My sister officially dislikes me for writing this chapter... Heh, isn't that great:D Anyway, on with the chapter...
Please overlook any possible words crammed together, I am not the one creating them, and when I try to fix them in QuickEdit, it just adds new ones in different places...
Darkness, darkness, darkness. Everywhere he looked, he was met by impenetrable darkness. Even if he had known a single thing about how to determine directions, he wouldn't have known if he was running south or north or even up or down. But he could feel that there was something ahead of him, so he kept going forward. Images of his nakama flashed before his eyes as the gnawing feeling inside him began to make itself known again, this time even more painful than before. The images were mirrored in the black air around him and made the throbbing pain in his chest even worse.
Zoro. Nami. Usopp. Sanji. Vivi. Carue. Chopper. They were all there somewhere in the dark, and he would find them, no matter what. That cloaked man was just lying. No one was dead, because that just wasn't true. Okay, so he had seen Zoro die, but where was his body? And why hadn't he been able to stop it from happening? Just like with Nami and the cannon… It was really mysterious, and he just couldn't get a grip of anything, no matter how much he tried.
He was so occupied with doing several things at the same time - thinking of his nakama while trying to figure out why things were so mysterious all of a sudden and of course running - that he didn't even notice when the darkness faded and was replaced with a path in a forest at the crack of dawn.
It wasn't until he - for the second time in a very short while - slammed head-first into something hard that he began to notice the change in the scenery. Luckily, it wasn't a concrete wall this time, but the trunk of a large tree. However, this hardly made the impact between his head and the trunk of that tree any more welcome.
Stumbling back from the tree, Luffy sat down on the ground while rubbing his lightly reddened forehead. Whining to himself, he wondered why so many things just seemed to jump out right in front of him when he was in a hurry and least expected it. Of course, he wasn't hurt, but he didn't really feel like running into a tree when all he really wanted was to find his nakama.
"Stupid tree…" he muttered, kicking the tree as he got up, just to make sure it wouldn't do that again.
He was brushing some dust off his jeans when he heard something that sounded like a war cry coming from far away. He straightened up and looked in the direction of the sound. What could have made a sound like that?
Just as he thought that he should go and check out the mystery noise, he heard another sound coming from the opposite direction, headed straight towards him. It sounded like someone was running in his direction, and when Luffy turned around towards this new noise, he could clearly see a figure running through the mists that were still creeping over the ground in the pale morning light.
"Damn it, damn it, damn it!" he heard the person say out loud as he came closer. "How could I be so stupid? I came up with that great plan, and then I choose the wrong slope! I have to stop them before they reach the village!"
Recognizing the voice, Luffy managed to grin and felt so much lighter all of a sudden. He had found one of his nakama!
"Yo, Usopp!" he called out, lifting one hand in greeting. "Have you seen--?"
He was cut off when Usopp didn't slow down and instead ran straight through Luffy as if he wasn't even there. It didn't hurt a bit to have someone run straight through his body, all he felt was a tingly feeling all over him, which soon faded. Luffy blinked and turned around to look after his marksman. That feeling of outmost terror and desperation that had come over him… Had he actually felt what Usopp had been feeling when they collided? He could feel a burning sensation behind his eyelids, but he didn't even blink. The tears that threatened to spill over his cheeks weren't his, and neither was the frustration that caused them. But what could make Usopp feel like that? Luffy knew that he just had to find out.
"Usopp! Wait!" he called out and started running after his marksman.
Damn, he was fast; Luffy couldn't even see him anymore on the winding forest path. But he could feel that Usopp was up ahead of him, and with that showing him the way to go like a beacon in the night, he wouldn't get lost even in the unfamiliar forest.
He had only been running for a short while when he suddenly emerged from the forest and came out on top of a cliff, from which he could see a landing-slope and the large pirate ship that was at anchor there.
The most eye-catching thing about the ship, except for its very size and the large crew that was climbing down its side to the beach below, was the large, black cat-shaped figurehead. Just looking at it made Luffy feel angry. It made him remember the sound of screams and steel scratching against stone, and the thick smell of blood.
"-- and I have a hundred million men behind me, awaiting my signal to attack!"
Luffy walked over to the edge of the cliff and looked down. To his right, at the top of the slope, stood Usopp with his slingshot aimed at the vast amount of pirates who were still emerging from the depths of the ship.
"What a stupid lie," laughed one of the pirates and pointed at Usopp with his sword as he was accompanied by the rest of the crew. "Who does he think he's kidding?"
But in front of the pirates, a tall, weird-looking man in a long, navy blue coat stopped in his tracks, looking completely baffled.
"A-- a hundred million--!" he stammered while looking stupidly at Usopp through a pair of heart-shaped glasses, his mouth gaping. Actually, Luffy couldn't see the glasses from the distance, but it made sense to picture them as heart-shaped.
"Captain, you don't believe him, do you?" asked another pirate. "He's just trying to fool you."
"Shit! They saw through it!" Usopp hissed, panic clearly heard in his voice.
"What!" yelled the weird man furiously, sticking his hand into the pocket of his coat. "You tried to fool me, did you? That was a rotten trick! …Now look at this ring…"
He pulled up a strange ring attached to a piece of string from his pocket and held it up in front of him. Then he let it dangle from side to side while he spoke with a slow, steady rhythm.
"On 'one, two, Jango', you will stand aside and let us pass without question. One… Two…"
Luffy leaned forward to see better from where he was standing. Just then, as if someone had put their cold hands over his eyes in a game of 'Guess who?' everything went dark, and he could hear a voice right next to his ear.
"Don't worry, you won't miss a thing. We just don't want you to be hypnotized as well, now do we?"
"Jango!"
The darkness that had fallen over Luffy's eyes faded and he blinked in the light of dawn before he turned back towards the pirates below. At the top of the slope, Usopp had dropped his slingshot onto the ground and was moving away as if to make way for the pirates. He didn't seem to be aware of what he was doing, but at the same time, no one seemed to be forcing him to do it either.
A few annoyed sighs and groans made Luffy turn his head in the other direction. The pirates had turned towards the weird man in the blue coat, who was now mimicking Usopp's actions.
"The captain hypnotized himself again…" muttered a few of the pirates.
"Captain, will you stop letting yourself pass? We have to hurry, remember?" said one of the pirates who stood right next to the so-called captain.
Shaking his head in annoyance, Luffy turned his eyes back to his marksman, who was still standing at the top of the slope, now with his arm held out to the side, as if to let someone pass without arguing.
What the hell are you doing, Usopp! Luffy thought angrily, his nails digging into the palms of his hands when he clenched his fists.
"Usopp!" he called out, not caring if anyone heard him. "Do you hear me? Stop that,damn it"
He could hear the man in the white cloak laughing behind him, but didn't turn around. Below him, the pirates had begun walking up the slope, and Usopp still wouldn't respond.
"You're wasting your time," said the man in the cloak amusedly. Luffy could swear that the stranger's voice sounded more and more cheerful each time he heard it. "Don't you see that your weak, pathetic excuse for a gunner can't even protect his own village, let alone himself, without you being here to save the day?"
"He's stronger than you," Luffy hissed, still staring at Usopp and was at the same time subconsciously trying to mentally persuade him to stop fooling around. "He wouldn't be my nakama if he wasn't strong."
"Is that so?" The other man's voice was hearty, but at the same time, it reminded Luffy of a snake slithering around its prey, aiming to strike. He decided to ignore the smug bastard as much as he could. He had no time to waste on that man, anyway.
Suddenly, he heard a voice above the roar from the pirates.
"Must let them pass… no, what the heck is wrong with me… but I must-- The pirates will kill everyone - Kaya, the kids, every last one - they must pass… no, I must stop them… but first I have to let them go…"
"No!" Luffy called out before he could stop himself. "Don't do it Usopp! If you let them go, I'll--!"
The cloaked man laughed again.
"Why don't you just try to stop them yourself? Clearly, he's not going to do anything," he said amusedly.
"No, he can do it," Luffy said in a whisper, his eyes narrowed to thin slits as he still stared at his gunner. "He can fight without me. You'll see. It's not over yet."
"Where do you get the energy to be so confident?" the other sighed, but Luffy ignored him.
Just then, one of the pirates accidentally ran into Usopp, pushing him to the side and onto the ground. Luffy watched silently as his marksman stirred and sat up while shaking his head. Usopp looked around confusedly until he spotted the pirates passing him by on their way towards the village.
"Wait!" he cried out, throwing himself at the nearest pirate. "You're not going to hurt anyone, I won't allow it!"
The pirate, whose leg Usopp had attached himself to, gave up an annoyed grunt and aimed a hard kick at Usopp's ribs with his free foot.
"Let go of me, you little punk!" he growled and kicked Usopp again. "What's wrong with you? You wanna die so badly?"
Usopp coughed in pain, but didn't let go of the pirate.
"No," he said breathlessly. "I don't. But you're not going to destroy my village as long as I'm alive!"
Another hard kick, this time right in the face, made Usopp finally let go of the pirate's leg. He rolled over to the side, his left arm - which was already covered in dried blood from what appeared to be a pretty recent injury - wrapped around his chest. Groaning, he reached up to wipe his bleeding nose before placing his hands firmly against the ground.
"You're not done with me yet!" he yelled, slowly getting up from the ground. Tears were now streaming from his eyes, and Luffy felt his heart twist painfully around itself. He wanted to run down and help, but just like he could feel the cloaked man's gaze locked on the back of his head, he found that he couldn't move a muscle.
"Get back here!" Usopp continued to yell, stumbling a little as he took a step forward with his slingshot now back in his hand. "I said that you're not done with me yet! I'll show you what happens if you ignore the great Captain Usopp-sama!"
He lifted his slingshot and pulled up something from his pocket in one fluid movement.
"Surekill!" he cried out, desperation and fear heard in each syllable. "Lead Sta--!"
The explosion-like sound of a gunshot rang out over the ocean, like the final tone of a battle hymn, and Usopp was cut off as his head was thrown violently to the side, the spatter of blood hitting the ground long before his body even lost its balance. He fell to the ground without a sound, his slingshot landing with a dull clatter in the dust in front of him. A pool of his own blood started to form around him as the pirates spat at him and continued up the slope as if nothing had happened.
Before the echo of the gunshot had faded into the distance (perhaps headed to the Grand Line, to let the heart of a certain sharpshooter know the truth of his son's fate), Luffy dashed forward, a roar of fury and despair escaping his throat. He wasn't going to let another of his nakama die in front of his eyes, just because of that mysterious guy in the cloak!
"Usopp!"
He ran through the last pirates who were climbing the slope, while unfamiliar, horrible thoughts and feelings that didn't belong to him were flooding his brain. Thoughts of murder, of pointless violence and fear of a shadow in black moving quicker than the eye could see, everything jumbled up in one large buzzing in Luffy's head as he stopped next to his fallen nakama.
Kneeling by his marksman, Luffy grit his teeth. He didn't know exactly how to check if someone was dead or not, but he was pretty sure that being alive involved breathing, which was something Usopp currently… wasn't doing. Luffy's eyes darted from side to side, not sure where he should turn to look.
"Come on, Usopp," he said, his fingers clawing at the frayed ends of his denim shorts. "Stop fooling around. It's not funny, Zoro did it too, and I don't think it's funny at all."
He tried to grab Usopp by the shoulders and shake him, but his hands sank right through the boy's body. Pulling back his hands, he looked down at his marksman with a horrified look on his face. An icy cold feeling raced through him and buried itself in his stomach as he realized that where he previously would have been able to feel what Usopp was feeling, he didn't feel anything at all.
"Ironic, isn't it?" said the cheerful voice Luffy now was beginning to hate with a passion. "Taken down by a lead bullet, just like that. But I suppose that's the way any gunner is destined to go, sooner or later."
At first, Luffy didn't reply. He was looking down at Usopp, still refusing to take in the image of his marksman lying there on the ground with his bloodstained face frozen in an expression of outmost surprise, his open eyes glazed and soulless, and the last of his tears still trickling down his cheeks. But when the information finally forced the walls he had put up around his mind, he rose to his feet and turned to face the man in the cloak.
"Take that back," he demanded. "Take everything back."
"Take what back? I'm just speaking my mind here."
Luffy shook his head, a vein throbbing in his temple. It was a long time since he had felt this angry, at least as far as he could remember. Usopp and Zoro were dead, Nami had disappeared, and Luffy still didn't know where the rest of his nakama were.
"No, you're going to take everything you've done to my nakama back!" he growled. "You did this, and I know it! You did this, and you did all of those things to Zoro and Nami, too, so take it back!"
"I haven't done a thing, as you very well have seen with your own eyes," said the other man coldly, not a single trace of his previous cheerfulness remaining in his voice. "I'm just here to show you the truth, so deal with it."
"The truth?" Luffy repeated, his voice still carrying an edge of rage. But the man in the cloak simply looked at him from within the shadows of his hood, and before he could reach out for Usopp's body, darkness once again blinded Luffy completely.
He actually died in this chapter... Not like in "The Liars" where he simply refused to die. But then again, there was really no other outcome in this situation. There's no way Kuro would have let Usopp live, even if the pirates hadn't killed him there on the beach... Now, I'm facing some problems with the next chapter. We'll see what happens in that when I finally get around to write it.
em182 - Yeah, the guy in the white cloak sure seems like he's up to no good. I really should have written more about the villagers in Cocoyashi, but then I figured that Luffy really wouldn't relate to them that much, and so it wouldn't add that much to his agony. You're very welcome, and I hope you had a great birthday.
Eiram-Chaosgodess - Yeah, but torturing Luffy is fun! I've been drawing so many happy pictures with him, that I felt the need to really torment him for a while... Good thing he has you to cheer him up a bit, ne?
TreeStar - Yeah, Zoro's dead and Usopp as well... as far as we know, anyway, that guy in the cloak seems to have something up his sleeve, doesn't he? -shifty eyes-
Thanks for recommending my story to your friends, the more readers, the more happiness for Kame :D I have to disagree with you on one point about Nami, though. I don't think she was committing suicide before she finallyasked Luffy to help her. I believe that she was just so angry with Arlong and what he had done, and in such emotional pain, that she just wanted to destroy anything that had to do with Arlong - and the closest thing to her was her tattoo, which she never wantedfrom the start. And the only reason to why she did that to begin with was because Arlong stole themoney she was going to use to buy the island from him. Luffy and the others made it possible for Nami to come over a lot of treasure during the short period they were sailing together, and if she hadn't met them, she would still have quitea lotof money to collect. Because of that, Arlong wouldn't have the reason to steal her money just yet, and Nami and the villagers would continue to fight for their own survival.
Digitaldreamer - -gets band-aid for your heart- Just in case it breaks again...
I'm glad you found the time to read my chapters, both the ones in 'The seventh guest' and in this one. I was reading the first volumes of the manga, and I began thinking of what would have happened if Luffy never met his nakama. At first, I simply assumed that they would have all died, but then I started thinking harder about it, and came to the conclusion that not everyone would die. Of course, there could have been the situation where Buggy actually managed to kill Nami because she stole the map of the Grand Line from him, but I thought that Luffy would be able to remember Arlong better because of what he put Nami through, so I made her survive.
I'm actually glad that so many seem to dislike theguyin the cloak. I kind of like him myself, just because he seems to enjoy tormenting others like he is tormenting Luffy. It would be hard to write about him if I didn't like him, I guess... Anyway, we'll see when the next chapter comes up, I'm having problems figuring out what's going to happen next...