Chapter 13: Immediately after Chapter 12, 14 days after arriving in Little Garden
Robin and Vivi were expecting an Eldorado followed by a number of other vehicles. When they peeked over the wall to see what was waiting outside the gate, they saw a single pickup truck with a bed full of supplies. Regardless, they both popped up with their guns trained on the vehicle. Vivi's grip was a little shakier than Robin's. After a moment, two pairs of arms stuck out of either window on the truck, holding them up in surrender.
"Wh-whoa hey, yo, what's with the greeting, bro?!" one voice called out.
"Yeah dude, we like, come in peace and junk! Yo, we're just the delivery guys! Her rulerness Hancock sent us, yo!"
Robin glanced at Vivi, who shook her head. She wasn't exactly sure what she was shaking her head at, but everything about this felt like "no". It was up to Robin to decide what Vivi meant, and she took it to mean Vivi didn't trust their claim.
"Do you have any proof?" Robin shouted.
"Y-yeah! Proof!" Vivi stammered.
There was a brief silence as the duo in the truck had a conversation. The one behind the wheel shouted out, "Yo, is Bonney or Zoro there? If they are, tell 'em Johnny and Yosaku are here, bro! They'll vouch for us and stuff! I'm Johnny! This guy's Yosaku!"
Robin glanced to Vivi again and nudged her head toward Bonney down below. Vivi just looked confused at her, and Robin made a more obvious head-nudge toward Bonney. Vivi silently mouthed "Oh!" and ducked down behind the wall.
"Hey! Bonney!" she whispered. "Do you know a pair of guys named Johnny and Yosaku?"
"Do they say 'yo' a lot and seem like they don't know what they're doing?"
"Oh yeah."
"Let 'em in."
Robin gave Franky a thumbs-up and he opened the gate. Vivi, relieved that she wouldn't have to open fire on anyone, slid down to sit on the edge of the balcony. "Oh thank God… Why did I say I was in? I'm not in! I'm so far out! I was not at all ready for stuff to go down!"
Robin started scaling the ladder. "Glad we figured that out now instead of when we're being shot at."
Johnny and Yosaku were a little shaken, clearly unaccustomed to having guns on them and orders barked at them. Their tension was slightly relieved after they climbed out and saw Bonney amongst the five who were there to greet them. They still had their hands up in surrender when they climbed out of the car anyway.
"Hey guys. Sup?" Bonney said, chill as possible. She held her fist up and the duo hesitantly bumped it with their own.
"Yo, Bon, sis, what the heck's with all the stuff…?" Johnny asked.
Bonney groaned in frustration. "Man, it's a whole… Big fuckin' thing." She turned to Franky and Luffy. "This guy here's Johnny, and the other one's his heterosexual life partner Yosaku. Guys, these two are Franky and Luffy. The gals up top who fuckin' threatened you are Robin and Vivi."
Franky extended his hand to shake theirs. "Sorry about giving you a hard time. We're all on edge right now, can't be too careful."
"So you guys brought the shipment? What's on the truck?" Luffy was already bounding toward it. Robin and Vivi met him around the back, and he opened the tailgate to hop up into the bed. There were duffel bags, coolers, and lockboxes strewn about, held down with bungee cords.
Yosaku shrugged. "I dunno, man, Her Empressship had it loaded up for us, yo. We just drove it out here. I guess she just put whatever she thought would be good…"
"Sweet! It's like Christmas only there's no snow and none of them are wrapped!" Luffy picked up a duffel bag and unzipped it. He frowned immediately. "Aww, it's just clothes…"
"Are there shoes in there?" Vivi asked.
Luffy dug through the bag a little. "Don't see any. Here, you look!" he said, and immediately tossed the bag to her. She was not expecting this, so she yelped and fumbled. She managed to keep a hold of it, though.
"What about bullets and guns?" Robin asked.
"Uhhhh…. OOH SWEET!" he cheered. He bent over and picked up a case.
"You found the guns?"
"Nope!" Luffy said, grinning. He reached inside the case and pulled out a bottle of cola. "Snacks!"
Franky perked up, "Aw no way! She came through! See, that's what makes her such a good leader!"
"Focus!" Robin snapped. "We can dig through snacks later."
"Okay, okay…" Luffy pouted. He continued searching through the bed of the truck. "Okay, yeah, there's some gun cases and stuff here, but they're locked… But… THIS ONE ISN'T!" he bent over and popped back up holding an M32 grenade launcher.
"PUT THAT DOWN!" Both Vivi and Robin screeched.
"SLOWLY!" Robin added, to cover all her bases. She would've expected Luffy to just drop the thing. He did as he was told, setting it down gently while rolling his eyes.
"It wasn't loaded or anything!" he said.
"Yo, for real though, can someone like… fill in the two new dudes about what's goin' on? I feel all… Locked outta the loop and stuff," Yosaku said.
Franky crossed his arms. "The long and short of it is, we're sort of anticipating an attack from this other group. They've kinda made it clear that they're planning on trying to take this place, but we can't exactly do anything about it. We don't know where they are, or what their numbers are, or what kinda heat they're packing. So we're just waiting for them to attack so we can defend ourselves."
Johnny and Yosaku both scratched their chins, in perfect mirror images of each other. "Y'don't say, bro…" Yosaku said. "That's some rough stuff…"
"Yo, d'you think it might be those dudes we saw on the freeway?" Johnny asked his partner.
Everyone sort of stopped what they were doing and looked toward the duo.
"Ehwha?" Franky said.
Oblivious, Yosaku nodded. "Yeah, might be… Yo, you dudes ever drive down 195? There's like, a camp with a buncha RVs and stuff all parked out on one of the exit ramps. We kinda drove past 'em on the way in, but we didn't see anyone."
Franky was agape, eyes wide and jaw about to hit the floor. He managed to hold himself together long enough to stammer out "D-Did… Did you happen to see a 1967 Eldorado there? A maroon one?"
Johnny shrugged. "Yo I dunno a lot about cars, bro. But like, I think there was an old grandpa car there."
Johnny and Yosaku suddenly felt uncomfortable as once again, all eyes were on them. But not out of malice this time. It was more like pure shock. Everyone's mouth hung open in disbelief. Luffy, who had been holding a small cooler, dropped it right into his foot. He didn't seem to notice.
"Alright, let's go right now! Let's go wrap this up!" he said, hopping off the back of the truck and bouncing around the others. "Let's go let's go let's go!"
"This would be an excellent time for some reconnaissance…" Robin said, once she got over her shock.
"Or it's an excellent time to do what Zoro said and take 'em all down at once!" Luffy insisted. "I will even drive!" he volunteered.
Vivi nodded in agreement with Robin. "This is valuable information. We should make sure we use it carefully and discuss it with the others before we make any sort of movement."
Luffy pulled at his hair and let out the most dramatic groan of frustration any human being had ever heard.
Despite his insistence, when the news was revealed to the rest of Little Garden, the consensus was to wait until nightfall before heading out to spy on the other group. They would send out a small team to procure some information and then report back and prepare accordingly. This was the smart thing to do and they at least understood that much.
As a concession, Luffy was allowed to be on the recon team, along with Baby and Sanji because like fucking hell was Sanji going to miss out on this opportunity. Johnny and Yosaku went with them, for two reasons. One was because they didn't have the ability to point out exactly where the camp was located on a map, and the other was to serve as a distraction. They had to get back to DC anyway, so they drove past the camp with their headlights on, making it fairly obvious someone was driving past. The thought being the camp would see their truck, and not check to see if anyone else was coming.
Sanji kept the headlights in his car off, and parked a fair ways away from the camp. The trio approached on foot, staying on the side of the highway until they could get a decent look at the glow coming from the few campfires that illuminated the area. They were about the length of a hockey rink away, a fair enough distance to not be seen. The trio laid flat on the ground, masking themselves even further in the darkness, while Sanji peered through the scope of a hunting rifle. Luffy just tried squinting, but he couldn't make it work.
"What do you see?" Baby whispered.
"A whole lotta nothing. I count… three RVs and they're sort of parked in a triangle. I guess to keep out the zombies… It's making it hard to see anyone."
Sanji could make out three people sitting on top of the RVs, armed with rifles. Aside from the RVs, Sanji could also see the Eldorado, once and for all confirming that this was indeed Krieg's group. The only other vehicle of note was a military jeep, like the Frankystein. Although, while this one wasn't armor-plated, it did have a big fucking minigun perched on top of it.
From their perches, the three guards could cover the entire makeshift camp, which made Sanji tell the others to suggest they have three people watch the walls from now on, as that seemed way more efficient than just two.
"Recognize any of 'em?" Luffy asked, rocking side to side in the grass to stave off his fidgeting.
Sanji shook his head. "I don't really… At the time, I didn't think to memorize all their faces in case I ever ran into them again. I was too busy freaking out because one of my friends was just shot in front of me."
Both Luffy and Baby swallowed heavily. "Zhat is… understandable," she said.
"Let me take another look, though…" He peered through the scope again, attempting to study the men on patrol duty. It was difficult. The scope wasn't equipped with night vision, so he had to rely on the flames to see anything. "God, we are really unprepared for this, aren't we?" he said with a hint of frustration.
"What do you mean? We are being proactive!" Baby said.
"Yeah, aren't we doing all this spy stuff to get the upper hand?" Luffy asked.
Sanji brought the rifle away from his face. "No way, they were way more proactive than we were. Look at us, not a single one of us thought we'd be attacked by humans. We thought we were just tucked away, and if someone did come looking for us, they'd be friendly. We planned for zombies. I mean, they don't even have a wall and they're more secure than us. They knew exactly where we were, how to hit us, how to get inside our outpost to scope us out. I mean, shit, they don't have half the gear and backing we do, and they still ran circles around us!"
"Well, if we can't outplan them, we'll just have to outpunch them," Luffy said casually.
"I like zhe sound of outpunching. Nozhing is more satisfying zhan ruining a plan zhrough stubborn stupidity," Baby chimed in.
"Ooh, I'd like to hear how you outpunch an assault rifle~" came a flighty voice from behind them.
The three of them tensed up and simultaneously turned their heads to look over their shoulders. Monet was grinning down at them in the darkness. She and her partner, a tall guy who was… wearing sunglasses when it was almost midnight, were both pointing assault rifles at the backs of the trio. "See, unlike you guys? We have night vision scopes on our guns. And? We're smart enough to figure out that a truck full of supplies going toward the direction of the only settlement around? And then seeing it come back without the supplies? We should pay attention to that truck."
Sanji groaned. "See? This is the kinda shit I'm talking about!"
Baby nodded, eyes still on the guns. "No, no, I understand what you mean now."
"You better not have hurt Johnny and Yosaku!" Luffy growled. "They don't have anything to do with this!"
Laughing, Monet circled around to their front. The gun at their backs kept them prone, so she crouched down in front of them. "Oh please, we don't care about them. We're way more interested in this catch. Krieg'll be so glad to see you dropped by~" She fished a walkie-talkie out of her back pocket. It looked military grade, probably came from the same place the jeep did.
"Aww maaannn… They have walkie-talkies…" Luffy said. "Why don't we have those?"
"You were right, Boss," she said into the device. "They came following the truck, tried to spy on us in the dark. I can't believe they'd stoop so low~"
The device crackled to life. "Good, good. Now, be a dear and bring them here, won't you?"
Sanji bristled at the sound of his voice and it took a lot of willpower to not try and snatch the device out of Monet's hand and shout every single obscenity he knew into the speaker. That stupid accent, that annoying, jovial attitude. Sanji concluded that Krieg was every negative thing he could think of.
"Anything for you, Boss~" Monet said. Baby bristled too, but for an entirely different reason. She glared up at Monet.
"Who do you zhink you are? Being zhe hot, sexually charged but also zhreatening one is my gimmick!"
"Oh, whatever, Frenchie. Come on, Vergo. Let's get these guys to the camp." Monet stood back up and watched as Vergo leaned down to smash the butt of his rifle into the back of Sanji's head. He went limp instantly, and Luffy and Baby both gasped in shock. Monet's eyes widened. "Wh… Why did you do that?"
Vergo stood there in silence. "Do what?"
"Why'd you knock him out?"
Again, silence. Vergo didn't seem to understand. "Was I not supposed to? We need to keep him from finding out where our camp is."
Monet looked over her shoulder and then back at Vergo. "Our camp's right there. We caught them spying on us. Now we have to drag him back to it instead of just marching them at gunpoint. And hell, we probably gotta knock them out too, because they might try to make a move while we're lugging his sorry ass."
"Yeah, a move like THIS-!" Luffy managed to shout. He made a move to get to his feet, but he didn't get very far before Vergo swung the rifle like a club and smacked him in the side of the head. He dropped like a big bag of dog food.
Baby looked to Sanji and then to Luffy. She bit her lower lip and said as peacefully as possible, "I will go quietly?"
"Shyeah right, Frenchie. I don't buy that for a second. And stop looking up my skirt," Monet said.
"You are not wearing a-" Baby said before there was another thwack and the world was, very briefly, incredibly painful. And then it was just dark.
When the world came back into existence, it came back with a vengeance. Baby's head was pounding as she tried to make sense of her current situation. Her eyes fluttered open and she was almost immediately blinded again by the sun shining through the window. Window? So she was inside. She heard Luffy groan out "No more bar hoppin', Nami…" and felt something move underneath her legs.
It turned out her bed was made of two men. And as she tried to sit up, she realized she was handcuffed with her hands stuck behind her back. I could make a joke about this situation but I'm going to take the classier route of not telling it to you, but not too classy as I'm also putting the idea in your head. When her vision cleared enough, she could see that Sanji and Luffy were similarly handcuffed, and she could tell the room they were in was small. The bed they were on took up the majority of the floorspace.
Sanji stirred to life underneath her back and she sat up more to give him a little more room. "What the hell…? Fuck, that's right. They got the drop on us, didn't they?"
"I am afraid zhey did, mon amor…" Baby said. "And now we are zheir prisoner in zhis… eugh… RV."
"Hey, sorry, it's the best we could fucking do," another voice, not belonging to Monet or Vergo, drew the trio's attention. With a great deal of shifting and nearly kicking each other in the face, they managed to turn to face the source of it.
"GIN!" Sanji screamed, almost lunging forward. He would've made it if he could use his hands. Gin was sprawled out in a folding chair at the foot of the bed. One arm was draped over the back of the chair, and the other was laid across his lap, his fingers wrapped around a pistol.
"So. Zhis is Gin," Baby said coldly.
"Man… He kinda looks like Law," Luffy said. "If Law was like… ten years older and got less sleep."
Still glaring daggers at Gin, Baby said "Zhat is impossible. No one gets less sleep zhan Law."
"You're looking well, Sanji. Taking care of yourself," Gin said, ignoring the other two.
"Well, you're looking… like a sack of shit," Sanji said.
Gin barely showed any emotion at that remark. "Y'know, you could afford to be a little nicer. This is the second time I've been able to keep you alive."
"Keep me alive?! You kicked me out of my fucking home! My friends all died out there! Your fucking boss shot my mentor in the leg! How the fuck is that 'keeping me alive'?!"
Gin looked mildly offended, as though his sacrifice should have been obvious. "Who do you think it was that talked Krieg into letting you guys go in the first place? He wanted to just slaughter the lot of you and be done with it. Before we got to the Baratie, I managed to convince him to let you all go. Just like I convinced him that I could get you three to join us. That's why you aren't all dead in a ditch right now."
None of them looked very grateful for that. "Y'know, if you really were trying to be a hero, you could've also tried to talk Krieg into not fucking with us at all. Just saying, that was an option all those years ago," Sanji growled.
Gin shrugged. "We needed a place to stay, what can I say? I have to look out for myself, you know. Just like we need a place to stay now and well, again, you've got the perfect little spot."
"Where is Krieg anyway? I owe him another punch to the teeth!" Luffy demanded.
"Oh, he's… He's gone," Gin said. "Yeah… He was going to wait for you to wake up, but he got impatient… Said he wanted to take care of this now. So he's uh… He just left for your little town there to… y'know. Slaughter all your friends."