Hey everyone,
Sorry for the long wait, I got completely absorbed in reading Sweet Inu Girl 's story "the Return" and it's sequel "The Accession" in the Inuyasha fandom…. can I just say, WOW! I still LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE that story! Looking forward to when she does the last one :D :D :D ahhhhhh…
Anywho, I do apologize to those who've continued to wait for this to update (and thank you for waiting ever so patiently!), I was also having problems with the website…for like two weeks I kept getting kicked from the server whenever I tried to open the tab for publishing inside my account…but that's been fixed so yay!
We're getting close to Mock Town, not a personal fave due to Teach and Bellamy but meh…I like the idea of this world having a 'Pirate Based Town' too much to complain about it overly much.
Enjoy! Stay Safe and Healthy!
It was the next morning, around eight thirty in the morning and we had all just finished breakfast, that things started to get weird.
Well, weirder than normal-weird, even by the standards of the Grand Line, that is.
I had joined Zoro in weightlifting for the morning warm up before our sparring session, and we heard a plink sound that made Zoro pause in the weightlifting he was doing to ask me, "is it raining?"
Everyone else out on deck heard his question and instinctively joined us as we all looked up to the clouds above, and saw nearly clear skies, causing Usopp to tentatively state, "it's not rain…" which Sanji followed with, "is it hail?"
Nami said quietly, "no, something is falling from…. huh!?"
We all screamed in panic, well I tried but almost nothing came out, as a literal galleon sized ship came falling from the sky.
I couldn't lie about this even if I wanted to….
It narrowly missed the Going Merry by less than six feet when it crashed into the sea, breaking into several large chunks and pieces flew out all around us.
I ducked as a large beam went soaring past where my head used to be. The strength of the ocean's rocking as the water was displaced from the crash caused our ship to nearly tilt sideways for a moment. We all scrambled to hang on as the ship rocked violently.
Nami yelled out directions to everyone to help straighten the ship, seeing Will and Neal had already lifted off into the sky, she called to him, "Careful! There's still more falling!" then she turned to also warn everyone else, "be on guard everyone!"
Among the debris that fell from the giant (in comparison to the Going Merry, that is) ship was several skeletons, one of which fell right into Usopp's hands as he tried to pretend that this was all some kind of nightmare, only to open his eyes and see the skeleton's face nearly eye level with him.
He'd screamed and came running over towards Sanji for safety, but Sanji kicked the skull away, as he yelled harshly at Usopp, "idiot, don't come over here! There's more coming!"
By the time all the pieces of the ship had fallen from the sky and the water was relatively calm again, we were all sweating and gasping for breath.
Looking up at the sky, Luffy asked, "why did a ship fall from the air?!"
Sanji just muttered, "too weird…"
Zoro pointed out the obvious, saying, "there's nothing there…"
Nami screamed and Sanji was almost instantly by her side asking her frantically in his worry for her well-being, "what's wrong Nami-san!?"
She was crying as she held up the log pose for us all to see, "the log pose...is broken! It's pointing up, not even moving around!" seeing how the glass was still intact and the needle was simply pointing to the sky, I sighed in relief, god damn it Nami! You scared me into thinking you actually broke the damn thing! This would have been the second one! That's it, next time we make landfall, I'm buying a damn log pose for myself! We've been stupidly lucky so far to have only relied on having just one!
I shook my head, but since I was towards the back, only Chopper and Robin saw me.
Robin pointed out, "that's not right. There's another magnetic field. It's changing the direction of the pose, if it's pointing up it means there's an island up there, and it must have locked onto a sky island!"
"Woah! What is that?! Sky Island?!" Chopper asked excitedly.
Luffy asked with a happy smile, "can an island really float?!"
I waived for Will to come down and he nodded. They landed on the deck besides me and I spoke without making a sound so that Will could lip read and translate for everyone else, "our log pose is pointing to a sky island. Tell them about mom's stories?"
He nodded and walked over to talk with Nami and the others as Robin was trying to explain that it's more of a floating sea up in the clouds.
Nami was trying to say that it should be impossible for such things as floating islands and seas, that the logical explanation was that the log pose was simply broken, but Will interjected here, speaking to Nami and thus the entire group at large.
"Not necessarily Nami. Our mom," he pointed to himself and me, "used to tell us stories about islands in the sky, she said she'd met some of the marine life that occasionally made their way down here to the "blue sea" as they called it, from the sea in the sky that they called the "white sea" since it's made of white clouds."
Nami's eyebrows furrowed, as she struggled with the concept of a sea and entire islands in the sky along with it's marine life. I could see the denial in her eyes, so when she looked over to me, I just nodded my head, to agree with Will, who was going on to say, "besides, Neal and I have been to a Sky Island before."
Everyone on deck froze, including myself. WHAT?!
"WHAT!?" Luffy, Usopp, Chopper, Sanji, Nami and Zoro yelled.
I just stood there blinking in surprise.
He shrugged and looked to Neal, who'd landed on his shoulder, and said, "do you remember that trip bud? It was when you had bird flu and couldn't leave the ship."
Neal shook his head, and said, "no, I was too delirious with fever at the time. I do remember there being a point where it was hard to breath, and you'd left to get medicine for me."
Will nodded, and said, "yeah, the medicine you needed was there at the sky island. Marco said it needed the elevation from sky islands to grow properly and that's why it's not normally seen down here. Something about the amount of carbon dioxide versus the ratio of Oxygen or something I think."
Chopper's eyes were sparkling as he looked up at Will and you could just see him daydreaming at the idea of medicinal plants that he'd never heard of before.
Robin smiled and asked Will, "to tell you the truth, I've never seen a sky island, so I don't know much about them, maybe I could ask you later about some of the cultural differences you noticed…" she turned to Nami after Will nodded with a small smile, "what I can say is, Miss Navigator, is that here on the Grand Line, things like logic and reasoning should be tossed out the window, the ONLY thing you can rely on is the log pose. So instead of worrying about the log pose, what you should worry about right now, is how to get up there."
Nami swallowed hard, and turned to Will and asked him, "what was the one you visited like? How did you get up there?"
Will shrugged and said, "it was beautiful, the plants, the few that can grow up there, are all huge from the abundance of carbon dioxide that high up, which made it hard to breathe at first, you know? Because of the elevation difference and all that, but we were in the New World at the time, so that route won't work for us with this Sky Island."
Everyone's eyebrows scrunched up in confusion, as we asked, "New World?"
Neal explained with a smile, waiving one wing in a sweeping motion as he did so, "yes, it's what's commonly referred to as the second half of the Grand Line. Veteran pirates call this half, the first half of the Grand Line, Paradise, since this half is so much easier than the second half. Not to mention that most of the islands within this half have been reported and mapped, while the other half isn't. It's literally uncharted territory the further you go in, and is a "whole new world," hence the nickname."
All of our faces, minus Robin, got filled with dread, as we thought back to some of the hellish stuff we'd had to deal with so far. With the exception of Luffy, who just looked like he was fit to burst with excitement.
Luffy jumped over to the wreck, bringing Usopp with him; the old broken ship was slowly starting to sink and so the two started rummaging around the wreckage.
Zoro asked Chopper, "what are those two doing?"
"Searching, they said…"
Robin was trying to explain that following the log pose was the only thing we can count on this sea where anything is possible, and that we can only blame our distress on our narrow-minded way of thinking. That no matter WHERE the log pose is pointing to, there WILL be an island there. That she'd be willing to bet her life on that fact.
Nami was still having difficulties it seemed. Guess there had to be something that would be a mental wall block for Nami to have to surpass, I thought as I sighed to myself.
Robin then set about opening the coffin that had fallen on a large piece of the ship. She'd pulled it aboard when it bumped the Going Merry and was examining it. The skeleton inside the coffin was practically a shattered mess and would undoubtedly take her some time to put back together for further study.
I tapped Chopper and asked him, in the softest, quietest whisper I'd ever made in my life, "Chopper, do you have any more of the medicine you prescribed me? And can we do the exam to see if I'm done being "mute" for now?"
He lit up and said, "Oh! Yeah! It's time for your medication! After this, you should be able to start talking back to the level you were before! Let me go get it! Remember to ingest it with a glass of milk, and a small snack, and then we can do a final checkup," he went on in his doctor mode, giving me another round of his lecture for the do's and don'ts for this medicine.
He ran into the room where the guys slept and grabbed my last dose of the medicine and his doctor bag, along with a glass of milk from the kitchen on his way out.
Sanji had heard that I needed a light snack to take my medicine and was so fast in going into the kitchen and then back out with a small bowl of miso soup that I had only blinked three times before he was kneeling before me with the tray.
I blinked again in shock and gave a hesitant smile. "Thanks, Sanji." I hoarsely whispered out, he almost swooned at my gratitude.
I savored every bite, every sip of the broth, and had to smile. It was a perfect blend of the small white mushrooms, (the only kind of mushroom I can tolerate to eat, much to Sanji's chagrin and Usopp's delight in not being the only one to despise the fungi) and the tofu was so perfectly cooked, the green onions chopped so that they all looked like they were the exact same size.
"Yum!" I whispered between bites. Sanji smiled wider and asked if there was anything else I wanted, but I shook my head. This was perfection.
Taking my medicine from Chopper, who warned me that it would take up to an hour for the medicine to take effect, nearly made me gag, but I swallowed, nonetheless. I thanked him before swallowing the medicine and he began doing his strange wiggle dance whenever someone complimented him.
Looking back over to Robin, I watched her carefully rearticulate the skeleton as Chopper got set up for my final exam of my throat, for now at least.
Just as Robin finished putting the skull together, Chopper declared me clear for now, but I was to take it easy until tonight, only whispering despite the urge to attempt to talk louder. I nodded and made sure to whisper, "Yes, I will remember. Thanks Doc."
He blushed and started wiggling around as he giggled and laughed happily while berating me for complimenting him.
It was still the most strange and contradicting behavior I'd seen out of a person.
Zoro asked Robin, "what did you find?" when Robin hummed in intrigue.
This brought everyone else's attention to Robin, as Nami observed from around the mast with Chopper on the other side, peaking out in his strange backwards way of his.
She couldn't keep her opinions to herself as she said, "what you're doing is really freaky!"
I scowled at her, and grumbled to myself, "Some would say what you do with your hoard is 'freaky' but you don't hear me complain about it to your face like that. How rude. No wonder she gets insulted as the "rude" girl when we're fighting strangers."
Nami glared at me, but kept her mouth shut for once as Sanji, who was kneeling down at the base of the coffin, happily watching Robin working as he said, "A dead body and a pretty woman, they go good with each other in a sort of opposites yin/yang sort of way."
I kept the snort to myself, mostly. I had to disguise it as a sneeze when Zoro looked my way, one brow quirked in a silent question. One I studiously ignored.
Nami was amazed that Robin was able to put the shattered skull back together when it was in such little pieces, I was more amazed at the speed in which Robin had done so, but Robin ignored us to mutter out her observations of the skull.
It was a habit that I'd seen other scientists do who were used to working by themselves for their research a lot, and it drew another bout of pained empathy for what she must have endured these last twenty years.
"This hole here is not natural."
Sanji asked, "So that means that this guy died when someone bashed his head?"
She smiled as she glanced over to him in amusement and said, "No, it's from a surgery method known as Trepanation."
She glanced over to Chopper and asked with an amused smirk, "Isn't that right, Doctor?"
Chopper scooted closer to the skeleton, fascinated now by the medical aspects and less creeped out over the fact that it was a skeleton and thus a dead person.
"Yes, it was used to cure some head diseases in the past...but that is a very old method that is no longer used."
Robin nodded as she picked up the skull to twist and turn it while she spoke, "That's right, he died around two hundred years ago, at the age of about thirty. He must have died of sickness while voyaging. His teeth are still intact unlike the rest of his skull."
At our curious faces on why that would be the case, she pointed out, "it's because they were covered with rubber oil. This was a custom of a particular area of South Blue. From that point of history, this ship must have been used for exploring."
She went inside quickly and then came back out with a red book, saying as she stopped flipping through the pages, "Found it, it's called the Saint Briss from the kingdom of Briss in South Blue, it says here that it set sail two hundred and eight years ago." she showed us the picture that had been drawn of the ship and Nami remarked how it was the same ship that fell from the sky, having the same sail and mast. Nami wondered if that meant that the ship had been up in the sky for the last two hundred years.
Turning back to look down at the skull, Nami asked incredulously, "Just from a skull, you can find that much information?!"
Robin smiled a soft smile and quoted something that sounded like what an old professor would say, "He may not be able to speak, but he can still tell us his tale, if you know how to look."
Looking out towards the ship that Usopp and Luffy were still exploring, she said, "if that ship was used for exploring, there must be a router in the ship...but the ship is sinking quickly."
It was then that we heard Usopp yell over to Luffy, "Luffy! Hang on!" as the floating piece that Luffy had just been standing firmly on, sank beneath the waves.
Before anyone could move, I'd hopped over the railing and was submerged in the water. Now that I was a full mermaid, I zipped through the water and brought Luffy up to the surface before Usopp had even reached the area of where Luffy had been when he first went under.
Once I'd gotten Luffy back to the Merry, he was all excited to show off everything he'd found. Claiming it to be something "really cool" that we just had to see.
In his hands was a very old and very damaged map of an island.
Across the top in a very detailed drawn ribbon was the name of the island, dubbed as "Skypiea".
It was at the sight of this map that Nami FINALLY began to believe that there was a sky island up in the sky instead of her log pose being broken. I'd just gotten my legs back and at hearing her sudden belief in what Will, Neal, and Robin had been saying I walked away from her in a huff, annoyed with dealing with her denial when all the proof had been literally smacking her in the face almost.
Nami's skepticism had her pointing out the possibility of the map being a fake, which almost made Luffy, Usopp and Chopper sag into depression as she claimed there to be many fake maps that existed, but they were quick to power through into celebrating the existence of a sky island after she'd stuttered out how this must be one of the good ones...honestly a small child could have seen that she was talking out her ass in order to cheer them all back up. But whatever.
Nami still grew pissed when she punched the metal plating around the mast to scream at Luffy, "All I want to say is I don't know how to get there!"
Usopp tried to calm her down, but Luffy's yelling drowned him out as he screamed in retaliation, "You're a Navigator, right?! Think of something!"
"There is something called IMPOSSIBLE!" Nami screamed in frustration.
"I don't care! I wanna go up there!" Luffy replied as he stubbornly refused to listen to reason…again.
Sanji noodle-dances from where he was still kneeling at the base of the coffin as he praised Nami, "Nami is so cute when she's angry!"
Feeling defeated by Luffy's stubbornness, Nami slouched as she said, "We just can't...we can't go on anymore. The Log Pose is continuing to point up. What we need now, is information like Robin said! If it's possible for such a big ship to get up there, it must be possible for us too! We must get our hands on that ships Router! Or Even their Logbook! Anything that will give us the information to proceed!"
Usopp huffed as he crossed his arms and leaned against the mast, grumbling, "but it's totally sunk now…?"
Nami wore a determined face as she cried out, "If it's sunk then we will just have to salvage it!"
Usopp and Luffy cheered while Zoro's East Blue Shark Teeth came out as he screamed, "Is that even possible?"
I rolled my eyes as everyone, including Will and Neal, conveniently forgot my ability to breathe underwater and thus search the damn shipwreck for said information.
Chopper turned to Robin to ask, "what is 'salvage'?"
She leaned her head into her hand as she turned to him with a soft smile to explain, "it means to pull up a sunken ship, but that one is too big for us."
Usopp's solution was to retrofit the three male powerhouses with a ramshackle diving suits made from barrels, tubes, and extra bits of sail cloth. Luffy's dive suit had two barrels since they had to cover his feet with the sail cloth too, while Zoro and Sanji were exposed from the waist down to the open water.
Looking at the amount of spare sail cloth that was used for these suits, I couldn't help but think to myself, I hope we don't need to repair the sails before reaching the next island…
Luffy tried on his first, excited by the idea of being able to go under the water without drowning. Despite his excitement, Luffy was the first one to express doubt in Usopp's engineering skills. I had to physically restrain myself from reacting when I realized that Luffy had thought ahead enough to think about how if Usopp's creation failed, Luffy would risk the fear of drowning. I soooo badly wanted to smash some heads in for even doubting my skills in keeping everyone down there alive.
Zoro opted to remain silent after I told everyone in a whisper that if anything went wrong I'd have them up to the surface before they could even begin to drown. But it did help bring back the excited child-like wonder to Luffy's eyes as the idea of going under water without severe risk of drowning sunk in and that hidden fear melted from his frame.
Sanji professed his love to Nami and reassured her that he'd find the things we needed to find in order to get up to the sky. While then turning to me and asking to be embraced by me, stating that he would drown a thousand deaths if it meant that I'd have to give him the 'kiss of life'... I started tuning him out for my mental sanity.
Nami smirked as she told Sanji that it was up to him now, while looking into MY eyes...
Oy vey.
Usopp tried to reassure Luffy that of course his invention was perfection and not to worry, to which Luffy just laughed jovially.
The reason they even wanted others to go and not send THE MERMAID alone under the sea?
CRUNCH
Yeah there were fish around us that looked like the types that were Sea King food…and where there is prey, there are predators.
This one in particular that just ate another fish that was the same size as our entire ship, was easily big enough to swallow the Going Merry with two crunchy bites, if it so chose.
Thank god fish tend to stay away from loud noises and this crew was practically the definition of unintended loud noises!
Either way, Nami, Sanji, Usopp and Chopper all felt more reassured if I had company down there to "protect" me.
Will tried to point out that as a mermaid, I could outswim nearly EVERYTHING under the sea, but they must have ignored that fact.
Selective hearing, at its finest, folks.
Will opted to stay above with Neal, up in the crow's-nest again to keep a lookout for any more falling ships...juuuust in case.
Everyone else not going in the water was responsible for manning the pulley device connected to each of the guys underwater.
Nami and Usopp wished us luck when the boys jumped over the railing into the sea.
I smiled and waved to Will, who waved back, and with a smirk at everyone else on deck, swan dived over the railing into the sea below.
AHHHHhhhhhhhhh…. Salty Seawater is the BEST!
I wasn't really able to enjoy it when dragging everyone's asses from the Merry to the dock of Luluka, or from rescuing Luffy's ass just a bit ago from the sinking wreck, but now?
Oh man, there's just no easy way to describe it.
It's like my blood just SINGS when swimming in the ocean.
I can feel the currents moving over and around my body as I swam ever deeper to lazily catch up with my crewmates below. Seriously, they're sinking at the pace of a cucumber snail. I could catch them in my sleep at this pace. That just gave me more time to enjoy the feel of the ocean around me.
It was just so invigorating down here…
I never told Chopper this, but due to being a mermaid and being able to thus communicate with the sea animals, the only way I could previously speak normally was while under the water.
Down here, I had very little pain or difficulty speaking.
Probably due to using different vocal cord muscles and not the typical ones. I'd just have to talk with him about this later. For now, it was time for some fun.
With a Cheshire grin, I swam behind Zoro and Sanji, letting Luffy have his fun looking at the different "sea monsters".
Sanji and Zoro accidentally went too close to a momma sea snake, who was NOT happy to have her den of littles being threatened by the men. She chased them off and I could hear them chatting with the crew above through their air pipes that doubled as a means to keep in communication with Nami, Usopp and Chopper.
I laughed, and the two men froze.
From their air tubes, I heard, "Who was that?!" (Nami) "SEA GHOST!" (Usopp) "What?! Sea Ghost?! Really?! AHHH! LUFFY, ZORO, SANJI!" (Chopper)
I kept myself behind them as they tried to turn around and look for the 'mystery voice'. Luffy calling out for the sea ghost to join his crew because that would be so cool.
Lowering my voice to sound more mysterious, I said with a shit eating grin, "but Luffy...I've always been with you...can't you tell?"
Luffy's top half of his barrel started to comically lean as he tilted his head side to side in thought, "hmmm….you have? Oh! Sorry! Hi! I'm Monkey D. Luffy! Nice to meetcha!"
I giggled again and in my hysterical laughing, Zoro managed to turn enough to catch sight of my tail. I saw him freeze, and then smirk before looking forwards with Sanji and Luffy again.
Huh...so he's going to let me keep playing with them?
Swimming down so that I was under their feet, I grabbed Sanji's leg and tugged. Before he could look down to his leg, after screeching like a little girl, he said, "Something with a human hand grabbed my leg! Wisp-san~ was that you?"
Throwing my voice out, so that it sounded far away, I called, "Sanji?! Zoro?! Luffy?! Where are you?"
Sanji's face!
Omg! It went so white!
He started freaking out, thinking that there was another person down there, it didn't help that Usopp and Chopper were STILL screaming out up top about a sea ghost.
It was sooooo hard to hold in my laughter at that!
I lost it when Zoro said that it might be a Siren come to take Sanji's soul since Sanji was such a pervert, which caused Sanji to go blue in the face!
"Ahahahahahhahaaha! Oh my god! Sanji! Your Face! If you could see your face! Ahahahhahahahhaa!"
All three of them bent at the waist to peer down at me, and besides Zoro who just smirked at my joke, they all gaped down at me with their mouths dropped open.
From Luffy's tube I heard Chopper telling me off for speaking so loudly, but I waved one arm in Luffy's direction, as I tried to get my gasping laugh back under control.
"hahaha...Don-Don't worry, hahahahaha! Chopper! Hehehehehe, I'm a MERMAID! Ahahaha! I don't tal-talk the same way underwater as above! He he he he…hoo…"
I slowly brought my breathing and my laughter under control, only to nearly be set off again at Sanji's face now being beet red in both embarrassment of Luffy's teasing, and pervertedness as he gazed upon me.
Zoro's face was red, and I tried to think what I'd done that would have brought out the small drop of blood at his nose, but when I looked down at myself, I facepalmed my forehead.
I'd forgotten that when underwater, a woman's, uh...jiggle physics go a little wonky…
That coupled with the fact that when underwater and I start laughing uncontrollably like that, I have a bad habit of swimming in an upside down, to circle back up again and then down again in a circled loop. At least until I brought my laughter under control…
Ops…
I blushed and focused on Luffy, who had finally let up on Sanji for thinking there was a sea ghost lady that was going to eat his soul…while simultaneously moping over not getting a cool sea ghost to join his crew. I only shook my head with a fond smile at that.
We all decided to continue on our way downwards, where we could see the sunken ship had already reached the bottom.
We'd just finished searching the majority of the ship, not finding anything of use, when some strange men decked out in professionally made dive suits started doing something to the ship. Luffy punched one in the face, while Zoro and I grabbed out swords, prepared to fend off more. The guy Luffy hit, floated to the surface, where I could see other men in the same dive suits pull him out of the water.
It was then that I noticed a second ship had arrived alongside ours.
Shit! Are they friendlies or foes?
I turned back to the guys, but Zoro was busy dealing with trying to keep an octopus from crawling inside his dive suit, Sanji was looking at different colored seashells, all of which I knew had high value for those on land, while Luffy was trying to talk to the fish like I could…
No help there...Shit….
Luffy and Sanji eventually went inside the ship's interior, but everything they picked up crumbled to dust.
Overall, everything on the ship looked like shit. It was like the ship had already been ransacked of anything valuable.
Only thing that didn't crumble away or break upon somebody touching it was some strange looking One-Man scooter-boat that Luffy found.
Every single sword Zoro found and tried to draw, rusted away into the water, and each time it happened, he would curse aloud. I nearly laughed again from the sight of the octopus riding along with Zoro on the top of the barrel like some kind of hat. Guess Zoro finally gave up on getting the stupid fucker to let go completely and just expected the soon-to-be-snack to let go when we left the water.
Zoro eventually joined up with Sanji to inspect the only locked chest we'd managed to discover on the ship. Zoro started to draw his sword, but at a wave of my hand, I had my sword drawn and then sheathed after cutting the lock.
He scowled at me and said grumpily, "I could have handled it, Wisteria."
I nodded and said, "I know, but my sword is already treated to be immune to all forms of salt water. Yours are not. As it is, you're going to have to spend an hour on each sword to clean them of the salt residue. No need to make it worse."
His face blanched, as he hadn't thought of that issue, but I smiled.
At Sanji's, "what? It's just a feather?" we turned to look inside the chest with him, and yea, it was just a single white feather…?
The guys looked at me and I shrugged, saying, "sorry. I'm not a 'bird expert'. If it had been a fish then sure, I'd have some clue…"
Before any of us could pick it up though, the wall crashed inwards as some kind of metal hooks dug themselves inside.
We all jumped (well, I swam back, but same result) back and got a better image of what had attacked. It was a five-pronged rotating hook.
The three guys all screamed out collectively, "What is that…!?
I thought I heard something coming from their end on the ship, but they must have covered the pipes for the sound.
Suddenly the ship walls and floors around us started to shake. It was as if some large Sea King had decided to nudge the ship while we were inside!
Then before we could leave the interior of the ship, a large bubble of air was shoved into the space, and I dropped to the wood flooring. The guys all shouted in amazement, questioning how there could be air under the sea like this. Despite their apprehension, Zoro, Sanji and Luffy were quick to take their dive suits off and inspect the space.
With a rumble, the ship started to slowly, ever so slowly, begin to rise from the deeps.
Luffy looked out the window and I was shocked by the scary face he made, but when more men in the same professional dive suits like that last guy, I knew that we were going to have a problem with them.
Or maybe not.
Between Luffy and Zoro though, the invading men didn't stand a chance.
The last member of the diving team was quick to pull his defeated comrades out and back to their ship. I could only hope that with Will, Neal, Robin, and Chopper up top, that they hadn't had any trouble.
As the guy was hauling his friends away, I heard him speaking into a tube, similar to what our guys were using with the rest of the crew up top.
"Sir! The crew under-water!"
It was just within my hearing range, but I was the only one who was able to hear their boss scream back, "What?! What happened to my crew?!"
The man was quick to respond to his boss, "There is someone inside the ship!"
I noticed the large shadow of a Sea King that had probably heard all the commotion and came to investigate. Seeing the bleeding and unresponsive men, I wasn't surprised that it decided to have a small snack.
The last guy, the one still conscious, shouted up the tube, "Captain! Help! Gyaah!" before he too, was eaten along with the others. Getting a closer look, I was surprised to see that the Sea King in question was a massive eel with fangs as long as the Merry's mast. Huh...haven't seen one of those before...cool, Mom always made it out like those were more deep-water fish around Fishman Island's depth of 10,000 feet below.
I watched as a large man free dived down towards the ship, and the eel Sea King attempted to eat him. However, today would not be the day that this man died by eel.
A single "monkey punch" hit the cheek cavity of the eel's face and the Sea King fled the scene.
None of the guys seemed to care to look outside, and were either standing next to, or in Luffy's case, as he said, "See! It's okay if we take off the barrels."
Zoro's tag along friend, the octopus, was now riding on his shoulders, as he told Luffy, "I didn't think that this much air could come down here...but who's trying to lift the ship up?"
Sanji freaked out for a second, wondering if something had happened to Nami and Robin, but when he tried to contact them again, he wasn't getting any responses. He tried multiple times to get them to reach out to him, but still the tube was silent.
I tried not to let that affect me, after all, Neal and Will were still up there, and both were very strong.
It was just after Sanji had informed Luffy and Zoro that he still, after the tenth time trying, couldn't connect with any of our crewmates above, that the large man I'd seen out the window came smashing in through the wall.
He yelled out aggressively, "Who dares to cause trouble in my part of the sea!?"
Luffy's first response at the sight of the man, was to say, "Ah! A Monkey!"
Seriously, Luffy?
Instead of getting offended, the man, who yes did look like a fucking monkey, blushed and scratched the back of his head to ask us, "eh? Do I really look like a monkey?"
Luffy looked him in the eye after giving him a much more thorough once over and said, "Yeah, you look more like a monkey than a real monkey!"
Zoro asked with a huff as he picked me up off the ground finally, "what's that supposed to mean?"
Sanji just grit his teeth at Luffy's idiocy and asked the monkey-man, "who are you?"
The man had a funny laugh, it sounded so strange that I don't think anyone but a real-life monkey could hope to produce something similar…
"Ooke oke ook!"
Luffy and the man, who was named Mashira, got on like two peas in a pod. Tales of our adventures he sat down with a smile and marveled how we came all the way from East Blue to here, while Luffy couldn't get over the fact that Mashira's physical resemblance to a fucking monkey was so strong.
Something that apparently was making the man blush.
Zoro and Sanji picked up the sacks of stuff that we had all found, most of which I could tell was pure junk, but to each their own.
When Mashira saw the sacks, he assumed they were full of gold or other valuables, and as this area of the sea was his "turf" for all salvage ships, he became righteously pissed off with all of us. He started chasing Zoro and Sanji, enraged, and the two men were quick to work off each other in distracting the man enough that they could get their dive suits on. I helped Luffy with his double barrel dive suit and shoved him out of the air bubble encrusted ship.
Sadly, Sanji and Zoro's lines got caught up in the maze-like interior. I doubled back to help them deal with that alongside Mashira.
What none of us were planning on contending with, was a giant assed sized Sea King Turtle munching down onto the ship like a fish would to a fishing line.
Sanji, Zoro and I stared at the turtle, and I had to make the decision to just ditch the damn dive suits; Luffy had come inside as well, and thus had to have his ditched when Mashira broke the top half of his two barrels dive suit.
We managed to get out, JUST in the nick of time.
We had a bit farther to swim than I'd originally estimated because the Merry had been moved since the time that we first initially dived down. Just before we reached the ship, the sky darkened up so much that there was almost no visibility under the water. All the guys latched themselves to me as I swam as fast as I could, and for being a mermaid, that was MUCH faster than the guys could have swam on their own.
I threw Luffy up on deck first, as he was a devil fruit user.
Zoro and then Sanji next, each holding onto a bag with white knuckled grips.
Once the guys were all aboard, I used my powerful tail to lift my human half of my body up and out of the water with both of my arms raised up, like I was a child asking to be picked up by mommy.
Neal flew down and used his talons from his front legs to lift me up out of the water. I laid me down on the deck gently as Zoro was yelling at everyone else that we had to get out of here NOW...like asap! Now!
Sanji was scanning the water, as he muttered to Zoro, "that guy was a pain…"
Usopp was just so glad that we were all live and safe to really hear that we had fled from a man, and not the island sized turtle.
I face palmed when Zoro and Sanji didn't even notice the damn turtle the whole time, as they went on to explain to Usopp about the Monkey-Man.
Usopp explained that they'd met him, and that he was a professional in this area for salvaging sunken ships.
When he looked over to the turtle, he was confused by the fact that the turtle had his mouth open wide, saying that it was no wonder we were able to escape.
I raised my hand up, drawing Usopp's attention, and whispered, "we escaped before it crunched down on the ship. I had to pull these guys since they refused to leave the stuff behind."
Luffy finally recovered from the exposure to the salt water, and at seeing the dark sky, asked, "huh? Is it nighttime already?"
Zoro was drawing the sail while Usopp was pulling in the anchor, to yell, "Luffy! Help move the ship out!"
ugh...I thought as Mashira burst from under the water and landed upon our railing, yelling how we were thieves for coming into his territory and stealing his treasure from him.
At the word "treasure" Nami was super exited, asking Luffy, "Treasure? You found treasure?!"
Luffy smiled and agreed, that there was a lot of it.
I shook my head, while Zoro got into a fighting stance, hand already prepared to draw his sword as he said, "this is bad, if he goes berserk on the ship!"
He didn't have to do any fighting though, because Mashira's men yelled out, "Cap... Captain! Da... Danger!" "WAAAH!"
Turning to look at his ship, Mashira muttered out a, "huh? What!?"
We all turned to look at this "danger" that Mashira's crew identified, and even fearless, reckless, near suicidal Captain Luffy's face went deathly pale out of fright.
Standing before us in the fog was the silhouette of five men, each carrying spears, that put the size of Giants, like the two we'd met on Little Garden, to shame.
They were so big, that the Sea King Turtle fled out of fear.
You know your screwed when a SEA KING fleas the scene in mortal terror...we're soooo fucking dead! I thought as Luffy, and Mashira each screamed in fright, "Monsters!"
I dragged myself over to the side of the railing, out of the way of the others, and attempted to force my tail to revert back into my legs.
It'd be Hella embarrassing, but right now, our lives mattered more than my fucking pride!
I tore my jacket off and tied it around my waist and grabbed the oar next to Sanji and Usopp. Sure, if anyone were really looking, they'd get an eyeful, but nobody was looking sideways at my lack of modesty.
On the other oar was Luffy, Zoro, and Will.
Chopper was running around at Nami's directions, tying off this here, and untying that there...manning the rudder when she said to; it was a lot of work.
Neal was up in the crow's-nest, shouting to Nami that he could still see them!
This encouraged us all to row harder, longer.
Finally, we were out of sight and back under the sun.
Once under the sun and Neal gave the "all clear," we collapsed.
Usopp was muttering out, "impossible!" while the rest of us just panted for breath.
Nami finally chimed in, between her panting, "yeah...nothing could be that big."
Lighting a new cigarette, Sanji said, "today has been a really weird day…"
Zoro started off the list, "A galleon fell from the sky…"
Nami continued to the next issue, "the log pose keeps pointing to the sky…"
Usopp was next in the chain, "The strange monkey appeared to recover the sunken ship with his salvage crew…"
Will groaned from where he was leaning against the mast, "the monkey man's ship could detach itself for salvaging a ship bigger than itself…"
Neal lighted down from up above, to land on Will's shoulder and began to preen his sweaty hair out of his face to provide comfort.
Chopper sighed out, "A Giant Sea Turtle ate the sunken ship…"
Robin tonelessly muttered, "the sky went black…"
Luffy was the last to say, "And finally! Giant monsters a hundred times bigger than regular giants showed up!"
But then a voice we had forgotten was still aboard the Going Merry spoke up, "Yup! That really scared me!"
Sanji, Zoro and Luffy were irritated with the man enough that instead of trying to make friends with the monkey man, like I'd thought they would, they kicked him skywards and away from the ship with a yell, "Get out of here!"
I chuckled at that display, but at a strong breeze reminded me of my loss of pants, I dashed to the girl's room to put on some fucking pants!
God! Why?! WHY!? Why do I always lose my pants when I change into my tail!? I thought, near tears out of mortification.
It's not like I'm shy...I'm not.
I'm proud of my figure, even if I'm not as busty as Robin, or even Nami.
I'm physically stronger than the two of them combined without looking like some buff muscle woman. Win-Win, right?
That doesn't mean I'm overly comfortable just flashing everyone, damn it! No girl just want's to shamelessly show off THAT place! Jeez!
I came back out in a fresh set of dark indigo blue cargo pants, my typical black combat boots, and a new clean blouse.
It was one of the ones Nami had bought for me back at Alubarna while I was unconscious.
While not my usual style, it had started to grow on me.
It was an ocean blue color with white trimming around the hem, and it had a deep (and this was the part that had to grow on me) scooped neckline that showed off my mother's locket very well. The waist was more flowy than I was used to, as I typically preferred tighter material around my waistline, so as not to interfere when I drew or sheathed my sword. The sleeves came down in a shear blue, so you could still see my arms and orange gloves underneath. They billowed out too, and then had a button at the wrist for optional fastening there. Something I chose to do.
I had come out on deck just in time to hear Nami yell at the guys, "Hey! Did you guys forget what you went underwater for!? All you brought back was trash and nothing about how we can get to the sky!"
Zoro and Sanji tried to explain, "there was nothing else in it!" Zoro) "yeah, that's true, Nami-san."
Laying exposed on the deck, was all of the…. "Treasures" that Luffy, Zoro and Sanji had found. Luffy was pacing across the deck in a very rusty set of plate armor, complete with an ornamental sword.
Zoro's octopus-friend had been transferred to the treasure pile at some point, causing me to giggle at the sight of it trying to make its way back over to Zoro's side. It was screaming death threats and challenges upon his honor.
When Sanji exhaled a cloud of smoke, he explained further, "that ship had obviously been attacked," his words made me think back to the several skeletons we'd seen with spears still lodged through their skulls, "either that or there was some sort of disagreement that caused them to turn on each other."
Nami seemed more steamed about that than she was before, as she said, "if that's so, then information is even more crucial. Don't you get it!? If we went into the sky right now, whatever happened on that sunken ship could happen to us too!"
She put her hands to her hips as she turned from looking at the items on the deck to Zoro, "the info we have can mean life and death! Look at this stuff: Swords! Food ware! Octopus!? What I NEED are things like a diary or sea charters, not this junk!"
She kicked the stuff that was in the pile, breaking 90% of it, causing Zoro and Sanji to cry out as she destroyed their hard work.
Luffy had come over to see what all the excitement was about, and when Nami saw him in his knight get up, she asked, "...and what's that, Luffy?"
Luffy was so excited he damn near had sparkles shooting out of his eyes as he said with a huge D shaped smile, "Armor, to protect me from harm."
In a fit of rage, Nami punched Luffy in the armor's chest plate, which made him fall over causing the rust infested armor to break into itsy bitsy pieces around him.
Zoro and Luffy exclaimed, "Ahhh! The armor is smashed to bits!"
Sanji tried to please Nami by showing her the beautiful shell he'd found with her in mind, but she harshly screamed out, showing her rather large East Blue Shark Teeth in the process, "I don't want it, you idiot!"
I frowned up at Nami as she ascended the stairs, but made my way over to Luffy, Zoro and Sanji, hoping to comfort them. I planned to deal with her shit once I knew they were okay.
I knelt down besides Luffy, who, along with Zoro, was picking up the pieces of the shattered armor. I patted Luffy's back as I whispered consoling words to him.
"Hey, don't worry Captain. I'm sure we can find you a set of even better armor at a town. One that, hopefully, won't break from a single hit by Nami. She just doesn't understand the appeal of a good set of armor."
Luffy was crying full on crocodile tears, complete with puppy dog eyes so wide, I almost thought he was manipulating his face with his rubber devil fruit powers as he asked me, "Really? You think so?"
I nodded and then looked at the broken swords that were in the pile of stuff that Nami had destroyed with a single stomp of her high heels.
My frown grew grim, as I thought back to those spear embedded skulls as I looked at the swords, without turning away from them, I spoke to Zoro, "hard to imagine what kind of mess we're going to get into if we go up there...if these guys were this well armed, why'd they all die?"
Zoro didn't answer, as he was suddenly finding himself dealing with the octopus that had finally managed to get himself in reach of Zoro. Zoro was trying to wordlessly get the little ass off of him but wasn't having much luck.
I tried not to laugh as I heard the octopus start bitching Zoro out for scaring off the first female of the breeding season. If it became known that his territory wasn't a safe place to be, then he'd be the laughingstock of all octopi to come! Of course, he then started insulting Zoro's lack of four extra limbs, and his coloration, and then his lack of a beak for a mouth, the smallness of his head, having hair (fur as he called it) in general…. yada yada yada
It was hilarious because Zoro was starting to grumble at the octopus for the exact opposite reasons. His grumblings drew Luffy's attention, and he got excited and happy all over again, begging Sanji to make him Takoyaki…
The octopus stilled, and started saying things like, "Ok! You win! I'll just go back to my turf under the water, DON'T EAT ME!"
That finally broke my laughter, and the guys looked at me like I'd gone insane.
I pointed at the octopus and said, "his attitude did a 180! Before Luffy asked for Takoyaki, he was cursing you out Zoro! But now! Hahahaha he's begging us not to eat him!"
The octopus swiveled his head around so that he could look at me, and asked in wonder, "You can understand me?"
I laughed and said, "yes! Yes! I can understand you!"
Luffy pouted and said, "so does that mean I can't have my Takoyaki?"
I shrugged, and said, "hey, just because I can understand him doesn't mean I'm going to stop you from eating food. Chopper doesn't stop us from eating meat, even though he's a reindeer."
Sanji held his chin in his hand as he thought aloud, "true, but ever since he's come aboard I haven't served venison-based dishes out of respect for the little guy."
Chopper, having left 'story time' with Usopp, came over and upon hearing Sanji say that burst into grateful tears, hugging Sanji around the knees as he cried his appreciation.
Sanji was a trooper and didn't react outside a twitch to his eyebrow when Chopper wiped his snotty face over his pants.
I cringed as I thought of what that was going to be like for laundry.
One good thing about having three/four additional crewmates?
Finally having more of a break when it comes to the menial chores around the ship.
Chopper was all for cleaning, as he had to work extra hard to keep things sterile out here at sea. He'd taken over the one closet space we had outside of the girl's room as his "infirmary" space. All the shit we'd had stored in the closet originally was distributed throughout the ship.
With Neal, and Will it was simple.
Will had a hammock in the men's room, but because of Neal's advanced eyesight, they often took over the crow's nest. I think I'd only seen them use their actual hammock twice in all the time we'd been at sea since leaving Alabastra. And that was only due to the freak snowstorm that had lasted for four hours forcing them indoors.
Sanji was debating still, on whether or not to cook the octopus, who I was soundly ignoring, while Luffy kept chiming in for Takoyaki.
Turning to Sanji, I said, "if the octopus was so stupid as to follow humans out of the water, then it's his own damn fault he got 'caught' and cooked. Maybe it'll help their gene pool for the stupid ones to be taken out of the equations by being cooked."
So, it was with tears and screams of "murderer, traitor, and demon" coming from the octopus, that Sanji cooked it up into Takoyaki balls for Luffy.
Still, I politely declined a helping.
Having food to eat, Luffy went to bug Nami about the log pose that Robin had stolen off of Mashira. Turns out he had an eternal log pose to some place named Jaya.
Robin theorized that it was where they kept their headquarters for their business.
Luffy started up a back and forth on whether or not we should go to Jaya, because Usopp, oh so helpfully, pointed out that if we went to Jaya, we wouldn't be able to go to sky island. That caused Luffy to put a stop on going to Jaya, so Nami had to walk him through the thought process of going to Jaya long enough to gather information on getting to Sky Island but leaving before the log pose changed course from Jaya's island magnetic field.
So, we ended up going to Jaya.
Ten minutes later, Luffy was waking from a daydream, calling out loudly, "alright me mateys! Let's go! To the kingdom of meat! Arrh!"
It was at that point that Sanji had Robin and Nami's Takoyaki done, as he'd had to fend off Luffy's grubby hands, yelling how his was inside on the kitchen table.
Luffy was quick to go grab his Takoyaki after that.
