As always, cannot thank you guys enough for the outpouring of reviews. I didn't have time to comment but I read them all and sat down and wrote a chapter in one sitting. Your support means everything for this fic 3
Now, on to what you've all been waiting for...
Crocodile's arm crumbled from his fingers to his forearm, as the sand his arm had transformed into melted into slag glass was met with the force of a creature that had no right accelerating as fast as it did. As fast as he came, he flipped back and out of range, crouching in anticipation. A snarl built in the back of his throat, loud and menacing. Flame snorted from his nostrils, fire still stoked from his evolution. Claws dug into the loose dirt, giving him hold. Sunny could not fear through the exhilaration.
Instead, and for the first time, Sunny saw real fear when Crocodile's gaze shifted between the two of them but it was replaced quickly with rage.
"'Lava!" He called, snapping his captain out of his stunned state.
Luffy blinked and shifted back into a fighting stance. "Let's finish this, okay, Sunny?"
Luffy aimed brutal strike after strike at Crocodile.
Sunny charged and swung his head into Crocodile, enhanced with the bright flame on his head. Crocodile swung down at Sunny, who moved at a speed even he hadn't been prepared for. He turned fast on his large paws, dodging the blow and sending a double kick to Crocodile's side—not his ankle or leg, but his side—before darting away. The hit landed, thanks to the heat coming from the wreath of fire coming off his back like a bobtail.
Luffy closed in the gap, coming in with harder and more devastating hits, cracking against Crocodile's jaw, his ribs, his chest. For the time being, with a missing arm, Crocodile couldn't keep up. Even with it, Luffy's resurgence might have been beyond him.
Every attempt to create sand was met with a blast of fire. For some reason, fighting beside his captain was like fighting beneath a burning sun. His fire flourished. Every defense Crocodile had was shattered. The knife hidden under Crocodile's hook couldn't withstand a hit from Luffy, who yelled as he sent him straight through the roof with a concrete toppling kick.
Crocodile funneled his sand around them, intending to take the entire structure down, but Luffy filled his body with air, flying up to meet him.
"GUM GUM DESERT STORM!"
"-SPADA!"
Both attacks hit simultaneously. Crocodile was sent flying through the roof of the underground structure and straight up into the air. Sunny just hoped everyone could see his defeat.
"Luffy?" Sunny suddenly sprung up, sprinting under the hole as Luffy fell downward and landed with a rubbery thump.
The ground rumbled and protested around them. Sunny didn't need his tremor senses to tell him that everything around them was going to collapse, and they were lucky if they had ten minutes.
He swung his head scanning for remaining threats. Vivi's father, Cobra! And the woman, Nico Robin.
Cobra began to crawl towards Luffy. Sunny went to stand between them. Threat. Threat. Protect him.
"The antidote," the king said, procuring a small bottle of serum and uncorking it. "Your friend needs it or he'll die."
Sunny hesitated and didn't move. Luffy's shuddering breaths sounded behind him. Zoro wasn't here, he was the only one here. "You're not a Strawhat. Don't come closer."
Cobra held out the vial. "Just get him to drink this, please."
Sunny hesitantly approached and gave the vial a sniff. Cobra made no move to attack and the vial seemed to smell like medicine. He took it in his teeth and dribbled it into Luffy's mouth. His breathing seemed to become less painful. Sunny allowed his blaze to peter out. On some level, Sunny knew Cobra was no threat, but every instinct he had told him to keep everyone away to keep Luffy safe.
Behind him, Cobra was pulling himself to his knees, trying to approach. A pillar cracked in the middle of the room.
Sunny used his head to shove him toward the entrance. In his condition he certainly couldn't carry Luffy. Even with all the adrenaline, Sunny hadn't forgotten why they had fought in the first place.
"You're Vivi's dad, aren't you? Get out of here! Go find her!"
He looked lost, but he could at least understand Sunny's shoving. "The pirate…and the woman," he argued.
Sunny bore his teeth and the fire flared on his head. It was foreign, having teeth enough to bear. It still didn't quite feel like his body. Again, the message was clear enough that the man stumbled away with purpose.
He moved Nico Robin. Her face was bloodied but her eyes were open and assessing him as if he were of great interest. "I suppose you either want to get me to leave or kill me here where I can't be found," she said coolly. " And I'd rather you kill me."
He snatched the cowboy hat off the floor and flung it toward the exit. "Leave."
Nico Robin looked disappointed for a moment. Then she moved her arms and with a flurry of petals, a hand coming out of the wall took her hand and helped her to her feet.
"You two are very interesting," she said as she left, "and very frustrating."
That left just himself and Luffy. Sunny licked and nudged his face but his captain did not budge. Sunny could tell he was in awful condition and the room was minutes from collapsing around them. Maybe Sunny should have forced Nico Robin to use that weird power she had to help Luffy, but Sunny did not trust her.
He wasn't strong enough to drag Luffy. Except, Luffy didn't seem quite so big anymore. As a cyndaquil, Sunny could barely drag Luffy a body length. But he'd more than doubled in size in an instant.
Sunny gripped Luffy by the back of his shirt collar, and he used all the strength to pull. His previous form's jaw lacked power or sharp teeth, unable to move Sanji and Nami to safety on Drum Mountain. Sunny stumbled, not expecting his force to break Luffy's inertia with ease. It was working!
He started dragging Luffy across the uneven cave floor. The back of the room crumpled in on itself as they reached the tunnel. It was a short uphill climb from here. With Luffy still unconscious when Sunny nosed his way under him, ignoring the saturated blood as he positioned himself under him and managed to stand. His legs shook at the weight three times his own and Luffy's legs dragged across the stone, but they were making good progress. Eventually, the brightness of the late afternoon burst from a crypt opening ahead of them and they were back outside.
Sunny's perked ears—oh, he hadn't even realized them- twitched at the sounds of fighting and he started in that direction. Sunny was immensely grateful that both his injuries and the poison had disappeared with evolution, but he was bombarded with new sights and sounds he either hadn't noticed or been able to detect before.
Nico Robin had been assessed as a non-immediate problem, even things like worrying about Luffy's condition had been put aside for their escape. They still hadn't won—winning meant ending the war. In the training part of the pokemon world, this was where trainers and pokemon fit together like a puzzle, pokemon thought with a big picture. The trainer puzzled out the details. But now Sunny registered through startlingly bright, bright light in his open eyes which saw with startling clarity every groove in the brick wall in front of him and sounds were sharper, smells stronger and he picked up recent scents of the crew.
A few twists and turns later, the smell of blood pervaded the air. They were right on the fighting now, just outside the alley. Sunny stopped within the alley, slid Luffy off his back. There weren't many hiding spots there, but there was sand that was swept away. Within a few seconds, Sunny had covered his captain neck down in a blanket of sand to help conceal him and keep pressure on his wounds, an old typhlosion trick from his mom. He checked his breathing, then he ran into the battle of the plaza.
The sun was baking. The battle sounds were cacophonous. He was worried about where he'd left Luffy, but he needed to make sure the others were safe, too. He wove through the outskirts of the crowd, then jumped on a rock and sat up on his back legs to survey the chaos.
Vivi was yelling from the clock tower but he couldn't make out the words over the chaos. The royal guards and citizens were still facing off with the rebels. Numerous bodies of Baroque Works agents were littered around—the doing of the rest of the crew, no doubt. He thought he might have caught glimpses of the other Strawhats separating combatants but still there were so many fighting.
What would make them hear her? He wished he knew a loudred. What else was there?
"Sunny! Is that you?" He looked over, didn't see anything, then had to look down to see Gelly the goomy.
Sunny blinked in shock.
"You evolved! That's so awesome! Are you alright?"
"I…" Words felt foreign to him, he'd just noticed the changes to his voice, the deeper rumble it produced. "I need to stop the fighting. So they can hear Vivi."
But the only thing I can do is burn things, he finished silently in his head.
Gelly gave him a smirk. "I have a plan. Ace and I got split up, but there's still one thing they want that will make them stop. But we need to get to the top of that tower to do it." She pointed an antennae to the top of the clock tower.
The one thing that could make them stop…
"Can you do it?" he asked.
"I can," she said, and Sunny believed her.
"Climb on." Sunny laid down before her. Gelly scooched up his back and Sunny tried not to shake out his fur at the strange sensation. "Here goes everything."
Then he took off into the clock tower, running up flights of stairs as fast as he could. He stumbled over his long legs and big paws a few times but Gelly had a deceptively good grip.
At the final floor, Vivi was yelling her heart out at the crowd, white knuckling the railing. Sunny thought she might run out of voice if they didn't hurry. He turned to Gelly on his back. "Here?"
She shook her body back and forth in a negative. "I need to get on the roof," she said, and as Sunny eyed the stone wall on the outside cautiously, she asked, "Can you do it, Sunny? You're my only hope."
"I'll…have to try," Sunny decided. He didn't want to let anyone down, and certainly not Gelly. Still, knowing falling from this high would make both of them goomy jelly did not ease his nerves.
He hopped onto the railing on the backside of the tower, readjusting himself and set a paw experimentally on the crack in the stone. His small claws held. Upwards, there were only about two Zoro-lengths to climb. Just like Drum, he decided, launching himself up so suddenly, Gelly yelped and flattened on his back.
There was a moment where he was scrabbling along flat stone, but his paws caught on a carved line in stone and he used that to propel himself forward again, catching the edge of the clay roof tiles.
Gelly hopped off his back and wrapped her antennae around a paw as his back legs scrabbled in air. "Less fire! Less fire!" She cried.
"Sorry, sorry!" Sunny gasped, reigning in his instinctive fire as finally he managed to pull himself up. Below them, he could see everything with clarity, even individuals fighting. It was hypnotizing.
"Ugh the tile burns!" Gelly grunted, she was moving from side to side, bobbing to her own rhythm. Sunny refocused and watched as she spun around, her antennae waving one way then another like a metronome.
"Can I help?"
"Nope! You already did your part," as she said that, her antennae bobbed down and Sunny realized clouds had hidden the sun away and they had become thicker and darker.
The first trickles of moisture hit his nose.
"Sorry, I know you hate rain!"
But Sunny didn't mind, even as one dripped down his face, he smiled. The precipitation speckled the hot clay roof. Faster and faster it fell, following Gelly's spinning dance. And the people stopped fighting and stilled. The din of weapons fell into quiet muttering as fat raindrops filled the air with silvery comets of water, quenching Alabasta's thirst.
And under all that yelling was Vivi, heard loud and clear. "STOP THIS POINTLESS FIGHTING!"
A pause to catch her breath, her voice hoarse and breaking, but loud. "THE RAIN HAS FALL ONCE AGAIN. THIS NIGHTMARE…IS FINALLY OVER!"
Sunny grinned.
In the next hour, much happened. Sunny found Ace and Gelly was returned to her rightful place on his shoulder. Ace dipped his hat at Sunny, as if reminding Sunny of his assertion to look after his brother.
Before they left, Gelly wrapped her antennae around Sunny's neck in a hug and thanked him for his help. His heart beat harder than he could remember. After that, Sunny had a bit of a hard time keeping a smile off his face. He hoped they'd be able to see them again soon.
Sunny found the other Strawhats, too, who had collapsed in exhaustion once the fighting ceased. Vivi had apparently gathered a group of guards to collect them before she too passed out. Only once Jackal had shown up to assure Sunny he was under Princess Vivi's orders, did he lead them around, finding all his sleuth, and of course Luffy, who was sleeping soundly on the floor of the alleyway.
Then he followed the guards carrying his exhausted crewmates back to the castle, waited patiently while they set up a room for them, and walked beside them as they were carted into it, and watched carefully as their wounds were dressed, food set out, and finally left alone in the dimness of sunset.
Sunny whistled a sigh, curled up beside Luffy, and only then did he let the exhausting trials of the day fall to rest.
He was the first to wake up despite being the last to fall asleep, simply by virtue of being the only one who actually fell asleep rather than passing out. He'd never been hurt so badly in his life, but it was like his battles had been punctuated by a nap, a jolt of coffee, and a full heal.
On waking up he had the sensation of complete unfamiliarity of his own body: longer, but still stocky limbs, with toes-three of them on each foot and ears and...and... He surged up to look at his fire spots, the uncoordinated movement had most of his weight slipping off the bed, Sunny's nose smashing against the floor, tipping him over to land flat on his back. He lay there for a moment as a grunt-not a squeak- escaped his lungs. The five pirates around him, sleeping in bunks, covered in bandages, didn't so much as twitch. Well, he'd rather they rest than be awake to make fun of him. No, that wasn't exactly true.
From his upside down position he could catch a half-decent glimpse of Chopper lying bandaged in the lower bunk, sleeping soundly. A relief.
Then the door opened with a soft click and Sunny scrambled to a sitting position with a thump in effort to gain some measure of dignity even with what had to be a few unsightly scrapes and bruises from after his evolution.
Vivi's face was peppered by minor cuts and burns. Despite that, she looked undoubtedly regal, wearing shining robes and with her hair worn down, wavy and freshly groomed. The bewildered expression on her face on seeing Sunny slowly morphed into wariness and veiled suspicion. She paused in the doorway with a tray of fruit, bread, and cheese. Sunny was suddenly aware of his hunger but by the conflicted look on Vivi's face, it wasn't the time. She strode into the room, setting the tray down on the table. Then she hovered, not approaching.
"Sunny, is that really you? I mean you look like him mostly but Sunny was-is little and had squinty eyes and-" She bit her lip.
"I thought the guards said that—" Her voice dried up. The creature in front of her was similar enough to Sunny that if she'd only briefly seen it, she wouldn't doubt that it was Sunny. But it—he—didn't look right. Like the faded old tapestries in the lower levels of the castle that had always scared her as a child-women holding babies with the faces of adults, like they weren't quite sure how to render a young face and instead used an adult one on a child's body.
This one looked like Sunny, tilted his head and was looking up at her in the same way he did when he was caught between confusion and nervousness. She hadn't realized she knew him so well until she was faced with something so different. But. She kneeled to the floor, hands bunched into the fabric of her silk dress.
"Why..?" She didn't quite have a question, just like he didn't really have an answer for her. So she looked him in the eyes—that flat crimson color was somehow fathomless and piercing at the same time. She remembered the crew bringing up Sunny's eyes once, only a few had seen them, how unsettling they were, Nami's surprise at the color, Usopp's shiver though he declared not only had he seen Sunny's eyes many times, he'd won staring contests with him regularly, though when prompted he couldn't correctly identify the color of his pupils. Vivi could answer now, that they were white.
How could white pupils function? She'd never seen eyes like that before. How could she be sure it was truly him?
Sunny was her friend, but this was a much larger creature—she tensed as he took a step toward her, a light tap of a big paw on the mosaic tile. She stood abruptly. "Sorry, I have to go—we're still working on disaster relief—I can't really take a break. But I brought food for you all. Please relax." She turned the knob and slid through quickly, clicking it shut behind. She took a deep breath. Then another.
"Rigel."
A lightly armed squire a little down the hallway approached carefully. "Yes, Princess Vivi?"
"Please go to the library and pull together everything you can about creatures with elemental affinities abruptly changing. I need you to tell me if there's a way to fix it."
Next chapter is Strawhat reactions! : D