Golden-Fire-Godess: It dosen't have a name, but if you have one in mind, go ahead and tell me so I can make it official. :)
I'm glad Zoro and Sanji's begining dialoge came across the way it did!
Sorry this was so late-I had to watch Zathura and get ready for my birthday on the 25th (hint hint) and so on... Anyway, here it is!
Continued...
In Which Usopp Makes a Discovery
Luffy just didn't like it. That's all there was to it. He was hungry. His nakama were still missing. He was hungry. He was uncomfortable. And he wanted to eat meat.
He didn't like it. So it had to stop. And stop it did. But...
It wasn't him who stopped it. He couldn't. He was being dunked in water- but that wouldn't stop him. So what would? Sea water. Darn ocean. He didn't care that he was cursed all that much, but the ocean didn't like him anymore. So it stopped him from stopping it. So somebody else did. Who, though? One of his nakama. How did he figure it out? He didn't. He just knew.
One shot- a crack in the ice. Two shots- water poured out onto the floor in a minerature waterfall. Three shots- more waterfalls. One last shot- the sharp sound of ice breacking, collapsing, sliding; water gushed out in one last burst, leaving Luffy hanging by wires, dripping freezing salt water.
Anoying people- marines- dressed in white coats, had put him in the water, jabbing needles into his shoulders and back. He was sure of that part, because that's what made him wake up. He had started fighting again, but, stupid anoying marine people, they wouldn't let him move. That never stopped him before, but before it had always been from outside of him. This time, it was his own body that was betraying him, and then he had been dunked into the water, like a half-eaten donut. Even worse, it was closed with ice. It was to cold to do anything, even if everything else hadn't been stopping him.
He tried anyway. He always did. Even if it was impossible, he always tried. Maybe that's why everyone called him stupid, and crazy, and foolish and stuff like that. He never paid any attention to people like that, so it didn't really do any good. In his opinion, it was people like that who never really got the point of anything.
But then there were people like his nakama. They called him crazy, too, but they quite understood that if he was crazy, so were they. That's what nakama do. If he's crazy, they all are, to follow him. That was the fun part!
"Luffy- Hey Luffy, you alright up there?"
The captain's eyes snapped open at the sound of one of his crewmate's voices. Even though he was still very weak and cold and uncomfortable, not to mention in pain, he cracked a slow, wide grin.
"Hey. Could you get me down? I'm kind of stuck." The grin never wavering, he made a small gesture with his head to the wires protruding from his skin that held him suspended in the air. His voice, even to his own ears, sounded far too quiet and chilling, like someone on the verge of total malicious insanity.
"... Sure, of course." There was only a brief pause before a pachinko star whizzed through the air and hit one of the wires, burning it to cinders. Five more shots, five more destroyed wires, and the rest of them snapped under the weight of the boy. He plumeted limply into the arms of his sharpshooter.
"You wouldn't happen to have any meat, now wouldja?" Than inane grin again, the raven-haired head tilted up to look at his face with imploring eyes.
"Sorry Luffy, I couldn't get any. Can you stand up?"
"Nah. You can just drag me if you want, so you don't have to carry me."
"I ain't gonna drag ya..." Usopp replied, in an of-course-not voice. I had been a long time since Luffy had heard someone use that voice. He closed his eyes.
"Hey Luffy, do you know where the others are?"
"Down." The unhesitating answer with only a blunt word should have startled Usopp, but for some reason it didn't.
He stomped one foot on the floor and instantly regreted it. The broken ice on the floor was still cold enough to keep shape, and was still jagged. He inhaled sharply to keep from yelling.
"How do we get to them?"
"Go down, silly."
Usopp sighed. "Maybe we should get those needles out of you first. So you can get better sooner. We'll need you, you know."
"Yeah. I know. Can you do it, Usopp?"
"Yeah, sure." He set Luffy down on a dry spot on the floor, so the captain was on his side, his back facing Usopp.
"This is going to hurt." Luffy didn't reply.
The needles weren't your average sewing needles, oh no, they wide enough to wrap around two of your fingers, maybe more. Streams of blood were already dripping down his back and forming puddles on the floor, his moving around causing the needles to become wiggled loose.
Usopp took two seconds to mentaly prepare himself before closing his fingers around the first of the monstrosities and pulled. It came out none too smoothly, and his captain's blood spurted out onto his hands. Usopp could see him shiver in pain and curl up slightly, tucking his knees into his body.
Usopp was no doctor, but he could tell that it wasn't really as bad as it could've been. The marines had at least taken his shirt off before jabbing him, so no cloth had gotten stuck into him. And, no needles had been stuck into his spine, that was definitly good.
---
A few bloodier-than-usual minuets later Luffy was needle free, and wrapped in Usopp's sash under his retrieved shirt. He had to be carried piggy-back because anything else Usopp couldn't manage while trying to be quick.
There were almost no marines around, which was the scary part. Usopp had no trouble at all getting to where they had been keeping Luffy, and that in itself was troubling.
This whole place was kooky. The lights were old fashioned fire torches. The halls were cement and almost circular, and there were no stairs, but sometimes the floor curved up or downwards. There were no marines. There were no doors to outside. There were no other rooms that actualy had much in them. Usopp found himself running in circles half the time.
He didn't really know what he was looking for, either. A stairway? An elevator? A map, saying 'You Are Here'? He tried to ask Luffy if he knew anything besides 'Go down, silly', but the poor kid had conked out and Usopp thought it best just to let him sleep and recover.
He tried calling for his crewmates, just because everything else wasn't working.
"Zoro! Sanji! Nami!" He went down to the part of the halls were the floor seemed to go lowest down and called again, at the top of his lungs.
"NAMI! ZORO! SANJI! NAMI! ZORO! SANJI!"
He paused, out of breath, and running quickly out of hope.
'... stop... my name...'
What? Was that... Could it be? It was them! He was sure of it!
"Guys!" he called, franticly searching for something, anything that would let him get to them.
He did find something- a metal handle in the floor. With all the strength he had left, he wrenched it up and whatever was attached to it out of the ground. A huge cement cube popped up and landed on the floor with a teeth-rattling boom. Looking down into the square hole that was left, Usopp saw an identical metal handle.
Okay. This was going to be hard. But, it was the only way to his nakama, so.
---
Nine cement blocks later, Usopp was starting to give up. He had used up all of his tiny bit of remaining energy three blocks back, and he was still going with no sign of the tunnel stopping.
In order to actualy reach the blocks to pull them out of the vertical tunnel, he had set up a pulley system from what supplies he could find. It had gotten so dark down the tunnel that he couldn't even see the handles anymore, and just guessed where they were.
He sat on the ground, panting, his eyes closed.
He couldn't go anymore. His arms were useless. He'll never reach the end of that darn tunnel, and he and Luffy would just die right here, along with the others.
Okay. Something about that just wasn't right. His captain would die here? His crewmates would die? Just because he was too weak to lift up a block? That was not right at all! Escpecially not the Strawhat Pirates! Even if they WOULD die in a dumb place like this, it would NOT be because of him!
Everyone was counting on him, he couldn't just roll over and DIE, like someone abducted by dinosaur people from the lost underwater city of Gersant! Heck, not even dinosaur people would make him abandon his nakama!
That's it. That tenth block was getting a piece of his mind.
The hook on the end of the rope was already locked onto the handle, so Usopp grabbed hold of the rope, and YANKED as hard as- no, harder than he could. The cement block, exactly two feet across, two feet wide, and one foot deep, just plain flew out of the tunnel, and kept going through the air, until in slammed into the ground a yard away.
Maybe... Maybe this is what Nami meant, that night on the ship. He never would have belived that he was able to do this, if he was completely sane. But here he was, wasn't he, lifting things that weighed more than he had ever lifted in his life, when he didn't even have enough strength left to lift a stick.
Doing insane things is good, isn't it? It's better than being normal. But in order to do insane things, you kind of need to be insane yourself, don't you?
Usopp looked back at his captain, sitting unconsious against the wall. Luffy was already crazy, that was for sure. He remembered back on the Baratie, when they had first learned about the Grand Line and still decided to go anyway. Maybe he had already been crazy, for following such a captain. Now he only knew it.
And as crazy as the Grand Line would surely turn out to be, it was like Neverland. Maybe he, and the others, were following a Peter Pan in a straw hat.
'Well,' thought Usopp as he stared down the now open-ended dark tunnel. 'It's about time we're off to Neverland.'
He jumped through the opening, one hand sliding down the rope.
To Be Continued
If you haven't already guessed, the phrase "off to neverland" occurs some where near the end of each chapter. Poor Luffy. Bloodloss is rarely a happy thing.