Asteria Nightmare
Part nineteen of a fanfiction by Velkyn Karma
Note: Herp derp, Karma fails at life. My wrap-up chapter got out of hand and I had to split it into two. But hey—that means more answers for you guys! Yay!
Note the Second: I've beaten Mindshattered in terms of reviews with this fic, which is just...I didn't know that was even possible. Wow. That is all thanks to you lovely people :)
Disclaimer: I do not own, or pretend to own, One Piece or any of its subsequent characters, plots or other ideas. That right belongs solely to Eiichiro Oda. The only thing that belongs to me here is the concept for the story.
"The human spirit cannot be paralyzed. If you are breathing, you can dream."
~Mike Brown
For a while none of the Straw Hats moved; merely breathed, existed, and relished the thoughts that they were still alive and their dreams were still (mostly) intact. Nami, for one, had crashed to her knees on a cleared part of the bony ground, panting with exhaustion and almost willing to cry with relief, knowing they had somehow survived that unearthly, extraordinarily powerful thing.
But after a while she realized that even with the Queen of the Night dead, or sent away, or whatever they'd done, they weren't quite out of the fire yet. True, all the Nightmares were dead now, which meant there was no lasting threat on this island. But a lot of their number were in terrible shape as well. Many of them were badly wounded, Franky and Sanji-kun were still missing their Dreamshards from the fight, and all of their supplies were outside the city, meaning they would need to be transported out before they could be given lasting help.
Still, for all that, the advantages were worth it. Luffy was still sprawled out flat on the ground, completely unable to move after his over-expenditure of Gear Second after not eating for three days. But he was grinning widely, satisfied that he had managed to save his nakama's dreams. She could hear him shishishi-ing under his breath, a welcome change to the creepy chanting that had been passing his lips in his dreamless state.
"Ah!" he said suddenly, sounding very distressed. "Hat! Nami, where's Hat? You did save Hat, right?"
"What kind of Pirate King's navigator do you take me for, Luffy?" Nami said, dragging herself back to her feet with liberal use of the Clima-Tact as a walking staff. "Of course I got your hat. We put it nice and safe with all our supplies back outside the city, it's waiting for you on top of the pile when we get back."
It was an absolutely wonderful feeling to see him grinning at that, instead of panicking, and he said cheerfully, "Thanks, Nami!" Then his whole expression seemed to wilt, and he whined, "Sanjiiiiii...I'm hungry..."
"We don't have any food with us, Luffy," Nami said. Not to mention Sanji-kun was sort of temporarily out of commission, but she didn't tell him that part. The captain looked so forlorn at the mention of no food, however, that she edited herself, and said, "Er, well, Usopp might have something in his bag, or something..."
"Yes! Let's go!" Their leader wiggled rather uselessly on the bone-strewn floor, and huffed in irritation when he moved nowhere. "Rrgh...so hungry..."
"I got it." Zoro appeared by her side, limping badly and still dripping blood from several places she was pretty sure he shouldn't be. "Chopper'll have a fit anyway if I don't come back. And you look like you've got something else to take care of." He bent down and snagged Luffy's vest by the collar, wobbling a little as he did so, before unceremoniously dragging their restored captain towards the rest of the group waiting some distance away.
"If you have something to attend to, might I be of assistance?" Brook, still standing nearby from the final attack, offered.
Nami considered. "Actually, there is. Franky's and Sanji-kun's Dreamshards are somewhere in this...mess," she said with a wrinkle of her nose, waving her hand wide to indicate the bone- and gem-studded floor. "Living Dreamshards look more...I don't know...alive, and brighter, than the dead ones here, but finding them is still going to be like finding a specific piece of hay in a haystack."
"Then a second pair of eyes could most certainly be of use!" Brook said delightedly. "I will be happy to provide...although, I have no eyes! Yohohoho!"
She already felt like she was regretting her decision, but said dryly, "Okay, sure. You go over and look where Franky's was, and I'll see if I can find Sanji-kun's. When you find it though, don't touch it directly! Pick it up with a cloth or something."
"At once, Nami-san!" Brook said, and darted over the broken bones to attend to his task, delighted at the thought of being helpful. Nami shook her head tiredly, but picked her way carefully over the scattered remains of forgotten people as well, heading towards her rough estimation of the spot where Sanji-kun's dream had been stolen again.
It was a complete and utter mess. Bones had been shattered by Luffy's anger-driven Gatling punches and the Queen of the Night's furious attacks against him, and dead Dreamshards were buried in thick layers of dust and bone splinters. They glittered weakly in the late afternoon sunlight pouring in through the massive crystal dome overhead, displaying beautiful arrays of colors that would have had any self-respecting thief drooling at the sight. Nami, exhausted as she was, couldn't even bring herself to care. Instead she simply crouched tiredly and began sifting through the piles of broken bodies and dead gems, searching for the one that still lived and would restore her nakama back to normal.
Had she been in a better state of mind she might have been squeamish about handling the bony remains of long-dead humans and animals and who knew what else. As it was she was just tired and in pain and wanted to get the entire mess over with. She was careful to set the bits of bone gently aside when she moved them to search for the gems beneath and around them, mindful that they had once been alive and still deserved respect, but beyond that she couldn't bring herself to care. She did treat the Dreamshards tentatively, poking them aside with a section of Clima-Tact as though they would bite her, and in that she felt justified; her hands were still raw and red from where she had been burned snatching Luffy's, Zoro's, and Robin's dreams, after all. But none of the little gems belonged to Sanji-kun, she could tell that easily. His had been much larger than these little ones, and anyway none of them glowed with that powerful inner presence that meant his dream was still alive.
It took the better part of an hour to shift through all of the shards and bones to make any progress at all. Usopp eventually came over to join her, once he had been patched up by Chopper, and his extra set of eyes made the process go a little faster. Eventually the sniper gave a triumphant shout, and stood over a small patch of ground carefully, pointing at something between his feet. Nami came over to investigate, and was relieved to see Sanji-kun's Dreamshard glittering brilliantly amidst a nest of dead gems, making his look all the more larger and brighter than before. It was quite some distance from where the All Blue had first been taken from him, closer to the macabre nest of the Queen still in the center of the Temple; the Harvester that had taken it had clearly been trying to deliver it to its mistress. Nami picked it up carefully with the sleeves of her jacket, careful not to let it touch her skin, and headed back for the rest of the crew while Usopp jogged over to Brook to lend his eyes to the search for Franky's dream.
Chopper was still hard at work patching the crew up, although it looked like he'd managed to deplete most of the supplies he'd brought with him for the attack on Oneirosa. He was currently bending over Franky, who appeared to be genuinely knocked out in addition to suffering from dreamlessness, and the rest of the group was sporting a number of bandages as well. Nami had a minor heart attack when she trotted closer and discovered both Luffy and Zoro slumped back to back, eyes closed; the tension eased seconds later when the pair emitted rumbling snores almost simultaneously, and Luffy muttered something about meat under his breath. They were actually asleep, Nami realized with relief, not somehow regressing back into their dreamless states. She supposed they deserved the rest, real rest, after everything they'd been through. Robin looked quite tired as well, although she managed to stay awake just barely, quietly watching the proceedings.
"You found Cook-san's Dreamshard?" the archaeologist asked, as Nami reached the group.
"Yeah," Nami answered, and crouched next to the cook in question, who was stretched out on a cleared section of stone floor. Nami wasn't surprised to see him still unconscious; he looked pretty terrible, and had taken quite a beating from the Queen of the Night. She dropped the Dreamshard onto his chest and tapped it as lightly as she could manage to force it to be absorbed—she didn't want to damage his ribs any more than they already were, after all. The Dreamshard glittered innocently over his heart for a moment before slowly sinking through Sanji-kun's dress shirt into his body. He shivered slightly in unconsciousness, although he remained steadily out cold—which was probably a blessing for him, really.
Job completed, Nami sat down tiredly and finally gave herself a chance to rest as Chopper rushed over to examine her anxiously. What a long day—if someone had told Nami that morning that they would destroy the entire colony of Nightmares living on Asteria, not to mention their Queen, she would have told them they were crazy. As it was, she still wasn't quite sure how they'd managed it—even for all their planning, they had barely escaped with their lives. It was satisfying to know they'd finally won, and that her entire crew would be okay again, but she really didn't want to think about that right now. Mostly, she just wanted to curl up in a ball and go to sleep for a week.
Twenty more minutes passed, while Chopper bound up her wounds and tended to her shoulder injury, which had broken open again at some point. Nami watched Brook and Usopp still searching idly, barely managing to keep herself awake. She was seriously starting to consider taking a leaf from Luffy's and Zoro's books and going to sleep anyway, when Brook gave an enthusiastic shout and retrieved something from the ground in one of his pocket handkerchiefs. He and Usopp trotted over and presented the Dreamshard to her anxiously. "Is this it, Nami-san?" Brook asked.
"Looks right," Nami said tiredly, and wondered when exactly she had become the resident expert on Dreamshard identification. "Get it in him and wake him up so we can leave." They obeyed, pressing the glittering gem into Franky's metal chest and shaking him awake, and in another ten minutes their cyborg was, if not in perfect condition, at least conscious and somewhat rested after his ordeal. Nami was relieved to see it. With the recovery of Franky's dream, everyone was accounted for. Their crew was whole again, if significantly beat up.
She stood once more, wincing when the last of Chopper's bandages pulled at her injured arm, and then staggered over to Luffy and Zoro, lightly kicking the two of them awake. Zoro came to with a grunt of surprise and twisted to glare at her in irritation. The movement disturbed Luffy, and no longer having Zoro for support, the captain crashed unceremoniously onto his side with his rubbery face pressed into the stone.
"Hungry," he whined almost immediately. Usopp hadn't had any snacks on him, meaning Luffy was still immobile after his overzealous expenditure of energy in Gear Second.
"I know, Luffy," Nami said tiredly. "I suggest we get out of here for the night and head back to the shed we were using earlier. We can eat up, rest, and figure out what else to do later." God, she just wanted to not think about anything right now. She just wanted to sleep.
"I need to get my supplies there, too," Chopper added. "I brought some of my more cumbersome things from the Sunny, but I didn't bring them with us to Oneirosa, and I need them now to treat Sanji's leg properly. I've splinted it for now with some of Franky's plank, but it really needs proper attention."
"Right!" Luffy said decisively. "Then let's go so we can eat!" He wriggled experimentally, barely moved an inch, and huffed in frustration. "Can't...huuungryyyyy..."
In the end they had to resort to the same sling they'd carried their captain in as before. Franky claimed he was still feeling 'super' and could manage that much, and they packed Luffy right back into the sailcloth contraption, although this time they left him with his head poking out so he could still see what was going on and talk to everyone. He found it thoroughly exciting and wriggled enthusiastically in his new method of transportation, chatting poor Franky's ear off. Nami almost felt sorry for their cyborg. The rest of them managed to walk on their own, although occasionally the group had to pause to let Robin or Zoro have much-needed breaks. Although they weren't dreamless anymore, they were still suffering the exhausting after-effects, and now that there was no longer a high-stakes battle and the two were no longer fueled by rage they seemed more susceptible than before. The sole exception was Sanji-kun, who had to be carried by Chopper very carefully in Heavy Point to keep his broken leg from taking further damage. Sanji-kun hadn't woken up for very long anyway due to his extensive injuries; he'd surfaced into consciousness for barely five minutes, long enough to curse Zoro a blue streak for some imagined transgression before passing out again.
They were weary, hurting, drained and hungry, but they were alive, every single one of them, in full. As the crew staggered its way out of Oneirosa, Nami kept that sole fact in her mind to keep her going. Survival was a wonderful motivator, after all.
Several eventful days passed after the defeat of the Queen of the Night, although they weren't exactly the most active days in the Straw Hat Pirates' history.
The crew had spent the night in the little storage shed that had initially served as their shelter and base of operations for their charge on Oneirosa City. With the Nightmares completely eradicated from the island there was no need to assign a watch or reset the Sunny-based traps that had protected them the night previous. So after filling their bellies (and in Luffy's case, recovering his hat) every single one of them had passed out cold, desperate for rest after the full-day battle they had only barely survived.
After that, they headed back for the Thousand Sunny. Although they had no intentions of leaving just yet, they were running low on supplies, and several of their members required the services of Chopper's more extensive infirmary. With no dangers of being attacked in the dead of night, the crew was able to travel non-stop, and managed to reach their beloved ship in a little over a day instead of the two it would have normally taken. It had been an absolute relief to see the Sunny floating, nice and safe, out in the deeper ocean waters where Franky had left it before he, Chopper and Brook had mounted their rescue mission, now feeling like so long ago. They clambered onto the ship gratefully, and it was unanimously decided that the next few days were going to be entirely about taking it easy and recovering their wits after the last frightening few days.
And the rest was almost certainly needed. The crew had collectively accrued so many injuries and after-effects that for the first day they largely resembled an escaped collection of zombies from Thriller Bark more than the Straw Hat Pirates.
The most obvious malady was the residual effects of dreamlessness, which over half the crew possessed. Franky and Sanji-kun were sluggish and sleepy for barely a day, and had largely recovered from that particular effect by the time the crew had reached the Sunny. But Luffy, Zoro and Robin were hit far harder by the exhausting after-effects, having been dreamless for far longer. Luffy spent his first few days back on the ship dozing almost as much as Zoro normally did. He was abnormally hungry too, even for Luffy (a fact that did not make poor Sanji-kun very happy), apparently from the desire to make up for three days of missed nutrients. It wasn't uncommon for Zoro to sleep on a regular basis—it seemed like it was the only thing he ever did around the ship under usual circumstances—but now he was lethargic almost constantly, and abandoned training entirely in favor of napping. He'd even fallen asleep in the middle of a verbal spar with Sanji-kun, much to the cook's astonishment. Robin was more careful about hiding the effects dreamlessness had had upon her, but Nami had caught the archaeologist nodding off more than once while reading, and seen her snoozing gently in her lawn chair on three separate occasions.
Zoro and Robin displayed other reactions besides physical ones too, possibly because they could still remember their ordeals in part. Zoro was so possessive of his swords it bordered on paranoia, holding on to the white one in particular even in his sleep. And Robin spent an inordinate amount of time in the library, even for her, like she was reminding herself of something. Strangely, Luffy didn't seem to have any psychological repercussions. Perhaps it was because his dreamless state had been more like a coma, and he still claimed to remember nothing of the incident. Or maybe it was because the Queen of the Night was defeated, and in Luffy's mind that meant the problem was over with. Whatever the case, other than his unusual sleepiness and lack of energy, Luffy appeared entirely normal. And after a few days, the effects upon all three of them, both physical and psychological, gradually disappeared, until there was no evidence that the incident had ever occurred at all.
Of course, that was only for the dreamlessness. In terms of fighting for their lives, there were still plenty of reminders. Most of them had still taken pretty decent beatings, and it would be a while before the bruises would fade and the gashes would seal themselves up. Luffy possessed crisscrossing lacerations all over his hands, from where he'd punctured his rubber fists on shattered bones with his Gatling attacks, and at Chopper's insistence his hands were heavily bandaged for days. Robin's hands were heavily damaged as well from the vicious burns given when she had handled Usopp's dream weaponry, and her arms were gashed in multiple places from earlier fights with the Nightmares, not to mention she sported superficial bite wounds from when the wayward Harvester had seized her in Oneirosa's streets. Franky's back had been slashed up badly by the Nightmares when his Dreamshard had been stolen, and the creatures clawed Luffy's sling from his back, although the cyborg appeared more upset that they'd managed to steal his captain from him than by the injuries themselves.
And those were the least injured of their group; others' injuries were more significant. Nami herself had been injured pretty badly (a fact that Sanji-kun would simply not stop apologizing for and reaming Zoro out on simultaneously). Her hands possessed nasty burns from the Dreamshards, and her entire body had been slashed up by the splintered bones she'd fallen on when the Harvester had tried to pin her down. But the worst by far was still the gash in her arm that the Attendant had given her. In the battle through Oneirosa she'd managed to not only break it open, but make it worse, and in the end Chopper had been forced to give her stitches in order to properly treat it. He promised her it would look fine in the end, and Nami certainly hoped he was right. She did not look forward to having a wide scar to match her tattoo. Zoro might be okay with that sort of thing, but she sure as hell wasn't!
The swordsman had, unsurprisingly, come out of the whole ordeal entirely worse for the wear. Nami was beginning to think he actively tried to collect scars, the idiot. Chopper had been forced to re-stitch the bite wound Zoro had managed to give himself during his fight in Remia, just before his dream had been stolen, due to the first stitches being torn in the battle against the Queen. His shoulder had been sliced wide open as well from his failed attempt to stop Robin from being dragged off, requiring heavy bandaging, and the deep stab wound in his stomach had practically given poor Chopper anxiety attacks. They were just lucky the Queen hadn't managed to hit anything especially vital that required surgery, or he most certainly would have died two days from the necessary equipment on the Sunny. And of course the swordsman was covered in his usual collection of gashes, cuts and bruises, not to mention the red, hilt-shaped burn scar on his hand that Zoro glared more furiously at than any of his other injuries.
Zoro was definitely a mess, but for once Nami was inclined to think Sanji-kun had actually come off worse. The cook had already gone into the Oneirosa fight with his fair share of injuries, like the deep gash in his shoulder from the first Shepherd they'd met, or half a dozen other bruises and slashes from other encounters. Those had only been added to in Oneirosa, with Sanji-kun being so frequently called upon to clear out the more dangerous enemies. And the worst of his injuries came from the Queen of the Night herself: several of his ribs had been badly cracked, and his right leg had been broken in two places from a combination of over-using his Diable Jambe and the Queen's highly resistant hide. Although it was impossible to keep him bedridden completely (though through no lack of trying on Chopper's part) the cook was still disgusted to learn he'd have to take it easy for the better part of a month, at least. Not to mention he was highly irritable about being the only member of the crew to lose his dream not once, but twice. It made him very surly around the boys (although he was his usual over-enthusiastic self around the girls), and he couldn't even fight with Zoro to relieve some of the tension, due to his damaged leg. Nami almost felt sorry for him, until their verbal spats became so loud they could be heard anywhere on the ship—then it was all she could do to keep from giving him a skull fracture to add to his list of bone-related injuries.
Even Usopp had more serious injuries than usual, probably because he was in the thick of the fights far more often than he tended to be usually as a sniper. He, too, was covered in a number of scrapes and bruises, the worst one of all being the gaping chest wound that slashed angrily across his front; almost, it looked as though he was trying to imitate Zoro's chest scar, though going in the opposite direction. The gash razoring up his arm from where he'd rescued the freshly-dreamless Zoro was equally prominent, and sounded like it would scar, although Usopp seemed more excited by the prospect than not. Nami supposed he was looking forward to having some sort of fodder for his stories, or perhaps just proof that it had been him saving one of the monster trio for once, instead of the other way around.
Only Chopper and Brook had escaped the mess relatively unscathed. Both were covered in minor nicks and bruises (or in Brook's case, small cracks and chips), but beyond that they seemed healthy enough. Being the center of the musical stun, Brook hadn't come close to the Nightmares very often, and Chopper's thick fur had likely protected him from the brunt of the slashes and bites the Nightmares had tried to hand out. The little reindeer honestly seemed more concerned for his antlers, which had been scratched and cracked pretty badly from all the encounters.
So the Straw Hats had definitely earned, and deserved, a good few days of rest. But by the end of the third day, while Nami couldn't say they were fully recovered, she could declare with some degree of truth that they were much better off than before. Zoro had started removing his bandages against orders (always a good sign he was feeling better), Franky was doing his ridiculous super dances again, Robin was beginning to look over the notes she had taken on the island, and Luffy, Usopp, and Chopper were careening around the deck once more in enthusiastic games of tag and hide-and-go-seek. Sanji-kun was forced to hobble around on crutches, but he was no stranger to leg-related injuries and could still move around with surprising speed. And all of the formerly dreamless pirates were back to their usual selves once more.
So it was unsurprising that they held an unofficial meeting that night, to decide how to handle things next.
"I want to explore the island more," Luffy said without preamble. He looked pouty, and added unhappily, "I barely got to see anything so far, and I missed the whole adventure. That's no fair!"
"Luffy," Usopp said in exasperation, "You helped us beat up the mother of all monsters—literally! How is that not being part of the adventure?"
"But I didn't get to fight anything else, or see the cool temples, or come up with neat weapons," the captain complained, planting his hand firmly on his hat. "I could have been so cool! Thousand Luffy! It'd be even more awesome than armor!"
"You really didn't miss much, Luffy," the sniper muttered, shaking his head.
"I, for one, would like to return to the Temple of Dreams," Robin interjected. "The building was extremely large, and I believe we haven't explored all of it yet. The Temple was obviously the center of this society's religion and culture, and I am very interested in uncovering the history of this island, now that it no longer presents a danger."
"Robin-chan is simply brilliant!" Sanji-kun cooed. "I am sure you'll be able to uncover every secret in the city! No, on the whole island!"
"Perhaps you will be able to uncover where these creatures came from as well, Robin-san," Brook added helpfully. "We still don't know for certain how they came to this world, after all—only that they are somehow connected to that archway Usopp-san destroyed."
The others clamored in agreement. They, too, would definitely like to find the answer to that question.
"Perhaps," Robin agreed. "However, what I saw of the Temple as we exited it was a bit discouraging. The Nightmares tore up its interior quite a bit, and that may make navigating it difficult. Perhaps if Franky and Usopp were to assist me with their engineering skills, we would be able to speed up the search."
"Sure thing!" Franky said immediately, taking on his trademark pose confidently. "I'm a super architect as well as a shipwright. This'll be no prob!"
"The Great Captain Usopp will gladly offer his amazing engineering skills for the cause," the sniper added dramatically.
Nami nodded and said, "That sounds like a good plan. While you guys are doing that, I think I'll survey the island for my map. After all this, at least I'll have the most accurate recording of Asteria Island in centuries."
"Nami-swaaaaan! Allow me to travel with you and carry your equipment!" Sanji-kun said enthusiastically. He managed to wiggle even on his crutches, and Nami was genuinely concerned he would somehow tip himself over.
"Absolutely not, Sanji-kun," she said decisively. "You can get around well enough on deck with those crutches, but there's no way you're up to hiking right now. I'll take Luffy and Zoro with me. Luffy wants to explore anyway, and Zoro can carry my stuff."
Luffy grinned widely. Zoro glared daggers at her. "Don't volunteer me for things, witch!"
"Oh, please," Nami said with a wave of her hand. "I took care of your swords for two days. The least you can do is carry my things around for me."
Zoro grit his teeth angrily, and very much looked like he wanted to argue but couldn't bring himself to do it. She'd hit him right in the gut with the sword comment, for sure. Privately, she was very happy he hadn't actually been conscious or aware enough to remember the way the entire crew had manhandled his swords for the past few days, otherwise she had a feeling his reaction would be markedly different.
"Cook-san can come with me if he likes," Robin added. "The path to Oneirosa will be much easier to traverse, and perhaps he can find a way to help with the Temple excavation."
"I live to serve, Robin-chan! Ask me anything, and I'll be yours to command!" Sanji-kun said delightedly. To Zoro, he added, "You'd better not ruin any of Nami-san's equipment, marimo, or there will be hell to pay."
"From who? You? What're you gonna do, hobble after me and call me names? Yeah, that'll work real well, curly-brow."
"Just wait until I get this cast off, shit swordsman—"
Nami interrupted them both with a fist to each skull, and they fell silent with one sullen glare and one profuse apology. "What about you guys?" she asked, turning to Chopper and Brook.
"I should stay with Sanji," the doctor said. "If he's going to be active I want to keep an eye on his broken ribs and leg, just in case."
"I would be happy to accompany Nami-san on her exploratory trip," Brook added. "I would be most willing to carry some of the equipment too, if you would like!"
"That's fine," Nami accepted. "The extra hands might be helpful anyway. So, it's decided then?"
"Looks like it," Usopp said. "Me, Robin, Franky, Sanji and Chopper will head to the city, and you, Luffy, Zoro, and Brook will take care of exploring the rest of the island."
Nami nodded. "This island is pretty big, based on what we've seen," she said. "It might take a few days. Let's say we plan to meet up in Oneirosa in about a week? That should give me plenty of time to take notes for my maps, and hopefully you guys can dig up something interesting in the city."
"With luck," Robin agreed. "That sounds reasonable."
"Right!" Luffy agreed, punching one rubbery fist into the air. "Then everybody rest up, and Sanji, make sure you pack enough pirate lunches for everybody! Tomorrow we're going exploring!"
So they did, and contrary to everything else that had happened on Asteria Island, that week was one of the more peaceful and enjoyable ones Nami had had since she'd reached the Grand Line.
Sanji-kun packed them enough food to last a week, even with Luffy on their exploration team, and between the three boys it was easy to cart around both their meals and her surveying equipment with relative ease. Without the threat of the Nightmares hanging over their heads, hiding in the trees or the villages waiting to feast upon their despair, Asteria Island was a very beautiful and enjoyable island to visit. The temperature was perfect, the trees remained frozen in bright reds and golds and yellows, the forests weren't so clogged with undergrowth that it was impossible to traverse them, and the pathways to the other villages on the island, while old, were still easy to navigate. Recording the information here would be infinitely easier than some of the wild, overgrown islands the crew had visited in the past.
It was easy to lose herself in her work, and Nami was definitely dedicated to getting Asteria correct on her maps. It wasn't just that it would it be the first accurate representation of the island in full ever since the arrival of the Nightmares centuries ago, as she had told the boys, although that was part of it. But she also felt like she owed it to the island, somehow, to show not just its shape on a map or its placement in the Grand Line, but to show as well the civilization that had once been here. Every time she thought of the hundreds of scattered bones, the thousands of dead Dreamshards and desperate cries in the Queen of the Night's single voice, she could only think of the fact that she didn't know a single one of those peoples' names, or dreams, or lives. Perhaps she couldn't make it so all of them were remembered; but at least she could make sure their world was, before the creatures came that destroyed them all. It was very important to her, somehow, that she show that.
The others sensed her dedication to this particular task, and seemed to understand. Zoro complained frequently about being turned into her pack mule, but never about her taking too long or needing to get something just right, and Luffy and Brook were eager to help with any little tasks she could find to give them. And she could tell the boys were enjoying themselves, too. Luffy was certainly making up for his three days of near-comatose dreamlessness by exploring every nook and cranny of every village they came across, searching for meat or a new friend or some sort of other adventure no matter how many times the rest of them assured him there was none of that here anymore. Brook was perfectly willing to be his partner in crime, not to mention that he burst into song on an almost regular basis for no reason at all (but it was still too soon for Nami to begrudge him that just yet). And when Zoro wasn't busy carting around their things, he always seemed to find an especially comfortable patch of ground in a pool of sunlight, or a particularly large tree branch placed just perfectly to catch a cool breeze, that he could nap in quite easily.
So they were able to create a comfortable routine without trouble, and by the end of the appointed week Nami was reasonably sure they had explored every single major village on the interior of the island. She would need to climb the walls of Oneirosa to survey it from a central, high area to be sure, but she had definitely gotten a lot of work done.
With her new and improved notes it was simple to guide the boys back towards Oneirosa City, and they arrived in mid-afternoon on the appointed day. Getting through the city was still tricky (they lost Zoro twice, much to Nami's frustration) but in the end they managed to make it to the great Temple of Dreams once more. The overbearing evil taint it had seemed to emit before had long since vanished, and Nami was in awe of the beauty and majesty of the great crystalline building, stretching up and up and up above them. Luffy promptly declared he was going to climb it, and it was only with the timely arrival of Usopp at the enormous front doors of the building that they were able to stop him from rocketing himself to the topmost crystal spire and (all too probably) wrecking the beautiful, final remnant of the people that had lived here by accident.
"It's good to see you guys!" the sniper said excitedly, waving to them. "Did you map out the island?"
"Most of it," Nami said. "How about you guys, any luck?"
"Lots!" Usopp said enthusiastically. "You've gotta come see this, wait until you see what we found!" He gestured for them to follow, and Luffy bounced up the steps excitedly, pestering Usopp for details as he dragged Brook after him. Nami and Zoro followed at a slower pace, which gave the navigator an opportunity she'd been waiting for all week. With all the group exploration there'd been little time to pull Zoro aside, but there had been something she'd wanted to address with him for days now.
"Er...Zoro," she began, a little hesitant. He blinked at her, looking a little puzzled, and Nami supposed she couldn't blame him; normally she didn't beat around the bush for this sort of thing. "I just...wanted to apologize. When we fought the Queen of the Night, I didn't have any other way to find your dream, so I had to...well, I had to look at it. I tried not to peek too much, but—"
"Don't bother."
Nami blinked in surprise. That wasn't what she expected to hear. Zoro had always been close-mouthed about his past; she thought he'd been angry that she'd seen such things. "Are you sure? I mean, I know you don't talk about that stuff much—"
He shrugged. "You're nakama, so it's okay." He did look a little uncomfortable, but he definitely sounded like he meant it, as well. At least he trusted them that much. She would never doubt Zoro's loyalty after all they'd been through, but sometimes it was difficult to tell in regards to other things, the way he kept some secrets so close.
"Alright." She hesitated, and then added, "I'll keep it to myself, though. Unless you tell me otherwise."
Zoro's expressions were difficult to read at the best of times, but Nami could definitely make out the quiet gratitude in his eyes then. He was okay with Nami having seen parts of his dream, but he definitely didn't want that knowledge to be treated so casually. Nami could respect that, and she would, too.
They hurried to catch up to Usopp, Luffy and Brook now. Usopp was chattering animatedly to his fellow crew mates, who were hanging onto every word. "—noticed it was a weird place for the rubble to build up, so I told Franky about it, and he agreed that there was probably a load-bearing wall behind it all. So we cleared it away with Robin's and Chopper's help and we found a whole crystal room. Robin's in there now, she's been there for days. There were a lot of papers and stuff in it that she's been translating."
"Where's everyone else?" Nami asked, as Usopp led them down a complex series of hallways. Robin had been right—most of these places had been blocked off when they'd stormed the Temple days ago, but with the rubble cleared away there were a lot more accessible places in the Temple than before. Nami had thought the enormous chamber the Queen had lived in made up the bulk of the building, but it seemed it was much larger than even that. The rest of the crew could be anywhere in this.
"Franky's off on the west side of the Temple right now," Usopp explained, as he turned and led them down yet another rubble-cleared hallway. They were well inside the building now, Nami could tell, mostly because all the walls were made of stone instead of the brilliant crystal that encased the outside of the Temple. "There's still a few rooms over there, we think, and he's trying to figure out a way to open them up without collapsing the ceiling. It's pretty tricky, the Nightmares really did a number on this place. Sanji and Chopper have been out exploring the rest of the city to see if there's anything else really important here. And Robin is here," the sniper finished with a flourish, as he led them into a room. "Hey, Robin, look! Everyone else just got here."
Nami stepped into the room and found her eyes widening in surprise. Luffy's excited "Awesome!" next to her just about summed up her feelings on this new, uncovered room. It wasn't exactly vast—it probably wasn't much bigger than the weight room on the Sunny—but it made up for its relatively small size by being constructed almost entirely out of the same crystal that the outside of the building consisted of. All four walls were glittering brightly in the candle light from the collapsible lamps spread around the room, and Nami could see the twisted, shattered wreckage of what had probably once been a door not too far from where they stood, also made of crystal. Only the floor and ceiling were of stone—or what was left of the ceiling, anyway. Most of it was gone, leaving a gaping hole just large enough for a Harvester into the rooms beyond. Nami shivered slightly at what that probably meant—but it was okay now. All of the creatures were dead.
A stone table had been hastily constructed out of what looked like a former part of the ceiling, likely Franky's handiwork. Robin was seated at the table on a makeshift stone chair, and spread before her on the table were pages—dozens an dozens of pages of parchment, old, withered and fragile-looking, stained with age. Nami could see several of the symbols normally found on the poneglyphs scribbled onto those pages, although most of the characters were so faded it was almost impossible to make them out, and Nami was surprised Robin could read them at all. The archaeologist had quite an extensive system working on the table: hands sprouted from it everywhere, some with eyes planted in their palms, aiding her in the process of...of whatever she was doing. Robin herself was bent over a single sheaf of parchment, her natural hands folded across her chest in concentration, but several other hands and eyes were scanning other pieces of parchment, delicately shifting the pages and sorting them into stacks, and consulting between each other when cross referencing information. Nami even saw a pair of hands studiously recording fully translated information in Robin's notebook, with another pair of eyes overseeing and another hand helpfully holding the inkwell.
Robin was deeply absorbed in her work, and it took Usopp a second try to catch her attention. Blinking, she looked up at the new arrivals, and smiled slightly. "Ah...has it been a week already? It seems the expression is right...time does fly."
"What did you find, Robin?" Luffy asked enthusiastically, as he bounded forward to investigate the table. One rubbery hand reached out for the nearest piece of old parchment, and alarm flashed in Robin's eyes. Quick as lightning several arms sprouted from Luffy's chest, wrenching his limb back before he could manage to touch everything.
Luffy looked surprised, and Robin said, "I apologize, captain, but these documents are extremely fragile. Even the slightest touch could destroy them if they are not handled properly. I must ask that you refrain from coming into contact with them."
"Oh," Luffy said, as Robin's hands released him. "Well, okay then, I guess. But what are they?"
Robin smiled, and the expression was warm, like she was truly enjoying herself. "It's history," she said simply. Luffy only blinked at her, expression puzzled, and she added, "This room appears to have once been a vault for the society's holy relics and documents. Much of Asteria's ancient culture was safely stored here."
"Vault?" Nami asked, interest piqued. If they had a vault, then there might be treasure, as well.
"Yes." Several arms sprouted from the back wall against the crystal, and with careful precision peeled open a small, carved crystalline door that had been cleverly disguised and worked into the wall's surface. A small space, approximately two feet square, had been carved into the crystal wall. Nami could see a few scraps of old cloth, some stone statues, and several other stacks of parchment that Robin must have already finished looking at safely stored inside, but nothing that looked particularly valuable. Rats.
"We think these guys knew that this crystal repels those Nightmares," Usopp said helpfully. "They couldn't come inside after us when we closed the Temple doors after all. And it seems pretty indestructible too—none of the crystal parts of the Temple have been destroyed or worn down even though centuries have passed. We figure this safe was carved in here way before even the Nightmares showed up to protect stuff."
Robin nodded in agreement. "Several of the relics in the vault coincide with some of the religious procedures I have since read about in these documents," the archaeologist agreed, as her hands carefully closed the safe once more and vanished. "I suspect this was a place of respectful storage for all of their most holy objects, and the resting place of their written doctrine. Many of the stories we discovered in the other villages' chapels are recorded in full here, as well."
"What about the Nightmares?" Zoro prompted. "Find out where they come into this yet?"
Robin hesitated. "Stories, mostly," she said slowly. "Having witnessed the presence of the Queen herself, I am convinced that she was a very old, and very real, threat to these people long before her arrival in the Temple. Many of their religious procedures speak of protecting the civilians with their own dreams, so that the Queen's children would not steal them away in the night."
Nami frowned. "But no explanation on how she showed up here?"
Robin was silent for a very long time, as if considering how to answer. Then she said, her voice still slow and measured, "I may have come across an answer." The others leaned forward with interest, and she waved one of her natural hands at the pages in front of her, and the plethora of arms that had stopped their work when Robin did. "This document is...unusual. It doesn't seem to fit the pattern that everything else found in the vault does. All of those objects were of cultural significance—holy totems, important relics, stories of the religion and the heroes that defended it. This document appears to be a perfectly ordinary journal, insignificant in the slightest."
Insignificant to the people that had once lived on this island, at least. Nami understood what Robin was getting at. "You think that means it's something important?"
"Perhaps," Robin said. "It has been difficult to translate. The holy documents were treated specially and were well-preserved, even after centuries. This document was not, and its information is hand-written—it is a personal journal, and I doubt it was ever intended for anyone but its owner to view. It is fortunate it was stored in the vault for all these years, or I suspect it would have long since been destroyed."
"You can do it, Robin," Luffy said confidently. "I want to know where that stupid Queen came from, anyway." A flash of a scowl flitted across his face, although it was gone as fast as it came, and Nami knew he still hated the whole lot of the creatures for messing so severely with his dream, and those of his crew mates.
Robin smiled at her captain's confidence in her. "I will do my best, Luffy," she said. "But it will certainly take me a few more hours, at least. I've been working on the translation for several days now. By now I am close to the end, but that doesn't make the procedure any less difficult."
"We'll leave you to that, then," Nami said, and grabbed Luffy by the back of his collar to drag him away from the table, which he was inching closer to curiously again. "C'mon, Luffy, let's have Usopp show us all the other things they found here."
Luffy took to the suggestion immediately, and eagerly darted out of the door, dragging Usopp with him. Zoro and Brook followed at a more leisurely pace, and once again Nami took the opportunity to speak with Robin alone, working up the courage to address the same issue that she'd just spoken to with Zoro.
"It's perfectly fine, Nami-chan," Robin said calmly, before the navigator could even get the first word out.
Nami blinked in surprise. "How do you know—"
"I am aware that you had to touch upon my dream in order to identify it," Robin said simply. "And of course I know the effects of the Dreamshards. They are quite unsettling, but I assure you, I don't blame you in the least for looking at my dream."
"You don't?"
"Not at all," Robin said, turning back to her work. "You are my nakama, after all. I am quite confident my dream is safe in the hands of any of our crew."
It was essentially the same thing Zoro had said—because they were nakama, it was okay for her to have peeked at their dreams, however unintentionally, no matter how intimate that unintentional look felt. Nami felt relieved that both of them were okay with her ultimately prying into their lives, and strangely honored that both of them trusted her so fully with their most valuable possessions.
"Thanks," Nami said. "I promise I'll keep it to myself, though." Like Zoro, she could honor Robin's trust in her, at least. Robin simply nodded, a soft smile on her face, and after a moment Nami turned to catch up with the others and leave her to her work.
She didn't even bother to try and pull Luffy aside. From the moment she touched his dream she knew he would never blame her for seeing it, would be more than happy to share it with her. Perhaps that was unsurprising, considering he had already done it in the past: it was Luffy's determination, and Luffy's enthusiasm, that had ultimately given her the strength to pursue her own dream, after all. If she apologized, he'd probably just laugh at her.
Usopp was chattering animatedly about the various rooms that they had found in the Temple now, and probably embellishing the story considerably if his ten near-death experiences so far were anything to go by. Luffy and Brook were just as enthusiastic with sharing their own adventures around the island, with Nami occasionally interjecting to correct something (and keeping an eye on Zoro so he didn't wander off; the Temple was big enough that it would take them hours to find him again if he did). Usopp took them on a tour around the Temple, pointing out rooms here and there and explaining briefly what Robin had deduced they were for. It seemed the Temple was a positively enormous complex, one that had likely housed hundreds of priests back in its day. Asteria had been a thriving place, once.
Usopp took them to visit Franky as well, on the other side of the Temple. The cyborg greeted them with enthusiastic ows, professing to be 'so glad to see my little bros again!' Nami could have kicked him for it. They chatted with him for a few minutes, but eventually left him to his work, which he insisted was a little too dangerous for most of them to hang about idly. Zoro was press-ganged into helping him due to his monstrous strength, while Usopp, Nami, Brook, and Luffy (the last too bored with the complex building work to be interested) headed back to the main halls of the building.
Almost inevitably, they came to the grand worship hall, where the Queen of the Night had perched on her macabre nest and ordered her children to hunt for her. It seemed all halls led to this enormous room, the center of Asteria's whole culture, whole religion...and, the Straw Hats knew somehow, also its final demise.
"We mostly left it alone," Usopp said, with a soft, hushed voice, as though he were at a funeral. Nami couldn't blame him. It felt almost impolite to do anything else. "We're not really sure what to do with all the...the bones, and the Dreamshards, yet."
Nami stepped into the room first, tentatively, as though expecting the great Queen to leap out of the deepest corners and swallow her whole. Nothing happened, and the others filed into the room after her slowly, looking around. Usopp had spoken the truth—somebody had carefully, and respectfully pushed the bones and Dreamshards aside to carve a small path from one side of the room to the other, but beyond that it remained the same as Nami had seen it last. Afternoon sunlight glittered through the crystal dome above, casting wide rainbows down on the scattered bones below, and every Dreamshard that caught the light flickered like a small, multicolored flame. The Queen's nest of dead dreams and dead people still stood, surrounding the broken remains of the crystal arch protectively, and it was so studded with glinting Dreamshards that it almost burned to look in that direction.
There was so much wealth here. One little Dreamshard alone back on Adamantina Island had been worth almost as much as Zoro's bounty. These specimens were, for the most part, even larger than the ones she had seen back on the island, and there were thousands of them here. If they were to bring them back to Adamantina, the crew would be set for life. They would never lack for funds again.
Tempted, Nami crouched down and plucked one of the larger Dreamshards from the floor. It flickered through a full range of color as she rolled it over her palms and fingers. This one was worth one hundred fifty million beri, easy. Would it really be so bad? It didn't belong to anyone, after all, and it was dead—
But no. No. That was the problem, she realized with a sigh, as she stopped rolling the little gem over in her hands, stared down at it with an expression of disgust on her face. It might be a dead Dreamshard, and it might not belong to one of her friends, but that didn't stop her from knowing what it was. Its owner was likely long dead, but this had once been his or her powerful dream, a collection of images and feelings and memories so powerful, so intimate, that no other person would be able to handle them without burning. Its owner had made the same sorrow-filled scream as her friends when this innocent little shard was ripped from them, and they had been empty until death, their last moments filled with little more than hopelessness, fear, and sadness, as the evil Queen fed upon them.
This shard and its owner had been through enough suffering without Nami to profit off of their horrifying ending, and the same thing was true for every single other Dreamshard that studded the room. If it was hers, and she was long forgotten with her Dreamshard ripped free, all she would want was to finally be put to rest. Shaking her head slightly, she carefully placed the Dreamshard back on the floor and stood up from her crouch, leaving it be.
That was when she realized that Luffy was watching her. She blinked in surprise as she rose from the floor and found Luffy's blank, highly attentive gaze turned on her, just watching, observing. After a moment his eyes flicked to the floor, and the Dreamshard she had replaced, and then back to her. He smiled then, a grin of approval, and nodded quietly at her before turning back to explore the rest of the room. Nami understood. To Luffy, dreams were everything, and never, ever meant to be disrespected—even if the dreamers were dead.
She wondered, briefly, what would have happened if she had insisted on taking some of the Dreamshards to sell. She shook her head after a moment. Whatever the answer was, she didn't want to know. The decision had been made, and wasn't worth thinking about any more.
They poked around the enormous worship room for a good ten minutes, but there wasn't much left that they hadn't already seen during the battle with the Queen. Nami once again supposed that it must have been beautiful in the days when people still lived here, and likely decorated with nicer things than dead dreams and human and animal remains, but it was impossible to really imagine it as a place other than the nest of torment and cruelty.
"Nami-swaaaaaan!" came a delighted trilling from behind her. Nami turned to find Sanji-kun and Chopper standing in the main entranceway of the massive room—the one that faced the enormous double doors of the Temple, which Franky had cleared out days ago. Sanji-kun was hobbling towards her enthusiastically now, picking his way carefully around the bones with his crutches, and looked positively ecstatic. "Nami-swan, I'm so happy to see you after all this time! Are you okay? Those idiots treated you properly, didn't they? Marimo didn't break your equipment, did he? I wish I could have gone with you!"
"It's only been a week, Sanji-kun," she said in exasperation. "You'd think we'd been separated for years, the way you talk. And I'm perfectly fine, thank you very much."
"You found what? Cool!" Came Luffy's voice from across the way. Nami glanced over. He was talking enthusiastically to Chopper, who appeared to be describing something in great detail to his captain, Usopp, and Brook.
"What's that about?" she asked.
"Oh," Sanji-kun said, and seemed to calm himself enough to speak relatively normally. "Me'n Chopper have been poking around the rest of the city, to see if we could find anything else of interest besides this Temple. We figured the Nightmares treated this place with a lot of importance, but they might have missed something significant to humans somewhere else."
"And you found something?" Nami asked, intrigued.
"We're not really sure," Sanji-kun admitted. "We found something that seems a bit like a city hall or some other important building. The architecture seems pretty different from everything else in this city, makes it stand out—kinda the same as this Temple, but this other building isn't made of crystal. We couldn't get inside it though. The whole thing is pretty unstable, and we didn't want to bring it down on our heads."
"Smart move," Nami said, and was thankfully Luffy wasn't with them—he probably would have gone in anyway.
"Thank you, Nami-san!" the cook trilled, pleased with the compliment. "Anyway, we'll have to wait for Robin-chan to identify it and see if it really is important, and Franky will have to stabilize it before we can really explore it further. But it did seem pretty special."
"Maybe there'll be more documents inside," Nami said. "Robin seems to have found a lot of religious stuff here, but nothing about the day-to-day affairs—"
"Luffy."
Everyone looked up, surprised. Robin stood in the doorway, arms clutched almost protectively around her bound notebook, and the expression on her face was one of absolute seriousness. She glanced around at them once, and then fixed her gaze on her captain and said, "Luffy. I finished the translation, and it does indeed have an answer to tell how all of this happened." She waved quietly at the bones and scattered, dead dreams.
Luffy was an idiot of a captain, but Nami gave him credit for one thing: he definitely knew when to be serious, when it counted. "Usopp," he ordered, "Go get Zoro and Franky. Everyone should hear this."
"That would be best," Robin agreed. "Meet us on the Temple steps. I have a feeling this is a story that is best heard in the light." Usopp paled slightly, but darted off to do as told, and the rest of them shuffled carefully through the bones to the outside, every single one of them oddly solemn.
It took ten minutes for Usopp to arrive with Zoro and Franky. The sniper must have told them what was going on, because they, too, looked quite serious when they arrived, and took seats on the stone steps without hesitation. Robin nodded quietly at their arrival, and sat down before the group on a large piece of stone in front of the steps, opening her notebook.
"The papers I was translating belonged to a man named Rezzik Nazuul," she explained. "He was a new initiate into the priesthood centered around the dream mythos here. The documents were his personal journal, one that he started recording from the day he finally entered the priesthood as a novice, up until his death. They explain everything. I could simplify, but...I feel it would be best for everyone to hear the full translation, instead."
No one argued, and after a moment Luffy said, "Okay, Robin. Go ahead and read it to us, then."
Robin nodded, and turning to her notebook, slowly began to read the records of the past out loud.
Fun fact: The priest's name there, Rezzik Nazuul, is a reference to some original characters of mine. The Harvesters in this story are based off one original character named Na'Azul, a living nightmare who comes from a dreamworld, and Na'Azul is the familiar of another character whom 'Rezzik' derives from.
Right, one more chapter after this, guys!
~VelkynKarma