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Chapter Two
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"Nnnnnnnaaaaaaami-san! Rooooooooooobin-chan!" Sanji called cheerfully as he knocked on the door of the women's quarters. "Breakfast is ready!"
A huge smile occupied the cook's face as he waited patiently to once again gaze upon his beloved female crew mates, the two having left the galley a half hour earlier when the crew meeting came to an end. When he received no reply, he added, "I made an especially extravagant fruit blend just for the two of you! It's waiting in the kitchen!"
"…Just leave it at the door." Came Nami's voice.
Sanji's smile faded slightly. "D-Don't say that…!" he argued encouragingly, a small bead of sweat appearing on his forehead. "P-Please, come join us! When you're sad, you should be around other people! We all want to see you!"
"Indeed~!" sang Brooke as the jolly skeleton speedily hopped up beside the cook, his violin in hand. "Let us escort you to your seats! I'll play you an uplifting melody along the way! "
Nami replied through the door again. "We're not coming out. Eat without us."
"N-Nami-san…!" Sanji choked, sweating more as his expression turned to one of stress. "You shouldn't take this so hard...! It doesn't matter if we're naked! We're all still nakama! W-We shouldn't let such a t-trifling matter come between us!"
"I could not agree more!" Brooke exclaimed as he shamelessly lowered his head to the door's porthole, peeking through it. "Even if you have no panties, my opinion of you has not changed in the lea-"
Brooke was cut off as Nami flung the door open, smashing the skeleton's head backwards and knocking him off his feet.
"GO AWAY." She ordered before slamming the door shut.
Silence immediately swept across the deck. For nearly a minute, Brooke lay on his back, unmoving, while Sanji stared at the door. A warm gust of wind passed by, blowing against their uncovered bodies.
At the end of the minute, Brooke rose to his feet and faced Sanji.
"…Might you have caught a glimpse as well…?" the skeleton inquired, a stream of blood flowing out of his empty nose socket.
"…I…I saw." Sanji replied, eyes wide, glaring at the door in shocked delight as blood gushed from his nostrils.
The dining room door opened and Usopp walked out onto the lower deck, rubbing his bottom. He looked around for a few seconds until he saw Sanji and Brooke.
"What are you guys doing…?" he asked, eyeing the two strangely.
"N-Nami-san…" Sanji muttered, a smile curling up his cheeks.
"I don't think they're going to come out." Usopp informed them. "You should hurry up and eat. Luffy will finish everything on the table soon if you don't."
"Ah, is that so?" Brooke asked, turning to Usopp. "In that case, I will etch this glorious memory into my brain and review it in my head as I brunch."
"I love my life." Sanji announced to no one in particular.
"Ah! Wait! I have no brain into which to etch!" Brooke remembered out loud. "SKULL JOKE! YOHOHOHO!"
Xxxxx
"We nweed tchu shelebrate!" Luffy shouted between mouthfuls as he stood with one foot on his chair and one on the table, engulfing the breakfast of meats and fruit.
"That's right!" Franky agreed, getting up on his chair as well and raising his mug into the air. "A toast! To the pirate crew that will soon shake the world with its SUPER show of bare, manly resolve!"
"CHEERS!" Luffy thundered, slamming his mug against Franky's and Chopper's, the reindeer having just morphed into his human form to join them on the table.
"Franky, now I'm a real man too, right!?" Chopper asked in a bellow as he brought his mug back and gulped it down.
"I-I'll say…!" Franky replied, gawking at the mammoth proportions of the human-beast's lower apparatus.
"Zoro! Why didn't you raise your mug!?" Luffy hollered, pointing with a slab of meat at the seated swordsman, who was busy stuffing his mouth with food. "This is an important celebration!"
"…What's so important about it…?" Zoro managed to utter between chews.
Luffy crammed the slab of meat into his mouth, then replied with, "Garb arrrh uhh dahger abar! Ur buhwum gruu pahridds!!"
Zoro wiped a wad of Luffy's flown spit from his face. "Being naked makes us great pirates?" he questioned, having become used enough to Luffy's garble talk to decipher most of it.
"Of course it does!" Franky shouted. "Haven't you ever heard the phrase, 'Beware the sailor who flaunts his fleshy saber'!?"
"I can't say that I have." Zoro replied as he stuffed another piece of fruit into his mouth.
Franky huffed, slamming his fists together. "It means that a man who has enough confidence in his own body to show it off is a man to be feared!"
Zoro eyed Franky as he continued to chew.
"…Well, I guess that makes sense in its own way…" he contended after a moment, swallowing his mouthful in a single gulp.
Usopp, Sanji and Brooke came in through the door.
"AH! Luffy! You ate my food!!" Usopp immediately barked, stomping over to his place at the table.
"Eh? Sanji, Brooke, what happened to your noses?" Luffy questioned as he sat down on the tabletop.
Sanji ignored Luffy and walked into the kitchen, humming to himself, while Brooke casually stepped up onto the table and took a seat next to Luffy.
"You've eaten most of the meat, so this piece is mine." Usopp said sternly, glaring up at Luffy as he grabbed a piece of steak from beside his distracted captain. "If you steal it while I'm eating you'll regret it! I'll inject tabasco sauce into your soap again!"
"Yo ho ho!" Brooke laughed, "Luffy-san, stealing food is quite ungentlemanly. When you take something of someone else's, you must only do it with the assurance that you will eventually return it!"
With great agility, the skeleton reached his lengthy arm across the table, snatched Usopp's steak off his plate, and tossed it into his own mouth.
"AHHHH! Brooke!" Usopp snapped, flinging the mug he had started to fill at the bony thief. "What the hell kind of gentleman are you!? That was the last steak!"
A gulping noise was heard as the steak vanished down the skeleton's non-existent throat.
"No need for alarm." He said reassuringly, followed by a burp. "I will return it to you in six to nine hours."
"I DON'T WANT IT THEN!" Usopp bellowed. "And where the hell does food go in you anyway!?"
"Yeah…Now that I can see your whole bony body that question's been bothering me too..." Franky mentioned, scratching his head. "That nosebleed is also a mystery…"
Chopper looked confusedly between Brooke and Sanji, who was gathering together the girls' fruit drinks and some meat he had hidden from Luffy onto a tray.
"Aren't you going to wipe that blood off your faces?" the doctor asked the two.
Brooke and Sanji replied at the same time.
"I wouldn't think of it!" exclaimed the skeleton.
"N-Never…!" declared the cook, his lips again curling into a big, catfish grin. "Nami-san's beautiful b-b….b-beautiful b-b-br-"
"Who would want to wipe off such a lovely memory!" Brooke exclaimed. "May this blood harden and stay with me 'til the end of my days! Although my days have long since ended! Yo ho ho ho!"
Franky finished the last of his food and leaned back in his chair. "You guys seem more perverted than usual today." he commented.
Usopp huffed and took a seat, scraping some remaining scraps of meat off of a platter onto his plate.
"Usopp, you shouldn't get so mad!" Chopper shouted in his best attempt at a manly voice, leaning back in his chair in a position similar to Franky's. "It's bad for your health!"
"Yeah," Franky agreed, grinning, "if you're a real pirate, you'll take your troubles with a laugh! That's how you live the SUPER exciting life of a man!"
Usopp rubbed his rear end once more and growled as he remembered the numerous embarrassing hardships he had gone through since waking up.
"I've had enough excitement…" He muttered.
Zoro glanced between Sanji, Brooke, and Usopp as he stuck a final piece of tangerine into his once again bulging cheeks. "…You guys get excited too easily…" he mumbled, preparing to once again swallow his mouthful in one gulp.
At that moment, the door slammed opened and Nami ran in. Her entire body was completely visible, since for some reason she wasn't bothering to cover herself. Zoro's eyes immediately bulged out of their sockets and he choked on his food.
"GET OUT ONTO THE DECK!" Nami screamed, a look of terror on her face. "A HUGE STORM IS COMING!"
"GWAHH!" Usopp hollered as he fell off his chair in agony, the combined shock of Nami's nudity and her forecast causing his newly formed hemorrhoid to burst.
Franky hopped out of his chair, knocking it over. "A storm!? I thought you said we wouldn't have to worry about the weather!"
"HURRY!" she screamed again, racing back out the door.
The ship suddenly lurched to the side and a heavy wind blew in through the door, knocking a few plates off the table.
"Oh my!" Brooke exclaimed, quickly wiping a new, thick stream of blood off his face. "It was clear out just a minute ago! Flash storms are the most dangerous kind! If one is coming this way, we are in great dan-AH! I wiped it off!"
"OKAY!" Luffy boomed, lunging off the table towards the door. "This is good! Now that we've become the best pirates, we need to beat this storm to prove it!"
"DAMN STRAIGHT!" Franky thundered as he reoriented himself from the ship's sudden tilt, stumbling forward. "We'll show that storm the manly power of the pantless pirates!"
Franky bolted out the door after Luffy, alongside Chopper. "The manly power!" the reindeer roared.
Brooke began to follow them out but stopped as he noticed his three collapsed crewmates. "Ah!" The skeleton shouted, placing his hands over his cheek bones. "Are you three all right!? A storm is coming, you know!?"
Zoro was sprawled across the floor, his face blue, clutching his throat as he gagged. The sniper was passed out in front of Zoro, his erupting posterior squirting blood onto the swordsman's face. Sanji was on his hands and knees, bleeding out his nose, the glasses he had been gathering in shards beside him.
"W-What a storm…" the cook muttered, grinning.
Outside, strong, warm gusts of wind were assaulting the ship. The sky, which had been clear in all directions only minutes before was now covered with dark clouds. Luffy, Franky and Chopper ran to the base of the main mast where Nami was standing with Robin. The navigator was gazing up at the sky with a fearful expression.
"We need to turn!" she announced as they approached. "Franky, handle the steering wheel and move the ship forty degrees starboard! Luffy, Chopper, man the sails!"
The three each gave a bellow of confirmation and headed to their respective positions. As they went, another powerful blast of wind hit the ship, causing it to lurch again. The three nearly fell over.
"We don't have much time!" Nami exclaimed as she and Robin held themselves steady on a railing. "There's a cyclone approaching! It's coming faster than any storm I've ever felt before…!"
"A cyclone, you say!?" Brooke hollered in fright as he reached the two. "A-Are you sure!?"
"Yes!" Nami shouted, looking between the ocean and the sky, her expression darkening further. "Hurry and help with the sails!"
"I-I understand!" the skeleton replied. He hopped onto the top of the mast in one giant leap.
Another powerful gust of wind rocked the ship as Franky began to turn it. "What a strong wind!" he bellowed, bracing himself as he held the wheel in place. "But it's no match for the pride of an Exposed Lion!"
Still holding the steering wheel, the cyborg jumped into the air and jutted his bottom out in one of his poses.
"Once we get past this storm, we'll be stronger than lions!" Luffy announced as he tugged down on the rope guiding the sail. "We'll be the Goliath Beetle Lions! The Goliath Beetle Lions With the Most Meat in the World!"
"D-Damn…! That's so manly!" Franky shouted, resisting the force of the rising waves with his massive muscles. "There's no doubt! This week's SUPER ME will be throbbing with pride!"
Chopper clenched his muscles and growled as a surge of adrenaline shot through him. "YEAH!" the reindeer bellowed, taking his arms off his rope and standing on the sail post with his legs spread apart. "I AM A MAN! I HAVE THE MOST MEAT!"
"This is all my fault…!" Nami said, biting her lip. "I should have noticed our course was changed an hour ago…! I was too distracted!"
"No one here would blame you for that…" Robin said comfortingly.
The sound of an immensely powerful wind came from off in the distance.
"I-It's coming!" Nami exclaimed.
A gargantuan wall of whirling air could be seen some ways off, approaching the Straw Hat's vessel at unnerving speed.
"N-Nami-san…!" Sanji called as he ran up to the two females. "I-Is there anything I can do?"
The cook was smiling slightly.
"…We might die…!" Nami gasped as she continued to gaze out.
"Ah, oh, I-I'm sorry to hear that…!" Sanji said, his smile not leaving him. "Ah! I-In that case, Nami-san…! And Robin-chan! W-We should make the m-most of the time we have left and…! I-I mean, s-since we're already naked…! T-The three of us-!!"
A ball of ice the size of a cannonball suddenly plummeted into the cook's head, knocking him out. He fell onto his back, still smiling.
"Eh!?" Nami exclaimed, looking up.
Robin quickly knelt down to check Sanji's pulse. "He's okay! But this is ice...!"
"Whoa!" Franky shouted over to them. "What the hell just happened!?"
*Crash!*
Another large ball of ice landed on the deck, denting it.
"IT'S ICE!" Luffy hollered.
"MANLY ICE!" Chopper roared.
'This must be because of the summer islands!' Nami thought to herself. 'They keep all the heat at sea level, so it's freezing in the sky…!'
Nami cried, "This is bad! It's about to hail!"
Another crash was heard as a third ball of ice hit the deck. Then another. And another. Within a few seconds, the Thousand Sunny was being bombarded by the oversized hail.
"Just ignore it for now!" Nami shouted as she and Robin backed up against the main mast for partial cover. "The cyclone is the bigger problem! Keep the ship going straight!"
"Leave it to me, naked lion sister!" Franky bellowed.
For the next few minutes, the hail continued to batter the ship as the cyclone got closer and closer. By a stroke of fate, the wind changed in their favor and began leading them at good speed out of the cyclone's path. A minute later, by a hair's breadth, they avoided it, Luffy and Chopper shouting poorly composed insults at it as it passed.
"W-We made it…!" Nami gasped in relief, leaning back against the mast. "But…Everyone, we're still in danger!"
"What do you mean!?" Franky shouted as a giant ball of ice landed on his head and shattered.
"Our course has been changed!" Nami began. "That old man…! When he put those holes in the sails it altered the ship's direction! It's only safe to travel in this area if you know the right course to take, so I plotted our course out from the start, but…now that we've been thrown off…We're in dangerous waters!"
Nami looked worriedly out over the ocean.
"We're approaching one of the most dangerous and mysterious places in the Grand Line!" she went on. "It's in the center of these three summer islands, where the magnetic fields of the islands collide...!"
"What!?" Luffy boomed, clenching his teeth. "Mysterious!? There's a mysterious place up ahead!?"
The Straw Hat captain hopped off the mast onto the lower deck and faced Nami.
"If there's a mysterious place up ahead, then it's an adventure!" he declared. "Since we've become the manliest pirates, we have to go there!"
"He's right!" Franky shouted from the helm. "As the manliest men of the sea, we can't turn down an adventure! We have to go! In the name of the Exposed Lions!!"
"That's not our name!" Nami snapped, covering her chest and nether regions with her hands as her sense of emergency was replaced with annoyance. "And we need to do everything we can not to go there! No one has ever returned from that place alive!"
"Nami!" Luffy yelled angrily, putting one hand on his hip and pointing at her with the other. "You're a naked pirate too! Where's your pride!? You need to be more manly!"
Nami's face creased in anger. "I don't want to be naked!!" she fumed, stomping her foot. "And there's nothing good about being naked! It's perverted! Who put these stupid ideas in your head anyway!?"
"It's not stupid!" Luffy defended. "Franky knows more about not wearing clothes than any of us and he said real pirates don't wear clothes!"
"Franky is a pervert!" Nami argued. "Don't listen to him!"
Franky blushed at the compliment he thought he had just received, rubbing his head.
"Anyway, I've already decided! We're going!" Luffy announced, stretching his arm out to the steering wheel and shooting himself up.
"Oh! Up ahead!" Franky hollered, pointing out over the sea as Luffy joined him. "I see blue sky a ways up! And there's something big sticking up over the horizon!"
"OH! It looks like another cyclone!" Chopper bellowed. "LET'S FIGHT IT!"
Nami's eyes widened in terror as she ran up to the helm. "T-That's what I was talking about!" she exclaimed. "That's the center point of the three islands! Their magnetic fields interact there, causing a permanent, stationary hurricane! It's extremely dangerous!"
"A hurricane that stays in one place…!?" Brooke questioned as he and Robin approached the helm as well. "I-I've heard of this!"
"What do you mean?" asked Franky, blinking as another ball of ice shattered over his head.
The skeleton hopped to the side to avoid a ball himself. "It was a popular rumor amongst pirates and sailors fifty years ago!" he explained. "Somewhere in the Grand Line, there is a hurricane that never dissipates and never moves! The rumor says that if any sailor were to make it to the hurricane's eye, he would become world famous!"
"And no one has ever made it!" Nami shouted, turning to Luffy. "It's impossible! We have to go around it!"
Luffy's eyes were sparkling. "I've definitely decided now!" He shouted. "We're going there!"
"Idiot! Aren't you listening to me!?" Nami cried. "We'll die!"
Luffy batted a falling piece of ice into the water just before it landed on Nami's head, then he pointed towards the horizon. "Let's go!"
"No!" Nami hollered, attempting to take control of the steering wheel from Franky.
"Come one, give it up alre-!" Franky began, but was cut off as the ship lurched to the side again.
The lurch caused Nami to stumble into Franky.
"Auuuuuw!" let out the shocked cyborg as the navigator's breasts pushed up against his arm, quickly followed by an "OW!" as her fist plowed into his face.
Nami backed up and huffed, angrily covering her body with her hands again.
"…Fine…!" she exclaimed, turning on her heel and stomping towards the women's quarters. "Die if you want!"
"S-Super…!" Franky breathed, grasping his bleeding metal nose.
"…We seem to have upset Nami-san." Stated Brooke.
Luffy jumped onto the lion's head and faced Nami as she opened the door to her room. "Nami!" he shouted. "You just need to do this and you'll look forward to any adventure!"
The captain faced the sea, put his hands on his hips, and stood with his legs apart, grinning as the wind blew through his hair.
"See, like this!" he shouted again, looking over his shoulder. "Nami, come over here and do this!"
"AS IF!!" Nami snapped, slamming the door shut behind her.
"I-Is Nami all right!?" Chopper asked.
"Don't worry!" exclaimed Franky, who was feeling particularly happy all of a sudden. "Once she realizes the freedom of being exposed, she'll have no complaints!"
"You're standing." Robin said as she turned around and headed in after Nami.
"Hnn?" Franky questioned. He stared after Robin in confusion for a moment until her statement hit him and he glanced down, exclaimed "Wah!" and covered his stiff privates.
"Oh my! You seem to be having a BONE of a good time!" Brooke exclaimed, slapping his thighs in amusement. "I do wish I could still do that! Yo ho ho ho ho!"
A series of loud coughs resounded from the dining room where Zoro had finally managed to clear his throat. When the coughs subsided, they were followed by a series of shouts as the disgusted swordsman noticed what had been squirting blood onto his face.
Xx
Five hours later, the Straw Hat crew was under blue sky again, a short distance away from the giant hurricane. All nine crewmates stood at the helm.
"So if we make it to the center of this, we'll be world famous?" Zoro asked, resting a sword over his shoulder.
"Indeed." replied Brooke. "Or so the legend goes."
Nami stood with Robin a short distance from the men, her arms wrapped around her chest.
"We're already world famous…!" she argued in her last attempt at persuading them. "There's no reason to do this!"
"That's right!" barked Usopp, clutching his buttocks. "What the hell is wrong with all of you!? That's a hurricane!! We're just going to sail right into it!?"
Luffy sat on the lion's head, grinning. "Of course we are!" he announced. "How else can we get through it?"
"We shouldn't be trying to get through it at all!!" yelled Usopp and Nami together.
"For a man, there's nowhere to go but forward!" declared Franky as he steered. "Nothing compares to the SUPER feeling of sailing into unknown waters, the wind whipping against your skin, unobstructed by such trivialities as fears or clothing! Truly, nothing beats sailing naked!"
The cyborg smiled from ear to ear and shot a glance at Nami and Robin, something he had found himself doing often over the past few hours. Sanji stood next to him, staring at Nami and Robin's reflection on the ocean's surface while rubbing the large bandaged lump on his head and smiling.
"…Well, I guess sailing naked is great," Usopp contended, also stealing a glance at the two females, "but why does that mean we have to sail into a hurricane!?"
"BECAUSE IT MAKES US MEN!" Chopper thundered, raising his arms above him. "Right, Franky!?"
"That's right!"
"Ugh!" Nami growled.
Robin squinted her eyes slightly as she looked ahead a ways.
"There seems to be a ship up ahead…!" she abruptly announced, pointing to a black spot next to the base of the hurricane a ways off.
"What!?" gasped Nami.
Usopp put his goggles on to get a better look.
"S-She's right!" he exclaimed. "There's a ship over there! It looks like it's anchored near the hurricane and…there's a skull on the sails! It's a pirate ship!"
Her priorities immediately changing, Nami quickly ordered, "GO AFTER IT!"
"Huh? Why?" Franky questioned.
"JUST DO IT!"
"…Well, okay…" he agreed. "Since they're between us and the hurricane, it would be hard to avoid them anyway…"
"I guess we'll be getting our clothes soon." Zoro said with a yawn.
