-ONE WEEK PRIOR-
"The Thousand Sunny is directly beneath us, Captain."
"Excellent," drawled Shiki at the report from one of his navigators, turning his gaze to the screen. "Feh. A bunch of rookies from the East Blue, of all places, becoming the most infamous crew in the world? The Navy has definitely gone to the dogs." A malevolent grin spread over his face. "But all of that's about to change. It's time—hmm?"
Shiki frowned at the image of Straw Hat Luffy on the viewscreen, which was eagerly waving up at him. For a moment, he considered this sight, and then with a flick of his wrist lowered the island ship enough that he was within the range of their snail. It was only just that he, of all pirates, give condemned men a final meal before their execution, no?
"Yeeesss?" he drawled.
"A cyclone is coming. Turn your ship ninety degrees to port," a female voice ordered.
Shiki blinked in surprise, then turned his gaze down to the navigation pit below him. "Navigator?" he asked.
"No, sir, our readings detect no such thing," one researcher said apologetically.
"The readings on the barometer are normal as well," another said, donning a smug expression. "I'm afraid their navigator is grossly mistaken."
"You actually think that's even possible?" a lazy yet threatening voice grunted in response. "You morons don't have a witch reading the air. But hey, if you want to die, we won't stop you. Have fun with that."
"Sir, they're turning their ship to nine o'clock!" another of the meteorologists called out.
"A-AND I SEE WHY! SIR, WE'VE GOT INCOMING!" one of the soldiers on deck cried out in terror.
"IT'S COMING IN FAST!"
Shiki turned his eyes to the front of his ship, and he gaped in surprise. "A beehive wig?!"
"THAT'S A WATERSPOUT!" Dr. Indigo snapped, slapping his captain upside the head.
-o-
"They've gone out of my range," Soundbite informed us, his gaze on the floating island-battleship above us.
"But they are turning to follow us, so at least they're not that stupid," Nami sighed in relief.
"I'd hope not, especially considering what they're sailing on!" Merry called down as she wrestled with Sunny's helm.
Usopp's reaction to that little tidbit was fairly representative. "Wait, that thing's actually a ship!?" he yelped in shock.
"Oh, yeah, nothing like Thriller Bark!" Merry confirmed. "The core might have once been an island, but it's all ship now. And she is old, proud, and powerful. Really, really powerful." Then she winced. "And really loud, too. She really likes being in charge and making sure everyone knows it, apparently."
I frowned thoughtfully while I wrestled with a particularly stubborn line. "And… does that tell you anything about who's running it?"
Merry tilted her head to the side with an uncertain frown. "Mmrgh… maybe, maybe not… A ship's attitude speaks to itself, its builder and its original crew, with influences from all who come after, but…" She shook her head remorsefully. "Sorry, she's too far to ask, and even then, somebody as grand and proud as that won't consider talking to a caravel or a barque like Big Bro. That's all I got."
"So, be wary if they don't just fly off," Sanji summarized, snorting derisively. "Which, considering the last guy we met who had a flying ship, is pretty obvious."
"That's for later if we don't sink to the damn ocean floor! For now, cyclone at 3 o'clock!" Nami roared at us over the now-howling winds.
"CYCLONE AT 3, AYE!" Merry barked in response, hastily yanking the wheel. "SOMEONE GET AHOLD OF THE MAINSAIL, WOULD YOU!?"
"I'LL GET RIGHT—ARGH!—ON IT!" I yelped, grabbing the line in question. Said line immediately tried to tug me off my feet, and I threw a pleading look around. "COULD I GET SOME HELP HERE?" Then, my gaze sharpened as I realized a very important discrepancy. "AND WHERE THE HELL'S PERONA!?"
"With you in spirit~," her astral form sang as it floated past, upside down without a care in the world, tongue stuck out in a way that would have been cute if I wasn't fighting for my life at the moment. "Isn't that enough?"
"I would prefer to have you in BODY!" The last word was emphasized both on account of my spiking temper and the pulley that suddenly tore itself free that I had to duck…
THWACK!
"AGH!"
Though Mikey was less lucky. Still, better a Dugong overboard than a man or hammer.
"And what good would that do, exactly?" Perona asked, half her attention on her fingernails. "My seafaring amounts to the unnatural calm of the Florian Triangle and the rigging and sails of Thriller Bark, and I never handled that. You can rage at me all you want, but if I actually tried to help you, I'd just be getting in the way. So of course you forgive me, riiight?" She capped it all off with a bat of her eyelashes.
"Does this answer your question?" I snarled, working a hand free to shot her a specific gesture. The quarrel might have gone on longer had Nami's voice not cracked through.
"Cross, less argument, more movement! And Perona!" She swung around and snarled, paralyzing the smirking spectre. "If you don't have anything good to do while we're in a storm like this, stay out of the way!"
Perona huffed, but returned to silently floating above our heads, while I returned to manning the line, Mikey giving me a hand—er, flipper with it once he got back.
Despite how routine it had become for our crew to go to war against the elements of the Grand Line, combating the ocean's spontaneous meteorological blitz never became any less demanding; lesser crews would have sunk within moments, and I suspect that even some of the more experienced pros in the ocean would have had trouble.
But with the combined might of our camaraderie and Nami's nigh-upon divine instinct for all things meteorological, we managed to pull through.
Once the storm passed, we were all left exhausted and sprawled bonelessly across the deck. But we were alive, and that was what mattered. Though there was something else…
Namely, the island still hanging impossibly high above our heads. "They're still not coming back down?" Luffy said, his head tilted in confusion.
"Maybe they realized Soundbite was down here and didn't want anything to do with him," Usopp snidely suggested.
"LICK MY SLIMY ASS!"
"That's… actually probably not that far off," Conis pointed out.
Slowly, Soundbite turned his eyestalks on her, visibly twitching. "Et tu, boom babe?!"
"Well, you do have an incredibly large range for eavesdropping," the Skypiean hastily explained. "And while we might be used to it and others ignore it, maybe whoever's up there just appreciates their privacy?"
"Privacy, SHMIVA—eh? UH-OH, MAN—! OVER… uh…" Soundbite's exclamation trailed off into a shocked gurgle. "C-CORRECTION! INCOMING!"
All eyes turned upward, and then the majority of our jaws fell in the opposite direction. There was indeed a man coming down, but it looked far too controlled to be free-fall.
"He's flying?!" Luffy exclaimed.
"Devil Fruit," several people said, though that didn't diminish the shock or awe.
As the man came closer, his form became clearer, and he was one of the more eccentric characters we'd met on the Grand Line thus far: his messy golden hair extended down to his knees and parted around what looked like part of a steering wheel lodged in his skull, and he had swords for legs from the knees down. He was also grinning and smoking a cigar, easily the most mundane parts of his appearance.
Of course, that wasn't what had jaws dropping all around deck. This close, it was very clear that his descent was controlled, and the moment that he landed on the pavilion's roof…
"PA-DA-DA-DAAAA!"
A brass fanfare blared out from Soundbite's direction, prompting just about the entire crew to jump out of their skins. The unknown pirate, for his part, briefly looked surprised, and then, out of the crazy blue hell, he began dancing, of all things.
… and then Franky and Chopper (in Heavy Point) jumped onto the pavilion and began dancing right beside him, because why the hell not.
Quite frankly, I wasn't sure how to react as the music played and two of our crew commenced a dance number alongside this stranger that fell from the sky, moving in perfect sync and stepping down flawlessly from their impromptu stage, continuing the dance until the soundtrack finished off and they ended with mirroring poses.
After a moment, the applause started.
"So this is what it's like to be on the outside of that…" I muttered to Robin.
"Then I suppose I won't have need to hold back the next time you pull such a stunt, hm?" she hummed 'innocently'.
I had a retort for that, I honestly did, but a sudden interruption made sure it would stay unsaid. "JIIHAHAHAHAHA!" the strange pirate laughed joyfully as he hopped down onto the deck, a strong hint of Jamaica in his voice.
"Jiihahaha… that was impressive. How did you know that song, little snail?"
Soundbite shrugged, still grinning ear to ear. "NO CLUE! I hear a lot, and when you touched down, something just clicked. IT JUST FELT RIGHT!"
"Happens more often than you'd think… for better or, more often, worse," I sighed mournfully.
"JIIHAHAHAHA!" he laughed again. "I knew I was getting into something when I decided to come meet the famous Straw Hat Pirates in person, but I never expected that."
He paused, looked over the crew, and he opened his mouth to speak again.
"I want his legs."
Then all eyes turned toward Leo, who clapped a flipper to his mouth, apparently not meaning to say that out loud.
"I love this day. Anyone else love this day?" Mikey breathed reverentially, his muzzle stuck in a positively shit-eating grin.
"Yuuup~!" Donny and Raphey both sighed rapturously.
"Jihahahahaha," the man chuckled, extending his legs forward to give a better view of the double-edged swords. "You've got a good eye, dugong. Oto and Kogarashi are famous blades that have fought well with me for decades. I used to wield them normally, but you can't be an old pirate without sacrificing a few things along the way. Ahh, but don't be fooled!" The man's grin widened proudly. "Just because I'm wielding them in a non-traditional manner doesn't mean I can't use them in the proper fashion! Observe!"
Putting up his fists in a boxing stance, the man lifted one sword-foot and let loose a few side kicks. Kicks that blurred from sight, and were accompanied by a metallic whistling sound. Eyes widened or sparkled all-around at the sight.
But he wasn't done yet. Bringing his sword-foot down again, the man lifted the other and then spun a roundhouse kick… and then ended up spinning on his sword tip, shaving grass from the deck and leaving him dizzy, wobbling, and then on the deck once he stopped.
I couldn't help but chuckle as I held out a hand to the old man. "I'd make a crack about sea legs, but I'm guessing it'd be in bad taste?"
"Jihaha!" our guest laughed, taking my hand to pull himself up, clapping me on the shoulder as he went. "You're about twenty years too late, my friend. But you do have the gist of it: when you're capable of traversing the heavens like me, it can be a bit of a chore to get used to being back on the ground. Ah, but anyway, getting back on task!"
He stood tall and raised his head proudly. "I obviously know who all of you are, so allow me to introduce myself. Captain Shiki 'The Golden Lion', a fellow pirate! Now, then, first things first! I believe the one who warned me and my crew about that cyclone was your crew's navigator, Nami, yes? Which one of you lovely ladies might that be?"
"That would be me," Nami said, raising her hand.
"Ah. So I have you to thank, baby doll," he drawled.
The air around our navigator immediately rumbled and began to smell of ozone.
"Watch it, old man," Nami warned him in an irritated tone. A good chunk of the guys standing behind her immediately started chopping their hands across their throats. Shiki chuckled again, raising his hands in mock surrender.
"Too far?" Everyone not in Nami's line of view nodded frantically. "Well, either way, thank you for the warning."
Nami narrowed her eyes suspiciously, but she let her clouds fade back to white with a dismissive grunt.
"Ah, moving on, could we address the elephant in the room?" Vivi asked.
"Hello, Funkfreed," half the crew deadpanned politely. Yeah, we'd worn that phrase out damn quick.
"I WAS TALKING ABOUT THE FLYING ISLAND-SHIP!" Vivi snapped, jabbing her finger at the structure in question.
The elephant-sword dropped his head mock-mournfully. "Nobody ever wants to talk to Funkfreed…"
"Can't imagine why! Hwee hwee hwe—!" THWACK! "YIPE!"
"Ah, well, you see—GAH!" Shiki reeled in surprise as he looked up, and the reason became clear when Perona, already floating between the wheel-headed man and his flying ship, flew down a bit.
The ghostly goth glanced up from her pointless nail filing, apathy written all over her face. "Can I help you?"
"M-M-My fairy godmother?!" he exclaimed.
An awkward silence fell in which some of the crew visibly considered dope-slapping the older pirate. I should know, I was one of them.
"…No," Perona said blandly, before disappearing back into the crow's nest.
"Damn, that would have been convenient," the lion-man snapped his fingers with a tsk.
"…Aaaanyway," Carue coughed into his wing. "Didn't we alweady say it was fwying because of a Devil Fwuit?"
"A-Ah, yes. The Float-Float Fruit, to be precise," Shiki explained, his composure returning as he stepped towards a barbell that Zoro had discarded on the deck. "I can manipulate the gravity of any object I touch, no matter how large or small. I'll give you an example."
He touched the weight, straightened, and then gestured.
Living on the Grand Line, you see a lot of things flying through the air, typically because of some storm or other tossing everything not tied down this way and that. But usually, a fifty-pound barbell wasn't on that list of items, and it most definitely never just floated through the air like some sort of soap bubble!
"Wow," Conis breathed in awe, pushing at the barbell with a finger and causing it to spin lazily before looking up at the ship. "And you can levitate something that big… constantly?"
"Not even that hard, angel!" Shiki replied. "I don't need to 'levitate it' at all! Once I tell something to float, it floats until I tell it to stop floating! Doesn't matter if it's a pebble or a mountain; if I'm involved, it doesn't fall without my permission!"
"Th-That, that's really…" Usopp gagged in shock.
"That's how those kind of Paramecia work," I spoke up, drawing everyone's attention. "From what I can tell, with any fruit that deals with manipulating things, they only wear off when the user wills it or gets knocked out. Though…" I turned back to Shiki. "To manipulate that much mass is impressive. I'm guessing that required a lot of practice to pull off."
"Naturally," Shiki responded with a grin. "But I'm no rookie pirate, Jeremiah Cross. I may have spent the last two decades in hiding since my last grand hurrah, but I've been on these seas since the days of the late King of the Pirates. Why…" His grin widened to display incredible pride. "I'll have you know I even traded blows with Roger more than once!"
My eyes shot wide in shock. "Holy—seriously!?"
"Ooooh yes!" Shiki nodded. "If you think Whitebeard was the only one to come out of that era, you're nuts. Now, granted, I didn't exactly come out of it—" He tapped one of his 'legs' in the lawn. "Unscathed, but I still got out, and in the pirate world, that's good enough for me!" He then glanced at the rest of the crew. "You may now lavish me with praise if you so wish."
The Kiddie Trio and TDWS promptly complied. "SO COOL!" Heck, most of the crew looked decidedly impressed with the man.
"My, to think we would encounter such a famous pirate…" Robin muttered in awe.
"You've heard of him?" I inquired with a cocked eyebrow.
Robin's response was to give me a flat look. "Unfortunately, no. I was… otherwise occupied twenty years ago, as you'll recall." I hastily glanced away with a sheepish cough. "And meanwhile, I believe I should be saying the same to you, no?"
"Ehh…" I tapped my temple, but I quickly had to admit defeat. "I… think I remember something about him? Maybe? Best I've got is that he's telling the truth about knowing Roger. He wasn't… front and center, if you get my point?"
"Either way, it takes a special kind of strength to lose a leg and keep going strong, let alone two legs," Sanji said, looking with grim admiration at the stumps where the swords were lodged. "Though I guess it's not that big of a deal if he can fly."
"Um…" Conis spoke up tentatively, raising a hand. "If you met the Roger Pirates… is there any chance you might have met my mother, Serra?"
The cheering stopped and Shiki's face snapped into a more serious expression the next moment, all of his attention upon Conis.
"S-Sorry, it's just…" Under Shiki's intense gaze, our gunner nervously glanced aside. "I don't remember that much of her, and I only just learned that she was a member of his crew, so… i-if you know anything, would you… well, mind…"
For a long moment, Shiki was silent, and then he looked away with a heavy, smoke-filled sigh.
"…Roger had no shortage of respect from me, but I was not friends with the man," Shiki said, raising a hand to his skull beside the steering wheel. "This was the result of my last clash with him."
An uncomfortable silence fell, but a smirk grew on Shiki's face. "That said, even with the abnormal being normal on this ocean, it's hard to forget a Sky Island native. The finer details escape me, but I distinctly remember how she fought. She was a pillar of strength, she possessed a bottomless stockpile of artifices to employ, and she never backed down…" The lion-man winced and rubbed her jaw. "And now that I think about it, she had freakish good aim with a bottle of rum, too."
Conis rubbed the back of her head, and a few others on the crew snickered, but she smiled gratefully. "Thank you, sir."
Shiki raised his chin with a wide grin that had a hint of… something in it? I 'unno. "Happy to help! Anything for a child of Roger's crew!" he boasted.
"Well, in that case, how about something for the kit of a pet of a member of Roger's crew, eh?" Su piped up in her characteristically impish tone, most of us bracing for snark. "If you can make anything fly, think you could take Carue for a spin? Ya know, make him into a real duck? Tseeheeheeheehee!"
"Ah, shaddap, Su," Carue squawked, rolling his eyes. Then, with a frown, he looked back at Shiki. "Though aye wouldn't say 'no'…"
"Jiihahaha! No can do, it doesn't work on animals!" Shiki replied, waving his hand. "I can make myself float, but that's about it."
"That's awesome!" Luffy gasped, eyes sparkling. And then they lit up in an entirely different light. "Oh, oh! I know, make me fly! I wanna fly!"
"Yeah! Yeah!" Usopp and Chopper eagerly agreed.
Shiki belted out a deep belly-laugh. "Sorry, my friends, but that includes humans."
"Oh." Luffy's expression promptly dropped into a sulky pout. "In that case, that's lame."
"Boo, boo," Usopp and Chopper chorused in agreement.
"Sorry to disappoint," Shiki said, taking a seat at the pavilion. "But there are sights in my hideout that I think you'd enjoy." His smile faded, and he looked to Luffy. "I might offer to take you there as a sign of my gratitude, but I feel as though it may be better served another way. From what I've heard on your show, you all are from the East Blue, yes? I hate to inform you of this, but recent scuttlebutt has said that the Navy is mobilizing to deal with a mysterious threat in your native ocean. It sounds like your homes are in deep trouble."
Aaaand that killed the mood right dead.
"We're aware," I nodded solemnly. "We had just decided to set a course back there when you came along."
"'Zat so?" the pirate said, raising a brow. "So close to the halfway point, and you're turning back now?"
Luffy lowered his hat over his eyes and smiled in the way he only did when he was about to say something wise.
"The adventure and the One Piece aren't going anywhere," he said confidently. "We made it this far once, we can do it again. It's not like we can just keep going when we know that our homes are in danger like that."
"…Quite impressive," Shiki said quietly, getting to his… er, supports. Then he raised his head with his grin as strong as ever. "That settles it, then! You saved my home, and so it is only right that I return the favor!" The man tapped one of his blades in the grass. "I'll use my Float powers to take you there. It'll be easy, I've been using the trick to avoid the Marines even before I went into hiding. And it'll be faster than whatever plan you had."
"Seriously? Awesome!" Luffy pumped his fists with a cheer, an emotion that was shared throughout our crew.
Shiki chuckled at our rejoicing, and I noticed some of the crew stiffen a bit at the twinkle of mischief that entered his eyes. And for good reason, seeing as I myself took a reflexive step back. "That said, I do have one condition for doing this. And before you say anything!" A raised hand, and our objections died in our throats. "I honestly doubt you'll mind."
He turned toward me, his grin growing. "I've been out of the world's spotlight for almost twenty years now. Two whole decades! And in my eyes that… is just not right. If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to speak to the world! Anonymously, sadly, I'm not quite ready for the Marines to come after me yet and I don't want them to know where my base is, but…" Shiki let out a despondent sigh. "I just want to say something, after these many long years. Is there any way that could be possible?"
I blinked in surprise… and then my partner and I slowly adopted our trademark Marines-are-about-to-have-a-bad-day grins. "I think," I chuckled, patting a hand on the weapon of mass-anarchy hanging at my side. "That that can be arranged."
"THEN WE HAVE AN ACCORD!" Shiki bellowed in a most grandiose tone, sweeping a hand skyward. "LET US BE OFF!"
And with that, the Thousand Sunny creaked, and shuddered, and then with one almighty lurch the ship went still. Utterly, impossibly still, outside the services of a drydock. Immediately, everyone dashed to the side, myself included, and stared down at the blue sea. The blue sea that we were rapidly rising from, as Sunny flew in a manner that not even Merry had managed to achieve.
I stared down at the sea falling away below us in awe for a second longer before shooting a grin at my partner-in-shell.
"Soundbite, old buddy," I said with an eager grin. "I think that we're in for one of our most glorious adventures yet!"
-o-
"Don don don don! Don don don don!"
"Guuuugh…"
One of the four strongest pirates alive groaned piteously, sitting up despite the Sea King rampaging in his skull. "How the hell does that big-mouth brat always manage to time his show to when I'm most hungover?!"
"Because you're always hungover, Captain," Beckmann deadpanned.
Shanks blinked dumbly. "I am not!" he protested after a moment.
"Right, sorry. You're only usually hungover," Benn revised, still dry as dust.
"Damn straight, now someone pick that up!" Red-Haired Shanks ordered. "And get me some vodka!"
"You sure you wanna do that, cap'n?" Yasopp called. Behind him, Roo took aim at their snail with a well-aimed Sea King bone. "Every time you drink while Cross is talking, you just spit it back up three seconds later!"
Shanks' ever so mature response was to transfer the weight of the bottle to his jaw so he could perform the ever-important task of flipping his sniper off and keep drinking. One of the first tricks he'd learned after becoming handicapped and he hadn't once regretted it.
When they dislodged the snail, the song coming across the connection was an upbeat tune with thumping percussion, blaring horns, and an odd sound similar to a guitar. Lyrics emerged after a few seconds.
"SONO CHI NO SADAME!…JOOOOOOO-JO!"
"…'The fate of that blood'? Is this some kind of epic ballad or something?" Yasopp wondered.
"Couldn't be," Rockstar shook his head. "No way that someone named 'Jojo' could be that impressive."
"And that was Sono Chi no Sadame, by… well, someone you'll all never meet anyways," came Cross's voice. "I'll talk more about that another time; for now…" The anarchist's expression slowly twisted into an absolutely vicious grin. "Welcome back to the SBS."
'Oh crap' was the reaction of most of the Red-Haired Pirates'. Their captain, meanwhile…
"PFFFT! GAH, DAMMIT!" Shanks roared indignantly, vodka dripping from his chin. "THAT'S IT! WHEN LUFFY HOPS THE LINE, I'M GOING TO BE THERE TO MEET HIM JUST SO THAT I CAN GIVE THAT BRAT A PIECE OF MY MIND! AND A PIECE OF MY FOOT UP HIS—!"
"HA!"
A sudden bark of laughter cut through Shanks' rage.
"YOU THOUGHT IT WAS CROSS WHO STARTED THE SBS!" the trademark bevy of voices cackled. "BUT IT WAS ME, DIO—er, SOUNDBITE!"
"YOU SLIMY LITTLE SON OF A… pffhehehe. Alright, fine, that was a good one," Cross admitted.
"…Oh yeah. Come hellfire or high tide, we're meeting them when they surface in the New World, and I am going to have words with the Voices of Anarchy," Shanks glowered, sitting back down and chugging the bottle.
"Does it technically count if it was in his voice?" Benn asked, frowning.
Shanks twitched at the thought before snapping his fingers at Rockstar. "The Wano Reserve we filched off of one of Kaido's boats. Now."
The rookie got up and began sorting through the bottles that littered the beach, grumbling all the while. When he walked by Roo, though, he stopped and shot the other pirate a curious look. "Hey, mind if I ask you something? Besides that first question, I mean."
"Spoilsport…" Roo grumbled into his fresh hunk of meat. "But yeah, go ahead."
"How come the captain's always like… well…" Rockstar nodded his head at Shanks. "I mean, he's one of the Four freaking Emperors! I'm not saying he should be another monster like the fatass or the beast, but—!"
"Why ain't he more respectable like the old man?" Roo finished, smirking. "Easy, really. Think about it: The Cap'n is one of the most powerful, most infamous pirates in the whole wide world. One of the four people in the world that the World Government absolutely, totally, completely can't control. One of the closest things they have to equals. And he acts like…"
Roo flailed his hands about, trying to find the words, prompting Rockstar to nod in understanding.
"Well, you know what he acts like. And you know what he told me, a few years back? 'Every second someone like me is the worst nightmare of the World Government, the Elder Bastards die a little bit more inside'."
"…holy hell, that's brilliant," Rockstar breathed in awe.
THWACK!
Then he winced when an empty vodka bottle thumped against his head. "I HEARD YOU AND I'M STILL WAITING FOR MY SAKE!"
"Also, the captain's still a natural stinking drunk!" Roo cackled.
THUNK!
"YEOW!" the fatso yelped as a rifle stock slammed over his skull.
"Shut up so we can listen to the rookie," Benn ordered.
"And he's a raging jackass…" Roo muttered.
THUNK!
"GAH, RIGHT ON THE OTHER LUMP!"
"Well, ladies and gentlemen, today is a rather special day on the SBS, as we happen to have a guest here!" Cross informed the word in his usual animated tone. "They're going anonymous for the time being, but they're doing a huge favor for us and all they asked for an interview on here, so let's get started!"
"Hello, people of the world. It's quite a pleasure to to speak to all of you, one that I've wanted for quite a long time now," came the dual voices that Soundbite used for anonymity. "I'm keeping most of myself to myself for now, but it should go without saying that I am a pirate. A captain of a fine crew that has every intention of shaking up the world."
"Well, that doesn't narrow it down very much, that could be any of those starry-eyed rookies," someone piped up.
"So, getting right into the interview, we've got our questions lined up. Primero: What makes you special enough to be able to shake up the world that much?" Cross inquired.
"Weeeell," the guest speaker drawled with a wide grin. A grin that made Shanks sit up and take notice. "I have spent several years mastering my Devil Fruit powers, which are by themselves enough that I hardly need to try against most opponents. Ah, but I am not complacent; I am a master swordsman as well, and my blades are of the highest quality. I am confident that between these two masteries, no adversary in my path will be a threat."
"Well, while I'm sure that your skills in both those areas is impressive, you'll forgive me if I have my doubts about the idea of one pirate crew taking on the Marine organization… well, one crew that's not ours, anyway!"
"Careful, Jeremiah Cross. Don't get too big of a head."
"Yeah, but think about how useless the Marines will feel the next time they take a swing at us and miss when we're showing that kind of attitude!" Cross shamelessly chortled. "Anyway, let's see, next question… what's your philosophy, what keeps you going through everything the sea spits out at you?"
"My philosophy?" the interviewee grunted, the snail's teeth gnashing in a way that indicated chewing on a cigar, as Boss had often shown. "Well… in difficult times, I have two sayings that I always come back to. First, you can't rush perfection; I'm as strong as I am because I took the time to refine my skills. And as much as I love massive payoffs, I've learned again and again that they take endless preparation to pull it off. Be it weeks, months, or even years, it can be hard to put in the necessary time and effort, to not leap for the payoff the first chance you get. But it's worth it. It is always worth it."
"Admirable. Most folks don't have that kind of self-control. And the second?"
"Second is that you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. It may sound a bit mercenary, but if you want to reach for the top? You won't make it there without a great deal of agony. Whether the pain comes from simple adversity, a failed experiment in growing stronger, or plain old misfortune, patience is not the only price that you must pay for success. Sometimes things turn out ugly even when you get the result you wanted. Again, though, I find that it is always worth it."
"Definitely an admirable worldview, and one we're all familiar with. I'm impressed."
"Oh stop, you're making me blush!"
"Huh, sounds like Luffy and his crew have run into a pretty impressive pirate!" someone piped up.
"Yeah…" Shanks rubbed his chin, a troubled frown on his face. "But for some reason, he's also pretty familiar…"
That sobered up the rest of the Red-Haired Pirates real quick.
"And on this crew…" another grunt slowly clarified. "That's… usually a bad sign, ain't it?"
"Yeah, but… c'mon, it can't always be that bad, right?" someone else asked.
"Mmph… maybe…" Shanks grunted noncommittally.
"Well, moving on to more material things, I must say your swords are most impressive!"
"Ha! Your crew just won't get off my back about them, eh? Don't you already have plenty of impressive blades already?"
"Yeah, but except for Funkfreed, they're all katana. I don't even know what yours are. HEY, ZORO, BLADE ID!"
"Skillful to Great Grade, now clam it and let me train!" the 'rookie' crew's first mate shouted back.
"Not what I—ugh, never mind…" Cross grunted with a roll of his eyes. "But anyway, yeah, a new pair of Greats is impressive. Especially seeing as I've never seen a matched set before."
"Yes, well—!"
"BUT IT LOOKS LIKE THIS ISN'T ONE OF THOSE TIMES!" Shanks barked, shooting to his feet and dashing over to the snail so he could hastily punch in the SBS's number. "Damn it damn it damn i—!"
"How bad, Shanks?!" Yasopp inquired nervously.
"'Raging bastard who gave Roger and Garp the fights of their lives' bad!" Shanks growled. "The only cigar-smoking asshole I remember to wield both an impressive Devil Fruit and a matched pair of Graded Swords—!"
"Shiki the Golden Lion?!" Benn roared incredulously. Then he ground the heel of his palm into his forehead. "Luffy, how could you possibly be that unluck—?"
THWACK!
Roo cackled as he smashed the remains of his Sea King ribs over his superior's head. "HA! Payback, asshole! Ah, but no, I do realize that this is serious, so—!"
SMASH!
Roo fell silent as he, Yasopp, and Benn looked back up at Shanks, who had just crushed the bottle he was holding with widened eyes. His mouth moved wordlessly, those capable of reading lips seeing the words 'wanted to for a long time now' form before Shanks redoubled his attempts to type in his protégé's number… which really only impeded him, fingers stabbing into all the buttons but the right ones.
"—and so I've wielded these blades ever since, and they've never let me down."
"Huh. Quite the story, but I shouldn't be surprised considering how Zoro got his swords."
"GUESS IT'S JUST A thing for the BEST—Dot dot dot dot!—SWORDSMEN! Ooh, a call-in!"
"Thank goodness," Shanks breathed in relief.
"Heh, maybe someone looking for advice from a professional pirate?"
"And just what are you implying with that, hmm?" Cross scoffed in good humor before picking up. "Alright, caller, who here do you want to talk to?"
"SHIKI, YOU GET THE HELL AWAY FROM THEM RIGHT THE HELL NOW!" Shanks roared at the top of his lungs. "IF YOU TOUCH EVEN A HAIR ON LUFFY'S HEAD, I SWEAR I WILL—!"
"The world, Jeremiah Cross," came a voice that was decidedly not Shanks.
"GAAAH!" the Emperor raged, slamming the receiver down hard enough to almost knock out the poor snail. "ONE FREAKING SECOND TOO LATE!"
"I will get straight to the point: I am Vice Admiral Tsuru of Marine Headquarters, and I would like to borrow the services of your SBS to send forth a warning regarding a significant threat that the Navy has been made aware of within the past two days. Will you permit this?"
"NO!" the Red-Haired Pirates bellowed as one.
"Eh… I'll allow it," the snail uttered with a shrug. "Just keep it clean. I'm the only one allowed to spew propaganda around here."
Shanks threw his hand up in frustration, spinning around and stomping away. "THE ONE TIME WE WANT HIM TO BE AN IRREVERENT ASSHOLE!"
"Captain, we can call in once he's—" one of the grunts began.
"No, don't bother," Shanks sighed, pulling up another bottle. "I really shouldn't be directly interfering in Luffy's journey. Besides, it's not like the Straw Hats haven't taken on impossible odds before."
Toning out the broadcast of the snail, Shanks took a long drink and then wiped off his mouth, before blinking at the nervous and slightly incredulous looks his crew was giving him.
"So… we wait?" Yasopp asked.
"We wait," Shanks nodded. "We'll see if the Golden Lion has bitten off more than he can chew by challenging them. And if he hasn't?"
Without warning, the better part of the crew nearly fainted as a blast of Haki billowed out from Shanks, his glare on the no-longer-conscious snail.
"Then he'll wish that he had."
-ONE MINUTE EARLIER-
"Fleet Admiral Sengoku."
Said man and Garp both turned to face their old friend, the speaker, who had just entered the room with a sterner look on her face than usual, a snail in her hand. Sengoku took a moment to sigh in discontent at her impersonal address before responding. "Yes, Vice Admiral Tsuru?"
"Will you permit me to call in to the SBS?" The elderly Vice-Admiral pointed at the snail the other two Marines were listening to. "I would like to use Jeremiah Cross's range to spread the warning about Shiki. And to potentially warn them about the threat to their lives as well; the better prepared they are, the bigger the strip they might take out of Shiki's hide."
The Fleet Admiral's growing scowl faded into surprise. He went back to frowning a moment later but nodded. "Do it. The brat's show can finally do something good."
Tsuru nodded, dialing the number carefully.
"—JUST A thing for the BEST—Dot dot dot dot!—SWORDSMEN! Ooh, a call-in!"
"Heh, maybe someone looking for advice from a professional pirate?"
"And just what are you implying with that, hmm?" Cross scoffed in good humor before picking up. "Alright, caller, who here do you want to talk to?"
"The world, Jeremiah Cross," Tsuru stated in a no-nonsense voice. "I will get straight to the point: I am Vice Admiral Tsuru of Marine Headquarters, and I would like to borrow the services of your SBS to send forth a warning regarding a significant threat that the Navy has been made aware of within the past two days. Will you permit this?"
"Eh… I'll allow it," Cross said nonchalantly. "Just keep it clean. I'm the only one allowed to spew propaganda around here. Mind giving me a second here?"
"Sure, sure, go right ahead."
"You were saying?"
"Thank you," Tsuru said neutrally. "People of the world, I am here to make two warnings of the utmost importance: first, to all peoples living in the East Blue, we advise you to exercise the most extreme amount of caution possible. Over the course of the past month, several islands have been razed in totality, all living creatures on said islands slaughtered with extreme prejudice. The most recent attacks have annihilated civilian settlements and left no survivors. Recent evidence also suggests that there is a hostile force directing these attacks, so all civilians are urged to report any suspicious activity they notice to their local Marines immediately and without fail. That is all."
"Geez…" Cross shook his head, a scowl on his face. "Well, that's just horrible in all kinds of ways. And the other thing?"
"The second warning, perhaps even more critical, concerns the whole world. One of the most infamous pirates in history has resumed activity: Shiki the Golden Lion. He is one of the most dangerous men alive, a ruthless warmonger, one of the greatest rivals of the late Gold Roger, and the only man to ever escape from Impel Down. He is empowered by the Float-Float Fruit, enabling him to levitate himself as well as anything he touches other than animals. And we have reason to believe that he… is…"
Tsuru trailed off, about to say 'responsible for the attacks in the East Blue', but she sighed and grimaced as she registered that the snail's expression had gradually become more and more horrified over the course of her words.
"…he's standing right next to you, Jeremiah Cross, isn't he?" she groaned, kneaded her brow.
"Guilty as charged, Wrinkles~" sang the no-longer blurred voice, which had just taken on a new undertone of malice.
"YOU! GUM-GUM—WAAAAAAA!" came Luffy's sudden bellow, followed by an equally sudden scream of surprise that was echoed by the rest of his crew.
"DAMMIT, LUFFY!" Garp roared. "HOW DID YOU LET YOURSELF GET TAKEN IN BY SHIKI?!"
Sengoku, for his part, just had his forehead slumped on his table. It almost sounded like he was sobbing in exasperation as the one good, if reluctant, hope he had of the situation resolving itself without issue evaporated.
-ONE MINUTE EARLIER-
"Eh, I'll allow it," Cross shrugged indifferently. "Just keep it clean. I'm the only one allowed to spew propaganda around here." He then shot an apologetic look at the crew's guest. "Mind giving me a second here?"
"Sure, sure, go right ahead," Shiki waved him off airily before wandering away. His grin then widened as the Straw Hat's captain came up to him with an inquisitive look. "Can I help you?"
"Well," Luffy scratched the back of his head with uncharacteristic hesitation. "I know you said that wheel messed with your head, and that you weren't really friends, but… uh… do you… remember anything about Roger at all? What he was like and stuff?"
The guest captain's mood swiftly sobered up, and he glanced away. "…he was a great man. Strong, stalwart. Truly a pirate to be admired in every way."
"So cool!" Luffy grinned ecstatically.
Shiki bowed his head as his expression slowly darkened. "…he was also a damned fool, who refused to grasp the world when he had it in the palm of his hand."
"Huh?!" the rubber-man boggled at Shiki for a second before frowning and bringing a hand to his head in thought. "Wait… why does that sound…?"
"What the—? HEY, GUYS!" Usopp suddenly shouted, snapping Luffy out of his thoughts as he garnered everyone's attention. "TH-THERE'S… THERE ARE ISLANDS UP AHEAD!"
"At almost four thousand meters in the air and without a Cumulo Regalis in sight?! You're kidding!" Nami said incredulously, joining the rest of the crew at the Sunny's sides, Perona shadowing her in her astral form, having vehemently denied any idea of getting anywhere near a several thousand-meter drop in person.
But no matter how impossible it should have been, none could deny the facts: That the Straw Hat's ship was floating straight towards an archipelago of totally normal islands, bearing a variety of climates and ecosystems… save that they were floating in the sky. And not a single Cumulo Regalis around.
"Woooah…" Usopp and Chopper breathed in gape-mouthed awe.
"I don't believe my eyes!" Brook exclaimed in shock. "My non-existent eyes! YOHOHO! SKULL JOKE!"
"I'm gonna go and get a Vision Dial! Otherwise, the guys back on the Fleet'll never believe this!" Raphey barked excitedly, Rip Tide-ing into the Sunny.
"What is this place?" Luffy asked, voice uncharacteristically soft and quiet.
The shadows upon Shiki's face grew deeper and darker, even as his grin grew wider. "That, my fellow pirate, would be the Hidden Land in the Clouds known as Merveille. My glorious hideout."
"Huh?!" Luffy and his crew all snapped their heads around to stare at the wheel-headed man in confusion. "But you said you were taking us to the East—!"
Shiki suddenly snapped his hand up, silencing everyone and allowing them to hear what was being said by their tactician's snail.
"The second warning," Vice Admiral Tsuru declared solemnly, "Perhaps even more critical, concerns the world as a whole. One of the most infamous pirates in history has resumed activity: Shiki the Golden Lion."
Some of the crew stiffened, but most barely reacted; they were some of the most infamous pirates in history, after all. Yet for some reason, Luffy in particular had a frown on his face. Shiki, for his part, just kept grinning and looking ahead. And as the Vice Admiral spoke, listing the other pirate's characteristics, Shiki's grin grew ever wider while Luffy's frown deepened into an out and out scowl, until finally…
"…he's standing right next to you, Jeremiah Cross, isn't he?" Tsuru groaned.
Shiki shot a vicious leer at the source of the Marine's voice. "Guilty as charged, Wrinkles~"
"YOU!" Luffy suddenly roared at the top of his lungs, his face etched into a rictus of fury as he snapped his arm way back. "GUM-GUM—WAAAAAAA!" The attack, before it could be launched, was transformed into a panicked cry when the Thousand Sunny suddenly rocketed straight into the airborne archipelago, throwing the Straw Hats clean off their feet.
Once they adjusted to the momentum, the stronger members of the crew got to their feet, looking around in an attempt to spot their apparent latest threat…
"I find myself curious, Straw Hat!"
And led everyone in glaring up at the mast upon which Shiki had perched himself, visibly basking in his own superiority with an arrogant leer on his face.
"You somehow suspected me when you had no right to!" the Golden Lion chuckled darkly. "How did that happen?"
"I remembered you from Shanks' stories!" Luffy snarled viciously, dropping into a fight-ready position. "And he said that you were the most evil, hateful bastard of a tyrant that he ever met!"
"Sticks and stones, my boy!" Shiki guffawed. "The words of none will ever hurt me! Not yours, not your third mate's, and certainly not that Red-Haired brat's either! JIHAHAHA!"
"BUT MY PIPE SURE AS HELL WILL!" the rubber-man roared, brandishing said implement—
"LUFFY, NO!"
—only to stumble when Cross hastily grabbed his captain's arm. "Cross, what—!?"
"I want to knock his block off as much as you do, but if you neutralize his powers for even a second, we're gonna hit the ocean like it was pavement!" Cross explained in a panic.
"Listen to the boy, Straw Hat!" Shiki called down, accompanied by a belly-deep laugh. "I'm not quite done with you yet, it'd be inconvenient to have to pick your remains up off the seafloor!"
"I THOUGHT I DITCHED THAT GAG IN SKYPIEA! I'M NINETEEN!"
"And look at how much I care!" Shiki boisterously replied, throwing his arms out wide. "And while I'm at it, let me humbly welcome you all to the Island of Merveille, as my honored guests! I am quite certain that you will find it to be a most wonderful home for adventurers such as yourselves… once you've settled in."
"Yoooou…" Luffy growled from the pit of his stomach.
"Oh, fret not, I won't be in your hair much longer!" Shiki waved his hand dismissively. "I'll just take what I decided to acquire while I was among you and be on my way! First off!" He shot his hand down towards the crew—
"GWAH!"
And suddenly jerked Cross clean off the deck by the strap of his transceiver's bag, the Third Mate yelping in surprise. Cross wasn't hanging for long, however, for as soon as Shiki had a good grip on the transceiver within, he cut the strap with a swing of his leg, letting him drop back down to the deck.
"This most interesting of gadgets, which I will make far better use of than you ever could," Shiki sneered as he spun the transceiver upon his finger, before shooting a titanically evil eye down at the Straw Hats. "And for the second… MY NEW NAVIGATOR!" Without warning the gold-maned captain shot forwards and pounced on Nami.
The navigator tried to snap out her Clima-Tact, but before she could even twitch, Shiki snapped his arm forward and an autonomous rope shot flew out of his sleeve. The living binding wound itself around Nami, both pinning her arms to her chest so she couldn't grab her weapon and gagging her screams of protest as the larger man slung her over his shoulder like a sack of flour.
The Golden Lion took a victorious tug from his cigar, floating himself and his captive skywards with a victorious leer on his face. "And with that," he gloated. "I shall be taking my leave."
"LIKE HELL ARE YOU GETTING AWAY WITH NAMI-SWAN! SKY WALK!" Sanji roared, leaping up and running on the air toward Shiki as though he were climbing stairs.
"TIDAL SWIM!" concurred the dugongs sans Raphey, swimming through the air after Sanji, weapons at ready. Shiki turned back towards them, his eyes widening in surprise. Then he chuckled.
"So you can fly as well? Impressive. But unfortunately, you're a few decades too young to try challenging me!"
With that, Shiki tossed his captive up into the air, where she came to a rest about five hundred feet above. The four aerial fighters didn't respond, instead bracing themselves on the air and then pushing off one last time at Shiki. And then, when they were close enough, Shiki flipped himself upside down and began spinning like a top. A razor-edged top.
Sanji, gritting his teeth, immediately went high. With a cry of "Nori Arts!", the dugongs swayed under the blades, at which point Shiki stopped spinning and brought his knees down on Donny and Leo, sending them falling back to the deck, dazed.
That didn't stop either Sanji or Mikey, who pushed off again to try and sandwich Shiki between them. Shiki didn't move, and for a moment it looked like they might actually get them. But at the last minute he soared up and between them, leaving Sanji, unable to react in time, to kick Mikey square in the nose.
"Oh shit!" Sanji yelped as Mikey soared towards the ground to join his fellow dugongs.
"JIHAHAHAHAHA!"
Flames roared in Sanji's eyes as he spun around and shot a glare at Shiki. "You think this is funny, shit-lion?"
Shiki straightened, wiping a tear from his eye. "You kicked your own crewmate in the snout! Of course that's funny! And you must've seen the look on his face." Shiki grinned wider, and then burst out laughing again. "Jihahahaha—whoa!"
That exclamation was due to a flying shard of razor air nearly taking his head off; as it is, he had enough time to hastily swoop over it, which was where Sanji met him, leg cocked back.
"Eat this!" the cook declared. "Mouton!"
The kick lashed out, and Shiki simply floated above it, legs drawn in. And given the nature of the Mouton, Sanji was left horribly exposed when Shiki began stabbing with his sword-legs as fast as he could. Especially since Sanji didn't—couldn't—bring his hands up, for fear of getting them slashed up.
And so, when Sanji, too, came crashing out of the sky, he looked like he'd gone charging through a patch of sawgrass.
"Well, that was fun," Shiki chuckled as he buffed his nails on his jacket, offhandedly floating up to grab Nami again. "But! As I was saying earlier… goodbye." And with that, the Golden Lion snapped his fingers dismissively.
And to everyone's horror, gravity reasserted itself upon the Thousand Sunny, sending the Straw Hats careening down towards the ocean far below.
"YOU SON OF A—!" Luffy roared, reeling up to shoot his arm at Shiki even as he freefell.
"WELCOME TO MERVEILLE!" Shiki cackled back. "MIND THE DROP!" He punctuated the last word with a sweep of his hand.
Luffy hesitated slightly at the action before stiffening in both shock and horror as he became acutely aware of the fact that the Thousand Sunny, his own ship, was swinging around towards him and his crew! "LOOK OUT!" The rubber-man shot his arms out and tried to grab as many of his crewmates as he could, but he only managed to grasp Cross and Boss before the Sunny's keel slammed into the whole crew at once with the force of a battering ram, a Sea King, and a Sea Train all rolled into one. More than enough force to send the Straw Hats flying to the far ends of the archipelago in several discrete clumps. The Sunny getting tossed onto another island with as much care as a broken toy merely added insult to injury.
As his captive began flailing and screaming muffled obscenities at him, Shiki turned his focus off the distant Straw Hats and to his ill-acquired transceiver. "In case you all didn't get the memo," Shiki leered at the world. "The Straw Hat Broadcasting Station is now signing off. Permanently. JIHAHAHA!" And with a final cackle, he slammed the mic down and shut the world off.
Slowly, the Golden Lion's laughter subsided into a contented sigh. He patted his latest acquisitions, prompting one of them to shout more muffled obscenities into her gag. "Ahhh, this has been a good day… I guess there's only one question left now, hm?" At those words, Shiki's mood pulled a 180 in the form of a frigid glare directed over his shoulder.
More precisely, directed at the astral form of Perona, half-formed Negative Hollows flanking a raised hand, just waiting for the order. And as much as she wanted to, she couldn't give that order. For she'd seen that glare before, so many times before, and it sent shivers through her entire body.
She'd seen it in the eyes of Moria… and she knew what awaited her if she tried to defy him.
And so, it was with a final apologetic look at Nami that Perona bowed her head in submission and let her Hollows fade away.
Shiki's demeanor became 'pleasant' once more. "That's what I thought. Now keep up. I wouldn't want you to miss out on the tour." He turned his gaze to the murderous woman over his shoulder, completely unfazed by her rage. "After all… it's the last home you'll ever know."
If Nami was angry before, those words caused her eyes, visible only to Perona, to shine with pure, venomous hatred. And it was at that moment that the ghost-girl knew, without a single doubt, that Shiki the Golden Lion had just made a fatal mistake.
Maybe even literally.
-THE PRESENT-
The sound of farting footsteps drew Nami out of her reminiscing. Dr. Indigo came into view shortly after, and despite their feelings for the man (read: burning hate), the two prisoners found themselves more than a little intrigued by the massive wooden birdcage he was carrying over his head.
"Captain Shiki!" the clown proclaimed. "We've had another evolutionary breakthrough! A new species! Take a look at this fella!"
Indigo sat the cage down, and Nami and Perona shifted to look at its captive. The creature in the cage resembled a duck, but it had a red comb on its head reminiscent of a rooster or turkey and long tail feathers more appropriate for a peacock. What struck Nami the most were its eyes; putting the pieces together on the local fauna was pretty straightforward, but unlike what she'd expected this fowl didn't seem aggressive at all. Hell, it didn't even have the tension most non-aggressive animals had. It just looked… utterly innocent, somehow.
"HUH?! A guitar?" Shiki gaped at the fowl.
"ARE YOU BLIND, IT'S A BIRD!" Indigo barked, slapping his captain.
The clown, the lion, and the gorilla then struck a pose, and the girls were about to turn away when the cage opened and the duck within squawked and spread its wings. In the space of a second, it flew up, draped itself on top of Shiki—
"QUAAAA!" ZZZT!
And then dropped a barrage of lightning on the trio with a perfectly content quack.
"HOROHOROHORO!" Perona and an entourage of her Negative Hollows cackled as the trio's skeletons flickered in and out of view.
"HA!" Nami barked, doubling over. "Oh man, the only thing I regret about this is that I didn't get the chance to do it myself sooner!"
The merriment was short-lived, however, because as soon as Shiki got his bearings back, he grabbed the obliviously happy duck by its jowls.
"Stupid guitar!" he roared, tossing the bird at Scarlet, who then backhanded it with a snarl. It slammed into a nearby tree, snapping it in half, but surprisingly, the duck appeared to be more scared than actually harmed. Still, that didn't keep Nami from being concerned.
"Hey, lay off!" Nami snapped, rushing over to the duck, huddling protectively. Shiki either didn't hear her or didn't care, more concerned with glaring daggers at his scientist.
"So, that was the evolution?" he bit out waspishly as he brushed some charred ashes off of his shoulders.
"Correct," Indigo weakly confirmed. Reaching up with shaking arms, he snapped his fingers under his nose a few times and inhaled the resulting emerald sparks. Almost immediately, he perked up, the shaking gone. "He's evolved to discharge bursts of electricity! And that was actually him being friendly, you should see what he's like when exposed to stress!"
Nami and Perona exchanged befuddled looks, then went back to the duck as it staggered back to its feet and cowered timidly behind them. "Evolved?" Nami asked cautiously. "What do you mean?"
"Eh? What's that?" The Straw Hats' navigator had to fight the urge to hurl as Shiki shot a taunting leer her way. "You want to know? Weeeell… you'll find out as soon as you join my crew, so I guess I might as well tell you now."
Shiki nodded his head at the aggressively natured and colored gorilla flanking him. "Throughout the history of this island, the native animals have evolved in a strange, rapid manner, untouched by the outside world. This development is all thanks to a plant called IQ. Over the years, the plant has found its way into the ecosystem of Merveille, and the chemicals present in said plant manipulate the animals' physical growth to not only adapt to their surroundings, but to aggressively overcome them. Once we realized its effect…" Shiki's grin took on a particularly vicious undertone. "I had every last IQ plant on the entire island harvested for my own usage."
"And after 20 years of experimentation, I've made the breakthrough of the century!" Indigo proclaimed giddily, leaping in front of his captain, producing and proffering a test tube full of green pills and a small container of green liquid. "The synthesized distillation of the IQ plant's potent powers. A drug that is pure evolution in chemical form: SIQ!" The mad doctor tossed the vials up, juggling them hand to hand with a confident smirk. "With a single injection, we can turn any animal into a perfect fighting machine, their astounding strength only matched by their boundless aggression. And the more we give them, the more violent they get! You've never seen such savage animals!"
"Huh…" Perona tilted her head thoughtfully before shrugging indifferently. "That makes sense to me."
"No, it doesn't! That's horrifying!" Nami snapped at her companion before shooting a scowl at Indigo. "And also familiar. You're the same Indigo who gave the Amigo Pirates that poison they injected themselves with, aren't you!?"
Indigo blinked in surprise, still juggling, and then his smile became particularly sadistic. "Ah, yes, now I remember! Yours was the crew that laid low that pack of lab-rats! I must thank you for the data, it was quite the boon!"
"Keep your damn thanks!" the navigator spat. "What the hell did you do, give them the same poison you're giving the animals?!"
"Psh, hardly," Indigo scoffed. "While SIQ works well on animals, the effects are depressingly reduced on humans. Barely any aggression whatsoever because of a long-induced immunity to adrenaline, pah! Hence, I used those hapless fools to test out my latest innovation!" The clown flicked his wrist, adding a third vial, filled with reddish-orange liquid, to his juggling. "BIQ! Booster IQ for the human soul! Still some bugs to work out, but still better than anything that shaggy rug of a quack you call a doctor could whip up!"
Nami let out a sharp 'tsk' and glared the doctor right in his eyes. "You only wish you were half as skilled as Chopper, you damned hack."
Indigo's jolly mood promptly evaporated into a blistering glare. His fists wrapped around the vials he held, the glass creaking under the strain. Slowly, though, he let himself relax, his glare relaxing into a bloodthirsty smile. "Well, we'll be finding out soon enough, won't we?"
A cold chill swept over Nami and Perona, both of them stiffening. "What are you talking about?" the navigator quietly but furiously demanded.
"Weeeell—!"
"You'll understand our ultimate goal soon enough," Shiki cut in, roughly shoving Indigo out of the way. "As long as you join my crew, that is."
"Are you deaf?!" Nami snapped back, her hand twitching towards her Clima-Tact. "I already told you, I'll never—!"
"You will!"
Shiki's sudden roar shut Nami's protests down cold. He had a glint in his eye that gave the impression he knew something that she didn't. And more importantly, that pushing him any further would be supremely detrimental to her continued health.
"Not only will you join my crew," the leonine pirate said, chin jutted out. "You'll grovel for your chance to do it. You'll get down on your hands and knees and beg. And once we've got that sad scene out of the way, I'll tell you everything you ever wanted to hear. Just make sure to remember: I'm always willing to grant a favor for one of my own crew. Ji… JIHAHAHA!"
Behind Shiki, Scarlet began beating his chest. "OO-OOK!"
"Er… are you pounding your chest to impress the girl?" Indigo questioned.
Scarlet nodded with an affirmative grunt.
"THEY'RE HAVING A SERIOUS CONVERSATION, YOU DIRTY APE!"
"EH?!" Shiki said, turning back to Scarlet. "I just thought you were my grandma for a second there."
"DOES EVERYONE IN YOUR STINKING FAMILY LOOK LIKE A GORILLA, OR WHAT?!" Indigo demanded, chopping his boss on the head.
Shiki rounded on his resident doctor, a snarl on his lips. "You damn mad scien—!"
"OOK!" SLAM!
Any further action was aborted by Scarlet bringing down a far stronger chop on his captain's head that the pirate's head into and through the floor.
"CAPTAIN!" Indigo yelped in horror before rounding on the overly juiced ape. "Damn it, Scarlet, I've told you not to do that! Unlike me, you actually have upper body strength, you could seriously—!"
"OOK!" Scarlet barked again, raising his fist in preparation to slug the doctor.
Said doctor hastily became far more pleasant in demeanor, reaching into his pocket and offering a yellow… 'fruit' to the ape. "Banana?"
That offer didn't please Scarlet much, give the way snarled and drew his hackles back.
"Plus four more if you eat it in my lab!" Indigo hastily tacked on.
"OO-OO A-AH!" the gorilla hooted joyfully, snatching the chemical-loaded banana from the doctor's hand and loping out of the greenhouse.
About a second after the ape left, Shiki let out a pained groan and pushed his way to his knees. "Damn stupid monkey… grargh." Shiki rubbed his temple, drawing a wince before shooting a glare at Indigo. "You can still control him, right?"
"I'll up the dosage of mood stabilizers in his next batch of SIQ-nanas, don't worry," Indigo assured his captain.
If anything, that darkened Shiki's mood further.
"Mood stabilizers that I can dispel at a whim!" the doctor hastily amended.
Shiki nodded with a dismissive snort. "Better."
"You bastards are despicable," Nami spat.
Surprisingly, instead of immediately responding, Indigo and Shiki shared a significant look. "Shall we, Captain?" the doctor grinned.
"Absolutely, Doctor," Shiki grinned back, locking arms and posing with the mad scientist.
"Pi~ra~te!"
Rumbling thunder drowned out Nami's snarl as she snapped out her Clima-Tact, though she stopped just short of actually attacking.
Indigo leaped a full meter back from the incensed navigator. "Okay, might have pushed that one a bit far!" the doctor admitted with a whimper.
Shiki barely reacted at all, simply turning away. "I'll give you some more time to think about it. For the time being, I have business to attend to regarding my master plan. I'll be back once I've got everything in motion. And then… you will join my crew."
With that ominous proclamation, Shiki headed for the exit. Indigo composed himself and made to follow, but then slapped his forehead and stopped dead in his tracks. "Gah! Almost forgot!" He turned around and jabbed a finger at the duck that was cowering behind their thundering prisoner. "You, with me! I need to find out the source of your bioelectricity so that I can put it in something less disappointing!"
"Quaaa!" the duck-peacock wailed fearfully, hiding further behind Nami.
Nami's mood darkened further, and she threw her arm out to shield the literal thunderbird. "Back. Off." Perona promptly backed her up by hovering over the clouds, a trio of Mini Hollows orbiting above her hand.
Indigo scoffed at the girls and started to reach into his jacket. "Okay, you two. Back away from the bird, before I—!"
"Leave it."
Indigo started at the order before boggling at the man who'd given it. "B-But Captain, the bird, the research—!"
"Leave. It," Shiki bit out, accompanied by a dark glare that got Indigo breaking out in cold sweat. "If it'll tide her over for a second longer, you can put it off for a few more hours."
"Bite me, bastard," Nami shot back at him.
"You do realize you're just pissing her off more and more with your every word, right?" Perona called at the Golden Lion's back as he finally walked out, his doctor trailing behind.
"It'll make her inevitable groveling aaaall the sweeter. Enjoy the pool, Miss Navigator!" Shiki called back without so much as a glance back, his final words punctuated by the room's doors slamming back shut.
"Ass," Perona groused
Nami let out a weary sigh, letting her Eisen Tempo recede into her Clima-Tact, which she resheathed in her holster. "Ass that's holding this whole archipelago in the air through will alone and who can kill us with a flick of his wrist."
The ghost-girl deflated at the reminder of the severity of their situation. "Point…" Straightening up, she swung around so that she was fully facing Nami, concern written all over her face. "Are you alright, by the way? He got you good earlier."
The navigator winced and rubbed her neck at the reminder. "I'll live. Believe it or not, I've gone through worse. I'll be fine…" Nami said, before glancing out the window with a frown. "It's the others I'm worried about."
"Even knowing how strong they are?"
Nami nodded solemnly. "That should tell you just how worried I am."
Perona nodded sadly in agreement before shrugging. "Yeah, well, we can worry about them later. Right now, let's concentrate on getting you out, alright?"
This was met by a thankful smile, and then Nami before looked towards the duck creature she'd defended, who was watching them with a curious and gentle gaze. "I don't suppose you know any good ways out of here?" she asked in a joking tone.
The duck blinked and tilted its head in confusion. "Qua?"
An expression of horror slowly came over the navigator. "… God help me, I'm a grown woman who talks to animals and expects them to talk back."
"Horohorohorohoro…" Perona chortled. "Don't feel too bad, I got used to all of my animal zombies talking back."
Nami slowly turned a flat glare on the Hollow-girl. "Perona, how in the hell is that meant to make me feel better?" And with that she stomped off, muttering mutinously under her breath.
"Wha—? Hey, come back!" Perona protested, hastily floating after Nami. "It was a joke, a jo—!"
"Sh!"
Silence fell at the glance Nami sent over her shoulder, a finger at her lips. Perona surreptitiously glanced in the same direction to see a snail mounted in the wall, one that had been tracking their every move.
"I can worry about my friends as much as I want because I've found a way out," Nami hissed under her breath. "We are getting out of here now."
Perona made sure that her face was turned away from the snail before grinning in relief and joy. "You want me to take a couple of extra minutes to leave a little surprise behind for them?"
Nami's expression would have sent the devil himself running for the hills. "Do you even have to ask."
-o-
"Usopp, a fair warning," Conis said in ill-concealed irritation as she tried to rub away the lingering stinging in her jaw. "I've been made aware of some rather interesting punishments since I started studying with Robin, so I'd advise against pulling that off again."
"I'll spare the time to worry about that threat when we're back on the Sunny, back on the sea, and back on our way to the East Blue," Usopp responded, his tone cold enough that Conis's anger faded in favor of surprise. "Meanwhile, I'm more afraid of the monsters who actually want to kill me, so don't get any ideas about drawing them to us just because you want to find the others."
Mikey, who had made exactly no progress at freeing himself, paused to angrily flail his flippers. Sanji, unfortunately, was busy working through bindings that Usopp had made twice as strong as the others', and so was unavailable to translate.
Frowning in thought, Usopp said, "I caught the word 'idea' in there, so I assume you were asking if I had any better ones?" The Dugong nodded, and Usopp huffed before turning back to the cliff they were walking towards, everyone else following.
"With a good couple of hours of peace and quiet, I was able to get my head together. So besides remembering that our homes are in danger and we've lost a week getting there, I realized that all of these islands are floating, but their altitude is constant. We can assume that the rest of the crew has been as busy getting chased everywhere as we have over the last week, including having to jump off of a few islands. And most of them can't use Moonwalk to get back up again."
As they stepped up to the edge of the cliff, he gestured around them. "So, they're probably all heading in the same direction: down. Meaning all we have to do is head for the bottom island and find a safe place to wait for the others; maybe they're even already there. Once we've done that, Sanji, if you want to fly back up and see if you can track down the ones who aren't, be my guest."
Sanji stared at Usopp in silence before tilting his hat down over his eyes with an aggravated but defeated growl.
"Glad to hear it," Usopp sighed in relief. "Now, Conis? Help me scout out a place down there where we can set up camp." So saying, the sniper pulled down his goggles and peered over the edge at the island below them. Conis joined him a second later, her goggles also pulled up. Scant seconds later, they spoke together.
"Whoa, there's a village down there!"/"What? That looks like a village!"
After several more seconds, the two removed their goggles and turned back toward their companions. "I'm not positive, but I think that the people there might be natives," Conis informed them. "From the way their village is set up, it looks like the local beasts are being kept at bay by a thick barrier of trees. If we want to establish a base anywhere, I think that's our best bet."
"Which makes things easier, and some of the rest of the crew may already be there waiting for us," Usopp added, reaching over his back and fiddling with the pack he was carrying.
With one final pull…
"Mmm-mmph—GAH! Finally!"
Sanji got the tape off his mouth and glanced surreptitiously around for any sign of visual snails nearby. "Damn it, Usopp… if it weren't for that reminder about the East Blue, I'd kick you off this cliff. But for now… Conis, dear, would you like me to carry you down?" he asked, swooning as he often did.
Conis… actually considered the situation and the alternatives. And upon doing so…
"…Alright. And, sorry about this, I normally wouldn't do this to you, but given the circumstances…" The gunner glanced over her shoulder at her onlooking fox. "Su, if he tries anything, make him look like his wanted poster."
"Tseeheeheeheeheehee!" the cloud-fox sniggered as the angel gingerly placed herself in Sanji's arms, bridal-style. Sanji's attention then turned towards Mikey, who had positioned himself at the edge of the cliff and was currently posing in such a way that implied he planned to make the dive an impressive thing.
For a few seconds, Sanji and Usopp watched him stand there, unmoving. And then, at the end of those few seconds, Sanji made his displeasure at being kept waiting clear by booting the Dugong off the cliff.
To Mikey's credit, he recovered his graceful form after a mere split second of falling. Sanji eyed the falling amphibian for a few more seconds before jumping off himself, and Usopp spared the time to double-check the device on his back before following suit.
The sniper only let himself fall for a few seconds before he yanked his ripcord, and with a bellow of "USOPP SKYGLIDER!", his chute unfurled and yanked him above his freefalling crewmates.
[Aaaand here comes our final contestant in the high dive, the greatest of the Teenage Dugong Warrior Squad, Mikey!] Mikey barked as he accelerated towards the lake down below. [Even after a disastrous start, the diver has managed to recover, and is about to perform an utterly perfect straight dive with perfect posture, discipline and—OH OCEANUS ALMIGHTY MY SNOUT IS ON FIRE!]
Sanji, Conis, and Su all blinked in confusion when Mikey's dive pose suddenly collapsed into a flailing mess, the dugong wailing in misery behind the flippers clawing at his nose. Said flailing persisted up until the dugong unceremoniously face-planted into the lake.
"Well… guess the village really is protected," Sanji decided.
"Ye—wait…" Conis' eyes widened in shocked realization and snapped to her friend. "What about Su!?"
The fox scoffed and snapped her tail indifferently. "Su su—KAI!" Su's nonchalance shattered into an agonized howl and she practically flung herself from Conis' shoulder, writhing and squirming against an intangible torment.
"SU!" Conis exclaimed. Without thinking, she practically flung herself after her friend, grabbing the fox tight in her arms to try and keep her as still as possible so that she didn't hurt herself.
It took a full second for Conis to realize that in moving to save Su, she'd inadvertently thrown herself clean out of Sanji's arms. And because of how hard she'd pushed herself, she was well below him, too far for him to catch up and catch her in time.
That poor decision was followed up with the supreme mistake of gazing downwards. On the one hand, Conis knew that while it was definitely going to hurt like hell, the impact with the lake below wouldn't kill her; on the other hand, some reptilian part of her hindbrain took one look at the drop below her and triggered every panic reflex her body had.
And on any other day, all those panic reflexes would have done was tempt her to scream, or threaten to send her into unconsciousness. Neither actually happened, because over the past week, all of the SIQ-infected flesh and foliage she'd consumed had grown a brand-spanking-new reflex in her body.
A reflex that killed Conis' shriek in her throat when she was suddenly jerked to a halt by something yanking her up by her shoulder-blades and stopping her momentum dead.
Conis started to look around in confusion, but the first turn of her head provided the answer. Though that still left her with the glaring question of how the hell her wings—her cute but physically useless vestigial wings—had grown to five times their original size and were now letting her glide gracefully instead of drop like a less-aerodynamic stone. Naturally, her mind stalled for a solid thirty seconds as it tried to even contextualize what the optic nerve was sending it. 'I—how—what the—!?'
THROB!
The far more angelic angel paled as she suddenly became aware of something else. Namely, the fact that her entire back felt like it was on fire. And in response to that pain, her suddenly useful wings lost that usefulness, and her plunge downward abruptly resumed.
Sanji saw the whole thing, all three seconds of it. When Conis resumed falling above him, he shook off his shock enough to kick against the air and let her fall back into his arms.
And that was the end of the excitement; Sanji exercised his Sky Walk to slow his descent and land reasonably gently on the pier below. Su barely lasted that long before resuming her squirming, paws clamped tightly over her nose. Usopp was still a ways up, descending at a controlled pace with his parachute. Mikey was floating belly-up in the pool, at least ensuring that he would not drown. Though from the moans he was producing, he probably didn't think that was a good thing.
For now, though, Sanji was concerned with far more pressing matters. "Conis!" he lamented, cradling the angel protectively. "Are you alright, my dear, sweet, beloved—!"
"Sanji, please don't take this the wrong way, but for the love of Gan Fall, please shut the hell up," Conis hissed in a strained tone, her entire body twitching in distress. "I think I just pulled a million muscles all at once and it is taking every fiber of my being not to scream bloody murder."
"Ah… right, sorry," Sanji winced sympathetically. He then glanced down at her wings. "Speaking of which, not that your wings aren't lovelier than those of a dove or—!" CLICK! The compliment died in his throat at the feel of a gun barrel pressing into his gut. "Right, focusing. What the heck is going on?!"
"I… think I can help you with that."
Sanji and Conis turned to see a somewhat older woman walking up to them. She wore a simple dress and had feathers on her arms from the wrists almost to the shoulder. Then, after a moment, Sanji let himself sag. "Please tell me you're a friend because we have been through hell like you wouldn't believe."
The woman smiled comfortingly. "Hordes upon hordes of monsters and beasts, each more titanic than the last?"
Realizing his mistake, Sanji winced. "Riiiight… don't suppose you could help us understand the situation we're in?"
The local nodded and moved to give Sanji a hand with his yet-incapacitated burden. "Right this way, I'll help you all get settled in. Though…" She winced and shot a fearful glance towards the village. "We will have to be a bit careful. Even behind the Daft Greens, nowhere is truly safe here."
Sanji narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "Because of a certain lion-headed bastard by the name of Shiki?" The woman's grimace was answer enough. "Oh yeah, we definitely have a lot to talk about."
And with that, the woman helped Sanji carry Conis into the village… leaving Mikey gurgling face-up in the lake. [Someone kiiiilllll meeee…]
-o-
"Donny, don't you think that if Boss were here, he would have you Tidal Swimming alongside us for training instead of resting?" Robin posed, not even looking up from the journal she was writing in.
{Oh, shut up. We've all earned a little rest after a straight week of monsters,} the Dugong grumpily signed back.
"Mmm, yes, a good point," Robin conceded.
The two, along with Franky and Brook, were perched on the back of what Franky called a "Crawley-Davidson" and which everyone else called "a giant-ass crawdad with wheels and steering". This left Carue, with Vivi slumped on his back, running alongside the improvised vehicle, something the duck didn't mind despite being at the tail end of a week of non-stop running for his life.
"Hey, it looks like there's something up ahead!" Brook exclaimed, pointing in the direction of a small mountain. Upon closer inspection, a cluster of buildings around the top of the mountain and an Asian-style palace at its peak made themselves known.
"Is that a town?" Franky asked in some surprise.
"Looks like it," Vivi said, perking up. "Maybe we can get some answers there. Carue—WAAAGH!"
The sudden scream was a result of Carue suddenly skidding to an uneven halt, coming within an inch of losing his balance and a wailing quack leaking out between the feathers suddenly clamped over his beak. At the same time, Crawley-Davidson reared up, leaping backward by several meters and nearly bucking its passengers off in the process.
Well, nearly bucking most of them off; Donny fell off immediately, his flippers too busy grinding against his face. Brook fell off mostly, hanging on only by a leg, while Franky kept a firm hold on his handlebars and Robin sprouted a few extra arms to keep herself in place. Shortly after the crawdad stopped bucking, Carue made his way back to the group, Donny in tow.
"I think I bit my tongue… not that I have a tongue," Brook commented weakly.
"DAGH!" Franky grunted in annoyance, whacking the crawfish on the head. "Motorcycles don't jump backward, stupid!"
{Urgh, don't blame him,} Donny shakily signed, one flipper still grinding against his nostrils. {There's some kind of stench in the air around that place, it smells like what Devil Fruits taste like. It must be how they keep those monsters away! It's taking everything I have not to bolt as it is!}
"A rotten smell?" Vivi asked, taking a sniff as she dismounted from Carue. "Huh, I think I can smell something… and that does make a lot of sense. Something like that would be the only thing capable of keeping monsters like the ones we've been seeing from attacking."
Carue squawked in miserable agreement. Looking around and spying one of the many cacti that surrounded them, he dashed over, clawed an arm off, and stuck his beak into the juicy inside with a relieved quack.
[GIMME!] Donny barked, leapfrogging off the duck's head and grabbing a cactus branch of his own to plug his muzzle with. [Oh, thank Gooood. Ergh, but I can still smell it a bit…]
"Quaaaa…" Carue moaned in agreement.
"But we're in the middle of the desert," Franky protested. "Where could a smell—!?"
"Unless my nose deceives me, I think it's coming from those odd trees over there!" Brook said, pointing out a wall of off-color shrubbery. "Though of course—!"
"Yeah yeah, no nose, we get it, come on already," Franky grumbled, yanking the skeleton free of their twitchy mount's saddle and dragging him along by the leg. All the while, the cyborg grumbled mutinously under his breath. "Stupid trees, stupid smell, stupid instincts and inferior building materials, give me good old-fashioned metal and I could make something ten times better in a damn heartbeat…"
Vivi eyed her cactus-snorting mount and how he was still shaky on his webbed feet before hanging her head with a sigh. "Guess we're walking. Don't suppose anyone has any ideas on how to pass the time?"
"Recite the entirety of the review sheet I gave you the day before we met Shiki," Robin immediately stated, still yet to look up from her journal.
Vivi paled at the suggestion and snapped a shaky grin at the rest of her friends. "Anyone else have any suggestions?"
The princess paled even further when the crew's archaeologist slammed her journal shut with a too-loud slam and a menacing gleam in her eye. "I don't recall saying that that was a suggestion, Your Highness."
"A-Ah, j-just a minute," Vivi said hastily. "The stones' indestructibility was determined four years after the founding of the World Government…"
"And she's off," Franky sighed. "You ever feel lucky to not have a woman jamming you up?"
"Honestly, I just feel lucky every time I talk to living people instead of the voices in my head," Brook replied in a perfectly pleasant tone of voice.
The cyborg shot a doubtful look over his shoulder. "We have really got to stick some books about psychology in front of Chopper sometime."
"For all the good that they'd do me! It's quite impossible to treat senility, after all, and I'm twenty years past the pale on that! Yohohoho!"
"See, it's things like that that really don't inspire confidence."
-o-
"How much longer until we get there?" Zoro grunted inquisitively, stubbornly not looking down at their 'guide'. A word he used only under extreme duress, mind you; it didn't matter what anyone else said, that tundra had been moving under their feet, damn it!
Said 'guide' scanned their surroundings before giving him a nod. "Don't worry, we're really really close! Just a few more minutes down this river and we'll be at my home!" Xiao confidently stated, the precious flower she was cradling in her hands nodding alongside her.
Zoro grunted again but gave no further response to the girl sitting before him. Chopper sat behind him, looming over them both and keeping a tentative eye on the girl; he had given her treatment for cold and shock, but the feathers on her arms and the unusual biology they signified kept him anxious.
Looking over all of them from up on the mammoth's back was Merry, a rope wound around each of her arms and tied to the tusks of the pachyderm they were using as a mount as the nearest and easiest thing to a bridle they could assemble on such short notice. And behind her, Leo was as close to kneeling as a creature with a legless lower body could be, taking advantage of their current peace to meditate.
"Glad to hear it, because we've been out of that winter wasteland for hours and I swear I've still got hoarfrost in crevices I didn't know I had until now!" Merry lamented, wincing as she rolled her neck. "I don't care if I almost drown from it, I need a hot bath stat!" And with that, she snapped her reigns and urged the mammoth to a faster pace.
Xiao looked up in panic at the sudden acceleration. "Ah, no, wait! You can't do that, we can't ride this thing anymore! We need to walk from here on out!"
Merry looked down in confusion at the feathered girl. "The heck are you talking about? Why wouldn't we ride this wooly lug all the way? I mean, there's nothing in our way! It's clean sailing all the—!"
"BAROOOOOOH!"
"—UWAH!?"
All of a sudden their mount not only stopped dead in its tracks but actually bucked forward in a blind panic, launching its riders from its back. Free of its restraints, the mammoth turned tail and stampeded its way back towards its natural habitat as fast as its bulky mass allowed.
"Argh, sonnuva—!" Zoro winced as he sat up, rubbing the back of his skull. The swordsman shot an accusatory glare at the crew's helmsgirl. "What the heck, Merry?! What happened to 'clean sailing', huh?!"
"Uwah, nonono, it wasn't her fault!" Xiao hastily reassured him, waving her free hand desperately. "It's my fault! I didn't think to tell you guys about the barrier sooner, I'm really sorry!"
The three-swords master looked at her with a confused grunt. "'Barrier'? What are you—?"
"Ughhhh…"
A miserable moan from Chopper drew Zoro and Merry's attention. The human-reindeer had a pained grimace on his face as he clamped his hands over his nose.
"She must be talking about the smell…" Chopper choked out, disgust clogging his every word. "It feels like someone shoved red hot pokers up my nostrils it hurts so much…"
"Uh-huh," Xiao nodded, bearing an apologetic expression. "They're called Daft Greens; they're trees that smell really bad, so they drive all the scary monsters away from the village. In fact, they stink so bad that they drive animals away before they even see them!" She paused after that statement, thoughtfully cocking her head. "…Oh, yeah, and they're poisonous, too."
"MENTION THAT FIRST!" the Straw Hats all roared at once.
"Ah, n-not right away I mean!" the girl hastily explained. "Th-The thing is, they're—! I-I mean that they, w-well…" Xiao trailed off and bowed her head mournfully, holding the flower she was carrying to her chest. "It… It's complicated, alright?"
The anger the Straw Hats felt melted away at the sudden shift in her demeanor, and after some swift and silent communication, elected to let the matter drop.
"Well!" Merry clapped her hands. "If we can smell those things, then that means that we're a stone's throw away! Come on, guys! Let's suck in our guts and hop to it, yeah?"
"Hmph." "Right!" "…"
Two of the three answers were as expected, but the third had Merry looking around in confusion. "Eh? Where the heck's Leo?"
"Uh…" Leaning around merry, Xiao quickly spotted and pointed out the dugong. "Ah, there he is!" She let out a whistle. "And he's still holding that pose!"
"That is some pretty impressive meditation," Zoro said sincerely. He waited for a few seconds and then nodded. "Didn't react to me saying that, very impressive meditation."
"Unless you're willing to carry him to the village, you'll still need to snap him out of it," Merry huffed, leaning over the Dugong and poking him repeatedly in the cheek. "Because in case you've forgotten, he's your punching bag, so if you seriously expect me to be the one to haul his blubbery ass, you've got another thing—!"
Squish.
Merry froze as she realized she'd missed in her poking, and instead of putting her finger in the amphibian's jowl, she'd put it in his eye instead. "Ah… whoops?"
[GAH!]
Leo suddenly shot up with a pained shriek, clutching his face in agony. [MY EYE! AGH! MY NOOOOSE!] A second after that, his flippers move to his nose, before shoving his snarling face in Merry's bemused one. [YOU LITTLE BRAT, WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT FOR!? I WAS TRYING TO ESCAPE THIS DAMN STENCH AND NOW I'M SUFFERING WORSE THAN EVER! I DEMAND COMPENSATION, YOU HEAR ME!? COM-PEN—!]
"We've found somewhere where we should be absolutely safe from those monsters for a while," Merry calmly said.
[—pleasure doing business with you, which way did you say this safe haven where I could sleep for a thousand years was?] Leo cleanly segued.
Merry chuckled in childlike amusement at the reversal before turning on her heel and heading right past Leo. More specifically, right back the way they came.
"…I was wondering how much of Zoro rubbed off on her," Chopper muttered.
Proving that she had very good hearing, Merry froze, spun on her heel, and stormed past them in the correct direction, her face red and expression daring anyone to comment. That didn't stop Leo and Chopper from snickering behind the appendages that were already clamped over their noses. She stopped before Zoro for a moment so that she could shoot a rabid snarl at him, and continued on without looking back.
The first mate blinked after her in confusion before looking back at the rest of the crew. "Someone wanna tell me what that was about?"
"I'll tell you later…" Chopper sighed with a wave of his hoof as he walked past, and then glanced aside. "Or maybe never…" he muttered under his breath. "Yeah, never's better."
Zoro just shrugged and followed after them, Leo bringing up the rear.
[You think some of the rest of the crew will be there?] the Dugong asked.
"Let's hope so," Chopper said fervently. "The sooner we're all back together, the better."
-One Hour Later-
"Not quite what I had in mind,] Leo and Chopper deadpanned as the usual two-thirds of the Monster Trio got into another spar. An unrestrained spar, mind you, thanks to the majority of the crew—minus Mikey and Usopp, who'd elected to stay behind and keep resting—having relocated to a hill a good distance away from the village to keep themselves away from Shiki's prying, invertebrate-borne eyes.
"Well, at least the last week is keeping them from pushing themselves too hard," Merry said, shaking her head. An explosion of utterly innocent earth drew a slight twitch from her gaze. "…to a point, anyway."
Chopper sighed, turning his attention back to the chemistry set he'd set up between his legs. "I'll worry about them later; for now, I need to work this out." Holding up a triple-sealed test tube, he scrutinized the verdant twig resting inside. "If Daft Green is the only defense against those animals, then it's best I make sure we don't get poisoned in the process. Though…" The human-reindeer's frown deepened as he put down the test tube and held up a beaker, this one containing a unique pink flower. "I'd really prefer it if I had a larger sample size of the cure…"
"Ah, Chopper?" Conis said, tentatively poking him in the shoulder. "Sorry for bothering you, but if you have the time, would you mind taking a look at, well…" She flapped her larger than normal wings for emphasis. "Me?"
"Are you currently in agonizing pain and/or dying?" the reindeer absently asked without looking up from his work.
Said work was promptly interrupted by a white paw clamping down on the vial of daft green, and a snarling vulpine muzzle in his face. [Rethink that prognosis, doc,] Su hissed. [Before I shove this devil-stick clean into your brain.]
Chopper shivered at the cloud fox's tone, before sagging with a defeated sigh. "I… I'm sorry, Conis, that just slipped out…" He started to knead the bridge of his nose, wincing. "This last week has been… hard."
"I know, I know, it's… well, not fine, but I understand," Conis soothed, rubbing the doctor's back. "It's not even that I'm worried they're dangerous or anything like that, they're just kind of in the way right now. I just really wish I knew how to make my wings smaller and compact like they were befo—"
FWUMP!
As fast as they had grown, her wings shrank back to their original cosmetic form, and Conis staggered, almost losing her balance. Everyone blinked in confusion.
"…Psychosomatic trigger, got it," Conis said flatly.
"When this mess is over, we will need to look into that," Chopper groused, shaking his head. "But for now…" He held up the beaker and tube again, superimposing one over the other. "I need to figure out how the IQ serves to neutralize the Daft Green's miasma. Seriously, it can't be that… hard… if…" Chopper's eyes widened in realization, his voice slowly trailing off into silence.
"Chopper?" Conis asked gently after a few moments.
"I am a Luffy-grade moron," the human-reindeer breathed.
[Well, yeah, but what does that have to do with—WAH!] Thrown off when Chopper suddenly shifted into his Walk Point and shot off like a cloven bullet, the fox blinked after him and then looked up at her human in confusion. [The heck was that about?]
Conis sighed as she picked her old friend up. "I wish I knew, Su, I wish I knew…"
-o-
"—and so, much like other languages, small marks can make all the difference in the symbol's pronunciation and meaning, as can the variations of the arches forming—"
"That will do for now," Robin interrupted as they reached the entrance to the fortress. The princess sagged slightly in relief, an honest smile on both of their faces; for all that Robin was scarily strict, both of them were happy about the learning.
That did nothing to ease the worries of their companions that Robin might try to rope them into it as well if they made the mistake of showing an iota of interest. Which, in all honesty, all three of them did possess. When Robin knocked at the door of the fortress, though, they all shoved that interest down as deep as they could.
Their wait was brief; the door opened about a foot, and a thuggish individual showed his face, took one look at them, and made to slam it in their faces. He didn't get far; Robin had arms blooming on his body, bending his fingers backward and covering his mouth before he could so much as twitch. Her move to open the door wider proved superfluous, as a second thug yanked it open, brandishing a large sword at her. The others readied themselves, Robin herself growing several arms over him and Vivi opening her mouth, but a sound of splattering liquid, not unlike blood being spilled, prompted both of them to wait.
At the same time as that noise reached them, they saw the thugs' expressions go wide in shock and panic. Then, just as quickly, all emotion left their faces and their bodies slumped where they stood, nearly falling over from the new slackness.
It was obvious to any experienced eye that someone had just taken them out from behind. But Robin and Vivi recognized much more than that, causing a smirk to crawl over the elder's face, and a grimace over the younger's.
"Well, now, this is a pleasant surprise," Robin said calmly. "I suppose I should have realized that we would be crossing paths again soon, but I did not expect it to be under these circumstances."
"Likewise," came an even voice from behind the thugs. "But it's good to see that you haven't lost your touch, Miss All Sunday."
The voice's owner stepped past the mindless thugs and came into view. Franky and Brook both blinked at the girl before them, dressed in a fancy, white, tomboyish outfit, but Donny put together the pieces immediately from the use of the codename and, much more glaringly, the palette and paintbrush she was carrying. Paying them no mind, the girl cocked an eyebrow at Vivi.
"You could stand to be faster on the draw, Miss Wednesday," she said blandly.
"Nice to see you too, Miss Goldenweek," Vivi bit out, doing her level best to obliterate the diminutive assassin with her glare. "Dare I ask what you're doing here?"
"Right this way," Goldenweek hummed serenely in response, waving the Straw Hats inside, though not before she took out her paintbrush again and scribbled symbols on the backs of the men's heads.
Robin cocked an eyebrow at the symbols as she passed. "Forgetful Fuchsia, if I'm not mistaken?"
"Amnestic Aubergine," the painter corrected. "I've been getting a lot of practice with it lately, and it never ceases to be a good thing. It would be inconvenient if anyone finds out you're here."
"At least there's some benefit to working with you…" Vivi sighed in reluctant approval.
While Robin and Vivi walked in, Franky, Brook, and Donny all hung back and exchanged confused glances.
"You ever feel like a heaping heck of a lot of context just went right over your head?" Franky asked.
"Well, to be fair, I am half a century behind the times!" Brook noted. "But yes, I felt that as well."
[Honestly, I say we just go with what you said earlier: women,] Donny sighed, shrugging helplessly.
[Just shaddup and follow us, already,] Carue called back from further down the hall, prompting the trio to scramble after everyone else.
The building that they entered was a three-story hall filled with bars and sturdy wooden tables. Light came from the many elegant lanterns hanging from the ceilings, creating a homey, classic tavern-type atmosphere. This picture was only enhanced by the rambunctious groups of men—most of them looking like well-dressed thugs—drinking and laughing at the tables. Young women clad in pink outfits with feathers on their arms moved between tables and took the men's orders or delivered food and drink.
Overall, it seemed like an ordinary banquet hall with an only slightly extraordinary clientele and staff. Though Robin's keen eyes noticed that Eternal Poses bearing the name 'Merveille' were on every table.
"What is this place…?" Vivi asked quietly, sticking to the shadows in an attempt to keep her distinctive hair from being noticed.
"Hell," Goldenweek answered. She then paused and glanced back at the frozen-in-shock Straw Hats. "That's what you call a gathering place of demons, yes?" She shrugged and started walking again. "Almost there."
The assassin led the group through the upper level of the hall until they finally reached a booth tucked away in a corner, mostly out of sight of the room's general population.
"Got them," Goldenweek announced as she slipped into the booth, idly grabbing a rice-cracker off the table. "You were right, they were close enough to find this place. It was a good call. Very surprising."
"Well, what can I say?" a familiar voice sneered from the shadows, causing Vivi to stiffen in shock. "I'm all about being a contourarian kinda guy."
"Contrarian."
"That too!"
"Wait, you're—!?" the princess gasped.
"Well, well, well…" a cool and comported drawl interrupted her. "The Straw Hats have entered the building…"
"Which means that sanity can exit stage left! Kyahahaha!" a far more chipper and manic voice laughed.
"Hehahaha!" the familiar voice cackled, and its owner drew the cover from the lamp's table to reveal a spike-toothed smirk. "Ain't that the truth!?"
The newly uncovered light source revealed more than that, of course. It allowed the Straw Hats to take in their impromptu hosts in all their uncharacteristically well-dressed glory: the Barto Club pirates themselves, or at least their top brass.
Mr. 5's outfit was hardly any different from how Robin and Vivi remembered, the only difference being the absence of his codename plastered all over. Miss Valentine was wearing a wider bottomed dress than they had last seen her in, patterned elegantly in yellow and black. The other young girl was wearing a black, ankle-length cheongsam with a golden dragon embroidered into it. And lastly, the gaunt man that none of them knew by sight was wearing a three-piece suit that clearly had not been tailored well.
The captain wore a yellow-and-orange pinstriped suit with ankle-length tails, a bolo tie with a silver clasp and inset lapis stone, and a dark red shirt. He was the only one that all of them recognized, and that was only because they knew the sharp-toothed grin and green hair—vaguely resembling a rooster's comb—from his wanted poster. The only surprise they found, given what little they knew of him, was that he was staying remarkably calm for meeting his idols in person, and was even displaying his usual bravado.
Bartolomeo nodded at the princess with a cocky smirk. "Glad to see you're still in one piece, Copperhead."
Vivi blinked in surprise, then pulled up a seat and collapsed into it with a weary sigh. "Glad to be in one piece, Rooster," she groaned. "This place has been doing its level best to rip us apart at every turn…"
"Huh?!" Franky glanced in confusion between the princess and the other pirate. "You saying you guys know each other or something?"
"Somewhat," Robin provided in her usual mysterious tone. "He's a friend of a friend of Cross's. I imagine I don't need to tell you to not mention this to anyone else, yes?"
"Uh… yeah, if you say so, I guess," Franky shrugged.
"Yohohoho, whatever you say! Though if I could receive some compensation for my discre—URK!" Brook choked as a hand took hold of his jawbone. "On ffekn' ffot, Ah'nng 'ood!"
Donny barked something out, waving a flipper in front of his muzzle.
"'I'm perfectly content being a pugilistic scholar, leave me out of your shadow-politicking.' That's what he said," the other girl provided politely. She then smiled and waved in greeting. "By the way, I'm Apis. Nice to meet you all!"
"Gin," the gaunt man provided, grimacing as he tugged at the collar of his suit. "Don't worry about not knowing me, you all joined way after I met your captain."
"While with others, their acquaintance with our crew was more…" Robin spun her hand thoughtfully. "Let's go with recent."
"Five. Valentine," Vivi stated frigidly.
"Oh, come on, don't be like that. It almost sounds like you hold a grudge," Five drawled grumpily.
"Yeah!" Valentine leaned forward and smirked impishly, resting her chin in the propped up palm of her hand. "You shouldn't address your superiors so glibly, Miss Wednesday!"
Thunk!
Both assassins recoiled in shock when Vivi suddenly sank the tip of one of her Lion Cutters into the tabletop with a twitching grin. "First off, you will address me as Princess Nefertari Vivi," Vivi grit out. "Secondly, apart from the fact that I never truly considered myself to be a member of your organization, I'd like to remind the both of you that I can and will cut you."
"And third…" The ex-assassins stiffened as they felt a sensation they were far too familiar with by half. "I believe that if we're going by our old positions, I would count as your superior, no?"
"Barty—!" Valentine whimpered plaintively around the hand that lightly gripping her windpipe, eyes locked on the knife Robin was smoothly flipping around her hand.
"Don't look at me, you dipshits dug this hole, you can dig yourselves out," Bartolomeo grunted, visibly more interested in the finger he was using to dig through his ear. Pulling it out, he smirked at the rest of the Straw Hats who were unfamiliar with him, taking the chance to polish his nails on his jacket. "And as for me, I'm 'Black Bart' Bartolomeo. Worth ฿350 Million, one of the most infamous rookies on the sea—" He flashed a pointy grin at the Straw Hats. "And a personal friend of Monkey D. Luffy and Jeremiah—!"
THUNK! "YEOW!"
Barty abruptly transitioned into a cry of pain due to the fork Goldenweek sank into his leg without even looking at him. "WHAT THE HELL, BRAT, I WASN'T EVEN FLIPPING OUT!" he roared at his diminutive crewmate.
"No, you were just being an ass," Goldenweek hummed around her cracker.
"You little—!" Barto snarled, reaching for her throat.
"Rooster," Vivi emphasized with a slap of her hand on the table, getting the captain's attention back on her. "What the hell is this place, and what the hell are you doing here?!"
Barty shot one last side glare at his underling before donning a cocky smirk and raising his arms to gesture at the room of criminals and villains around them. "Ain't it obvious, Princess? This here's one of the many gathering spots the great pirate, 'Golden Lion' Shiki, has set up in his hideout of Merveille for the fifty other pirate crews he's recruited to join in a grand alliance, which he's personally heading up. And as for me? Weeeell…" Barto leaned back, arms sprawled behind his chair, and proudly raised his chin. "You're speaking to the newly recruited commander of his 51st division, thank you very much."
Vivi's eyes widened in shock. "You infiltrated his ranks?"
"Not like I had much of a fucking choice!" Barty snarled, leaning forward on his elbow. "He's Shiki! The man fought Roger, for cripes' sake. When he says you're his new commander, you damn well act as his commander! And, well…" He winced and glanced aside, rubbing the back of his neck. "I thought it'd be a good way to try and find you guys and get some intel for the Masons, ya know?"
"Well, you're sitting in front of another Mason now, so what do you know?" Vivi pressed.
Bartolomeo's face darkened, and Gin spoke up.
"If Shiki didn't have a complete ban on bringing snails into this place, we'd have every alarm bell ringing," the old Demon of the East said grimly. "But even if he's loose-lipped about his plans to anyone here, he's got enough brains to take that precaution. Any snail comes into Merveille, he locks it down tight. Total communications blackout. That's the only reason…" Gin slammed his fist on the table with a grim glare. "The only reason the East Blue isn't being evacuated as fast as possible."
The reactions to that particular tidbit were as expected: pallor, rage, and hatred.
"Shiki's behind the attacks on the East Blue—" Franky began, his lips twitching into a scowl.
Robin's eyes narrowed dangerously. "—and he's been using these monsters to pull it off—"
"—and now he's gathered all of these crews together to form a traditional army to make matters even worse," Brook finished, teeth audibly grinding.
"More than just that," Vivi snarled, 5 and Valentine and even Goldenweek edging away from the livid princess despite the fact she was gnawing on her thumb. "This kind of an army… his sights are set higher than just the East Blue, aren't they?"
"'First the East Blue, and then the world'," Apis repeated grimly into her juice. "That's what he said when he recruited us. And with his powers keeping his army out of anyone's reach until they start attacking, and those beasts acting as a vanguard to break any forces that oppose him, there's nothing anyone down there can do about it."
"But the Lion made two big mistakes," Bartolomeo cut in, his grin as savage as ever. "The first was not noticing that our crew was from the East Blue. All he saw was us attacking a Celestial Dragon and getting away with it. And the second mistake?"
He threw back his head and cackled. "HEHAHAHAHAHA! He was actually braindead stupid enough to not only declare war on the Straw Hat Pirates by stealing one of their own, he brought them to this place himself! Oh, sure, he's a monster in combat, no denying that, but my money's still on you guys."
"Naturally, he's going to regret challenging us. But before that, we need to find the rest of the crew," Brook said, most likely poking up a finger behind the shades of his 'hat'. "As you all have access to the video feeds of the archipelago, would you know of our compatriots' current locations?"
"Kinda yes, kinda no," Valentine sighed explosively as she sank down in her seat. "We've been given a front-row seat to the pummelings you've all been giving and taking, yes, but you're all moving way too fast for us to pin down. One day or even minute you're in one biome, the next you've shoved off to another. Trying to go based off of the feeds would just mean we end up where your friends were and nothing more."
"But thankfully," Five picked up in his usual drawl. "We've managed to find a different solution we think will work just as well."
"And that's where I come in! YO!" Barto barked, hand raised. "CAN I GET SOME DAMN SERVICE OVER HERE?!"
A passing young woman with a red ponytail and the same feathered arms as the rest of the 'wait staff' looked over at the call, and began making her way towards them. "Greetings folks, my name's Ever and I'll be your waitress. How may I help you this fine evening?" she asked with a smile.
Vivi cocked an eyebrow. "Impressive. It took me years to learn how to hide that kind of hate that well."
Ever responded with a more honest smile and her fingers in a v-sign. "Thanks, and don't worry, it's directed more at my 'employers' and the words, not you guys. Barty and his guys have literally been the nicest folks we've met around here in years. It's just a bit hard to turn it off sometimes. Seriously, how can I help?"
Standing, Brook leaned in close to the waitress. "Well, first," he said, looking her up and down. "Would you mind showing me your panties?"
A vein popped to life on Ever's forehead, and she leaped elegantly into the air. "NO WAY, CREEP!" she snapped, slamming an axe kick down on Brook's head that slammed him to the ground and dislodged the basket he had been wearing.
"Ohhh… you kicked my face off," Brook moaned, raising his head.
"Yeah, and I'll damn well do it again if you try… something… like… that…"
Ever's eyes widened as she got a good look at Brook's face, a feeling that was reflected by the majority of the Barto Club.
"But then!" Brook continued with rising mirth. "It's not like I have a face to begin with! YOHOHOHO!" He then blinked—somehow—in confusion when he realized that a good fifteen-foot radius had gone dead silent. "Uh… is everything alright?"
The only response he got was Goldenweek's rice cracker falling from her slack jaws.
"Brook, have you looked in the mirror anytime within the last 50 years?" Franky deadpanned.
"Hm? A mirror? Why? Is there something wrong with my face?" Brook asked, picking up a glass and looking into his reflection. He stared for a second before recoiling in horror. "UWAH! OH DEAR GOD NO!"
{What, is something wrong?} Donny signed in concern.
"Oh, it's terrible, just terrible!" Brook pointed at his eye-holes. "I'm starting to go yellow around my orbital sockets! Now how will I get all the hot young skeletons to love me?!"
WHAM!
Vivi, Franky, Carue, and Donny all face-planted out of their seats. Robin remained more composed, but her palm still met her face, though that didn't muffle the fond chuckle.
"What," Gin managed, eyes wide.
"In," Mr. 5 continued, in much the same condition.
"The," Miss Valentine picked up.
"Actual," Apis squeaked.
"Everloving!" Ever choked out.
"SHIT?!" Goldenweek shrieked at full blast.
Bartolomeo snapped his fingers. "AHEM!" he coughed, all eyes turning back to him. "As funny as this is to watch, Ever, I need you to fill these guys in on the local safe places."
"Wha—? Captain, are you seriously not going to react to—?" Apis started to protest.
Rolling his eyes, Bartolomeo crossed his fingers, and the words "DEVIL FRUIT" traced themselves on the table in big block letters. "Anyway…" Giving Apis and his other two ability-using officers one last disdainful look, which got them blushing and looking every which way but at him, he turned to the waitress. "Ever, we didn't call you here just for more drinks. Tell these guys what you told us."
The feather-armed young woman blinked in surprise at the request, then coughed into her fist and hastily comported herself. "W-Well, as you most likely noticed on your way here, the only areas safe from Shiki's modified monsters are the ones protected by barriers of Daft Green trees. Besides here, I only know of two places where the Daft Greens are planted: Shiki's palace, which is where your friend Nami is—"
"Saving that for once we've got everyone back together," Vivi cut in.
"—and my home village. It's at the lowest point of the archipelago so that Shiki can literally reign over everyone. Your friends have been moving down and towards the main island this entire time, so they should find it sooner or later. We haven't seen them yet, mind…" Ever pointed out several projections on the wall, which displayed a perfectly normal village, save for the feathers on everyone's arms. "But then, the surveillance on our home isn't exactly subtle. I'm certain that if they are there, they're just staying out of sight of the snails."
Vivi frowned in both confusion and concern. "Wait, you mean to say that Shiki's maintaining surveillance on your village? Why?"
Ever shrugged helplessly. "Beats me. The only people Shiki's left back home are the children and elderly. Some of us think he's showing us mercy by letting us keep an eye on our loved ones, but… well. You've met him."
"That I have…" the princess muttered in agreement, eyes darting back and forth in thought. She considered for a minute longer before shaking her head and standing up. "Well, I guess I'll go ahead and check out that village; with Carue, I can get there and back faster than the rest of you. I'll find out what I can while I'm there."
{I'll go with you,} Donny signed as he waddled to her side. {I've been without my siblings and master for a week and for some Set-damned reason I miss them. Sooo I'd rather see if any of them have found their way to the village than stay here, sitting on my tail and twiddling my flippers…} His expression then fell flat. {And so help me, if you ever tell any of them I said that I missed them, I will stab you.}
"Noted," Vivi chuckled.
"We'll stay here, then, gather more intel and try to put together a plan while we wait for you to get back," Franky said.
"You have fun out there, try not to get eaten on the way," Robin added, a winning smile on her face. "After all, you will be riding around out there on a tasty duck, so the chances of you being swallowed alive are quite substantial. But still, happy thoughts, right?"
Vivi smiled back innocently. "Robin, I'll keep thinking happy thoughts while you soak your head."
"Oh, come now, surely you don't mean—!" SPLASH! "—blurgh!?"
Blinking stupidly, Robin tracked her hand as it put down the now-empty glass that it had just splashed in her face.
[Aaaaand I'm out. Move it, blubber-butt,] Carue quacked, walking away with Vivi and Donny following close behind.
Robin stared after the princess, frowning slightly, before shaking her head with a bemused smile, gratefully accepting a small towel from Ever. "Mmm… so, new outfits?" she asked, clearly looking for a way to change the subject.
"Eh, it's a momentous occasion for the Golden Ass," Barto shrugged. "After nightfall, all the crews are going to join Shiki at his palace for an allegiance ceremony, and he wants everyone to look their best."
"I could do without it," Gin grumbled, uncomfortably shifting around in his ill-fitting outfit. "I just grabbed the first thing I saw in his tailor's quarters that looked right. Didn't bother to get it fitted…"
"We can get you some too if you want!" Ever offered eagerly. "The tailor is so overloaded with orders that he won't notice if I slipped a few extra orders in. Though…"She frowned in concern, tapping her chin thoughtfully. "We'd still need the measurements for the rest of your crewmates, so, I guess that's a—"
"Here you go."
Ever blinked in surprise at the disembodied hand currently offering her a folded up piece of paper, but she took it in stride, unfolded it, and then nearly fell over in shock when she read what was written on it. "What the—!? These are measurements for your entire crew! How and why on earth do you have these on hand!?"
Robin's response was a very wide, very disturbing grin, accompanied by an equally disturbing chuckle. "Weeeeell—"
"On second thought, I don't wanna know!" the feather-armed woman frantically pleaded off. "I-I'll just go ahead and get this to the tailor, so that you all can look your best as you kick Shiki's ass! Good luck to you all!"
But before the waitress could properly skedaddle, however, a mook rushed up to the table with a panicked expression. "B-Boss Bart! We've got a major problem!" the pirate hissed out, his eyes darting this way and that as if to spot hidden watchers.
In response, Bart scoffed and started picking his nose again, sending his underling an unimpressed look. "Buddy, we're balls deep in enemy territory and under the heel of one of the worst pirates in living memory. How the hell could shit get any worse?"
Unnoticed by anyone else at the table, Robin brought her hand to her face, then several more.
"I, uh, well…" The underling glanced surreptitiously at Ever before leaning over the table to his captain and hissing something in Barto's ear as quietly as he could.
For his part, Barto nodded and grunted in understanding at the information. Then, all at once, he stiffened as though struck by lightning.
"SHIKI'S GOING TO DO WHAT!?"
-o-
The sound of flatulence rose from rubber soles with each step Dr. Indigo took towards the pool room. The not-so-good doctor intended to surreptitiously gather some data about the bird that he had left with the prisoner—er, new recruit. After all, just because he couldn't take it away by his captain's orders didn't mean he couldn't still observe it. It wouldn't be particularly productive observation, not when he was looking to build a better killing machine and those women only saw a probably-cute animal, but at least he would find out what the creature did when left to its own devices with constant human contact.
Upon entering the room, his grinning face scanned the room in search of the peaducken (name pending). Unfortunately, it was nowhere to be seen. Nor, as he took in the entirety of the room, was the former Straw Hat. Paling beneath his makeup, his eyes turned toward the pool—
"Horo horo horo horo horo horo horo…"
And then snapped upward at the familiar haunting laughter of the other 'prisoner'. His pallor intensified when he did not see a young tanning goth girl, but instead three large, orb-shaped specters with childlike eyes and mouths. Well, except for the part where the mouths were grinning in blatant, naked malice.
"Thanks for being such wonderful hosts," came Perona's taunting voice from the specters. "But we've overstayed our welcome, so we're heading out now. But here's a parting gift for you. TRIPLE SPECIAL HOLLOW!"
Indigo barely had time to even begin deploying his fumes for Chemical Juggling before the specters completely swamped him. Only the sheer size of the palace kept anyone else from hearing the massive detonation that followed a moment later.
-o-
"Clowns and mad scientists like blowing up, right?" Perona snarked, fighting not to burst into laughter. She waited for someone else to do so in her place and sagged despondently when she realized that no one was around to do so.
"Maaan," she groused, spinning the spectral rendition of her parasol on her shoulder. "It really sucks not having an entourage around to laugh at my jokes anymore." The astral 'princess' cast a glare up and through the lake she was floating beside. "Where the heck are they? It's not that far from the drain to the castle, shouldn't they have been here by now?"
Sighing, Perona mentally gave it another minute and went back to taking in the landscape around her. She glanced at the coral coating the bed of the lake she was floating beside—a lake that defied gravity by essentially being a vertical wall—but she'd been examining that for most of the time she'd been waiting. She glanced down, towards the target island, with its caldera lake, green canopy, and the Thousand Sunny visible at the end of the scar in the jungle it had left, but it wasn't a very visually appealing island.
With little other choice, she turned back to the coral, and the gap Nami was supposed to come out of. Thankfully, a few more seconds the duck and the Straw Hat flew out of the hole, shooting straight for the edge of the lake. Perona flew up out of the way and heard a splash followed by the gasp of someone inhaling after a long time holding their breath. In seconds, she was beside Nami, flying down alongside the navigator, who was clinging to her plummeting mount's back.
"Enjoy the swim?" Perona shouted over the rushing wind.
"Shi—hugh!—Shiki's got almost a mile of plumbing under his monument to his own ego, and my mount took three wrong turns in a row!" Nami shouted back, coughing up a lungful of water halfway through. "If I weren't such a good swimmer, I'd have drowned twice over!"
"Yeah, well, you're in luck, because you can recover and dry off once we get back to the Sunny!" Perona said, beamed ecstatically as she pointed up. Or down, rather, seeing as she was floating downward head first. "Shiki must not be paying attention to where he lets the islands float, because we're falling straight towards your ship!"
"Really!?" Nami gasped happily. "Oh, man, that's great! Hey, duck!" She tapped the back of her mount's head. "Pull up! We're close to… my… uh, duck? Duck!" She rapped his head hard and paled when he failed to even twitch. "Ooooh crap."
Perona righted herself, sending Nami a look of concern. "What's wrong?"
The navigator cursed colorfully under her breath as she tried to shake her mount awake. "Damn damn damn! I'm a good swimmer, but ducky here isn't! He must have conked out after the last turn!"
"Ooooh… yikes," the zombie princess winced sympathetically. "Well, look on the bright side: At least your landing won't be too hard."
"Huh?" Nami blinked at Perona in confusion. "What are you—?"
SPLASH!
"—BLURGH!?"
"That's what I'm talking about," Perona giggled to herself as she stopped just short of the water-filled caldera, while Nami and her ride slammed face-first into it. Once the giggling subsided, the ghost girl peered through the water. "Wow, I'm honestly surprised! Even after a fall that high, it looks like she's gonna be okay."
Perona's schadenfreude-enforced smirk faded fast, her pallid demeanor lightening even further as a group of very large beasts, partly shadowed by the surface of the water, heading straight for Nami. "She'll… probably be okay?" she hesitantly corrected.
KRZZZZZZZT!
The sudden explosion of lightning, and the accompanying flash of light, prompted Perona to wince and shield her eyes. When she lowered her hand, the aquatic beasts surfaced, and Perona readied Negative Hollows almost reflexively before recognizing that that shock had done all that was needed; they were no longer among the living. She stared for a few moments at the corpses, and then the duck emerged from the water, perched on what remained of the least fortunate of the attackers, merely a skeleton, and squawked triumphantly.
"That was a shock," Perona most certainly did not say. What she did do was grin and pump her fists triumphantly. "But now Nami's definitely okay!"
The fresh bravado lasted long enough for both she and the duck looked around, and their jaws dropped in horror at the sight of her body floating nearby. Face-down. "Maybe, maybe okay," Perona choked out.
The duck, to his credit, reacted instantly. In a matter of seconds, he had flown over to Nami, taken her in his talons, and carried her to the shore, her limbs skimming the water as he flew.
Perona followed. By the time she caught up, the duck had placed Nami down on the rock and was pacing nervously, then gingerly poked her with his beak. She stirred slightly, and the duck let out a squawk of joy. Then, in a move that was an inadvisable but not unsound leap of logic, he began pecking her much more insistently and forcefully.
"CUT THAT OUT!" Nami roared, sending the duck flying almost to the other end of the crater with her punch.
"Okay, yeah, you're okay," Perona slumped with a relieved sigh.
"Almost—ugh…—wasn't…" Nami hacked miserably, massaging her throat. "What the heck happened?…and why do I smell toast, of all things?"
Slowly, Perona pointed her finger at the paradoxically sheepish duck. "Yellow bill boy here saved your bacon by frying the things coming up to munch on you. Your fault for not being naturally resistant to electricity."
The navigator snapped a paralyzing glare at the electro-fowl, freezing him in place. Tersely, "On the one hand, I really feel like knocking your bill into your brain for almost killing me twice in a row."
The duck flinched and began waving its wings about, quacking frantically. That quacking shifted into a squawk of surprise when Nami threw her arms around his neck and brought him into a hug.
"On the other hand, I am so freaking happy to be out of that hellhole, and it's all thanks to you!" Nami laughed in relief. "So thank you soooo much!"
The duck smiled widely and, with a pleased squawk, returned the affection and hug.
After a few minutes, Nami let go, and she turned her smile on Perona, only this time with more of an edge to the expression. "And now that we're out… you said that this is the island the Sunny is on?"
"More than that, this is the mountain your ship's on!" Perona replied with an equally vicious grin. "It's this way, on the slope! Come on, let's go! I want to get back in my body as soon as possible." And with that, the astral girl swooped off and over the lip of the caldera, with the duck carrying Nami close behind.
The second the duck crested the edge and Nami laid eyes on the Thousand Sunny, her face lit up with joy and relief. Jumping off the duck's back, she took off down the mountain, though she slowed her careening run at the explosions that blossomed in the forest to her left. And she stopped completely, just in sight of the Sunny, when a handful of familiar figures came out of the forest, heading for the other side. They abruptly came to a halt as they saw the familiar form of their ship. One of them fell to his knees, his hands raised in triumph—
"HAAAA-LLELUJA! HAAAA-LLELUJA! HALLELUJAH! HALLELUJAH! HALLE-E-ELUJA!"
With the loudest of them on his shoulder providing a very loud but undeniably beautiful soundtrack.
"And here I thought that that snail didn't have any good taste at all," Perona muttered.
"I should care more about that, but honestly, I'm a little preoccupied with the fact that they're actually here! LUFFY! CROSS! BOSS!" Nami shouted in joy, waving her arms over her head.
The trio snapped their heads in her direction, and even from so far away, Nami still knew that they were all beaming with just as much exuberance. "Nami!" Cross's voice laughed in relief, the blond collapsing onto his ass as the energy seemed to drain out of him. "Oh maaan, you have no idea how stupidly relieved I am to see you again!"
As if on cue, the omnipresent sounds of roaring animals and snapping foliage suddenly intensified, and before anyone could react three massive, bearded scorpions, with carapaces in blue-black, grey-black, and red-black, shoved aside some trees, claws clacking. Then, not ten feet from that group, a massive, scarred, rotund lion with short stubby legs and sharp, not-stubby-at-all fangs bowled over some more trees, flopping onto its feet and roaring. And on the other side, a massive toad with a grey, pebbly hide that just screamed durable came crashing out of the canopy, accompanied by a loud croak.
By contrast, the oversized komodo dragon that barreled in five seconds later was almost normal. Except there was crazed look in its eyes that it shared with the other five animals, and the drool dripping out of its mouth caused hissing smoke to rise above where it dripped onto the forest floor.
Regardless, all six took one look at the humans in the clearing, intensified their respective noises, and then dipped their heads and charged.
Cross moaned and let his head hang. "…these bastards, not so much."
"Uuuurgh…" Boss groaned, falling onto his flippers. "Normally, I'd show off some more machismo and help you with dusting our lunch… but at this point, we're exhausted and you look fresh, any chance you could fry them for us?"
The smirk Nami adopted would have sent any sane being diving off the edge of the island. Less painful that way. "Oh, you have no idea," she purred, assembling her Clima-Tact as fast as blinking and deploying a mass of iron cloud. That mass of strands quickly bunched up into a ball behind Nami. "You're going to want to get out of the way, because this one's brand new! Divine—!"
"GrrrrRRRRAGH! ENOUGH!"
Nami halted mid-attack at Luffy's incensed bellow. She wasn't the only one, either. The cavalcade of monstrosities, so eager two seconds before, all hit the brakes, some tumbling as their legs locked up and the front runners shoved forward by the beasts behind running into them.
Having known the rubber man for as long as she had, Nami could tell the yell was more out of frustration boiling over than actual anger. Not unexpected, considering what they must have been going through over the last week, but why would he ask her to stop? One blast and they'd have some peace and—
"WE'VE BEEN CHASED ALL OVER THESE ISLANDS FOR DAYS!" Luffy roared, glaring hellfire at the oncoming beasts as he marched towards them with his fist strangling his pipe. "WE'VE FINALLY FOUND OUR FRIENDS, OUR HOME, AND WE BEAT ALL OF YOU! YOU LOST, WE WON! NOW GET IT THROUGH YOUR HEADS, AND LEAVE!"
Luffy took one more step toward the small horde, causing them to try and frantically backpedal.
"US!"
Another step—no, a stomp, this one shattering the earth beneath the captain's feet.
"ALONE!"
Luffy's roar hit its peak on that final word, and the air rippled. A wave of force slammed clean into Nami, stealing the breath from her lungs and sending her stumbling back. It… It was like the few times Vivi had accidentally snared her while practicing her Sovereign's Will, but at the same time… at the same time it was so much more. If it weren't for her staff, she would have fallen to her knees or even collapsed outright as the hazy image of a gargantuan beast imposed itself—crushed itself—into her mind's eye.
After a minute, the pressure eased enough for her to stand upright and look around. What she saw sent a chill over her body; Perona was nowhere to be seen, the duck had collapsed out cold beside her with foam coming out of his slack beak, Cross was slumped over and barely supporting himself on Boss, Soundbite's shell foaming on his shoulder… and most importantly, the three giant scorpions and their entourage were collapsed on the ground, dead to the world with more foam practically flowing from their mouths.
It took a few seconds, but Nami's mind eventually rebooted, and threw up a seemingly random memory. A memory of everyone sharing their tales of battle from Enies Lobby once they'd returned to Water Seven.
A memory of Cross sharing his knowledge of Kings and Conquerors.
That memory shook the last of the weakness out of her legs, and she sprinted down the slope to regroup with her friends as fast as possible. "Cross!" she gasped out when she arrived, swapping her gaze between the tactician and her captain. "Was that—!?"
"AH!" Luffy yelped, recoiling in shock at the sight of his crewmates' haggard expressions. "What the—!? Did I do that to you guys!? I'm so—!"
"Luffy!" Cross interrupted in a choked voice, visibly fighting to keep his head on straight and his gaze at least somewhat on target. "That feeling, w-whatever you felt just now, the anger, the rage, I-I-I don't know, I don't care, y-you, you need to… you need to remember it. Hold onto it. Th-Th-That feeling. Because what you just did…" Cross's dizzied expression slowly grew into a massive, mad grin. "That was a boot… clean through the door… of the Conqueror's throne room."
"Hail TO THE KING baby…" Soundbite gurgled through his own foam.
"Yeah, that was really cool and awesome and manly, and I really want to see you learn to get it under control…" Boss wheezed, shaking his head in an attempt to clear the fog from his mind. "Just, don't practice it too close to us, until you're a heck of a lot better at controlling your range, would you? Feels like someone reached through my shell to clock my skull."
Luffy flinched, visibly unsure how to respond. Nami was more than a little shaken herself, but she gathered herself together enough to fall back on what never failed to distract Luffy.
"Hey, Luffy? How do you think those things taste?"
The rubber-man's face lit up, and he charged over to the nearest scorpion. Cross shot her a relieved smile, especially now that he could stand on solid legs, which she returned.
"It'll be nice to enjoy a meal without worrying about something charging at us partway through," Boss nodded in agreement, cracking his neck back and forth in an effort to unstiffen his too-worn muscles.
"Food later, rest now," Lassoo suddenly wheezed, shoving himself off of his wielder's back and flopping to the ground in a boneless heap, his tongue lolling out of his maw. "Cross, drop us off on the Sunny before you do anything else, would you? I've got dire urge to whiz on a tree…"
Cross chuckled at the request, and drew his sword and cast it aside. "I'm gonna go out on a limb and say you feel the same way."
The elephant-sword grew to his full size and then promptly tumbled onto his side, a relieved bray coming from his trunk. "Ohh, you have no idea. First, I'mma drink all the water I can handle. Then, eat as much untainted grass as I can stomach," Funkfreed said in tearful relief.
"Right up that way," Nami jabbed her thumb over her shoulder, up the mountainside. "There's a whole caldera up there filled with fresh water, you can gorge until you burst."
"Hallelujah!" Funkfreed cried, somehow finding the strength to right himself and charge up the mountain far faster than anything his size had the right to move.
"Ah, wait! Soundbite, if you could—?" Nami pointed after the elephant and was rewarded with a crackle of static. "Funkfreed, on your way back down, grab the knocked-out duck! He's a friend of mine, and if it weren't for him, Shiki'd still have me!"
She got a wordless trumpet and a wave of the pachyderm's trunk for acknowledgment.
Nami nodded gratefully, then began looking around. "Now, where did Perona go?"
A scream like a banshee followed by a familiar astral form shooting from the crow's nest answered that. "YOOOOOU!"
Nami shook her head as she made tracks for the Sunny, her mind filling in the details long before Perona's livid and graffiti-covered form floated down to meet her.
"Is it too much to ask that I might rightfully punish someone for violating my body while I was out of it?" she furiously demanded.
"Hey, you go right ahead and rip their psyche apart for all I care," Nami said placatingly, hands raised in surrender. "Just make sure they're breathing once you're finished."
"No promises," Perona snarled, shooting off in a blind and Hollow-shrouded rage.
Nami stared after her before slowly pinching the bridge of her nose. "Dare I even ask who stayed here and watched over her body?"
"That'd be this blubber-arsed moron right here, ma'am," Boss stated flatly as he Rip Tide'd to her side, holding a slack and soaking Raphey by her tail. "Found her cowering in the fishtank."
"Don't let her get me, I don't wanna be a sea cucumbe-e-er…" Raphey wept.
Boss rolled his eyes. Tiredly, "I am too hungry and too sober for this shit. Tell you what." The dugong stabbed his cigar towards the insensate beasts. "De-meat the two scorpions our captain isn't on in less than half an hour and I won't toss your ass to your rightful comeuppance."
"Yessir, Master Boss sir!" Raphey barked, saluting while still upside-down.
"Get to it," Boss nodded, tossing her away. But before she could Riptide, he snapped his fingers, prompting her to turn her head. "And Raphey."
"S-Sir?"
Boss took a long, slow drag before breathing out a cloud of smoke. "…well done. You did your squad proud. Keep it up."
Raphey immediately beamed. "Yes sir!" And with that she soared away to perform her task.
Nami let the green, brown, and pink blur leave her sight before side-eyeing the older amphibian. "…I assume you meant the guard duty and not the graffiti?" Nami deadpanned.
Boss smirked and tilted the brim of his hat down. "Said what I meant, meant what I said. Take it how you will."
For a long while, Nami remained in that deadpan, sidelong expression. And then, out of the blue, she collapsed to her knees and dragged the dugong into a tight hug, burying her face in his skullplate.
"I missed you crazy bastards so damn much…" Nami sobbed into his hat.
Boss, frozen in surprise, let himself relax and returned the hug. "There there. Wasn't much fun without you either, ma'am," he replied, patting her shoulder comfortingly.
-o-
Hearing those words and seeing Nami so relieved felt like getting stabbed in the heart with a knife made out of solid guilt. I couldn't hide the grimace that came over my face; it was just lucky that Soundbite was the only one who noticed it, although the slightly scared look on his face told me all I needed to know about my expression.
"Later, once this mess is over," I said quietly, making every attempt to mask the reminder of what was yet to come with the current situation and the implications thereof: Nami back, and Shiki yet to pay. It helped that it wasn't long before Nami broke the hug with Boss and came over to grab me up instead.
Memories of the same situation on another sky island ending with a tongue shoved down my throat made me twitch involuntarily, but I dismissed the sentiment just as fast and returned the hug with gusto.
"I am going to plant my greave in whatever the Monsters leave intact," I swore quietly.
"And Chopper and I will be right there alongside you backing you up," Nami chuckled back. "Monsters and Demons, I know, I know… but still…" Nami released me and stepped back, her expression deadly serious. "Cross, I have so much that I need to tell you."
I jabbed my thumb over at our future dinner, my good mood suddenly turned somber. "Lemme guess, Indigo is Shiki's quack and this place is his bio-weapons lab?"
Our navigator blinked slowly, and the energy visibly drained out of her. "…not as much to tell you as I thought," she murmured lamely.
"We can compare notes later. For now, you go ahead, grab some new clothes and relax," I said, pointing her to the Sunny. Right as she turned away, though, a thought occurred to me and I graced her with a flat look. "And no baring your midriff; I'm almost positive the bastard ripped a cape off of Little Garden to make this place, and I don't want to have to save your ginger ass a second time from whatever pathogens places like this can cough up."
Nami paused, turned around me, and matched my flat look with one of her own. "I really hope that Tashigi managed to recruit that Cleaner, because your memory clearly needs it. You got sick from Little Garden, Cross, not me."
"Uh-huh." I donned a smirk as I gestured at her stomach. "By the way, nice tick marks. Oh, wait!"
Nami raised her finger, opened her mouth to ask what the hell I was talking about… and snapped it shut with an aggravated hiss as the penny dropped. "You win this one, big mouth. You win this one."
"Pfheheheh," I chuckled, folding my arms behind my head. "What can I say, eh? I'm on a hot streak lately!"
"DAMN—Puru puru puru puru!—STRAIGHT! YO!" Soundbite agreed, while also starting in surprise.
"And let's keep that streak rolling!" I chuckled in relief. I popped Soundbite off my shoulder and held him before me. "Freaking finally, I've been waiting for them to call. At least they didn't do it when we were being watched."
"I hear that," Nami nodded sympathetically. "But still, let's hurry this up before Shiki decides to come snooping, right? Because I don't doubt—!"
"No!" I cut in, sticking my raised finger in her face.
"Wha—!? Cross!"
"No," I repeated firmly, jabbing my finger past her at the Sunny. "Clothes. Shower. Bed. Now. And if you don't take the time to rest and relax, so help me."
"Or what?" Nami scoffed incredulously. "You'll send me to bed without dessert?"
"Or else," I repeated back at her with a malevolent grin. "I enlist Robin and Vivi's help and while you're asleep they give you a haircut that would make Bellemere proud."
Nami blinked, then paled and snapped her hands to her scalp. "You wouldn't."
A venomous smile on my face, I leaned in as close as I could. "Try me."
The sight of Nami running with her tail between her legs felt so good, almost as good as seeing the Sunny again after… that week. "Winning. Streak," I repeated.
"…Interesting threat there, Cross."
My smirk twitched harshly. "Aaaand winning streak over. Damn you, snail."
"CUT ME A BREAK! DO YOU REALIZE how annoying that RINGING GETS after the first few seconds?!" Soundbite groused, rolling his eyes. "AND DON'T WORRY, I MADE DOUBLY SURE no feather-rats hauling my peeping cousins were anywhere nearby."
"He's got a point, you know. The ringing does get annoying," Tashigi oh so helpfully pointed out. "Anyway, Cross, to answer what I'm sure is your first question here, it took so long for me to call you because for some reason, the Navy is monitoring all Transponder Snails like they're a lab experiment that might blow up. Some of the officers think the brass is paranoid about how far Shiki's stretched his influence over the years. But hey, who knows, maybe they're just concerned that with all the anarchy you've spread, you have some contacts inside the Navy itself. And they're not wrong, really." That last was said with a slight smile.
It didn't last. "Anyway, I had to wait until we reached Sagittarius to be safe; he's had a White Transponder Snail secretly on hand for years in case of an emergency. So I couldn't contact you safely until now."
I nodded in acceptance of the explanation, and took over the conversation.
"Just as well that you didn't get a chance until now. we've been on the run for the last week, and we only just found where the Sunny landed. Shiki took us to his base, an archipelago held in the sky by his powers, and it's filled with an army of hyper-mutated bioweapon animals that he and his crewmate Dr. Indigo—think Caesar Clown, both in genius and lack of conscience—have created. These things look like they've crawled out of the New World and Soundbite says they're only getting stronger every second, if he lets these things loose, it'll be a bloodbath."
"Yeah, well, whatever you're imagining, reality is going to be a million times worse."
I frowned in confusion. "Know something I don't?"
"Oh-hoh, trust me, you know it as well as I do," Tashigi grimaced. "Think about it, Cross, imagine it: the result of all those animals set loose at once, whipped into a frenzy at the same time, and then set loose on a location, most any location. What would be the result?"
I frowned in thought, turning the pieces over. And then I almost puked as my body tried to react in so many fucking ways at once. "So… what you're telling me is that not only did Shiki personally attack one of our crew, he's personally attacking our sea of origin as well?"
I heard teeth grinding as Tashigi slowly nodded in confirmation. "For what it's worth, while it is personal, Aquarius doesn't think it's personal with you specifically. According to her, Shiki got that wheel he has stuck in his head when he last clashed with Roger, with his entire fleet backing him to take on Roger's lone Oro Jackson. Shiki lost, utterly, and has hated Roger ever since for destroying his dreams of world domination. More specifically, he hated how he was beaten by a man—"
"—from the weakest, most worthless of all the Blues," I finished. "Which also explains why he came after us, the big-shot rookies from the East who are following almost exactly in Roger's footsteps. He wants to both stamp out the source of his hatred at the source and get the victory he thinks was rightfully his twenty years ago. I hate to say it, but it makes sense. Sense through a twisted lens, but sense."
"Yeah? Well, that 'sense' is going to justify dropping killer rabbits on the East Blue, and unlike you, most civilians aren't quite so good at running."
"Hey, I wasn't trying to—!" That was as far as I got before what she'd said really hit me, and my eyes widened into an incredulous stare. "Tashigi… how the hell did you know that I almost got my head ripped off by a rabbit this morning?"
Soundbite's expression flattened into a glower. "Zero for two, I thought you would have put the pieces together already, Cross. Shiki is using your transceiver to broadcast what's going on with your crew all over the world; he delivered Visual Transponder Snails to all across the Blues and the Grand Line; as of noon today, everyone is watching."
My jaw dropped in horror. "Sonnuva—that pompous old tyrant got more viewers than me!?"
"…Please tell me someone else is listening to you right now, Cross," Tashigi said with absolutely no emotion. "Because I need to hear someone punching you for getting your priorities out of line. I need to hear you in pain."
"Coping, woman, focus. Also, you saw what I was going through. Imagine that over an entire week, non-fucking-stop," I retorted acridly, massaging the bridge of my nose as I tried to consider the implioh fuck me. "Hold on a second!" I damn near shouted in my panic. "Does that mean that the world knows about Brook?"
"Cross, this is not the—"
"I AM SERIOUS, TASHIGI!" I roared. Soundbite recoiled in shock, but I plowed. "Tell me: does the world know that Brook's a skeleton or not!?"
"That he's a wha—!? Gah, how does this even… um, not quite? He was wearing a weird hat that looked like a jellyfish; we were craning our eyes, but the strips hanging down made it impossible to see who he was. The world knows his name, his voice, and that he's a swordsman, but they didn't get a glimpse of anything underneath."
I sighed in relief. "OK, that's workable… makes things harder, but workable." With the only potential pitfall of our crew being broadcast dealt with, I turned my attention back to the call. "Just let it be known that Brook's connection to us, or at least the fact that he's… 'living-impaired', so to speak, cannot become public knowledge, either now or anytime soon. Moving back to the matter at hand, I assume the Masons are working on this?"
Curiosity and other emotions I couldn't identify warred on Tashigi's face, and eventually, she let out a defeated sigh. "I'll save it for after this mess is done. And yes, but there's not much we can do outside of what we're doing already. The Divine is mobilizing against the threat along with the rest of the Navy, and the Damned are out of contact because like I said, communications are under tight watch. The rest of the Masons will be getting White Snails of their own as soon as we can manage it. Actually, if you could contact Monkey once you get the transceiver back, that would make things easier."
"Alright, good enough for now," I growled tiredly, rubbing aching temples. "Alright, we'll stay the course, regroup with our crew. Luckily, Nami managed to break out of Shiki's hold; without her, this entire place is at the mercy of the Grand Line's storms, so that'll delay things. Once we're all back together, we'll do our best to kick Shiki's teeth in, and then you guys can pick up the pieces. And probably make sure these animals don't fall into the wrong hands, too."
"Heh, acting as the Straw Hats' cleanup crew. When have I heard that one before?" Tashigi chuckled, donning an actual grin. "Alright, we'll leave this up to you. And Cross?"
"Mm?"
"…I'm happy you haven't lost your head yet." KA-LICK.
I cocked my eyebrow at Soundbite as he blinked back to his usual self. "Well… call me crazy, but I think I'm growing on her!"
"You've always been crazy," Soundbite retorted. "If you'd prefer, I'LL CALL YOU mad or deranged or insane or unbalanced—"
"Alright, nix on the thesaurus," I waved him off. "And lay off the 'unbalanced', would you? Considering the footing… hits a bit close to home."
"YEAH, FINE," Soundbite nodded in agreement. He then cocked his eyestalks. "AAAAANYWAYS, I'M STARTING TO GET STARVED. LET'S SEE WHEN DINNER'S…whu-oh."
I snapped a nervous look down at my suddenly pale snail. "Whu-oh? What's whu-oh?"
"Well, see… the thing is? Those beasties may not be waking up yet—"
"GRRRR-RAAFF!"
"BUT OTHERS CAN STILL FIND US!"
Another monster stormed into the clearing just as Soundbite snapped back into the dubious safety of his shell, drooling like a waterfall as it looked around at the unconscious beasts, and then us.
"I thought Saint Bernards were supposed to be friendly!" Raphey yelped, darting away from the scorpion she'd been carving up.
"YEAH, AND THEY'RE ALSO SUPPOSED TO BE IN THE MOUNTAINS with a barrel of whiskey AROUND THEIR NECKS, bothering YODELING AUSTRIANS, SO TODAY'S JUST A DAY OF FIRSTS!"
"I've got this one!" Nami called, stepping to the edge of the deck, a fresh jacket on her shoulders. "It'll be easier for me to relax when I've blown off some stress," she added, looking in my direction. I opened my mouth to argue, but didn't get any further before help came from another source.
"Not before me," Perona cut in, swooping in front of Nami in a freshly cleaned astral form. "You'll still get your pound of flesh from Shiki, whereas I seem to have been robbed of mine, so I'm taking this consolation prize… even if it is such a cute doggy." That last degenerated into a crooning tone, and a thoughtful expression blooming on her face. "Actually… on second thought…"
Before any of us could question what she was on about, the ghost-princess flew past us all and came to hover in front of the Serial Bernard, smiling beatifically at the slavering, snarling beast. "Hell-o there, cutie!" she cooed in an endearing and cutesy voice. "You look like a really nice boy, and I'd love-love-love to keep you as a pet, but only if you pwomise to calm down, m'kay?"
"GROWF!" The giant dog wasn't exactly 'm'kay' with that if the way it growled and tried to nom on her astral form was any indication.
Perona's expression fell pointedly blank and she raised a hand. "Alright, let's try this again. Negative Hollow."
One of said Hollows shot from her hand, zooming through the monstrous dog's head and out the back of its neck before returning to Perona. For a moment, it remained frozen mid-snarl, and then it fell to the ground. And at that moment, I found out the hard way that monstrous or not, you can't look in the eyes of a genuinely miserable, crying dog and not have it hurt on some level unless you're completely lacking a heart.
Apparently, that included Perona, because she just said, "Bad dog," and threw a heartless glare at the poor mutt. "Do you understand what happened there? You attacked me, and now you're sad. If you make me unhappy, then I make you sad again. Understand?" She shook her finger in the dog's face. "Don't attack me again."
The Bernard blinked a couple of times, shaking off the momentary existential despair before getting back on its feet. This time it was cautious and wary, but, inevitably, it raised its hackles and started snarling again—
"Negative Hollow."
And then a second dose of existential despair brought it back to whimpering.
"Don't. Attack. Me. Again," Perona reiterated in a truly dark tone, leaning in close to the dog to give it a scathing glare. "Or else you'll get three at once next time, and I promise you that you'll never feel as bad as that will make you. Choose: Be nice, or be miserable."
This time, the poor beast let out a positive-sounding whine through its whimpering, and when it regained its composure, its comportment shifted. The Bernard didn't entirely back down, but it didn't attack or make any overt moves towards Perona, either.
And apparently, that was exactly what the hollow-girl wanted. Immediately upon receiving the reaction, Perona's demeanor lightened and she smiled beatifically. "Good boy. Here you go!"
Another Hollow shot from Perona's hand and, before it could turn tail and run for the hills, through the dog in less than a second. I briefly considered lambasting her for animal abuse, because even on a monster like that there was a limit, but then I actually got a look at the Hollow itself: Rather than smiling and laughing brainlessly it was… sobbing.
Obviously, that meant something important, but I had no time to connect the dots before something else unprecedented snagged all my attention: the Saint Bernard reacting to the Hollow… with pure and unabated joy. All of a sudden the large dog perked up and started barking eagerly, like it was a completely normal—if ridiculously overgrown—canine. It was panting and letting out happy "WOOF!"s and shaking its tail into a blur, and it was even jumping side to side like it couldn't wait to play!
Perona, meanwhile, took the shift in demeanor in stride and whistled sharply, catching the dog's attention. "That's it, that's a good boy! Come here, boy, come here!"
The Bernard immediately leaped to her and started acting friendly in an attempt to show her its affection, nuzzling and licking at Perona's astral form and whining when the efforts proved futile. Perona smiled at the dog, and I noticed her flicking her hand behind her back. In response, the still-weeping Hollow that had been looping around above passed through the Bernard a few more times, and it ratcheted right back up to rapturous.
"Don't worry, boy, doooon't worry," Perona soothed. "I'll be right back, I promise."
And with that, the ghost princess flew back up to the crow's nest to retrieve her body, and a minute later, she strolled up to the once-rabid beast in her physical form without a care in the world. And the dog actually continued to act happy, nuzzling and snuffling at her like she was its lifelong owner, and she in turn she showered it with petting and affection.
"…What… What just happened?" I asked weakly.
"Perona, what did you do!?" If Nami's tone was anything to go by, she was just as gobsmacked as I was.
The hollow-girl cast a smirk over her shoulder at us. "Oh, so Know-It-All Cross doesn't know all after all? Lo, how the tables have—!"
"So help me, woman," I growled, raising my knuckles.
"Alright, alright," Perona said airily. "Well, seeing as I'm such a benevolent princess, I guess I'll tell you: my powers work just the way that the name says." She spun her arm and a few of her more normal-looking ghosts began spinning around her arm. "The ghosts I make are called Hollows because they're empty shells that are made to be filled."
One of her smiling goons popped up and wagged its tongue at me. "Negative Hollows are devoid of positive emotion, and when they pass through someone, they fill that hollow with the positivity of their prey, thus leaving the targets as utterly helpless wrecks." The smiling buffoon was joined by a sobbing counterpoint that rubbed at its eyes as it wept. "Positive Hollows, meanwhile, are the opposite: No negative emotion, so they drain all the sadness and misery someone has and leave them feeling like they're in heaven."
Perona smiled as she scratched the obliviously happy Bernard behind the ears. "And by combining those two elements at the same time, negativity to bad behavior and positivity to good… well, I think you can see what I'm getting at."
"I GET THAT YOU'RE A BLOODY SOCIOPATH!" Lassoo howled from Sunny's deck, his expression one of purest panic. "USING THAT BASTARD PAVLOV'S METHODS ON ONE OF MY OWN KIND?! I SHOULD BURN YOU ALIVE, YOU CRUEL WITCH!"
"Cruel, but effective~!" Perona sang back, still scratching. "And don't worry your pretty little heads, this method only works on ani— on simple animals, the ones that aren't on par with human intelligence. Like this big old dummy right here!" she cooed as she intensified her scratching to the dog's delight. "Yes you are, yes you are, you're a big dummy, yes you are!"
Boss's eye twitched as he watched the titan-dog come apart under Perona's fingers. "Yeeeaaah… those ghosts of yours ain't the only things that are 'hollow', lady."
Something clicked in my mind at those words, and I slowly pointed my finger at her as metaphorical light bulb went off. "Hollow… your Special Hollows hollow out pockets in the air, voids, and then you collapse them… they're not explosives, they're im-plosives, aren't they!"
Perona paused in her scratching. Briefly, of course. "Of course you knew already, it couldn't be more than the basic concept that you didn't know…" she sighed, rolling her eyes.
"No, I'm just that smart!" I informed her in a perfectly chipper tone of why the hell was I even born… "Somebody step on me, I need to get back to my place in the pecking order: lower than the dirt on the bottom of everyone's boots…" I mumbled into the earth with my pointless, useless breSWEET MOTHER OF MERCY! "GAH WHAT THE FUCK DID I JUST SAY!?" I yelped, snapping up and onto my ass.
"PERONA!" Nami roared over the sound of the ghost-princess's cackling.
"HORO HORO HORO!" Perona cackled ecstatically at my existential misery. "HE WAS ASKING FOR IT, SUE ME! HORO HORO HORO!"
"YOOOOOU—!"
Not wanting to get another Negative Hollow to the face, I unfortunately had to settle for strangling the air instead of Perona's neck
"Tell me in complete honesty that you wouldn't do the same thing if our places were switched, and I'll apologize," she challenged with a taunting smirk.
I opened my mouth to rebut her, I tried, oh dear lord did I try to rebut her, but when my voice got tangled up in my throat the third time in a row I gave up. "At least I don't need to torture people into being friends with me…" I attempted.
"Wow, what a comeback," Perona sneered, rolling her eyes. "Cutting, witty, sophisticated."
"GUYS, STOP PICKING ON CROSS! IT'S TIME TO EAT!"
My jaw dropped and I sank to my knees as my captain 'helpfully' came to my rescue. "Saved in a battle of wits by my witless captain… how could I have fallen so low?"
"Should I start playing the world's smallest violin?" Soundbite asked snidely.
"I've been away from witty repartee and intelligent conversation for a week, let me have my melodramatics!" I snapped as I clambered back to my feet. "Ugh, anyway…" I sobered up real fast as I collected up all the bits of news I had heard over the past hour. "Guys, we need to talk while we eat. I've got news… and none of it's good."
Everyone else exchanged worried looks at my tone. It was Nami who responded first with an assured nod. "We'll eat, you can tell us your news while we eat, and then once the duck's back on his feet—!"
"Oh, you mean Billy?" Luffy asked.
Nami looked at him in surprise. "Bil—? Wait, he's awake?"
"Nah!" Luffy grinned. "I just think that's a good name for him!"
The navigator contemplated opened her mouth to respond, but then closed it and shook her head in defeat. "I… it's a decent name, I suppose."
"FOR SOME REASON IT FITS, but for the life of me I can't understand why…I mean, yeah, HE HAS A BILL, BUT MORE THAN THAT…" Soundbite trailed off, deep in thought.
"Anyway," Nami continued. "Once Billy gets up, we can get his help flying us around looking for our friends."
Everyone exchanged nods. And then we began dining on roughly prepared drugged predator meat for what I sincerely hoped was the last time. At this point, I'd give anything to sink my teeth into Sanji's cooking even one. More. Time…
-o-
"NAMI-SWAAAAAN! PERONA-CHERIEEEEE!"
Alright, almost anything. Because seriously, what good was food in my stomach when I felt like tossing it.
To make a long story short, we'd eventually managed to find our way to the village. And Billy wasn't the only duck that arrived there when we did.
It'd been a hell of a reunion, everyone happy to see everyone else, stories were swapped, and even a few ideas and thoughts shared here or there.
But, as always, the good times eventually devolved into quiet sobriety, and it was with a solemn tone that I brought together all the disparate details everyone had gathered over the course of their ordeals, and I put together the pieces of the horrific tableau Shiki had concocted over the past two decades. It took some time to tell everything, to make sure that everyone understood properly, but eventually?
"That's about the long and short of it," I solemnly concluded, taking in everyone's reactions. Over the course of my explanation, some of our crew had relaxed and settled in a bit, such as Usopp tinkering away on a project Funkfreed and I had gone over with him, Chopper working meticulously on some sort of formula he was currently obsessing over, or Sanji exulting his two most recently returned beauties.
But nevertheless, the reactions were still there: disgust, horror, terror, and of course, complete, world-shaking rage.
Luffy slammed his fists together. "I'm going to kick Shiki's head in!" he declared.
"Soon enough, Luffy," Zoro growled, his thumb repetitively stroking the hilt of Kitetsu the Third. "But unless we want a repeat of what happened back on the Sunny—!"
"I told you, he caught me when I wasn't ready and I was hungry!"
"—we need to get everyone back together first," Zoro looked over at Vivi. "How long do you think it'll take for the others to get here?"
"With Franky's… shall we say, improvised methods of transportation?" the blue-haired princess rolled her eyes. "I'd say an hour or two. But if you want me to get there in the shortest amount of time possible?" Vivi jabbed her thumb at Carue, who'd seated himself against a tree and was guzzling a freshly refilled water barrel. "Carue needs time to rest. He's been going nonstop all day, and it won't do us any good if he just up and collapses on me. On the plus side, he'll be good to go in about an hour."
"Mmph, acceptable…" Zoro grunted.
"Although…" Vivi winced as a thought struck her. "In retrospect, it might be a little longer coming here, seeing as we'll have to account for the likelihood that we'll be bringing back someone from Barto's crew too."
I frowned in confusion. "Yeah, that's… something I still don't get. Bartolomeo, he's… he's from Loguetown, the East Blue. Hell, I think most of his goons are too! Why would Shiki invite him, even considering how ruthless he was before I gave him a talking to?"
Slowly, Vivi turned a disbelieving look on me. "…Cross, Bartolomeo has green hair in a mohawk, teeth that suggest he has a fishman somewhere in his recent ancestry, and he's the fifth most wanted rookie on the seas. If I didn't know him and you'd asked me where he was from, I would have guessed any Blue except the East."
I turned that over in my head. "That… makes a lot of sense, yes," I admitted. With that settled, I clapped my hands, getting everyone's attention. "ALRIGHT! Any other points to bring up, any questions, anything like that?"
"I have one," Su said, raising a paw. "If this SIQ stuff is supposed to be so volatile for animals, then why hasn't it affected any of us as bad as it affects them? I mean, I'm not complaining that I can bench press your scrawny ass without breaking a sweat, even if that's not saying much—"
"If I were to make you into a scarf and wear you, would I become as clever as you imagine yourself to be?" I asked airily.
"—but I'd still like some sort of explanation if that's… not too much trouble?" Su shrugged helplessly. "I mean, this does affect a lot of us, after all."
"I can explain that," Chopper piped up, not taking his eyes from the chemistry set he was still tinkering with. "I kept and analyzed the few samples of the prototype BIQ that the Amigos didn't ingest long enough for me to form an antivenom. Not a perfect defense against its cousin, but the innoculations you all got seem to be doing their jobs."
The pause that followed that announcement was legendary. I'm pretty sure empires had died in that kind of pause. Some of them had probably committed suicide as a final desperate means of escape. Finally, Zoro voiced the question on all of our minds. "…What innoculations?"
Chopper blinked and looked up from his work, honest confusion written all over his face. "I don't understand the question," he said with the utmost sincerity.
"Never mind, you just answered it…" I groaned, pinching the bridge of my nose.
"Changing the subject, I have a question too," Merry said, waving her hand frantically. "If we're all here and Robin, Franky, and Brook are at that banquet hall, who's guarding Big Bro?"
"Perona's literal guard dog and the rest of her new pets," Boss gruffly answered around the cigar he was chowing on. "Raphey and I would have stayed behind to do it, but between captain's orders, her promising that they would guard the ship with their lives, and Sunny reassuring us himself that he'd be fine, we're better off here, planning for sending this place back to the blue—MMPH!"
It would have been amusing to see Boss getting dogpiled by his apprentices so they could slap their flippers over his muzzle, but there was nothing funny about the way Conis had started shivering at his words. After a moment, during which several hissed whispers and a slap upside the skullplate were exchanged, Boss shook off his fellow dugongs. "Sorry, Conis," he said.
"I-It's fine, just a bad memory," she said casually, the shudders now down to the occasional twitch. "It's not the same anyway; we're attacking a tyrant and sending this island where it truly belongs."
"Aye have a queshtion, too," Carue squawked from his resting place. "Who's the wowwywowt you fwew in on?" He nodded his head over at Billy, who'd spent our entire time here cowering behind Nami.
"Billy, as Luffy named him, is one of Indigo's new breakthroughs, but he's not hostile like the rest of the creatures on these islands," I provided. "He helped Nami get out of Shiki's base and he seems loyal. And apparently, he makes up for his lack of any physical offensive skills with bioelectric shocks."
"Macro-bioelectric shocks," Perona corrected as she buffed the nails on one hand, the other holding Bearsy tight, having refused to leave the doll behind on the Sunny after being separated from him for so long. "He's got some ridiculously powerful voltage on him, he took down a half-dozen monsters in one full-powered blast without breaking a sweat. Even if they were immersed in water at the time, you can't deny that's impressive."
"Huh… weww, you'we gaht my wespect," the supersonic duck offered his wing to the electric one. "Aye'm Cawue, nice to meet you!"
Billy's response was to let out a panicked squawk and hide even further behind Nami, bumping against her Waver folded across her back, a piece of equipment she'd refused to leave behind when we left the Sunny.
Carue blinked in confusion and glanced at Soundbite. "Ahhh…?"
Soundbite huffed and shook his head. "HE'S CLAMMED UP EVER SINCE he woke up and we explained MY POWERS TO HIM. Scared totally quackless. I HAVEN'T EVEN BEEN ABLE TO CHOOSE A GOOD VOICE FOR HIM!"
"Eesh, poah guy…" Carue winced in sympathy
"Poor guy we can deal with later," I cut in. "Alright, anyone or anything else?"
Silence.
"Right then," I nodded. "Everyone rest up, recover your energy and get ready to rumble. And make sure you stay the hell out of the way of the POV of any mobile snails. Soundbite's warning them to stay out of our way, but that's no guarantee, so be careful. With any luck, we'll be back on the seas tomorrow and Shiki's head'll be on a spit." I swung my arms out. "Dis-missed!"
With that, everyone broke ranks, meandering about to get to wherever it was they needed to go.
I myself was on my way to speak with Zoro and Nami, but before I could even take two steps their way, I was grabbed on the shoulder and dragged the other way, courtesy of—
"Vivi!?" I sputtered incredulously, stumbling to keep up with her. "The hell are you—?"
"We need to talk," she interrupted. And going by how little argument her tone brooked… Well, the only sensible thing to do was what I actually did, which was right myself and follow her. "Lead the way."
-o-
Upon dismissal, Mikey, Donny, Raphey, Leo, and Boss had headed to the lakeside where prying eyes were less likely to see. The four siblings exchanged glances, the same feelings in all of their hearts but the same pride on all of their faces.
"So… hell of a week we've had, huh?" Leo asked casually.
Donny shrugged indifferently. "It was… meh, informative."
"Meh, it was no biggie!" Mikey scoffed, folding his flippers behind his head. "I could do it all again in my sleep."
"Pfheh, or you could just sleep outright for all I care," Raphey sneered his way. "I've spent a week doing nothing but sitting on my ass, I could use some action! Heck, bring on Shiki right now, I'm sure I could stuff that wheel of his right up his—!"
"Ahem."
All four of the TDWS fell silent and turned to Boss, who had raised a flipper. "Boys, it seems I've neglected to teach you a little lesson about reunions." A smirk spread on his face, but an unmistakably warm one. "Real men don't hold back their tears."
There was a second where the TDWS maintained their composure, kept up their stoic and uncaring facades…
And then the four fell into a group hug, sobbing and clasping each other tight.
"I thought I was gonna die a hundred times ove-e-eeer!" Leo cried in despair.
"I was so scared without you guys at my back!" Donny wailed.
"I missed all of you crazy bastards getting on my back about my jokes and giving me lumps for them!" Mikey whined through his snot. "Even Raphey, and she hits like a sledgehamme-e-er!"
"I was so bo-o-ooored!" Raphey whined. "All I could do was sit around and—! Wait, what did you say about my flippers!? Come here, you dingus!"
"ARGH! HELP ME! HELP MEEE!"
Boss snickered as he watched his students interact. It was truly a testament to just how much they'd missed one another that all Raphey was doing was grabbing up her brother in a headlock and noogie-ing the shine out of his shell. Normally, Mikey would be sporting several lumps and a veritable map of bruises for that sort of comment, and Donny and Leo would be right there sharing the pain seeing as they would have been what she was clobbering him against. But instead, all of this was undergone with more tears, less venom… and unrelenting smiles.
"Heheh…" Boss chuckled proudly as he blew out a ring of smoke. "Moments like these… guess there really is hope for us smarter entities after all."
-o-
While the Straw Hats wandered off to prepare for the upcoming battle, and as the village around them ran through its daily activities, one person was conspicuous in her inactivity. As soon as Cross had told everyone to break, Perona had parked herself against one of the outer huts and began examining her nails. After all, she wasn't a part of the Straw Hats, this wasn't her fight, she could leave anytime she wanted to, and more to the point, she had no interest in trying to tackle Shiki, not after the scene in Nami's old gilded jail cell.
Of course, there was one problem with this: boredom. There was only so much nail-examining Perona could do, because Raphey, not being familiar with nails at all, had left them alone in her graffiti-writing rampage. Aside from needing a trim after a week unattended, they were pretty much exactly as they were before this whole mess. So the ghost-girl looked up again in search of something to do, and found it in the form of a red-haired, frog-faced little girl, just… staring at her, right in the middle of the road without even trying to hide herself.
That immediately pricked a nerve, and Perona graced the girl with an annoyed glare. When that failed to stop the staring, Perona resorted to her fallback method: scathing commentary.
"What do you want, brat? Fair warning, if you just want to gawk at the creepy girl, you have ten seconds to leave before I—!"
"Huh? Of course not!" Xiao said, shaking her head frantically like it was the most ridiculous idea in the world. "I'm not looking at you 'cause you're creepy, I'm looking because you're cute!"
"…huh?" Perona said lamely. If there was anything she'd expected, it sure as heck wasn't that. "Uh… what… are you talking about? I mean, don't you keep fainting whenever you see something scary?" 'Scary' being somewhat loosely defined here, after seeing the girl go halfway comatose upon seeing Luffy's group arrive. And that only because that meant meeting more than four new people at once.
"Uh… w-well yeah, of course, I just get really scared when I see something that's big and weird and couldeatmealiveohmygodI'mgonnadiiieeee-!" Hyperventilating, the girl swayed on her feet, but managed to catch herself and calm down, and then shoot a sunny smile at Perona. "Ah! Ah, b-b-but you're not scary at all! You're really cute and pretty!"
Perona remained thoroughly poleaxed for a while longer before she finally managed to settle on a reaction, one that had protected her many a time before: disdain. And yet…
"…you don't know what you're talking about, kid," she muttered halfheartedly.
"Nuh-uh, it's true! Your makeup's all funny and nice like a panda—!" Perona's hand twitched, whether to summon a Negative Hollow or smack the insensitive little brat upside her head, not even she knew. "And your hair is really really pretty! It's pink like the sakura trees up in the Spring Zone, and your ponytails look a lot like my big sister's only there're two of them, so they're even better!"
Still, reflexive twitch aside, poor Perona found herself completely at a loss for words. Half of her, one that had allowed her to survive on her own for years, wanted to vehemently deny the compliment, tear down the brat, and move on with her life. But a new, louder half wanted to just take the damn compliments already. And maybe hug the girl and never let go.
"I—ah… t-that…" she stammered, eyes flicking back and forth to find some way out of this. Reflexively, her hand twitched to conjure a Negative Hollow…
"Eeee! Ohmigod what is that, is it a ghost, he's so cuuuute, can I hug him, I wanna hug him!"
Now she had a little girl practically leaping for one of her Negative Hollows. A little girl that she could admit, at least to herself, wasn't nearly annoying enough to deserve a Negative Hollow. So she hastily dissolved the ghost, Xiao passing through where it used to be before sprawling in the dirt.
"Aowww…" Xiao whined, pushing herself on her knees and whimpering as she rubbed the spot on her forehead she'd smacked on the ground.
Seeing this—seeing Xiao's gleeful enthusiasm 180 so quickly—stirred something in Perona. Kneeling down, she conjured up a Mini Hollow in one palm and used the other hand to poke the girl in the shoulder blade. "Hey, kid."
Xiao looked up, saw the hollow, and immediately lit up, eyes wide and shining with happy tears. Perona grinned. "Here, play with this one instead," she said.
For a second, Xiao didn't move. Then she took a deep breath…
"EEEE! Thankyouthankyouthankyou!"
And simultaneously nearly blew out Perona's eardrums and nearly knocked the wind out of her with a head-tackle-hug, before carefully scooping up the Mini Hollow in her hands and running off a ways.
Perona, once she recovered, returned back to leaning against the wall, but this time she had something to watch: a little girl, playing with one of her Hollows. And the smile hadn't left the ghost-girl's lips the entire time.
-o-
Brushing aside the curtain used as a door out of the way, I stepped into the house Vivi had ducked into, finding her staring out the window off into nothing. "So, what's up?"
"Something… isn't right here, Cross," she said, turning around to show a deep frown on her face. "I've been trying to figure it out since I found out about this village from Barto, but nothing makes sense."
"We're on a fucked up remix of Moreau's Island a few miles in the sky, nothing makes sense here," I shrugged. I then snapped my hands up in defense as Vivi glared hellfire at me. "Alright, alright, complete and utter seriousness. Can you blame me for wanting to lighten the mood after the week we've had?"
Vivi briefly maintained the glare, but then she sighed, shook her head,and started pacing. "I'm not talking about the typical Grand Line insanity, Cross, I'm talking about Shiki. I've tried putting myself in his shoes: say I've just escaped from Impel Down, I've created an immense biolaboratory in the sky so that I can create an army of living super-weapons and unleash them on the East Blue in the name of my vengeance…"
She stopped and spread her arms, indicating the house around us. "And then I steal all the adults in a nearby village and use them for slave labor? It doesn't make sense."
I blinked in confusion. "Well, why not? He's a raging bastard who sees people as tools, how does this not fit?"
"Well, what I'm wondering is why the village is even here in the first place."
Soundbite cocked an eyestalk. "What do you mean?"
The princess waved a hand at one of the landmasses floating by above us. "Shiki's already demonstrated to us that his control over his powers are immense. When he was scooping up islands for his top-secret world in the sky, why take an island with a village on it?"
"Beeeecause it had the IQ plants he needed?" I asked more than said, almost positive that wasn't the right answer.
"Then why not just take the IQ plants and call it a day?" Vivi countered. "Why not just crush the village and everyone in it once he had what he needed? He obviously doesn't need their help tending for the IQ, seeing as he's doing it himself."
"Well…" I frowned as an inkling of doubt wormed its way into my head. "As you said, slave labor, right? Again, we know people are just tools to him."
"That's just it, Cross! He sees people as tools, and he already has his own crew gobbling his every word. Why not make them wait on him hand and foot? Why outsource? I doubt he'd go the extra mile for their sakes."
"Maybe…" I glanced aside and scratched my temple thoughtfully, the doubt building in my mind. "Maybe he has them doing dangerous jobs? Ones that could get them killed, and he wants his crew around for the East Blue's destruction?"
"But he could still use his own crew for that," she refuted. "As he's demonstrated, people are expendable to him. All he'd have to do is go down to the Blue Seas, flash his identity, and he'd have people tripping over themselves to join his crew."
"That's…" I hesitated, trying to find a proper answer. Mostly because I did not like where this was going.
"And even beyond that!" Vivi forged on, shifting into a lecturing tone as she went. "When you consider the purpose of this place, when you consider Shiki's ambition, slave labor is an unnecessary luxury. After all, keeping slaves is expensive; even when they're sorely mistreated, you need to provide food, shelter, and even administer medical care if you're intent on maintaining the ones you already have."
I gave the princess a funny look.
She rolled her eyes impatiently. "Paper for my economy teacher on how slavery is a drain on a nation."
"Ah, of course…" I 'ah'd in understanding before frowning in confusion. "But… I do see your point. It's… an anomaly."
"Save that Shiki is intelligent," Vivi rebutted. "He wouldn't allow for an anomaly like this…"
I frowned grimly. "Without some kind of justification, right. Alright, alright…" I started to pace in opposition to the princess. "Alright, let's take it from the top. I'm Shiki, megalomaniac extraordinaire. I've taken a village and am using the adults as slave labor… why exactly?"
"If you just wanted the slaves, it'd be easier to snatch them up from the sea, you know," Vivi pointed out. "Seeing as you've already shown how easy it is to do that."
"But instead I go to the trouble of taking an entire village, both those I want to enslave and those I leave behind… why leave them behind?" I splayed my hands in confusion. "Once I have the slaves, why not kill the rest?"
"Hostages, maybe?" Vivi glanced back and pointed a finger pistol at my head. "Do what I say or I'll kill everyone you love."
I considered that, slowly raising a finger pistol of my own. "Or maybe the reverse: Do what I say or I'll kill mommy and daddy."
Vivi frowned as she lowered her hand. "So the slaves are hostage in order to control the village?"
"He is monitoring the village intently," I reasoned. "More so than his own base if what Nami told us is accurate."
Vivi hummed thoughtfully and started pacing again. "So it loops right back around to the start: somehow, the village is important to him. Important enough to keep it around…"
"Important enough to make sure it's kept in the same state, unaltered," I specified as I joined her, gnawing on my thumb's armor. "If he just wanted the people, he could have easily stuck them in a camp or compound he could watch but he didn't. He doesn't want anyone leaving, he wants the whole of the village, all of the people, to stay here."
"But why keep a community functioning in the midst of the army you're building?" Vivi wondered, shaking her head.
I started to nod in agreement, before pausing as something niggled in my head. "…wait… that's… not right."
Vivi looked at me with confusion etched on her face. "Huh?"
"You said it yourself," I pressed, swiftly building up a head of steam as my mind started to churn. "These things aren't an army, that's the pirates he's recruiting. These things are weapons, super-weapons."
"What difference does it make?"
"Makes a difference to me," I muttered, tapping my temple. "Something about those words… Super-weapon and… community? No no, something else… society? Populace? Neighbor—town! Yes, that's it! Super-weapons and—!" I choked myself off in horror as realization hit me like a sledgehammer. "Towns… oh… oh, damn it…"
"What, what is it?" Vivi pressed.
"B-Back in my world," I rubbed my neck, sweat streaming down my neck as my mind dredged up the relevant memories. "My people developed super-weapons of our own, weapons of mass destruction, bombs powerful enough to wipe out everything for miles around them."
"Like what Shiki's doing here," the princess nodded slowly in agreement. "But why—?"
"We didn't deploy them straight away, we tested them first, proved their might." I rubbed my hand over my mouth, my horror with the situation rapidly mounting. "And the best way to demonstrate the power of a weapon of that scale, a weapon meant to destroy everything around it…" I slowly turned around, staring in the direction of the village, the very real, very populated village. "Was to construct mock-ups of towns… and blow them away."
Vivi's face turned ashen, her gaze slowly turning back the way we'd came. "A proof of concept…"
"He's going to sic his monsters on this village as an example of what they're capable of," I summarized grimly.
Vivi bolted for the treeline, grabbing me as she passed. "We need to evacuate everyone, now!"
"Little bit late for that…"
We both froze at Soundbite's grim announcement. "What? Why?!"
"Because there are people at the Daft Greens now."
Vivi and I started sprinting again before Soundbite finished speaking—
"WAIT! FALSE ALARM!"
—and then faceplanted as he said that.
"Sorry, I PANICKED at actually HEARING PEOPLE THERE," Soundbite quickly explained. "But it sounds like SOME OF THE OTHER NATIVES HAVE COME HOME."
For a moment, we felt good, because we thought we had some time. But then that good feeling was brutally murdered by fridge logic kicking in.
"Because people fall farther when they're dropped FROM AS HIGH AS POSSIBLE," Soundbite whimpered, voicing our thought. "SHIKI wants to give them A SPARK OF HOPE BEFORE HE MURDERS THEM ALL."
"Alright, we don't have any time to waste," I barked, getting back to my feet. "Call ahead, get everyone working to evacuate the village, now!"
I don't think either of us ever ran faster in our entire lives than we did on that dark, darkening day.
-o-
A frantic, energy and desperation-filled quarter-hour later, Vivi and I met back up in the once-lively village's center, and even though I couldn't see them, I could hear the rest of the crew running through the village's streets, just as frantic as we were.
"Everybody's safe?" Vivi asked, her head on a constant swivel.
"WE STASHED EVERYONE WE COULD FIND in a bunker they had in case of stampedes!" Soundbite informed her, his eyestalks crossed and eyes clenched shut as he concentrated his hearing on the village. "It's built like a brick SO IT SHOULDN'T BREAK TO ANYTHING SHORT OF A MORTAR STRIKE, and no animal around here is ridiculous enough for that."
I fought my temper down to a growl, rather than the snarl I felt like uttering. "Is Carue rested up enough for the trip to the gathering hall?"
Vivi let loose the whistle so summon him. "In all honesty, I'd prefer to give him another hour, if I could work it, but given the circumstances? I think we can make it a half-hour coming and going if he really pushes it."
I nodded. "Good. Make sure they're prepped for war when they get here. The second we're back together, we bring a war with this golden-plated bastard's doorstep."
Vivi nodded, her face as stormy as the cyclone we'd dodged the accursed day we'd met our 'host'. "I'm looking forward to it. I swear, I am going to bury my Lion Cutters so deep down his—!" And then out of the blue, Vivi's tirade stopped dead and she paled, staring past me… and up. And Soundbite had fallen silent as well.
In spite of how hard my heart was jackhammering in my chest, I slowly, deliberately took and released a deep breath, and then I gave Vivi a piercing look. "Get out of here now," I whispered solemnly. "Get everyone else, get back here as fast as you can. We'll be fine." I cut her protest off with a raised hand. "Just get on the duck and go."
Vivi's face twisted, agony and outrage playing merry hell on her features, but ultimately she settled for a sharp nod, and when Carue dashed by she grabbed onto his reins and swung up onto his saddle, vanishing in a blur the second she was properly settled.
Once she was gone, I waited patiently for everyone else to come to the square, with Luffy leading the charge, his face utterly apoplectic.
"Cross—!" he growled.
I nodded sadly. "I know, Luffy, I know…" I turned around and stared upwards with subdued resignation.
Stared up at Shiki, who smirked down at us with all the pomp and pride he had to spare.
I also noted that there was a glass case hovering beside him that contained a snail watching us with a lazy sort of attentiveness, but I had a pretty damn good idea what that was about as well.
"HE JUST… HE JUST DROPPED OUT OF A CLOUD… from a mile up…" Soundbite whispered miserably. "I didn't… I-I JUST COULDN'T…"
"It's fine, it's fine," I soothed. "It wasn't your fault, you couldn't have known." I then looked back up at Shiki, suddenly feeling the full weight of the past week on my shoulders all at once. "Soundbite's been misdirecting the surveillance snails the whole time we were here. How did you know where we were?" I called up.
"Call it… an act of divine providence," Shiki replied with a voice that was just pure egotistical conceit. Said sneer then dropped into a scowl that had the balls to look insulted. "But, moving on to more pressing matters... Honestly, Straw Hats, you disappoint me! I thought you'd be better guests!"
I twitched as I felt something stir in my gut, and a ripple went through our crew.
"What the hell are you talking about?" Luffy growled out, his voice a downright murderous rumble.
"Isn't it obvious, Captain Luffy!?" Shiki spread his arms, indicating the whole of his dominion. "Think about what has happened! I graciously invite you into my home! I let you partake in vistas you could never have seen before in your miserable lives and entertained you to the best of my ability! I have shown you every possible courtesy that a host is due to afford his honored guests! And how do you repay my most gracious treatment!?"
The air around Shiki seemed to darken as he folded his arms, and stared at us with contempt. "You steal. My. Property," he rumbled.
My gut lurched, and our crew shifted and stiffened further.
"What," Luffy spat, his entire body coiled like a spring and his pipe—uncapped and devoid of seastone—groaning in his grip.
Shiki slowly uncrossed one of his arms and pointed at our group. "My navigator."
Nami flinched back in disgust and horror, her Eisen Tempo falling around her and crackling and rumbling like a meteorological shroud.
Shiki's finger shifted to the side. "And my guinea pig."
Billy let out a panicked squawk and retreated back around the building he'd been cowering behind.
"Both my rightful property, both stolen by you," Shiki said pompously, jutting his chin out at us. "And both very valuable. I think I'm due some compensation. So tell me…"
Shiki's face twisted into an arrogant, despicable, disgustingly mad grin.
"How do you plan on repaying me, hm?"
My gut roared, and I finally managed to place what I was feeling: Down and out, unadulterated, murderous rage.
And going by the chorus of weapons unsheathing that sang around me? I was far from the only one.
"BY BREAKING YOU IN HALF!" Luffy roared at the top of his lungs, slamming his fist into the ground and shattering it beneath his feet, but prudently refraining from boosting his blood flow just yet.
And Shiki? He just kept grinning, laughing, and looking down on us in every conceivable way.
"You… You actually think you can hurt me? Ji… JIHAHAHAHAHA!" Shiki threw his head back and roared with laughter, a deep, belly-shaking, utterly evil laugh. "Oh, this oughta be good for a laugh. Go right ahead…" He spread his arms, inviting us, begging us to do it. "Give me your best shot."
And that was just what we did.
Cross-Brain AN: If any of you haven't watched JoJo's Bizarre Adventure? Watch it; Oda has been referencing it all through the Whole Cake Island arc, and all three of the Cross-Brain's Freudian Trio recommend it.
Also, you know how we apologized with last chapter's cliffhanger? Weeeell… this time it's just because we enjoy it.
Hornet AN: This was my idea, by the way, so… sorry, not sorry.
Patient AN: But hey, at least we didn't leave the cliffhanger after the fight scene, right?
