Thank you so much for being patient with my 3-month absence from this story! I moved and got a puppy so I've been pretty busy. Here we go! As a late celebration of this story's first anniversary-here we go!
Nami was feeling better and Chopper's tears dried as the island disappeared from view and the crew took a collective breath of relief. Hours later, a cask of ale was broken open and Luffy led the charge for a quick celebration, trying to rile his crew into joining his passionate rendition of Bink's Sake. Though Luffy's singing voice was all over the place, he seemed to know all the words. Even Chopper perked up enough to do a valiant attempt to join the chorus in a song he didn't know. Sunny hummed and swayed along, enjoying the rise in temperature now that the Winter Island has disappeared into the night. There was no time to rest or celebrate for long-their course was set straight to Alabasta and planning to be done but Sunny and Luffy found themselves uninterested and unperturbed.
"I'll just defeat Mr. 0!" Luffy announced every time anyone tried to bring up strategy after the sing along. He was summarily booted from what had become a late night meeting in the galley. Sunny self-imposed his own exile and carefully climbed up to join Luffy on the figurehead. Luffy was laying on his back watching the sky and Sunny climbed onto his captain's stomach, and laid on his back to watch the stars glitter. His favorite was the pale white spiral he could only see on the ocean, where it was dark. Sunny broke the comfortable silence.
"My mother told me that each star was white-hot fire of our ancestors. The really little ones clustered together are cyndaquil who have died or got or lost and joined their sleuth up there." Sunny pointed, drawing Luffy's attention—he had his arms propped lazily behind his head but Sunny could tell he was listening. Luffy had always minded the language barrier the least. "They're so close together because they're playing. And Mom says they all move slowly across the sky so you can't always see all of them out there. Some only come for the summer. She could recognize them.
"And the bigger stars are quilava and typholsion. They hunt up there, I think, that's probably why some are gathered together but they're mostly alone. My mother—and probably my brothers and sister and father, are up there watching me every night. They're what keeps the sky warm even when the sun goes away." Sunny moved his head up to look at his captain. Luffy didn't say anything but he gave Sunny a scratch on the chin.
"I don't know where the other pokemon go though, or anyone else. Maybe the chikorita become blades of grass and the totodile become drops of rain? And—and people become…" Sunny was quiet for a long moment. "I don't know, but they become something good…they become pokemon." He decided, liking the idea more and more. What would Dr. Kureha be? He wasn't sure, and as for himself-maybe he once had been human? And could hold a book and walk on two legs and sing sea shanties with Luffy and talk to his friends or even carry his own plate to the galley table.
Sunny wondered about Ho-Oh. He left only to come back when humans and pokemon were at peace. Did he exist as far as here? It couldn't be the same world, could it? But if Ho-Oh wasn't here, what did it mean for the pokemon here? He pushed the thoughts aside when it actually started to hurt his head to think about.
He flipped onto his stomach with a tired sigh and Luffy put his hand over Sunny's back.
"Sunny~" Nami called sweetly. She was standing in the girl's cabin. She gave Vivi an impish grin and Vivi, hiding behind the door, had to restrain a giggle. "Sunny, come here!" Nami tapped the ceiling of the cabin a few times.
A few seconds later, they heard scrabbling down the corridor and a curious face popped into the room, nose twitching. "Qui?"
"Come here, we have something for you." If Sunny had been more discerning, he would have been on guard by Nami's use of 'we' as she appeared to be the only one in the room, or classified the look on her face as "up to no good." Sunny didn't have a clue until Vivi slammed the door closed behind him and Nami's face twisted into a predatory grin.
"Alright, we'll reach shore in less than an hour, everybody ready?" Nami asked. The crew was decked out in various new outfits for the warm weather Nami had purchased. Not having planned for Chopper, he was wearing one of Nami's tank tops, which fit him perfectly anyway. Everyone was enjoying their summer wear except for one very disgruntled pokemon. Said fire-type was sitting in a beige bucket hat and a shirt Nami had picked up in the baby section of a shop in Loguetown that said "I'm a beach boy!" with a yellow sun and umbrella print, and was wearing four little red boots that Nami kept having to re-velcro when Sunny wiggled one off. Seeing him try to walk in them made the exercise completely worth it though, even without Vivi's warning that the desert sand could reach 130 degrees in the afternoon. Sunny had already been exposed to one extreme of weather, she wasn't about to let him try out hyperthermia on this trip.
She clapped her hands. "Alright then, I think we're ready?"
Sunny ignited where he was sitting in the middle of the line up. Zoro and Usopp on either side of him looked down, watching the shirt slowly burn off his body while Sunny sat, looking satisfied in a way one would expect from someone who had just gotten away with farting in public. No one moved for a moment.
Then- "NOOOOO! SUNNY'S ON FIRE! SOMEBODY HELPPPPP!" Chopper yelled, rushing over to Sunny and batting his hooves against the fire, to Sunny's wide-eyed surprise.
A hand reached out and picked Chopper up by the scruff before anybody got hurt. "Chopper!" Zoro scolded. "Sunny's on fire five times a day, calm down."
"Wha? Oh," Chopper relaxed and was set back down. "O-oh, right. Sorry, Sunny."
Vivi pointed out the city of Nanohana and they docked the boat, looking out at the town. Sunny climbed up Luffy's shoulder to get a better look. Now that they were closer, he could make out the individual colors of the city more, but he didn't quite understand what they were all oogling at this distance.
"Alright, we're going to need to resupply here-and stay out of trouble. It's important we don't attract attention..."
"The one who needs to hear that is already gone," Zoro pointed out.
"FOOOOOOOD!" Luffy was already charging full speed toward the town with Sunny hanging on around his neck with a death grip squeaking in alarm.
Nami buried her face in a palm. "Of course it would be those two."
Zoro shrugged. "Just find the place with the most commotion and that's where they'll end up."
Eventually, the panic of moving at Luffy's top speed faded to where Sunny started worrying about more pressing concerns-removing the stupid red booties Nami had made him wear. A little gnawing and a little rubbing against Luffy's back loosened each one in short order. Only then did Sunny let out a sigh of relief. Luffy slowed down and looked around in confusion, sweating in the middle of a sweltering desert.
"Actually...this place doesn't look like it would have food at all...WHERE ARE WE?" He screamed.
Sunny on the other hand, had stars in his eyes. He jumped off Luffy's shoulder and buried his paws in the pleasantly scorching sand with a delighted whistle. With the wind from Luffy's running, he'd hardly noticed the steady rise in temperature. But looking around, Luffy had definitely not led them to any human habitat. All he could see from any direction was more sand dunes. Sunny had allowed himself one roll in the sand before Luffy pointed a little ways toward a small cabin, roof covered in sand.
In short order, they were heading that way. Sunny dancing at Luffy's heels.
"Oi, is anybody home? Do you have food?" Luffy called at the front door of a very small house. "Oh, look water! Sunny want some water?" Luffy turned the spigot for a barrel but not a drop of water came out. "Aw man, there's no water. Is anybody home with some water in there?" After no response was offered, Luffy tilted his head and crossed his arms in annoyance. "Eh? Nobody's really here? But I'm hungry."
Sunny sniffed the dry air. It smelled like a human dwelling, but it was hard to say how recent. The little mouse pokemon hopped onto a pile of acrid sacks around the side of the cabin and peaked in.
"Oh, what's this?" Luffy called again. Through the window, Sunny saw a silhouette tense up at Luffy's call, his back against the door. Something metal shined against his belt. So there was somebody inside! A loud sound of ripping and a hack from Luffy made him swing his head back over to his captain. "Yuck! This is gross-it must be poison. Sunny, burn it!"
Sunny tilted his head at the man in the house, he didn't yell for them to stop or reach for the door to greet the captain. The fire on Sunny's back lit up gleefully.
Maybe it was the heat that made him so fire-ready but he didn't think about it as he fired a flurry of embers that caught and immediately set the pile ablaze. Luffy and Sunny's eyes widened comically as there was now a raging, smoking bonfire in the middle of the dessert.
"I got carried away!" Sunny wailed, standing up on his back legs and leaning back from the fire. There was someone in the house and that meant the poison powder had been theirs! Sunny cringed as the acerbic smell worsened. Was his captain a pyro too? He already knew he was.
The door shot open, the man with the knife's eyes bugging furiously from their sockets. "Did you just burn all the dance powder? It took me weeks to get that much powder from the black market and you torched it! You're going to need to pay me for all this or I'll gut you!"
If Sunny had the decency to feel a little guilty about the arson, Luffy was entirely unrepentant. "Are you saying this stuff is illegal? Why would I pay you for some illegal smelly stuff?"
Almost as an answer, the sky cracked with lightning and massive clouds of rain rolled in above them. Sunny, who was equally as startled from the lightning and the intrusion on rain on what was a perfectly scorching day, darted past the incensed man and into his cabin.
Outside, Luffy got answers out of the man who turned out to be a desert bandit, the powder was prized for making rain, at the cost of drought in the surrounding land. In short, he and Luffy had messed up and the powder was very dangerous in the wrong hands-or paws. Sunny crept back out into the poor weather, examining the clouds. He would classify them as a run-for-cover-for-10-minutes sky. Quick, scary weather, then it would be sunny again. This was rain the rest of the island needed. He may not love it, but cyndaquil needed some form of water just like any other living creature. But even if he didn't like it, Sunny's stomach turned at the idea that they were wasting water others badly needed.
The idea would have been crazy to him just a few hours ago. After all, this planet was covered in it, he remembered terrifying flashes of his fall to Spring Island, seeing the blue expanse, the never-ending water. Here, there wasn't enough. Four tiny, focused fires lit on his back, growing brighter and with it, the clouds whitened in color and began to disperse in the wind, carrying their meager rain elsewhere with his signature move. Sunny and Luffy breathed a weak sigh of relief that a portion of the crisis they caused was lessened.
Luffy let his tiny fiery charge lead them in circles for half an hour before he stumbled onto his last ditched shoe. The dastardly human accessory had a use after all! He took off looking for the next three, and finally they had arrived back in Nanohana, where most the crew were supposed to be in the first place. Sunny climbed back on Luffy's shoulder to get a better view of the town. Tons of people, and tons of new smells. And one very familiar one. Sunny and Luffy exchanged a glance.
"MEAT!" the pirate captain cheered. In a flash, they were rocketing off in that direction, Sunny managing to hold onto his captain's ear.
Luffy took a seat at the first bar they found that offered meat. "Hey bartender guy! Two ciders over here!" He picked up Sunny from his shoulder and set him on the bar seat next to him. The large man seated to the left of Luffy sighed dramatically, set money on the counter and walked away, leaving Luffy and the person on the other side of the man to stare at each other. Sunny leaned over to take a look at who Luffy was spluttering incoherently at. It was another boy, older, shirtless, with black hair, freckles, and an orange hat. He was gaping openly back at Luffy. They pointed at each other for a second.
Finally, Luffy spoke, the same time as the other man. "AAAAAAAAAAACCEEEEE?"
"LUUUUUUUUUUFFFFFFFFYYY?"
The two men recoiled in shock. Tears welled in Luffy's eyes. "It's Ace!" He cheered.
Ace gave him a massive grin, ruffling Luffy's messy hair with a heavy hand. "And it's my troublesome little brother, who followed me out to sea!"
"No way! I wanted to be a pirate since before you could walk!" Luffy protested adamantly, though he was leaning into the older boy's touch. Ace sputtered a laugh.
"No way that's true, you joker. Not that I don't understand you wanting to follow in your big brother's footsteps," he teased.
"Shishishi!"
Sunny was standing on his back paws, leaning over the counter to get a good look at the other man, no, Luffy's brother. Sunny had had no idea he had a brother. He'd never mentioned it, not even when Sunny had talked about his family! His eyes squinted more than normal as he glanced between them, emitting a low squeal of thought. Humans were hard to distinguish like this, but...they did seem like they had a lot in common? Black hair, wide, smiling faces, dark eyes. It wasn't as obvious as he and his siblings had been, where the relation was pretty obvious with the distance between their eyes, their longer-than-average front legs, and the rotation of their firespots.
A big, satisfied smile graced Sunny's face as he looked at the two of them. He was really, really happy his captain, the patriarch of the sleuth, had a brother who clearly seemed to care about him.
Ace's gaze darted to the mouse pokemon, who had contorted himself to look at the newcomer Luffy was talking to. Luffy's forehead and mouth creased in confusion as he noticed strange purple goo that was clinging rather obstinately across his brother's bare shoulder.
Luffy's finger found his nostril, the other hand pointing to the slowly-expanding slime. Ace scratched in his own hair, and pointed at Sunny.
"Eh? What's that?" They said in harmony.
Ace frowned after a moment, still scrutinizing Sunny. "So, did you know you have a gopher sitting next to you?" He asked conversationally.
Luffy lit up even more. "Yep! This is my Sunny. He's my nakama, and he's really awesome. He's my ship's Lieutenant of Fire!"
"I see," Ace leaned over and took Sunny's paw, giving it a shake, a serious look crossing his face. "Nice to meet you, Sunny. Thanks for taking care of Luffy, I hope you'll continue doing your best with him even though he's so much trouble."
"Cyndaquil," Sunny replied sagely.
Luffy took a napkin and tried to wipe the slime off Ace's shoulder before Ace knocked his hand off peevishly.
"Hey, quit it!" At the same time, the slime wobbled and let out a giggle. "That's not slime, she's my crewmate and partner. Gelly, don't be shy, this is Luffy."
Sunny jumped on Luffy's back, and leaned over his head in order to get a closer look.
The purple goo wobbled once more, congealing into a dense blob and turned to show two small black eyes which blinked heavily, and a squiggly smile between two round, green cheeks. With a full body wave, the pokemon gave a cheerful greeting- "Goomy!"
Well! Let me know what you think! A couple more chapters until the Alabasta arc gets really intense :)
In case you were wondering, Gelly is pronounced like Jelly.