The ravenous mass hissed violently, as an animated sculpture of bugs fizzled away from the contact with seawater. He had just tried his newly acquired seawater weapon on it.
"Zoro… Does it feel odd? To use a gun instead of a sword?"
Chopper felt his voice ebb, in a feeble manner into the gigantic foggy planes. It seemed to never end on each side, one vast horizon of dead, hard packed soil, which was very slowly turning back into the fluffier, more fertile insect packed variety.
"Nah."
Brook, Luffy, Chopper and Robin were walking in the center of the ring formation, surrounded by their other crewmates, all of which had an anti-devil's fruit weapon each. The crewmates moved below their regular speed, on account of the people standing at the back having to walk backwards, and at a slight angle, to keep from being surprised from the back.
Zoro decided to elaborate on his curt answer to his reindeer friend.
"These guys are completely uninteresting to duel. Might as well get rid of them and go find better opponents asap."
Nami squirted a stream of water at another incoming monster, this time shaped like a bull.
"HAH! Take that."
The large being melted away completely with progressive attacks.
"I can see why Usopp likes that slingshot so much." She beamed, slightly mean, slightly proud.
Robin felt the tension from earlier evaporate from her being. Although a new sense of unease,
small… Like a mouse—had smuggled its way into her.
Mice are generally harmless. Of course, here the problem was that she didn't- As of this moment- feel like a body of flesh, blood and heat. She might have been a supercomputer made up of wires… Rodent teeth did not mix well with her internal processing.
"Hey."
Her crewmates tilted their heads slightly toward her, as if to pick up the ringing phone.
"…Isn't it somewhat strange? The fact that they're evaporating… But more of them keep coming?"
"Perhaps it's best not to look a gift horse in the mouth… But that did cross my mind too, Robin-san." Said Brook.
"It's ominous, and it's all the more reason to get the hell outta here." Said Sanji.
The devil's fruit monster attacks decreased in frequency, which made the crew comfortable enough to walk in a more regular line formation eventually.
An indefinite amount of time later, the starving straw hats saw their first trace of hope in several hours. The fog had long since faded entirely, and lead them through the same manner of dense flowery fields as they had landed in while arriving on the island.
They had slowly been walking at an upwards incline of bouncy flowerbed for a few minutes when their captain grew restless. Before anybody had time or energy to stop him, Luffy sprinted as far as he could, to the edge of what he noticed in time was a steep edge.
"Whooh! That was a close one." He wiped his forehead, reeling from the sensation of his starvation mixing together with the adrenaline of almost tumbling down a steep incline of a cliff.
"GUYS! IT'S THE VILLAGE!"
As the rest of his band of starving adventurers caught up, they noticed he was right. They also saw that the coastline below was swarming with navy officers, and a few of their ships. They shouted at Luffy unison, albeit more quietly than the enthusiastic rubber man had himself.
"KEEP YOUR VOICE DOWN, YOU'LL DRAW THEIR ATTENTION!"