A/N: My first try at horror, it's pretty hard to make things spooky, I've found. But please enjoy anyway. I love horror, so I do hope that I can do better in the future...
Nami was the navigator of the Straw Hat Pirates, so naturally she had to be the best navigator out there, but she was currently having the biggest confusion of her life.
One of the needles of the log pose on her wrist had been pointing to a certain direction and she had been following it quite nicely, but she took one sip of her drink and suddenly it was pointing backwards.
Nami was staring at it, then lifting her head and staring towards the back of the ship, then looking back at the log pose again.
She had been following the same needle for a few days now, so there was absolutely no way that she could have mistaken it for a different one.
"Uh, everyone," she called out loudly. She tore her eyes away from the empty ocean behind her to look at her crew, and sighed when they were not paying attention to her as usual. Even Sanji had disappeared into the kitchen, so that left Robin as the only person to look at her. "EVERYONE, LISTEN!" A blur zoomed past her but she grabbed the little Sonic by the ear with no trouble.
"Owowow Nami that hurts!" the little captain complained, but she wasn't paying attention. Instead, she was glancing at the others to make sure that she had gotten their attention, and sure enough, all nine members were looking at her, each paused in their own action.
Sanji was the first to speak up, "Yes, Nami-swaaan~?" he asked, doing his noodle dance to get uncomfortably close to Nami, "If you want more-" he got cut off by Nami who pushed his face away.
"Is something the matter, Nami?" Jinbe asked, hands lowering as they were raised in a karate position beforehand.
"There's something up with the log pose," Nami began, letting go of Luffy's ear and putting her other hand on her waist. She lifted her wrist with the log pose as Luffy rubbed his ear. "It was pointing in that-" she pointed towards the figurehead, "-direction before, but within one minute it was pointing towards the east." She pointed towards the tail of the ship to get it through to the heads of the more directionally-challenged members.
"That's not supposed to happen?" Luffy asked, his hand lowering.
Nami facepalmed. "Luffy. The needles of the log pose points to an island. Within one minute of us going in a straight line, its direction changed...completely."
"Which means that according to this log pose, we have just passed an island," Robin supplemented, closing her book as she spoke.
"Oohh!" Luffy said with widened eyes. "But there's no island!" He turned and ran towards the edge of the ship to make completely sure. Usopp and Chopper followed.
"Are you sure it has always been pointing in a straight line?" Jinbe questioned. He was considering the possibility that the island was another sky island or maybe even an underwater one.
"Yes, I'm very sure!" Nami looked exasperated. "This log pose...I don't get it! Even if the island was invisible we would have crashed into it!"
In the background, Luffy's neck was stretching further and further out to sea, while Usopp and Chopper held onto his body and cheered him on.
"The Grand Line is a mysterious place," Robin said with a twinkle in her eyes. "There might indeed be an island after all."
"Yeah, like how the sky island turned out to be real," Zoro stated lazily, still resting against the mast with both hands behind his head.
"Yohohoho! I remember hearing about that story from Usopp-san!" Brook was standing by the tree, violin and bow in hands, not that he had any.
"Yeah! The Merry was super amazing for being able to withstand that Knock-Up Stream!" Franky was still sitting down on the floor, working on whatever he was working on.
Nami groaned. "You guys-"
"AAAAAHHHH!"
The older crew members whipped their heads at the scream, any normal scream and it wouldn't have even been unusual, but this scream sounded distinctively fearful for some reason.
It was coming from Chopper.
"What's wrong?!" Nami called out, rushing over. The others followed closely behind.
But they saw the problem for themselves.
"Luffy! Hang on!" Usopp was yelling, his hands pulling on the younger teen's shoulders. He seemed to be fighting against an opposing force. Chopper was panicking and running around.
While the subject of their panic had his neck stretched to an incredible length, and his head was nowhere to be seen.
They could see where the neck ended.
Nami and Brook were screaming.
Sanji, Zoro, and Jinbe were moving quickly to assist Usopp.
Robin was sweating from anxiety.
Franky was yelling.
With the combined force of the strongest members on the crew, they successfully managed to pull Luffy back enough that his neck could no longer stretch any further, and thus his head came flying back.
Luffy's head was surprisingly drenched in water, and his eyes were closed.
"Luffy?" a worried Nami tried, bending down to observe him closer.
Sanji gave him a good kick in the stomach, which caused some water to spurt out of his mouth, and Luffy's eyes flew open. The young captain sat up and gasped for air.
"What happened?" Zoro took the liberty of asking, turning to Usopp since Chopper was looking over Luffy.
"I-I don't know," Usopp stuttered, he still seemed quite shaken from the recent incident. "We followed after Luffy and he was just trying to see what was going on, so we helped by holding him back, then suddenly we nearly lost our grip on him 'cause something seemed to be pulling on him! Then his head disappeared!"
Luffy had recovered by the time Usopp finished, so Jinbe asked him instead, "What happened, Luffy?"
Something was unnervingly off about their captain, he was staring into the distance, which happened to be about the area where the island was supposed to be, and his mouth was open as if he was trying to process something.
"I...I can't remember."
Since the entire incident unsettled the crew, and their captain avoided the question whenever he was asked about whether he wanted to return, they decided to simply continue on their way.
Luffy didn't act strange in any way after that, he was still the energetic, adventurous captain that they knew and loved, so it was soon put off from their minds.
When Zoro asked the others about Luffy, they all said the same, so he thought that he was probably just over-analyzing the incident.
After all, he seemed the exact same in every other way.
Luffy had been having more nightmares afterwards. It sometimes woke up one of the other members, but it never took long for Luffy to recover and they would just go to sleep quite soon afterwards.
Zoro was usually asleep when he was on watch, so if it had happened before, he never noticed.
It was probably a month after the incident, and Zoro had just woken up from a brief nap. His eyes were bleary, and he was drowsily taking note of the time. It was still night, so he yawned and was adjusting his position to go back to sleep.
Even in this state, he still noticed a figure swaying in the night.
It was disturbing enough to shock him awake. He stood closer to the windows of the crow's nest, and he saw that it was Luffy, with his back facing towards him.
He was standing on the railing, swaying like a pendulum.
Then he toppled over, and it was enough to shock Zoro into motion.
It was a moonless night, so it was pitch-black in the water, and he only had a general idea of where Luffy had fallen. It was cold too, much too cold for comfort, but what Zoro was worried about was the fact that he had lost complete track of his captain.
He was swimming fast, he could not remember a time where he had been this desperate before, where he was fighting against time and was hoping to anyone in general that he could find just a hint of Luffy, but it was too damn dark and he could barely even remember which way was top. Even when his lungs were screaming at him he was still down there, wading against an impossible darkness for the man he could not afford to lose.
But eventually his mind returned to him, and he resurfaced to take a huge breath of air, and he decided that he wasn't getting anywhere.
He swam as hard as he could against the irritating obstacle of water, climbed up the rope ladder, ran across the ship and kicked open the door to the men's quarters, then hollered at everyone to get up. He did not have any time to pander to them, and luckily they did sense that something was wrong.
"Luffy is drowning," were the three simple words that he used to explain the situation, and he asked – yelled at Franky to get the Shark Submerge ready.
Then he was running again, to the edge closest to where he saw Luffy fell, and the water was black, it was so dark, the difference was not clear enough for his brain to process at the time.
But then he was in the water again and the smell was everywhere.
He lifted a hand to see that it was soaked in watery blood.
Usopp must have noticed that he was still above the surface, so the sniper came over to see what was going on. His face drained of colour so fast, he was sinking to his knees.
"Z-Zoro..." the liar choked out. He was holding out his goggles with a trembling hand.
Chopper was using the periscope, and he wasn't excited about using it for once, in fact he was scared.
But Luffy was counting on him.
And he stilled when he saw the unmoving form in the distance.
Brook was standing closest to him; he noticed how the reindeer's eyes widened and mouth fall open in shock.
"Chopper?" he was almost afraid to ask.
Then they all saw it – Brook, Chopper, Franky, Sanji, even Zoro who was near the submarine.
They saw the slim body of their captain floating in the water somewhere below them, blood pouring from the wound that was supposed to remain a scar, creating a red sort of halo surrounding him.
Apparently he was dead long before they found him.