AN: Heavens, I'm writing this again. Friendly reminder to those who might not have done this yet: read chapters 15/16 of the oneshot series "Soul and Bones" on my profile for the background leading to this story. This chapter talks about things originally brought up in those chapters.

Salut! Things really start to get interesting from here on...

Chapter Six: The Divide

There was not much to look at during the long trek to 'The Pool', Nami observed. They were led side-by-side down an undecorated corridor, and judging by the cracked, sloped floor, they were now underground. When she thought about it, the building they entered on the surface was impressive, but not quite large enough to be palace. It was entirely possible this was just one of many subterranean structures connected to the main building.

Usopp had been quiet since he'd calmed down. He'd figured out where they were, too, and hopefully knew shouting and screaming wouldn't help. Nami was grateful, because she had other things on her mind besides their impending demise.

Brook didn't play. He didn't even sing. Not only that, but he had the audacity to claim that he couldn't! She was a whirlwind of rage, denial and worry. His deceit? Forget the princess, how would she every forgive his deceit? Of all times to lose his nerve.

An image flashed in her mind, of bones, a face wrapped in bandages, and the not-so-distant memory of a bloodcurdling cry of pain.

What if...what if that artifact had been put back for a reason? The one that started all of this madness. What if it took something away? How much, and what? Talent? Abilities? Passions?

Memories?

Usopp seemed to sense her thoughts by her cross, determined expression. Falteringly, he said, "O-Oi, Nami...what do you think they've done with Brook?"

Of course, he'd been thinking about the idiot musician, too. Well, the past few days had been kind of a shock and now they were all mortal danger, so why not? That brat of a princess tossed around death sentences like they were punishment for petty crimes. The man who wronged her most was Brook, and that didn't bode well for him.

And that look on Brook's face just before they'd been dragged out of the room. Nami wished he was still a skeleton, because then she wouldn't have to remember that.

"You should be more worried about that they'll do to us, you idiot," she said quietly. "That announcement they made...this is obviously a trap. And Luffy's going to fall right into it."

"You think so?" He went silent for a moment, then gulped. "Oh man, I can't believe this all started because we wanted to buy some new clothes..."

No, it started long before that. Nami shut her eyes and sighed. Just so long as their captain didn't show up and start wrecking everything in sight, they might have a chance to escape without causing a war. Or another skirmish with the Navy. Or a political upheaval that put everyone's life in jeopardy.

But more importantly...

"I can't believe they took all my money!" she yelled, and two of the guards escorting them promptly fell over in shock.

Robin stood in front of the building made from deep red, elegantly carved wood and shingles of gold-painted scales. It was quite possibly the most beautiful library she had seen in years.

"Robin!" cried Chopper, tugging at her leg feebly. His eyes were wavering with captive tears. "We have to hurry and rescue our friends! We can read books later! Robin!"

Sanji, who belatedly noticed that his two crew mates were no longer with him, stopped and turned around a dozen paces away. "Robin-chan."

"Mmm," she said. "I understand, Sanji-kun. But we still do not know anything about the artifact that caused Brook to become human. I am worried about its true purpose."

For a quiet moment, the blonde-haired cook stood and smoked, contemplating the same thing. Chopper sniffed, but said nothing. This was the original reason for their coming to this island, after all. Every moment the mystery went unsolved was a moment that Brook's life—possibly even all of the Devil Fruit users on the crews' lives—was in peril.

Though the pause seemed to stretch on forever, Sanji finally made an assertive noise. "Okay. The four of us will be more than enough get Nami-swan and the others back. You take the baby transponder snail, and call Zoro when you figure out what that shitty thing does."

"Of course," she replied with a confident smile. She carefully patted the top of Chopper's hat. "Go on, Chopper-san. Luffy will need your help protecting the others."

The reindeer doctor put on a brave face, despite its watering and quivering, and he nodded sternly before taking off towards Sanji.

"Be careful, both of you," Robin told them.

Sanji tilted his head to the sky, blowing out a stream of smoke. Then he clasped his hands together and cried, "Of course, Robin-swaaan! The power of love will protect me! I'll save Nami-swan and come back to keep you from harm!"

Robin made a patient sound, and turned to the library's entrance. "I look forward to it."

The sounds of Chopper's angry yelling at Sanji's distracted behaviour, and Sanji's irritated barking in return faded into the streets as heavy door clicked shut behind her. From the moment the smell of old books, rich wood and dust came to her senses, a great deal of tension left her body.

But not her resolve. Ignoring the curious stares from some of the city's residents at the entrance, she strode into the hive of knowledge to seek out the truth for her nakama.

The dungeon, as it turned out, was not a very lively place. Brook did not expect much excitement in a place that seemed to only exist for a spoiled girl's perverse idea of justice. However, the silence that stemmed for his cellmate's unwillingness to talk was nearly unbearable. After realizing her usual escape route was closed, Mince-san appeared to simply...shut down.

That sick feeling returned to Brook's stomach as his worry grew. What was happening to Usopp-san and Nami-san right now? To have them ordered to death so cruelly...and for him to be unable to stop it. He truly wanted to despair, but the irrational part of him still insisted that he had a purpose, and it was to escape and stop this avalanche of misfortunes from burying what remained of his livelihood.

So, after many minutes of a dark cell steeped in silence, Brook looked up from his sitting position. "Um...Mince-san?"

"Didn't I tell you, old man? I don't have any money. And stop talking; you're creepy."

Those short, heated words weren't as hurtful as she might have hoped. Nor did they dissuade the former skeleton from his mission. "If it were only my life at stake, then perhaps I would oblige, Miss Flutist. But I must do all I can to save my friends."

The girl heaved a sigh, but said nothing.

"Mince-san...could you tell me more about this kingdom?"

She glared daggers at him. "Nothing to tell. The 'one true king' rules here, and his 'beautiful princess' gets to play tea party with his army's strongest generals. Do what the brat says, and everyone lives. Don't do what the brat says, and get beat up by the soldiers who do."

It was the most she had spoken since the incident with the window. Taking heart (a heart! A literal heart!), Brook prodded even further. "And why does the king allow his daughter to do such things...?"

"How should I know? He's never shown his face. Me, I don't think he even exists. Everyone 's just ruled out of fear of Princess Kana's devil power."

Brook recalled the groaning and shaking of the palace's foundation when the princess had become very upset. "Ah, I understand," he said softly. "That would explain much. What is her power, exactly?"

"Bzzzzt. Don't know. She makes the palace shake when she goes crazy. Once, this really famous pirate captain got caught, and he made her so angry, that he collapsed on the ground. Dead. Not a single scratch on him. Know what they found when the docs cut him open? A gold coin. Lodged right in the middle of his heart."

That was quite daunting, indeed. A power that could sink a building this large, but be yet so subtle to stop a man's heart without spilling a drop of blood? In the hands on a child, no less. No wonder every soul under her reign lived in complete fear.

What Brook found more disturbing, however, was how Mince-san spoke about the princess so openly. No fear at all. In fact, though it was not quite admiration, there was a great deal of respect in her voice as she described the princess's strange powers.

"I see...am I correct to believe you have been brought here many times?"

"Yes. That snot-nosed brat has something of mine, and I'm gonna get it back."

The moment she said it, Mince-san slapped a hand over her mouth, looking horrified with herself. Then her blue eyes narrowed in anger and she rose to her feet."Why the hell did I tell you that? What kind of twisted Devil Fruit power are you using on me, old man!?"

"W-Wait, I did no such thing!" he protested, waving his hands in front of him. Nine years old or not, she was scary when she wanted to be. "Besides, I do not find that strange at all. This thing you have lost, it must be very important."

"More than a pirate like you would ever know."

Brook bowed his head pensively, aware that much of her vehemence was being directed at his profession, and not himself personally. What had this child gone through to become so cynical at her age?

Since his young cellmate had given up on conversation, Brook momentarily diverted his attention to the sounds coming from an adjoining cell. It was only just barely audible, but there was a man inside, cloaked in shadow and hunched over himself. He was repeating the same number over and over, voice strained and erratic.

"Ninety-three, ninety-three...ninety-three...ninety-three. Ninety-three."

Counting the days he had been imprisoned? Or months? What a cruel fate for anyone, denied the sunlight and fresh sea air for so long. Where was this country's justice?

Before he could think of an answer, a man in uniform appeared just outside their cell door. Without a word, two bowls of nondescript gruel were unceremoniously deposited on the ground. The smell of it reached Brook's nose, and his stomach twisted painfully at the thought of consuming such a thing.

Mince-san, on the other hand, dove on it as though it might be her last meal. Brook frowned in revulsion.

Between noisy bites, the young girl glared over top of her bowl and snapped, "What, aren't you going to eat?"

"Ah..." He would kindly rather chew broken glass, but of course, he did not say as much. "N-No. If you like, you may have my share, Mince-san. Yohoho!"

"Stupid. It's free food. Whatever, your loss."

Perhaps under other circumstances, Brook would have relished even the uncomfortable gurgling of his stomach. Such things were taken for granted. But he felt so ill, and he longed for the familiar boxed hammocks on board the Thousand Sunny. If he were to escape alive, in time to rescue his friends, he could not afford to spare another moment.

For several minutes, Mince-san ignored him. Then, when she noticed him staring at the lock on the cell door, the blonde-haired girl snorted. "Staring at it isn't going to help, dummy."

On the contrary, my dear, he thought with an internal sigh. Through sheer power of will, anything is possible.

Brook reached out to touch the lock, and felt a familiar, sickening feeling in his arm. He pulled back with a grimace. "Sea prism stone...of course."

"Yeah. And believe it or not, that window used to be thirty feet high," his cellmate said behind him, jerking her thumb at the barred window. Brook blinked at her in surprise. When he'd peered out earlier, it was clear their cell half-buried underground.

"Oh, that's right...you're new around here. This whole palace and its dungeons are sinking into the ground thanks to the beautiful princess. We call it the Swallowed Fortress, but don't let her royal tantrum know."

A sinking palace, which would mean a great many rooms were deep underground now...that would explain why the palace's looming spires appeared to pop out of the ground in strange places. Thinking about it, Brook also felt a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach.

Could he still do 'it'? Did he dare leave his body so unprotected, in the presence of this wild child, in order to try? What affect would it have on a living body that it could not do to a skeleton?

Somehow, he cared not.

To most El Lo Miscan locals, Straw Hat Luffy was nothing more than a cross-looking blur of motion charging through the streets of their otherwise peaceful city.

"Usopp! Nami! Brooook!" He howled into the sky, convinced this was the most effective way to reach his crew. What did he care if the soldiers were looking for him? They'd already made a big mistake by threatening to execute two of his nakama. Whatever happened to them now was completely their fault.

Maybe he should have a least waited for Zoro. He would have, but Zoro would have just gotten lost, anyway. And he'd probably try to stop Luffy, too. He liked Zoro, but he didn't want to sit around and talk about what they should be doing, he wanted to do something. Right now! For all they knew, one minute could be the difference between life and death.

Luffy charged around a corner, apologized quickly to a group of old ladies as he whirled past them, and clutched his hat onto his head as he raced towards those big, funny-looking towers in the distance.

He knew Franky would probably go and protect the ship. If these Elly Misca guys really wanted a fight, that's where they would go to try and capture his crew. As long as Franky was there, nothing bad would happen to the Thousand Sunny.

There was an awful dryness in his throat when he thought about that announcement. Did they let one of his nakama go? But then they would have come back, or at least used the baby transponder snail to call them. Usopp ran away a lot. Luffy really hoped that this time, Usopp had ran away and maybe forgotten to take the bag with him.

Luffy's body began to slow down to a standstill, when his ears caught the sound of familiar names being spoken by unfamiliar voices. He stood at the edge of the street and turned his head to look directly at a group of three uniformed men on the other side.

"What a sap! He was like, 'Usopp-saaan! Nami-saaan!' Bra ha ha ha ha!" boomed the voice of a large, barrel-chested gorilla of a guy, to his comrades.

His skinnier friend laughed like a hyena. "I've never seen such a pathetic-looking pirates before! Are you sure they're even pirates? Maybe we caught some scary-looking squid farmers!"

The other two brayed with laughter at that. Something deep down in Luffy's body was bending. A part of him that, unlike the rest of his rubber body, would eventually snap. His clenched fists began to quiver.

"Shall I play a song for you, beautiful princess?" mocked the third soldier, pretending to hold an invisible violin. "Oh, wait! I forgot how! Please don't kill me!"

More laughing.

Luffy turned his feet towards the soldiers, and began to cross the street.

The gorilla-shaped man wiped some tears from his eyes and clapped the skinny guy on the shoulder. "That long-nosed guy, what was it he said? 'You'll suffer a fate worse than a million paper cuts!' And then the princess sentences him to death first!"

The hyena one shrieked in his annoying, high-pitched way. "That's our beautiful princess for you! Always—oi, oi, what's up with this kid?"

The trio were the last people on the street to notice Luffy's slow, methodical stroll toward their position. Most everyone else had the sense to move away, or go indoors, as they all seemed to be experiencing the same, invisible fear of oncoming dangers that brewed like a storm before the Straw Hat captain.

Everyone except three loud-mouthed soldiers.

"Hey, kid, did someone take your lunch money?" guffawed the gorilla. "Don't worry, once we collect these pirates' bounties, we'll give you a million beli!"

That set off his buddies again. Luffy's entire arm throbbed as it began to steam under the morning sunlight. The soldiers finally seemed to catch on that the 'kid' walking towards them wasn't listening, and the gorilla grew bold.

"Get lost, squirt! Don't mess with us Imperial Elite, or maybe you'd like to take a swim in the Pool, too!"

Luffy stopped.

"Gra ha ha! That's right-"

"Stop it."

Gorilla stopped in mid-laugh, and scowled at the boy in blue shorts standing before him. "What?"

A piercing gaze materialized from beneath the brim of the straw hat, and Luffy drew his arm back to his side. "Don't..."

And he launched his first forward, straight into the face of the soldier with the force of three sea-trains.

"...make fun of my nakama!"

TBC