Warnings: Dark themes, lots of mentions of death, strong language, human experimentation, experimenting on children, child abduction, graphic descriptions of experimenting, lots of needles, lots of violence, poor descriptions of panic attacks, descriptions of blood, rated M for safety.
*If I need to add anymore warnings please tell me in the reviews or a PM and I'll be sure to add it!*
Chapter 91: An Island's Secrets
The next day Ace and Sabo found it extremely hard to keep Luffy from running off to the island first thing. As much as they all wanted to go to the island, they still had to eat breakfast. Not to mention, check-in with Whitebeard to see who was being assigned what today. Marco had promised they would be free to go exploring today, but sometimes it was inevitable that they had to be pulled in to do something, whether they had plans to explore or not.
Breakfast seemed to drag on for Luffy who was a bundle of excited energy. He ate quickly, finishing his many plates within minutes, but even then he knew he still had to wait. Ace still had a couple more plates to go and Sabo had barely finished his first plate.
It was practically excruciating for the boy to sit at the table, just waiting to go explore the awesome looking forest on the island.
The Commanders and Whitebeard watched with knowing smiles, all of them waiting for the moment that Luffy's patience would give out and the young teen would rocket himself over to the island, regardless of the procedure they had on the Moby.
Ace and Sabo, however, didn't want to let that happen and were instead focusing just as much attention on eating as they were to keeping Luffy in his seat, one of them grabbing the youngest's hands every time he attempted to bolt off and out of the galley. As funny as it would be, it would also mean that they would lose Luffy to the forest of the island and it would be much too difficult to find him, even with their enhanced senses.
Eventually, everyone finished and the crew gathered out on the deck, waiting to hear what Whitebeard would say.
Luffy, of course, was bouncing where he stood in between Ace and Sabo, waiting for the second Whitebeard stopped talking to run off to the Striker. Even if he couldn't power the boat himself he was sure he'd be able to figure something out if he was desperate enough.
Whitebeard announced that they had everything they needed and that today was a day of relaxation, anyone welcome to go to the island if they wanted. When he finished speaking Luffy cheered, grabbing Ace and Sabo's hands and dragging them towards the stairs to head toward the Striker.
"Ne, Luffy," Marco called, stopping them from progressing and causing Luffy to groan.
"Marco, you promised!" Luffy whined as he turned to look at the first commander. The man was smiling and Luffy could feel the amusement coming from him, telling the teen that he was finding something funny.
"You're right, I was just going to say have fun. And be safe, yoi. No getting into trouble." Marco said, sternly at the end, though still light-heartedly. Luffy blinked while Ace and Sabo laughed, and then the youngest beamed, nodding.
"Mm! Tell Thatch to make a big dinner for when we get back!" Luffy called as he began dragging Ace and Sabo once again, not even waiting for a response. Once they were below deck it didn't take too long for the three to prepare the Striker and be on their way.
Like yesterday they beached the Striker, though this time they did it much closer to the trees then they had yesterday. They planned on spending a lot more time here today- the whole day most likely- so they didn't want to take any chances in losing the Striker.
Once that was done, they were off, the three of them charging off into the forest. While those on the Moby who were coming to visit the island were only just leaving, the brothers were already beginning their adventure in the giant expanse of forest.
Luffy, of course, was adamant about finding the tallest tree. In the journey to find said tree, however, he was content to run around and explore with Ace and Sabo.
Most of the island was trees- the town to the west being the only other thing they'd seen so far. The forest was dense and even Ace had difficulty seeing much further ahead than where they were already standing. Everywhere he looked his vision was blocked by another tree, but that didn't deter them. If anything, it made them all that much more excited to explore the unknown forest.
Luffy managed to scramble his way up to the top of his current tree, and once he had he had a better vantage point of the forest. He wasn't able to see the ocean, they were now too far into the forest for that, and the tree he had climbed wasn't the tallest by far, many of the surrounding trees towering over his.
Undeterred still, Luffy jumped over to another, taller tree and climbed that one.
"Oi, Luffy, don't go too far ahead, alright?" He heard Ace shout to him from his tree below him. He turned and gave a thumbs up that he knew Ace would see while telling Sabo he wouldn't go too far. Even if he could just follow his brothers' waves right back to them, he wouldn't go and get himself lost on purpose.
Even if that tree over there looked pretty tall.
His new tree was tall, taller than his last, but yet again, not the tallest. He had promised he wouldn't go too far ahead though, so he waited for Ace and Sabo to catch up before jumping over to the next tallest tree that he could see.
And so it went for the next few hours. Luffy, on the hunt for the tallest tree, jumped from tree to tree, each one taller than the last, yet not the tallest of them all. Eventually, Sabo called up to him and told him they should take a break for lunch, and by taking a break, he meant go and hunt. This was fine by both Ace and Luffy, the two scrambling down their trees simultaneously towards their blonde brother. The thought of hunting was always tempting to the three brothers, especially since it reminded them of easier, better days back on their home island, hunting giant animals in their jungle.
The animals on this island were tiny in comparison, easy to defeat, but their meat tasted the same. With a practiced routine, the brothers took down animal after animal, though were careful not to kill too many so as to deplete the forest's natural predators and leave the townspeople here without food.
Starting a fire proved more difficult than they thought it would seeing as they were surrounded by such a dense forest. There was no clearing that they could find that was big enough to safely start a fire, and because of that, the trio had to make their own clearing.
Between exploring, hunting, and clearing their own patch of land the brothers had worked themselves into a ravenous hunger. The second an animal was cleaned and cooked, it disappeared in one of the trios mouths, barely filling their bottomless appetites. The three sat around the fire, eating animal after animal, and before they knew it, the food was gone and they were satiated.
It was nostalgic as the three laid on the ground, all of them around the fire that they were letting burn itself out. Looking up through the surrounding trees' leaves they could see the bright blue sky, a few clouds dotting it. Bones were scattered around them, as well as the remains of the trees they'd knocked down, and each of them had stomachs full of delicious meat.
It brought back memories that they hadn't thought about in a long time.
With the whole facility thing, the trauma, being constantly hunted by the marines over something that they had had no control over, they hadn't had much time to just sit and enjoy the peace and calm of being out. Being free.
Sure, over the year of being with the Whitebeards crew they had had times where they could reflect back, where they could realize they were truly out, but it hadn't ever felt real. All of their sessions with Whiskey had been in an attempt to get the brothers to see that the doctors, the marines, had no control over them anymore. The only ones who could control them were themselves, and that had been the hardest lesson for the brothers to learn.
Sitting there in the forest, only the three of them, no one there to tell them what to do, it finally sunk in for them that they didn't have to let the memories of the facility hold them down.
"Wanna spar?" Ace asked quietly, not wanting to speak too loud in case he accidentally broke the quiet peaceful air around them.
"Yeah!" Luffy cheered, obviously not as concerned about being quiet as Ace was.
"That would be nice." Sabo agreed, smiling softly as he spoke. Ace smiled as well, taking in the now fleeting peace while he could, before sitting upright.
"Luffy, go take some of the bark off that tree over there. And take this." Ace said, tossing Luffy the dagger he always had strapped to his belt. Luffy caught it easily and nodded, heading off to one of the upright trees and stripping the bark off of it before unsheathing the dagger and carving into the tree.
Sabo stood slowly, taking his time as he brushed the dirt and leaves off his clothes. He unstrapped his pipe from his back and twirled it between his hands a few times before eyeing Ace.
"You didn't want to spar with Luffy first?" He asked with a grin, to which Ace rolled his eyes.
"When he's got that much energy? Nah, I'll let you fight him first." Ace said as he walked to go sit where Luffy had finished carving their initials into the tree, lines dividing them up evenly.
"So you're a jerk and you're lazy." Sabo teased, noticing that Ace had had Luffy draw up their scoreboard for him.
"Like I said, too much energy. He was happy to do it, right Lu?" Ace asked, nudging Luffy who nodded, still beaming.
"Alright, you know the rules still, right Luffy?" Sabo asked as he crouched down into a fighting position.
"Yup!" Luffy chirped, also lowering in preparation.
"On my mark!" Ace announced, watching as his brothers tensed in anticipation.
"Go!" He shouted. Luffy was the first to attack, drawing his fist back and flinging it Sabo's way. The blonde blocked it with his pipe though, sending it recoiling back to Luffy instead.
It was a stark contrast to their past spars on their home island where Luffy could barely aim straight, much less handle his own punches recoils, but now he did it without even blinking, sending another flurry of attacks at Sabo, though never gaining much ground against his older brother.
As Ace had predicted though, Luffy had too much energy for his own good and he very nearly managed to win a few of his fights against Sabo. It didn't matter though, because all of the fights were his loss, Sabo being the inevitable winner of the two each and every time.
Ace handed the dagger over to Sabo who took it, sweating a bit after his fights with Luffy.
"We can't let Luffy get this much pent up energy again," Sabo vowed, dropping to sit against the tree. Ace snickered at his brother before facing Luffy who still looked ready to go, not even sweating in the slightest as he stood at the ready, waiting for the sparring to resume.
With all that had happened in the past few weeks, and this being the first island they'd docked at since Thatch's attack, it was understandable as to why Luffy would have too much energy that he needed to get out, but that was also why they were doing this.
Well, that and sparring was fun.
"On my mark," Sabo announced now, pipe lying across his lap.
"Go!" And off the two went, Luffy just as enthusiastic as before as he belted attack after attack at Ace. Like always, Ace still had the upper hand amongst the two, and no matter how hard Luffy tried he continued to lose fight after fight.
"Come on Luffy, you can do better than that!" Ace teased as he ducked under another one of Luffy's kicks. Luffy's face grew more serious as he tried even harder to get just one win against his brother, but as he tried throwing another punch, Ace blocked it with his arms, covered in haki, and charged towards him, kicking him and flinging him into a tree.
"Looks like another win for Ace," Sabo said from the sidelines, carving the win into the tree under Aces initial.
"Aw! Another one! I'll beat you for sure then!" Luffy whined as he stood up from the tree, looking as if he hadn't even felt the bone-crushing impact of hitting the tree, and honestly, he hadn't.
"You know the rules Luffy, 50 fights each." Ace said.
"Maybe next time, Lu," Sabo said as he walked up, ruffling Luffy's hair. Luffy pouted, but eventually conceded, taking the dagger from Sabo and heading to the tree where he sat, ready to keep score.
Of course, the fights between Ace and Sabo were much more evenly matched, and as Luffy gave the go-ahead for each new spar to take place, it became evident to him that his brothers were still too evenly matched.
At the end of it all though Ace managed to pull out a win, putting him five ahead of Sabo much to the blondes disdain.
"Damn, every time," Sabo said, strapping his pipe back onto his back. Ace grinned triumphantly, fists flying into the air.
"Yes! Still the undefeated champion!" Ace called out, fist-pumping the air as he gloated. Sabo rolled his eyes while Luffy laughed, enjoying the happy feelings coming from both of his brothers, even if Sabo looked like he wasn't that happy.
"Yeah, yeah, rub it in why don't you. I wasn't that far behind." Sabo said, crossing his arms over his chest.
"Whatever helps you sleep at night man." Ace said tone gentle as if he was speaking to a child. Sabo glared to his brother but decided to ignore the last comment, turning his attention instead to Luffy.
"Alright Luffy, let's go find that tall tree of yours, hm?" Sabo asked, reminding the youngest of his earlier endeavor.
"Yeah! Let's go!" Luffy cheered, climbing back up into the tree and leaving their clearing. Ace was quick to follow, still gloating loudly about his win, while Sabo made sure the fire was really out before following. They didn't was to accidentally be the cause of a giant forest fire after all.
After having determined already that there was almost always a taller tree than the previous one, Luffy decided that the much better idea was to rocket himself straight up from the top of his current tree. Of course, he did this without running the idea by Ace and Sabo, so the two nearly had a heart attack as they watched their youngest brother fling himself straight up into the sky. He was fine, he was rubber after all, but that didn't mean there was a split second in the brothers' thinking where they believed Luffy was a normal human who was going to be seriously injured falling from that height.
"We need to teach him not to do that." Ace said, eyes wide as he watched Luffy carefully with his enhanced vision.
"Good luck with that. Luffy does what Luffy wants." Sabo said, though his eyes were just as wide and his heart was beating fast.
"Hey, you guys, I think I saw it! The biggest tree!" Luffy called as he began falling back down. Before they could worry about whether Luffy was going to attempt to save himself from falling to the ground, they watched him stretch his arms, grabbing onto the top of a nearby tree and flinging over to it.
"Luffy, don't go flinging yourself into the air like that, alright?!" Sabo called over to him in a vain attempt to save them from future heart attacks.
"What? Why?" Luffy asked in confusion, not understanding why he couldn't do it. It had given him the desired results; he knew where the tree was now, and he hadn't gotten hurt, so what was the issue?
"Just tell us next time you're about to do something like that, alright?!" Ace called over instead. Still not sure why this was a big deal, Luffy shrugged and agreed before heading off towards the tree.
"Oh yeah, I think I saw a clearing too! Too bad, cause we made our own!" Luffy called back to his brothers who weren't too far behind him.
"Really? That's cool. Was it big?" Sabo asked, launching himself from branch to branch.
"Yeah! I couldn't really see it, but it looked big." Luffy said, only having gotten a fleeting look at the clearing, more focused on the tree he had been looking for.
"We could go check it out before we head back to the Moby if it's not too far away." Ace suggested. The brothers agreed to the idea, and soon enough Luffy was climbing what he proclaimed to be the tallest tree in the whole forest.
"Ace, Sabo, look at me! I'm so high up! I can see the whole island!" Luffy said in awe as he looked around, hand shielding his eyes from the bright sunlight shining on him.
"Oh, there's that clearing I was talking about too!" Luffy said, pointing off towards said clearing. Ace and Sabo looked and even though they weren't in the same tree as Luffy, they were still high up enough to see it as well.
"Huh, it looks like there's something in it... a building?" Ace asked, more to himself as he inspected the clearing.
"A building? That far away from the town?" Sabo asked in confusion.
"I don't know, that's what it looks like. It's pretty big, but the trees around it are bigger so I can't really see it that well." Ace said with a shrug. The brothers shared a look before it was decided that they would go check it out.
Traveling atop the trees was a much faster way of travel and within minutes they were close enough for Sabo to hear voices coming from the building, telling him that it wasn't abandoned.
"There are definitely people there from what I can hear. Lots of them too." Sabo said, eyebrows scrunching in concentration. Getting closer and closer, the sounds cleared until Sabo was able to hear well enough to understand what was being said. As he took in the many conversations taking place, Luffy became increasingly uncomfortable, frowning and hesitating in his swings between trees.
"Bad feelings," Luffy said simply, shivering as he felt the sudden onslaught of dark feelings coming from the building. It ranged from sadness and fear, to even the darkness.
"What kind of bad feelings?" Ace asked. Unbeknownst to him, Sabo was growing paler, eyes widening and dread filling him.
"People there are scared, and in pain, and sad, and some of them have the darkness too," Luffy said, stopping completely in his movements, not getting any closer to the building. Ace and Sabo stopped as well, Ace glancing back and forth between Luffy and the building.
"Y-you guys, I think... I think that building is a facility." Sabo said, voice soft and eyes still wide. Ace and Luffy's eyes both grew wide as well, dread now filling all three of them as they turned to look at the building.
"They're talking about tests, and test subjects and calling out numbers. I can hear screaming too, and people in pain." Sabo explained, not wanting to jump to conclusions, but feeling an eerie sense of deja vu listening in on this building. It sounded all too familiar to their own facility.
"There's more than one facility?!" Ace asked in disbelief, gripping the tree branch he sat on tightly, nearly snapping it in his hands.
"I don't know, I don't even know if this is a facility. Maybe it's like back at Fishman Island, where we thought it was a facility and it was just Shirahoshi, but... this is almost exactly what our facility sounded like." Sabo said, the fear beginning to creep up on him now. He tried to keep it under control because he could already see that Luffy was breathing much too heavily for his liking, most likely on the verge of a panic attack.
"Ok, ok, we have to... we should..." Ace was at a loss. All their sessions with Whiskey, all the time they spent trying to get rid of the facilities control on them, and here they were, finding out there were more than one of the horrid buildings.
"Pops. We should go tell Pops." He said after taking a deep breath. Sabo nodded in agreement, but the two were quick to realize that Luffy seemed to be in a state of shock, unresponsive.
"Luffy? Oi, Luffy, come on, we're gonna go back to the Moby and tell Pops about this. He'll know what to do." Ace said gently, placing a hand on Luffy's shoulder in an attempt to snap him out of it. It took both Ace and Sabo coaxing the boy for him to finally snap out of it, blinking and breathing heavily as he looked at the two.
"Its alright Lu, come on, we're going back to the Moby to tell Pops about this, alright?" Sabo asked soothingly. Luffy nodded, and slowly but surely the three climbed down from the trees, all of them not trusting themselves to not fall out of them.
And it had been such a good day too.
And now you see what this arc is going to be about. The idea of multiple facilities was mentioned during Fishman island, but this time there is much more reason for the brothers to think that this building, in the middle of a dense forest, is a facility. With the sounds and feelings coming from the building, its highly likely that this is what it is.
This arc will have a lot of revelations throughout it that I can't wait for you all to see and seeing as its the final arc, I want it to end with a bang. Fun fact about this arc though; I didn't originally plan to have it at all. In the original planning for this story, the 'bang' that I have planned wouldn't have been possible because a certain character wouldn't be alive for it to happen.
I'll explain more in depth about that next chapter.
When I rewrote my plans for this story I had the idea for a future future event- think sequel- and for that to happen, this needed to happen. Thus, this arc was born.
I hope you all will enjoy this arc just as much as I do. Thank you all for all the love you give this story. You guys motivate me to keep this story going, so thank you immensely. I'll see you all on Monday with the next chapter!