The Girl from An Island of Wolves
Chapter 15:
End of the Road
On a typical sunny day on the Grand Line, it was calm. High winds made the sails full and the ship move fast. But other than constant blowing into ears and the splash of the ocean, things were quiet on the Going Merry. Usopp was up in the crow's nest with a telescope hovering in front of his eye, checking the horizon for anything out of the ordinary. Down below on the deck, Zoro was sitting with his back against the side and his hands resting on the back of his head as he napped with apparent snores. Nearby was Robin, who sat in a chair with a book in hand and a cold drink on the table next to her. Up on the Merry's prominent goat head, Luffy sat with legs crossed and a hand supporting the bottom of his chin. He was quite bored despite liberating Alabasta a couple days prior.
The rest of the crew was tucked away inside the Merry somewhere. Sanji was in the kitchen prepping a mid-afternoon snack for the crew, especially the ladies. Nami was below him in the map room, sketching lines on blank sheets of paper to help put together pieces of her world map. Chopper was in the boys' quarters mixing medicine together to resupply their stock. But he got done with it faster than he anticipated, so the cute little reindeer wearing a pink hat came out to the deck with the creak of the door opening and closing. Usopp looked down to see him climbing the ropes to join him. "You're done making medicine?" he questioned him.
"Yep! All done," he confirmed, climbing over the edge of the crow's nest and dropping in. "Now I have nothing else to do."
"Well, nothing much is going on up here, either," Usopp confessed, looking back through the telescope. "No marines, no islands…"
"After Alabasta, I'm fine with a long restful break."
Usopp checked the other side. "Oh, scratch that. I see a ship."
"Marines?" Chopper inquired, jumping up to look over the edge of the crow's nest. He held on with his hooves and then draped his front legs over to keep himself suspended.
"I don't think so." He adjusted the telescope so that it could see closer. The ship was moving away from them, so they were not in danger of an attack. The coloring of it also did not match the blues and turquoises of Navy ships. He spotted crossbones on the sails. "Pirates, but I don't recognize the insignia."
Down below, the door to the kitchen swung open so that Sanji could saunter out with two trays in hand. "Oh, Robin!" the blonde-haired cook sang out. "I made you a snack!" He quickly skipped down the stairs and made his way to the newest crewmate of the Straw Hat Pirates.
She looked up from her book with a smile. "Thank you," she said, her voice as luscious and smooth as silk.
Sanji's heart fluttered as his eyes sprouted hearts, and he settled one tray down on the table her drink was using. Then he skipped over to the door that Nami was on the other side of and greeted her the same way.
Usopp tried to get a closer look at the pirate insignia on the sails, but he was distracted by the crowd of bodies that were gathered on the deck. There were fists in the air, and what looked to be like a lot of yelling or cheering. He barely shifted his scope to see a plank bowing down with weight, and a person standing on the end.
"Are we too far away? Chopper questioned him.
"No…Hey, Chopper, how do you know when a someone is pregnant or just fat?"
"Huh? Why you ask?"
"Uh…no reason."
"Well, I guess if it was a someone like Nami or Robin, then it could be obvious that they're pregnant. But if they already have a bigger body mass, then it could be harder to tell."
"Hmm…"
"Do you see someone like that on the ship?"
"Kind of."
"Let me see!"
Usopp pulled the telescope from his eye and held it down to Chopper's level.
The little reindeer adjusted the positioning so he could peek through. He saw the ship, but Usopp did not have it pointed at the right place. "I can't see what you were seeing."
"Sorry." He pulled it back to his own eye to lock back on the scene, but the plank was empty. The water underneath, however, was freshly foaming. "Ah! Uh, guys! We have a bit of a problem!"
Luffy instantly shot up from his seat and stretched his arms to grab the crow's nest and slingshot himself to Usopp. "What problem?" he asked.
Usopp pointed to the ship in the distance. "I just watched someone go overboard!"
Zoro yawned from where he was and rubbed an eye. Sanji emerged from Nami's map room, where she followed him out. "Who cares? If it's pirates, it's not our problem."
"But it was a girl!" Usopp added.
"WHAT?!" Sanji bellowed, his entire demeanor changing instantly. He rushed to the side of the Merry to see where the other ship was. "Where?! When?!"
"Over there!" Usopp directed while pointing.
"Luffy! Throw me!" Sanji demanded, pulling his shoes off.
"You got it!" Luffy happily obliged, dropping down to the deck with a hand keeping his straw hat secure on top of his head. He was ready for something exciting to happen again. A rescue mission was right up his alley.
With Nami's help, Luffy was shown where to angle himself as he held on to the rail and stretched as far back as he could. Usopp kept using the telescope to see if the girl surfaced, but he never noticed a head bobbing among the waves. He had a bad feeling about this, especially as the ship sailed away so there was really no way to know where exactly Sanji had to swim to.
Sanji rested against Luffy's front and prepared for a short flight. Once Nami gave the go-ahead, Luffy lifted his feet and allowed his devil fruit powers to do their magic. Like a rubber band, Luffy thrust himself outside of the ship but did not let go, snapping back for Zoro to grab before he damaged the ship from brute force. By now, everyone was on standby.
Meanwhile, Sanji was airborne for a good two seconds before he hit the water and started tumbling. First it was his feet in the water, and then he flipped over completely so that his head was underwater, and back to his feet, over and over until he finally lost enough traction to be completely submerged. It was difficult for him to admit that he was dizzy, but he quickly lifted his head to the open air to see that he was a few feet away from the pirate ship.
Damn good throw, Luffy, he thought, excluding the ungraceful splashing along the way.
Diving under with a deep breath, Sanji kept his eye peeled for a submerged body. His powerful legs kicked as he went deeper for a search. Devil fruit users like Luffy just sank when they hit water. He did not know what he was dealing with, but he flipped over to look at the surface in case her body was floating instead. Covering a big area, he kept going. Surely he landed nearby at the very least? Regardless, he decided to go for a breath and then continue searching.
"He surfaced," Usopp updated.
"Alone?" Nami questioned, shielding her eyes from the bright sun reflecting against the ocean to try seeing for herself.
"Looks like it. I don't know where she could be!"
"Need me to try looking, too?" Zoro offered.
"Right, like you could find her and successfully bring her back to the Merry without getting lost yourself," Nami sarcastically commented.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Zoro angrily countered.
"He's back under," Usopp said, lowering the telescope.
Sanji all around him before going deeper. He did not want to give up, but he was unsure how long this would last. If the girl was drowning, then time was running out. But the moment he thought he saw something from the corner of his eye, he immediately turned and swam over. It was a dress. The frilly layers from underneath the skirt were floating and blocking out the sight of her body, but Sanji was confident it was what he was looking for. He pushed down the skirt layers until an unconscious girl came into view. No air bubbles exited her airways, indicating that she had already inhaled seawater. And her hair floated upward just like she had dropped into the water from above. That had to have been the reason why her dress was disheveled; the skirt was thrust upwards as she submerged, possibly preventing her from finding her way back to the surface.
He wrapped both arms around her and kicked his legs with as much force as he could muster. As soon as they surfaced, Sanji waved a hand in the air and tried to clear the girl's airways. Her head slumped on his shoulder. There was no sign of life.
"He got her!" Usopp announced, pointing at where they both were.
"I got them," Luffy confidently declared, grabbing the railing one more time and pulling himself back.
Nami followed him. "One hand to grab them," she reminded him.
"Oh, right." He quickly let one hand go so it could snap back to him, and then he launched himself again. Sanji saw him coming and held the girl as tight as he could with a hand reaching out. But Luffy's free hand stretched with the force exerted, so he wrapped his arm around them both a few times before his rubber body could start recoiling back to its original shape.
"Get ready," Nami warned Zoro and Chopper, who were bracing for an impact.
"Ugh, they're heavy!" Luffy complained, feeling more drag in the water than he was expecting.
Robin summoned many pairs of hands on the side of the Merry. Sanji saw it coming, so he slipped them both out from Luffy's hold at the right time so that they would not violently hit. Instead, Zoro and Chopper took the brunt of Luffy's impact as his body snapped back to normal. Sanji shifted the girl so that Robin's sprouted hands could carry her to the deck. They all passed her up without an issue, leaving water trickling down from her waterlogged garments.
Robin's hands carried the girl all the way over the railing and left her laying on her back. Chopper was the first one at her side, shrinking back to his normal size and pressing his ear to her chest to listen for a heartbeat or breathing. Luffy adjusted his straw hat and took a look at who exactly he reeled in. The first thing he noticed was how distended her abdomen was. "Whoa! No wonder she was heavy. Look at how much lunch she ate!" he pointed out.
"That's not from food," Zoro rebuffed, coming around to join everyone else in surrounding her. "She's pregnant."
Sanji came over the side of the Merry, too, thanks to Robin's hands. He quickly came between Nami and Usopp to see that the girl he helped rescue was in fact very pregnant. He could not believe that he never noticed even when he embraced her. Usopp looked with extreme guilt. He had a feeling that his eyes were not deceiving him through the telescope, but he did not trust himself in the moment. Now two lives were in danger because he was too late in calling for action.
Chopper lifted his head. "There's nothing," he worriedly shared. Then he grew back up to a bigger size and stacked his palms against the center of her chest to begin chest compressions. It was hard to watch, and a tension formed around all of the Straw Hats. They could rescue an entire country from the rule of a warlord, but they could not rescue an expectant mother from drowning.
Usopp's fists tightly balled up. Why now? This pitiful girl was due to give birth any time, and they make her walk the plank now? Something was very fishy about this. It was like a classic case of dirty pirates discarding certain evidence.
Sanji could feel his anger growing as he studied every detail he could about her. Brown hair with olive skin. No, there was also white hair, and pale patches of flesh on her forehead and on the right side of her collar bone. And her face was slightly round with prominent cheekbones. If she was beautiful in this state, he could not imagine how much her beauty compared when she was awake.
Chopper paused in his chest compressions to check for a pulse, but when he still came up empty, he started doing more with extra vigor. Pumping deeper into her chest cavity, he felt oddly calm. "Come on," he encouraged.
Still nothing.
Nami respired shakily. This was scary. But she trusted that Chopper could bring her back.
Then, the girl suddenly coughed. Chopper immediately rolled her onto her side so she could clear the seawater from her lungs. A collective sigh of relief passed through the crew when they knew the worst was behind them.
Instead of relaxing, Aurilee pushed her upper body off the floor to sit up. Chopper shrunk back down and ran in front of her to get her attention. "Hey! You've been through a lot. Just lay down for a second," he tried to tell her. But she was not even looking at him. Her brown and green eyes were locked on the giant crossbones painted on the sail with a straw hat as the defining feature. Absolute dread filled her gut when she realized that her nightmare was just going to continue.
Everyone's heart sank when she began to weep. "I wanted to die. Why didn't you let me die?"