Here's another chapter before January 12th as that will be the second anniversary of this story :) And I very badly want to get to the climax of this arc.
Sunny followed Tashigi onto the main street, waiting impatiently as she took a long look around.
"Would you say that the Straw Hats have an unrelenting penchant for finding trouble?"
Sunny gave a hesitant nod.
"And they do it in the most overt and spectacular way?"
A firmer nod.
"So they might be at the extremely overt casino owned by one of the Seven Warlords?" She pointed to the huge ornate pyramid decked with a golden crocodile on topp known as Rain Dinners. "Confronting an extremely dangerous and government-sanctioned pirate?"
Sunny sweat in response. "I'd bet Nami's gold on it."
Tashigi ran her hand across her face and started to hobble in that direction. "Then I'd stake my glasses on it that Captain Smoker's followed them there. We need to hurry."
At the front steps of Rain Dinners, wealthy tourists came and went up the stairs laughing loudly. Tashigi went for the stairs to enter the casino while Sunny snuffled up and down the bottom step trying to catch the Straw Hat's scent. There was too much overlap to catch them anything.
Bounding up the steps two at a time, Sunny caught up with Tashigi just as she was stopped from entering the casino by a well-dressed man in the front.
"You can't enter looking like you just got in a fight. You've got blood on your clothes and Crocodile doesn't want his resort associated with the marines. I'm afraid I'll have to insist you," he looked down at Sunny pointedly, "take your rat and go back from where you came."
Tashigi grit her teeth. "This is official Marine business."
"You don't have business here. As one of the Seven Warlord's property, Rain Dinners is immune to petty Marine interference. Unless you happen to be of ranking Commodore or above?" The man raised his eyebrows with a facetious smile. Tashigi's eyes flashed to Sunny's momentarily.
"Listen to me. You will regret-" Tashigi started, her voice raising. The bouncer extended a foot to stop Sunny from sneaking past him with barely a glance. Sunny prickled with irritation at the boot in his face.
"You'll regret it if you keep testing me. As if I don't deal with someone trying to sneak past me six times a day. Simply sloppy. Now go on, before I call our real security."
Tashigi and Sunny retreated back down the stairs, Tashigi quietly swearing under her breath. Sunny sent a baleful look at the bouncer.
"Something's going on in there, I know it," he insisted.
"We'll need to find another way in," Tashigi said, skirting the building. Along the side of the building they came across the large pond at the back of the casino. Tashigi immediately went to continue walking but turned around when she saw that Sunny had paused.
"I...think I saw a shadow?" Sunny said, leaning close to the water to give it an experimental sniff as an air bubble came up.
"I wouldn't drink that if I were you," Tashigi warned sourly.
As she spoke, Nami, Usopp, Vivi, and Zoro carrying Luffy sprang out of the water. Sunny admirably fought off his heart palpitations in order to help drag Luffy's limp form from the water as Zoro hefted him up. The others collapsed on the side of the lake gasping for breath as Zoro pushed Luffy's legs from the water. Luffy propped himself up on one elbow, trying to gurgle words at his first mate. Zoro paused, waiting for his captain to spit up mouthfuls of water with his intense steely stare. Sunny knew the feeling of having the first mate's steel eyes focused on you, the intensity, the focus. But of course their captain returned it.
"Z-Zoro. You need to get him too."
"Luffy..." Zoro's eyes shifted to look at Tashigi, who had drawn her sword and was slowly approaching. When Zoro looked back to his captain's stubborn eyes. "Campfire, watch him." With that he disappeared back underwater.
"Zoro? Where are you going?" Sunny raced to the water's edge to see where Zoro had disappeared to in shock. The sudden idea of Zoro getting lost underwater in the wherever he was going made him lean forward so far to spot him that his front legs splashed into the water and he had to flail backwards to pull himself out.
Luffy hefted himself to a sitting position as the others picked themselves up too. "Sunny, Zoro's gonna be right back."
The fire mouse felt some of the tension melt away with his words. Despite his fear, there was something about hearing that from his captain that made it inherently true. He exhaled. Zoro would be back.
"Mouse, I hope you know our truce is over now." Tashigi growled. "Straw Hat, Captain Smoker was pursuing you twenty minutes ago. What did you do to him?"
Zoro burst out of the water a second time, hefting a sodden gray-haired man. He dropped the limp man on the ground with little care.
"Smoker!" Tashigi's sword lowered as her will to fight briefly melted from her body. Seconds later, she was supporting Smoker as he coughed up water and Zoro had climbed out of the water.
Smoker stood up, his coat dripping rivers of water, he pulled his jitte from his side. That's all Sunny saw of the weapon before it clashed with one of Zoro's swords. His five-foot long jitte and Zoro's sword remained in a deadlock as they held each other's steely gazes. The tension was dripping off them as plainly as water was running from their clothes and weapons.
"You saved me, tell me why, Pirate Hunter Zoro."
"I was just acting on my captain's orders. It was one of his whims. Don't think too hard on it," Zoro returned.
"Roronoa you-!" Tashigi started, tensing her sword in her grip.
Smoker held up a hand to stop her. "Then I'm sure you won't have complaints if I perform my duty and arrest you right here?"
Luffy stepped past his first mate. "This country is going to have an all-out war soon and you're worried about a some pirates?"
Smoker scoffed. "Of course."
"It's your 'Justice'?" Luffy countered, eyes shaded by the brim of his hat, pointing back at Rain Dinners. "Not to bother with him?"
Smoker bit back a response. Sunny suddenly wondered what had happened inside Rain Dinners to make the atmosphere so heavy.
"We're here to stop him! We'll stop the entire coup d'etat! Tens of thousands of lives of my people are at stake!" Vivi said. "We're the only ones who can, the only ones who will. On my authority of Princess Nefertari Vivi I can tell you arresting these pirates will consign my country to death! You heard what he said in there!"
Smoker's jitte lowered as he scrubbed his soaked glove across his face. "Damnit." After another moment: "The woman in there, Ms. All-Sunday. Her true identity is one Nico Robin, Demon of Ohara, assassin, and, it seems, Crocodile's right-hand man. She has a bounty of over 70 million berri."
"Captain!" Tashigi protested. Smoker held up a hand to silence her. Her mouth snapped shut.
"Master Chief Tashigi, Crocodile admitted to working against the World Government in there. And the moment those two joined forces, their plan turned into more than simply taking over the country. If left alone, I fear this might develop into an incident large enough to engulf the whole world." Smoker continued gravely.
Luffy's mouth shifted into a dangerous smile. "I don't need another reason to kick that bastard's ass!"
Smoker didn't speak for a moment, before turning around. "Go. I'll look away just this once. I can't in good conscience forget that your crew saved both our lives, shameful as it is. Besides," Smoker sent a lazy look over his shoulder to the fire-type. "...I don't arrest anyone under two feet tall."
Several Straw Hats and even Tashigi sweat dropped at that.
"Straw Hat Luffy. I hope you weren't lying about being able to defeat Crocodile." Smoker said. Tashigi couldn't hold back a hiss of shock at her superior's open misconduct.
"Shishishi you're really funny, Smoker. I don't hate you," Luffy said.
"Get out of here you airhead! Didn't you hear I'm giving you a free pass?" Smoker shouted at the pirate captain.
Luffy let out another good natured laugh before leading his crew away in a run east toward Alubarna.
Minutes later, marine backup arrived. "Master Chief Petty Officer? You said you spotted the Straw Hats?"
Smoker pointed the direction the Straw Hats had run, face grim and shaded. Tashigi turned around to look at her captain in surprise before he spoke again. "Don't chase them. I want all the troops to reconvene in Alabasta. Await further orders."
"Captain Smoker?" A fresh-faced marine ensign asked incredulously.
"Now!" Smoker qualified, sending the marine scurrying away. "Master Chief Tashigi, I don't want to see you until after your injuries have been-"
Puru puru puru!
Smoker pulled out his transponder snail. "Yes?"
"Captain Smoker, sir! We just found several ensigns unconscious and in critical condition! It seems someone took the prisoner!"
Smoker's eyes flashed to Tashigi's. "The prisoner?"
"Yes sir, the man MCPO Tashigi identified as Mr. 2 has escaped custody."
Baroque Works' Project Utopia: Underway
To say Sunny was used to his crew finding new and inventive ways to advance their mission would be an understatement, still the cyndaquil's jaw hit the ground when he saw the new friend Sanji and Chopper had picked up (or rather, that had picked up them.) It was not only a strange, speedy crab, but the biggest crab Sunny could imagine, much, much bigger than any kingler. In no time at all, Chopper had urged everyone on the beasts' massive back, which seemed to be covered in sandy shag carpet-it had enough room for all of them to sit and before long they were scurrying into the desert toward the crown city as fast as they could.
On the way, the team that had entered Rain Dinners filled the rest of them in. Chopper had played the Mr. Prince gambit this time while Sanji had snuck in and sabotaged Rain Dinners in the hopes of slowing Crocodile down. In the process, he seemed to have summarily fought off a group of some sort of banana crocodilian mob (though it seemed a bit farfetched and Sunny wondered if he weren't just trying to impress the girls.) Then the others who had met Crocodile shared terrifying news. Not only was Crocodile's plan to dismantle Alubarna, according to Ms. All-Sunday, also known as the highly wanted criminal, Nico Robin, there was a plan being put into action as they spoke...but much to Vivi's chagrin, most of the crew did their best work off the cuff.
"Luffy, pay attention to the map! I swear this is like wrangling supersonic d-ERRRK!" Out of nowhere, a golden hook struck out. It caught Vivi around the waist, and was drawn back as if by a rope by loose sand.
"VIVI!" The crew screamed. Chopper skid the moving crab to a stop and Luffy reacted, stretching out an arm, pulling Vivi from the hook and throwing her back onto the crab. Luffy was still holding the hook.
"Luffy!"
"Don't worry about me!" Luffy said, landing on the sand between them and the direction the hook had come from. "Just keep going, make sure that Vivi makes it home! I've got some business to settle here." Despite his words, his grin stayed big as he raised a fist in the air. "And good luck!"
The crew looked on in what could only be described as shock and fear. To leave their captain so suddenly out in the open with one of the Seven Warlords-
"Let's go Chopper, we're heading to Alubarna," Zoro said.
Teary-eyed, Chopper set the moving crab back into a run. Sunny's eyes went wide in shock. They couldn't-? Vivi, Usopp, Luffy, Nami, and Smoker were in Rain Dinners with him and could barely escape!
"Zoro, you can't be serious! We can't leave him out there, if we do who's gonna protect me, damnit?" Usopp shouted.
Sunny steeled himself and took a flying leap off the crab's back-
-And was caught around the waist by a strong arm.
Zoro's eyes were locked on the horizon as they sped away. "Crocodile will fail, Luffy will win, it's that simple." Glancing over, Sunny saw that Nami was also holding Vivi back from following, declaring her confidence in Luffy as well.
Sunny felt his heart clench. He'd let his emotions win out again, and relied on the others to rein him in. He'd been on the crew for months now and he wasn't a kid anymore. He was one of the more senior members of the crew! Zoro and Nami would trust Luffy to raise the sun at dawn and lower it at dusk. Sunny, too, knew not to doubt Luffy by rote. The pokemon let out an eventual smoky sigh as the distance blurred in his sight, briefly fought to wrangle his fear, and primly hopped out of Zoro's arm.
"I know that. I just wanted to watch our captain win," he said, coming to sit next to Chopper. His teary eyes locked on Sunny's squinting gaze.
"You're really sure?" Chopper sniffed.
"Luffy won't stop at anything to help Vivi," Sunny assured him, heart squeezing in his chest.
In the next few minutes, a measure of dread burbled up within the captain-less group. No one but Usopp, who was telling Chopper a story, spoke, as speaking their fear out loud would pull apart the words that the crew had said, undermining the whole-hearted confidence the crew had instilled Luffy. Eat away at the determination and confidence Vivi had finally placed in them. That's what Sunny thought of the smothering quiet as they watched a sandstorm kick up, larger and larger in the distance. For whatever reason, Sunny always had a sixth sense for negative emotions. Usopp's story about teaching the crabs to walk sideways didn't mask it, even if it did distract Chopper. Not even Zoro could trick his sense. His neutral expression did nothing to cover the waves of dread and frustration he was emitting. Maybe that's why it was so desperately difficult for Sunny to stay calm in these situations. With everyone around him, he felt as if he were sitting in a stagnant pool of dread and fear. The only reason he didn't succumb to it and do anything rash was the distinct lack of it radiating from one person. Vivi, who had had so much uncertainty. The words of Luffy and the rest of the crew had finally bolstered her heart, rekindled her faith. She was a breath of fresh air in the tension, and also the one reason for him to cling onto his façade of assuredness in this horrible situation.
Zoro had begun to do reps with Eyelashes sitting on his sword. When Nami protested wasting his energy, Sanji scoffed.
"Leave him be. Guys like Zoro need to keep moving or they can't stay focused. Especially now that he's met a Warlord." Sanji took a draw of his cigarette.
"Stop pussyfooting around and say what's on your mind or shut up," Zoro grunted.
"You need me to spell it out? All this tough-guy shit is just to hide your fear that Luffy might lose this one," Sanji said, facing away from the group. Sunny felt sweat form on his face. This wasn't like Sanji either, to call Zoro out on his stoicism, especially not at the risk of upsetting the Vivi. But it wasn't a question Sunny needed to ask. Not when he was sitting where he could see Sanji's face, shadowed by his hair, the cigarette shaking in his hand.
"Who me? You sayin' I'm scared? Look at me, fancy-eyebrows!"
"Oh yeah, you want to go?"
Nami thwacked them both on the head, and when Vivi tried to comfort them, Nami walked over and gently thwacked her on the head too. "Keep your mind on the rebellion and leave the rest to us."
Zoro sat up, crossing his arms but looking somewhat less on edge. "We fight among ourselves, we've already lost," he finally agreed. The silence elapsed on following Vivi and Nami's relieved sighs.
Sunny had a better idea of how to spend their time. "-And it's said they spend so much time in the desert that their blood has turned to sand. They don't move during the day but at night you may notice a pack of them trailing you, waiting for weary travelers to exhaust themselves so they can't get away before they pick you off," Sunny glanced with exaggerated nervousness at the deserts surrounding them, fading red sky of the newly set sun. Then he leaned in close to Chopper and to Usopp, who were shivering in fright. "And that's why you can never, ever trust a cactus."
Chopper, clearly catching the majority of Sunny's tale, screeched. "And w-when this cactus creature eventually catches you it eats you? T-that's horrible!"
Usopp paled further. "That means, this creature is probably following us as we speak, just w-waiting for a final moment of weakness?"
Sanji turned around from what passed as the front of the side-walking crab, tick-mark on his forehead from where he was dutifully strategizing with Vivi. "What the hell are you guys talking about back there?"
"I-It's fine, C-Chopper, that's way too freaky to be true. That's too preposterous. R-right, Sunny? It was a joke?" Usopp turned to Sunny for reassurance to find that the fire-type pokemon had attached himself to the front of Zoro's shirt, teeth shattering and body trembling in pure fear.
Nami, Vivi, and Sanji sweat-dropped. "I think he scared himself the most with his story. He kind of deserves that, though," Nami decided.
"Hey, what's that green thing standing out there?" Zoro asked dully. Chopper, Nami, and Usopp startled. The swordsman had been expecting to get a good startle out of the pokemon, but instead the fire mouse went even bluer in terror, opened his mouth and his ghost appeared to exit his body.
At that, the crew managed a small laugh despite everything ahead and everything left behind.
Crocodile watched the sinkhole draw in the largest piece still in play on the board, leaving no trace except for the crater his ability had formed. His path to the crown was left wide open. He grinned, throwing the cigar butt he'd chewed through during the fight into the sinkhole along with Straw Hat. Then he picked up his hourglass, which was just now dropping its last grains of sand.
His form dissipated back into sand and blew away back toward Alubarna.
"Me, lead the troops?" Tashigi said incredulously. "But sir, are we reinforcing the royal army or chasing the Straw Hats?"
"That's up to you. You'll have to decide what's more important when you get there," Smoker said, facing toward the desert.
"But sir, I don't understand, what's going on?"
"You'll have to define your own sense of Justice. And decide if either Straw Hat or that dopey little rodent you were with made you abandon the ideals you've upheld until this point, or if...it is something else entirely."
"Sir, is this some kind of test?" Tashigi demanded.
"Mmh, perhaps, but it isn't your test. Whatever happens, I'll accept responsibility."
The rest of the journey was fraught with danger, as it turned out, unlike kingler, this crab couldn't swim, and even with Nami and Vivi powering Scissors, Sanji had to fish Sunny out of the water after it sunk. A sandoran catfish decided that the crew would make a good late dinner snack, and only the dugongs, which were not squirtle, jumping in when they did and hauled them ashore saved them.
Once on land, Vivi squinted her eyes at something in the distance Sunny couldn't see. But moments later he felt a subtle shift in the sands which became stronger by order of magnitude in seconds.
Sunny's fire flared. "Are we running?"
"It's the Supersonic Duck Squad! Thank god, Carue!" She yelled, waving her arms as what Sunny now recognized as the giant superspeed ducks approached and skid to a stop just feet from the group. Vivi pet Carue's beak affectionately. "Want a ride?"
Plan now fimly in place, Sanji and Sunny jumped onto one duck; Usopp and Eyelashes; Vivi and Carue; Nami and Zoro together with their mounts; and Chopper with his. The Straw Hats, the princess, and the the Supersonic Duck Squadron gathered in a circle once they were ready, throwing their hands, paws, and wings in the middle.
"We'll bring peace to Alabasta-!" Sanji started.
"-If it's the last thing we do!" Vivi said. "We'll beat the rebels to Alubarna!"
"And make Luffy proud!"
They lifted their arms to the sky and ran towards their prospective entrances to the city.
It was only until they were minutes from the entrances that Sunny and Sanji noticed the hoofprints across the vast expanse of the sands. Thousands of hoofprints, as far as they could see. Ahead them even more. Sunny tugged Sanji's sleeve and when the chef looked up from the ground and his eye shifted to where Sunny tacitly pointed. Dozens of smoke billows rising from the city of Alubarna, Vivi's home. Slowly, the cacophony of fighting hit their ears-yelling, fighting, burning. Their duck skid to a stop just outside of the stairs, where the proof of a continuing battle was apparent. Cannons smoking, some fallen down the walls, craters from cannon blasts, several prone forms laying across the sands.
A cigarette plopped onto the sands below their feet.
"We're too late."
* I can guess we have 3-4 chapters left in this arc and we're already on the 6th chapter. For reference, the second longest arc is 5 chapters total.
*Longest chapter yet! But I had to get to the cliffhanger ^_^ I may not be able to write another chapter before the 12th but if you want it, Please R&R!