Part 1; Island Whale

Chapter 2/4; Wailing at the Twin Peak

The Mugiwara pirate crew was climbing a mountain with their ship. Or rather, their ship was sailing on a waterway that took them up a mountain. It was a strange experience, and the adrenaline rush of almost crashing upon entrance was leaving them all a little shaky. Still they were all riding a wave of anticipation and excitement.

Sanji didn't know what to expect in this sea or with this crew he was now a part of. And he was a part of this crew. He was more included in this rag-tag team than he ever thought he'd be. Yet, what he did know was that he was ready for it. Ready for Grand Line and so, so ready to search for All Blue.

Usopp whooped as they reached the peak of the mountain, Merry jumping like a bunny before the water turned her to head back down, in the direction of Grand Line. Usopp hadn't quite grasped it yet; he was a real pirate, fighting real battles and he already had so many stories to tell Kaya, Piiman, Ninjin and Tamanegi that he knew none of them would believe; because they were too wild to be true! And that was only East Blue.

Grand Line was the sea Hawkeye resided in. But somehow that wasn't very important right now. Zoro was enjoying the moment of crazy calmness that drifted through him as they secured the sails and descended the mountain at high speed. Zoro knew he had a lot of work to do before he was ready to face the greatest swordsman in the world for a rematch. He had a lot of training to do, a lot of battles to fight and his own arrogance to trample. But with the wind and sea in his face and the rush of the success of entering Grand Line, he was just happy, content even with the joyful cries of the friends that surrounded him.

Nami threw off her new raincoat and forgot about it. They were entering Grand Line! She could finally start working on this part of the sea that nobody had ever charted before. She would be the first! The very first person to ever map this sea. She couldn't wait!

Ruffy was seated on Merry's head, which had quickly become her favourite spot of the ship, with only one thought in her head. "The greatest sea in all the world. I'm home."

She'd been born in East Blue, raised with other children, taken care of by people whose faces she could barely remember anymore. Sun's face however was clear, and Ruffy thought she saw the shadow of her in the mist that they were entering. A shadow that was… growing…

"Hey, what's that sound?" Zoro asked, tilting his head.

"It was probably the wind," Nami said confidently. "The cliffs around here are supposedly strangely shaped."

Ruffy was still watching the shadow she'd thought was Sun. It was turning out to be a shadow she could actually see with her own eyes and not just her imagination. And it had the shape of something… No, Ruffy couldn't figure out what the shape looked like.

There was however a sound mixing with the wind, like wailing. There was also a heartbeat…

The rest of the crew had silenced their whooping.

"Nami-san, there's a mountain ahead!" Sanji called from the mast where he was awaiting orders to release the sails.

"Mountain? That can't be! Once we pass the Twin Peak it should be open sea!"

Ruffy was still looking at the shadow and trying to make sense of the heartbeat echoing around her. They were still going incredibly fast, and it was slowly dawning on the captain that something, probably something living, were blocking their way, and they were about to hit it with enough force to turn Going Merry into toothpicks.

The wailing sounded again, much louder.

"You promised."

They cleared the mist.

"It's not a mountain!" Sanji reported, or corrected himself, he wasn't sure.

"It's a wall!" Usopp shrieked, because that's all he could see; a high, blank, black wall they were about to hit.

The wailing echoed, and Nami put the pieces together. "Oh shit no! It's a whale!"

Zoro spotted an opening between the cliffs and body of the giant… unimaginably giant whale as it kept getting bigger and bigger the closer they got.

"Portside! There's an opening! Take the helm!"

"But it's broken!" Usopp cried.

"Fix it! I'll help!" the swordsman yelled and ran to the kitchen to help Usopp, closely followed by the cook. At the same time Ruffy shook her head, having been momentarily frozen by the cries of the whale's heart. They were about to crash, the men were trying to steer clear but Merry was too stuck in the current. An idea lit up in Ruffy's head like a lightbulb.

To Nami's utter surprise, the captain turned, jumped down to lower deck and went inside the bow storeroom. Nami herself stood frozen in indecision.

The whale cried, Usopp, Zoro and Sanji tried with all their might to push and pull the piece of helm they still had to steer Merry clear of the whale. But they were too close. In six seconds they'd hit that wall and…

And then their cannon went off.

Nami flew forward from the recoil, falling to her knees, right before they hit the whale, fairly lightly, but with enough force to nearly knock Nami out on the railing. Merry's head broke off, but otherwise, they were… well, safe was not the word any of them were about to use, but they were alive.

Except for the fact Ruffy had just tried to shoot the whale, alerted it to their presence and was now just one shake of its head away from sinking them all.

Nami was just bracing herself for that to happen, could almost feel the cold of the ocean on her skin.

"This is it. We're dead," the navigator said to herself, her heart beating so hard she thought it was about to explode.

Inside the kitchen the guys were also experiencing a sense of doom. Usopp was scrambling backwards as if that was going to put any distance between him and something the size of that whale. Sanji was frozen, looking at Merry's severed head like it was his own.

Zoro was looking between the black, eyeless surface in front of him and the tiny little opening to their right.

Everything was, oddly, deathly quiet.

"G-grab an oar and row!" Zoro's voice suddenly called out, and Usopp and Sanji jumped up in agreement.

"What the hell, didn't it notice it was shot?" Usopp asked as he and Sanji manned one oar, trying to keep the same pace as Zoro on the other side of the ship.

"Maybe it's just really slow," Sanji suggested and would be very happy and hopefully still alive at the end of the day if he was right.

"Who cares! Less talking, more rowing," Zoro hissed at them, because they had gotten Merry out of the stream, and right above them was an eye several times bigger than their ship.

The whale wailed again, and this close the sound tore through them all, their cries drowned out in the call of this mighty creature.

Unfortunately, Ruffy was not on the same page as the rest of her crew, and for once she was too angry to react to the lonely call of a big heart. She stomped out on the deck, cannonball in hand and tears in her eyes.

"Merry's head," she was saying, glaring at the eye of the whale. Then, before anyone could stop her, she threw the cannonball at the whale's eye crying; "YOU RUINED MY FAVOURITE SPOT!"

Zoro had been with Ruffy longer than any of the others, had seen her get her bony ass into one crazy situation after another, had called her an idiot almost every day since they'd met.

Now he wanted to kill her.

Usopp both loved and hated Ruffy's crazy side, even though he knew it would probably be the death of him one day. It was a thrill when they survived. Now they were doomed.

Sanji and Nami both just cried and choked on air because that had just happened. The whale was looking at them and Ruffy was picking a fight as if the creature wasn't the size of at least two mountains.

"Want to fight! Bring it!" Ruffy yelled at the whale.

"SHUT THE HELL UP!" Zoro and Usopp shouted, both with a high pitch to their voices as they jump-kicked Ruffy, anything to stop her from digging their graves even deeper.

It didn't change the fact she had dug their grave though, because the whale opened its mouth wide, the water flowing between teeth that were three times the size of Going Merry. Ruffy was knocked overboard, and while Zoro fumbled to catch her, he wasn't looking too closely as he was focused on the mouth closing around them again. To think their adventure would face such a sudden and instantaneous end.


Usopp had never had a problem wording his stories, the descriptions of his fantasies always flowing smoothly. His friends back in Syrup village rarely believed him, and they would never believe this particular story, he knew. But at the moment he wondered as much as his crewmates what had just happened. And what words to use to explain the experience.

"What do you make of this?" Sanji asked from the other side of Nami.

"What do I make of this?" Zoro asked back, his voice strangely stiff and slow. Not that Usopp could blame him. He had yet to find his own voice after all. Beside him Nami was just gaping at the sight of the bright blue sky, green water and the tiny islands with a house on the biggest one and a palm tree on the other, giving shade to a chair and a small table.

"Yes, what do you make of it?" Sanji repeated. "Because I could of sworn we were just swallowed up by a whale… are we dreaming?"

Zoro nodded slowly once, and then again more firmly. "Yes, this must be a dream."

Usopp was ready to happily write this off as a dream. It certainly made more sense than getting-swallowed-up-boat-and-all-by-an-unbelievably-humongous-whale-and-finding-another-world he thought had happened. Had they even entered Grand Line?

But then a squid –way smaller than the whale they may or may not have encountered, but certainly bigger than Going Merry– rose its head up in front of the ship, curious tentacles poking at Merry's hull.

Usopp and Nami reacted first, hastily jumping away from the monster with a shriek. Sanji and Zoro were a little slow, still trying to figure out if any of this was real or if they'd died without noticing.

But then the squid jerked, three harpoons penetrating its scull, and it sank back into the water with twitching tentacles.

"Seems there are people here," Zoro said from where he had frozen beside what used to be Merry's head.

"Let's hope they are people," Sanji countered.

"Should we open fire?" Usopp asked nervously, ready to do just that and blow this dream to the moon.

"This is madness. I want to go home," Nami whined beside him.

"No, wait," Zoro said, hand resting lightly on his katana.

The harpoons had come from the house, and out the door stepped…

"It's a flower!" Sanji cried in surprise.

"No, stupid! It's a human… I think," Zoro protested weakly. Because it had to be a human. And old guy with an interesting hairstyle, or a hat, that definitely made his head look like a flower. The old man gave them a hard look, then pulled the squid ashore and into his house. When he came back out he glared at the straw hats.

And sat down under the palm tree with a cup of tea and a newspaper.

"SAY SOMETHING!" Sanji cried in outrage, because he was having a shitty strange day already and this old fart wasn't helping!

The old man just kept looking strangely at them.

"You looking to fight? We do have a cannon you know!" Usopp yelled.

Sanji cast a quick look behind him to make sure Nami was still there and safe. She looked confused and nervous, but otherwise as beautiful as ever.

"If you open fire, blood will be spilled," the old man said ominously.

"Oh yeah?" Sanji challenged, tensing up for a fight. "And whose blood would that be?"

The old man turned a page in his newspaper and said; "Mine."

"BUT CRY ME A RIVER!"

Sanji was seconds away from jumping over to the old man and kicking his teeth out when Zoro suddenly pulled him back with a firm grip around Sanji's bicep.

"Calm down."

"He's just pulling my leg," the cook hissed, but let Zoro step in.

"Excuse us, gramps. You wouldn't mind telling us who you are and, well, where we are?"

The man glared at them again. "You want to know such things, but it's proper manners to introduce yourself before you ask who I am."

That was absolutely right, but Zoro felt he was stressed out already after everything else that had happened today and he was getting worried about Ruffy.

"Of course, my bad…" the swordsman started.

"My name is Crocus. Lighthouse keeper on the Twin Peak. 71 years old, Gemini, blood group B."

That's when Zoro's patience broke and he turned to his crewmates. "CAN I KILL HIM?!"

"There, there, keep a cool head," Usopp said and gingerly patted Zoro's back and holding Sanji back at the same time.

"And about where you are?" the old man continued. "You intrude in my private little resort and wonder where you are? Where do you think? Inside a the stomach of a rat?"

That answered one overhanging question.

"So… we really were swallowed by that whale," Usopp squawked and looked around at the blue sky, the clouds and the green water. "But this doesn't look like the inside of a stomach…" not that he actually did know what that looked like, but Usopp was pretty sure normal stomachs didn't have skies inside them. Or maybe the whale had swallowed a piece of the sky?!

"Wait! Hold on! This sea is stomach acids?!" Nami cried looking alarmingly blue in the face. "What's going to happen to us? I don't want to be digested! We have to get out somehow!"

Of course Nami had to go and make Usopp think about that too.

"There's an exit over there," the old man pointed out offhandedly.

The pirates turned as one, all with the same surprise. "There's an exit?!"

Usopp blinked, rubbed his eyes and looked again. It certainly was a gate off to their left, but before that was a whole new bunch of questions rising.

"Why does the whale has an exit in the stomach?" Usopp asked the most obvious one.

"And… how is it floating in the sky like that?" Nami asked, right before she started taking a closer look at the sky in question.

"It doesn't," Usopp realized, though even if he did see through the charade, he still couldn't really believe it. "Look closely. The clouds aren't moving; the sky is a painting! The entire inside of the whale's stomach has been painted into a sky!"

"Just a pastime," the old man said and turned the paper.

"WHAT ARE YOU EVEN DOING IN HERE!" Usopp howled, because the size of this space was enough for them to sail in and the painted sky gave it the illusion of being endless. It must have taken years to paint! He called it a pastime…

But Zoro was pulling Usopp back. "Leave the old guy. We have an exit and a captain that hopefully isn't dead by the time we get out of here."

It was … frustrating, Usopp decided. They had just entered the Grand Line, had been eaten by a whale that was so big Usopp couldn't even describe it, he was dying with curiosity about this mysterious man living on an island (something the whale must have mistaken for a snack…) and now he had to worry about Ruffy too! He hadn't even seen what became of her after he and Zoro kicked her for attracting the whale's attention…

She had so deserved that kick.


They had been waiting for a week for this opportunity. Finally last night the old man had entered the whale, and the pair had jumped at the chance, carefully climbing up the side of the whale as it rose to cry at reverse mountain. Both of them had felt like parasites, the way they climbed the whale's sides without its notice. On the other hand, the lighthouse keeper had built doors and hallways inside the whale, so if anyone was a parasite, it was the old guy.

"Are you prepared, Miss Wednesday?"

"I am, Mr 9."

The pair, one dressed in a suit and a brass crown on his head embedded with glass jewels and the other in high boots, shot shorts and a fur-lined coat over a tight shirt with a circled pattern, uncovered their guns, making sure the gunpowder was dry.

They took off down the corridor, heading for the stomach. They knew the lighthouse keeper was there, probably preparing to sedate the whale again because the hallway was moving. Holding tightly to their weapons and the walls, the duo made their way towards the whale's stomach.


Ruffy had somehow survived. She wasn't exactly sure how she'd survived, there was a bit of a blackout between the whale opening its mouth and Ruffy finding herself sitting on the whale's head, shaking from head to toe for a number of reasons.

"They were eaten…"

But… they weren't dead. Ruffy could feel it in her heart. Zoro, Usopp and Nami all still had beating hearts. The captain berated herself for being such a coward and not listen to Sanji's heart. Until the day she did there was no way for her to tell if Sanji was alive or not if they got separated like they were now. Right now though, she had to believe he was alive and with the others. Ruffy just had to get them out of the whale. Preferably before it dove under the waves like its movements told her it was just about to do.

Looking around herself in desperation, Ruffy's eyes caught on a glint of metal and looked again, because that was metal in the shape of a familiar square.

The whale started going under the waves.

Ruffy ran to what looked like a door, grabbed the handle, tore it open, jumped in and secured the door behind her.

Only then did she realize that it was indeed a door, and now she was inside a whale. She caught a quick look at her surroundings; a corridor of wood and metal, before the air suddenly vibrated with the whale's heartbeat, going straight through everything that was Ruffy.

You promised! I'm still waiting! Can't you hear me?! I'm waiting!


Crocus sighed as the acids around him started to act up right before the space shook violently.

"So he's at it again," he sighed, heart aching with grief and frustration because there was only so much he could do.

"What's happening?!" the children from the ship Laboon had swallowed cried out to him.

"The whale is bashing his head against the cliffs of Red Line," Crocus called back and took the rudder of the small boat he was on.

Since whales can't digest metal, Crocus had made two boats of iron and turned them into islands inside Laboon's stomach, to make sure he had access to him when the whale was underwater, banging his head against this wall that was never going to bend. This way Crocus could minimalize the damage Laboon did to himself.

But the boat wasn't moving very fast. Fearless of the acids in Laboon's stomach, Crocus jumped in and swam over to the gate where he had built a ladder up to a smaller door, leading to a room closer to the heart that held all the sedates and the giant needle.

"Stop hurting yourself, Laboon!" Crocus said, even though he knew his old friend couldn't hear him.

Taking account, the old man made a face as he prepared the needle. "I don't have a lot of sedative left. Need to make more."

He pressed the needle into the unprotected flesh, sending the medicine straight into the whale's blood, calming him within the minute.

Sighing again, Crocus returned to the stomach. He sensed he had more trouble waiting for him there.

In the meantime, the straw hat crew had been reunited with their captain in again the strangest way the girl could manage. Zoro, Usopp and Sanji had just gotten the oars out, the old man was still swimming towards the ladder beside the gate that was presumably their exit, when Ruffy and two other weird people burst through the small door at the top of the ladder.

Zoro reacted first, reaching out with the oar as far as he could in hopes of catching the girl before she fell into the acids. She latched onto the very tip of the oar, the force of her fall causing Zoro to strain every muscle in his back and arms to keep the oar straight and above acid level.

The cook quickly jumped in to help bring the girl aboard.

"Should we save the other two as well?" Usopp asked, looking over the railing where the two weird people had fallen in.

"Getting digested sounds like a horrible way to go," Nami said, but didn't move to aid them.

The strange duo however were seemingly very aware they hadn't landed in water, and both could swim. They went straight to Merry and cried for help.

"It's a lady! I'll fetch the ladder!" Sanji cried, apparently not at all eager to jump in to save her, Usopp thought as Ruffy landed groggily on the deck.

The sniper kneeled beside her. "Oi Ruffy. You okay? How'd you get here?"

Sanji returned in a flash and threw the ladder over the railing, almost forgetting to secure it. The two weirdos were quick to climb up, wiping their faces and shaking their hands and clothes shuddering all the while.

They were also carrying large bazookas.

"Who are you?" Nami asked pointedly.

The duo they had fished up glanced around, and upon seeing the flag they sat closer together.

"Mr 9, they are pirates," the woman breathed, but in such tight quarters as they currently were in, Ruffy was probably the only one who didn't catch that.

"I know Miss Wednesday, but they might be on our side," the male whispered back.

Nami narrowed her eyes in suspicion. She was anything but a fool, but she wasn't sure about the roles of each party here. In the middle was the whale who had been crying at Reverse Mountain and was banging its head against the Red Line in an aggressive expression of suffering. Then there was the old man who had first Nami assumed was here in order to cut that suffering short. But now here were another two players on the field, and those large bazookas said their intentions weren't friendly. Their false jewellery though said they were make-believe king and princess, so they might as well be a couple of clowns… unrelated to Buggy, Nami hoped.

"As long as I'm alive, you won't lay a single finger on Laboon!"

Everyone looked up. At the top of the ladder stood the old man, looking grim.

The pirates blinked, Ruffy groaned quietly, and the weird duo started cackling. They grabbed their bazookas and aimed into the painted sky a little off the platform where the old man Crocus stood.

"We're already inside the stomach!" the princess stated.

"And it'll be all too easy to…"

Ruffy suddenly wailed, the sound a copy of that of the whale, albeit lighter since she wasn't nearly as big, and it cut through everyone who heard. The duo who had been about to fire at the walls of the whale's stomach dropped their weapons and tried to cover their ears along with the rest of the Mugiwara crew.

"BLOODY SHIT! WE'RE INSIDE A BODY!" Zoro realized, or rather realized what that meant for Ruffy. The heartbeat of the whale must be echoing in here!

"What's going on?" Sanji demanded, torn between giving whatever protection or comfort he could give to Nami and the beautiful princess and running over to Ruffy.

"Ruffy! Are you trying to kill us?!" Usopp cried, because it felt like his very blood was hurting.

Nami was stumbling over to the rig, pulling Zoro along, glaring up at the old man by their exit. "Let us out!" she screamed desperately when Ruffy silenced, giving them a little leeway she doubted would last very long. "Ruffy's a devil fruit user! She can take in people's feelings and send them back! She can't control it!"

At Zoro's surprised look, the navigator just gave a helpless shrug and started to climb the rig to release the sails. She didn't know if that was actually correct, but it sounded good?

Ruffy's wailing started up again.

The gate opened into a waterway, but Usopp looked up and noticed the old man wasn't unaffected. The "king" was crying at them to get the wailing to stop.

The princess was on the deck, squirming like a worm with her mouth wide open as if she couldn't breathe. They really needed to get Ruffy out or…

Usopp hated himself, but when Ruffy next ran out of air, the teen rushed forward and kicked Ruffy in the temple as hard as he could.

She fell like a ragdoll and was quiet.

They were already entering the waterway, leaving the stomach behind. Usopp ran over to his captain, worried despite the fact he'd seen this girl trade blows with monsters like Arlong who was decidedly on a different planet from Usopp, strength wise.

Beside him, Sanji sighed. "Good thinking, even though I don't agree with your method."

Usopp however suddenly remembered the last time they had seen Ruffy unconscious, and grew pale.

"Don't panic when holding her!" Zoro hissed, coming back from helping Nami with the sails.

"I can't help it! You take her!"

Sanji watched, worried and confused, as the swordsman took their captain and pressed her tightly to his chest, sat down and took a long, deep breath as if calming himself.

"What's going on?"

"What Nami said," Usopp explained and pulled the cook with him so he could help manning the broken helm.

"Huh?"

"Basically," Usopp started, and felt the urge to lie to lighten the mood, but as a member of the crew, Sanji deserved to know. "Well, Ruffy fell unconscious once before, and she ended up panicking and biting Zoro pretty bad in the arm. She wouldn't say why it happened, at least not to Nami and I, but Zoro said something about night-terrors."

Sanji found a pair of brooms and used their shafts to stick into the openings on either side of the helm, creating a makeshift and barely functioning method of pulling the stump the way they needed.

"So she has really bad dreams?"

"Well, you saw the state of her heart, right? From what the rest of us shared, I seem to have been in a good place without so much blood, but I don't really want to see it again."

The cook pressed his lips into a thin line. "She hasn't listened to my heart yet."

"She hasn't? Why? She was so persistent with me."

Sanji fidgeted. "Because I'm a cook."

Surprisingly, understanding the issue made Usopp angry. "Oh, for the love of the sea! That girl is hopeless!"