enjoy!
The Walking Dead
30 – skeleton
Summary: The Roger Pirate apprentices were up to no good. And that spelled the whole crew's doom.
The two Roger Pirate apprentices were up to no good. That was the only explanation to the fact that they were creeping through the hallways in the middle of the night without any form of light to guide their way.
Feeling along the walls and counting the doors, Buggy found the door to the kitchen and ducked in quietly. Shanks followed with equal stealth. Phase one of the mission: complete.
Now to execute Phase 2. Which involved copious amounts of flour for some (sinister) reason.
Strange, the set-up of the room seemed different from what he remembered the galley was like. But it was too dark to tell for sure. Perhaps he was just not in the section that he thought he was. Rather disorientated, Shanks felt along the walls until his hands encountered some cabinet of sorts.
Scuffling from the opposite side of the room indicated that Buggy was similarly having difficulties with his part of the task. Thankfully his eyes were beginning to adjust to the darkness of the room, allowing him to see basic silhouettes.
"KYAAAA!"
"What's with that girlish scream? Shut it, you're going to get us caught." the red-haired boy tossed over his shoulder without looking at the other boy. Better grab the stuff they needed and hightail it out of there before someone came to investigate the noise. Damn that Buggy. After a while, he realized that the red-nose had strangely given no reply. Confused, he turned. "Buggy?"
Shanks was met with the very picture of Death.
Empty eye sockets on a skeletally thin face that was nothing but bones stared back at him evilly. The red-haired boy froze, hardly daring to breathe. How had such a monster gotten on board the Oro Jackson undetected!?
It took a long moment before he finally realized one important thing – they must have accidentally wandered into Crocus-san's infirmary, and that the 'monster' was nothing more than the doctor's plastic model skeleton.
"Hahahaha, you fell for it!" he couldn't see the other boy, but the mirth in Buggy's voice was unmistakable.
Shanks huffed, rather embarrassed. "You were the one who screamed like a girl, Buggy."
This time it was Buggy's turn to splutter. "I-Idiot! I was flashily pretending, of course!"
"Uh-huh." Shanks didn't believe him for a second.
"You wanna fight, flashy red-head?"
Shanks ignored him, "Well anyway, we're in the wrong room. Whose fault is that, eh? You obviously didn't count the doors right. Now we're in Crocus-san's inf…" His voice trailed off. After a short while, Shanks' face broke into a devilish grin that looked absolutely sinister in the limited lighting of the room. "Hey, Buggy, I have a new plan."
"Why do I have to go with your plan, you flashy idiot? What about my masterpiece?"
"Your plan failed from the moment you led us to the wrong room. Anyway, my plan is better. Just do it, Buggy."
"Don't wanna," was the miffed reply.
"You leave me with no choice." Shanks ominously unsheathed a sword.
"Oi, no need to take such flashy measures! Fine, I'll do it!"
Shanks grinned victoriously. "Now listen here. Detach your hand and put it here. Can you float it up properly? Good, now this is the plan…"
Their first victim was a poor unsuspecting crew member known as Peters.
Peters had been assigned the night watch along with Gaban on this fateful night. Gaban had taken to the crows-nest, leaving Peters to the deck. He yawned. The moon was half waned, the light provided by it mediocre at best, and the clouds did not help with visibility. But they did not expect to be attack in this largely deserted region, so it wasn't that bad. At least the low visibility would be a problem for any would-be enemies too.
Night watch was always boring. At least during the day one could be entertained by the antics of either their captain or the two cabin boys or all three. At night, there was no companion besides a skeleton standing in the middle of the deck…
Wait what was that!?
The moon retreated temporarily behind the clouds again, throwing the area into darkness. Peters squinted where he had seen the strange apparition.
The clouds shifted, gradually casting a glow over the deck. Which revealed a pair of empty eye sockets just a few inches from his face.
"GAAAHHHH!"
Hidden in the shadow of the cabins, two boys rolled on the floor, giggling silently with tears in their eyes. Recovering slightly, they sent each other victorious thumbs-ups.
Victim number two was the cook.
Old man Steele was a man that adhered to a very organized daily schedule. At 6 am, he woke, to spend half an hour getting ready for the day. Refreshed from his early morning routine, he would then head to the kitchen at 6.30 am to prepare breakfast for the ever-hungry crew. It was a time where the sun was just rising and would cast a faint glow in the galley.
Steele hummed as he headed for the galley that day. He had traded some recipes with Red Leg Zeff when they had by chance encountered the Cooking George a couple of days ago and was eager to try them out. He was thinking of testing out the other cook's pancake recipe, and a batch of walnut bread would go well with what he had planned for lunch.
There was already someone in his territory, sitting at the dining table. It wasn't a rare occurrence, the presence of someone who had either awoken early or been on the night watch and was hoping for a pre-breakfast snack.
It was a skeleton.
Bemused, he stared at it for a short while before turning away to grab eggs from the pantry. Strange. Had Crocus misplaced his plastic model skeleton?
The sound of movement and noisy clattering made him turn with mild irritation. Interrupting his work like that…he was tempted to deny whoever had entered the early snacks he would have handed out.
There was no one in the room. Save the skeleton, of course. It was still sitting motionlessly at the table. Steele tilted his head to one side. Hadn't it been in another chair before? Dismissing it as him not having paid much attention to it before, he turned back to the pancake batter.
After a while, the clattering started up again. He turned with a narrow-eyed glare. Again, the expected crew members were absent. Then he noticed something.
The skeleton was in a different place from before. There was no doubt about it this time. It now had it back to him, having switched to the opposite side of the table from where it had been. Steele stared at it, perplexed. Skeletons didn't just move however they liked. Heck, skeletons did not move, period.
At least, that was what he thought, until its head turned sharply towards him at a completely unnatural angle, staring at him with expressionless eye-sockets.
"GAAAAHHHHH!"
The pranks were going swimmingly. Buggy's control over the skeleton was getting better and better, allowing them to pull more elaborate stunts.
Now they sat huddled together, plotting the doom of another unfortunate crew member.
"So who next? The captain?" Shanks mused.
"He's more flashily likely to ask it to join the flashy crew."
"…He would, wouldn't he? Master Rayleigh is out too, he wouldn't bat an eyelid."
The two boys looked at each other, out of ideas.
"So who's next?" a deep voice asked.
"I don't know, don't ask m- GAH, CAPTAIN!?"
Roger grinned, crouched behind the two boys. "I presume that the complaints I have been getting of a walking skeleton are thanks to you two troublemakers?"
The boys exchanged glances before turning to their captain with innocent expressions. "W-What skeleton?"
"No use pretending now, kids. I can see right through you."
Two sighs. Busted. "Yeah…"
"You know what this means, right?" Roger said sternly. The boys looked apprehensive. Until Roger's face broke into a huge mischievous grin that spelled doom for the rest of the crew. "I want in."
The doctor walked from the bunkroom to the infirmary, yawning lightly. There was a commotion going on above deck. Ignoring it, he entered the medical room. There weren't any gunshots or the like, so it wasn't likely to be an enemy attack. Anyway, someone would get him if he was needed.
His infirmary looked a little…messed up. It also looked rather emptier than usual, which was strange. His eyes swept through the room to identify what was missing. Ah. That.
The noise that sounded akin to screaming chickens was getting closer.
He opened the door just as a group of men dashed through the hallway, looking as if the devil was on their heels. Crocus climbed the steps up to the deck. "Has anyone seen my model skeleton?" he asked, oblivious to the chaos (or perhaps it was better to say that he was so used to it that he paid it no mind). No one heard him.
The poor, poor crew. What did Roger and the boys get up to? I'll let your imaginations do the work. :P
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