Chapter 17: Spells, books, and deadly poisons.
Summery: I may never know how it truly began, but I do know that I never truly had a choice in the events that led me here. I am in one piece now, and have unwillingly left my own world behind. That is all that matters, and all I need to know.
Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with any legal rights to one piece in any form, I do not own one piece or any part of the merchandising, gaming, manga, anime, characters, or anything of the sort. Please do not sue me as I do not have any money. The only things that I own from this fic are my own original characters.
Note: You can now look at artwork of the story by going to my profile and clicking on them.
Amazingly, I am already 31/53 of the way through the first season, and once it's over, on to the Grandline! :D
Note: Sorry to all of you that tried to review the last chapter, but were unable to. I deleted my prologue, so thought that the last update was the same old chapter 15, when it was really 16.
MonkeyGurl, here's your fix, but remember, you didn't get it from me. -wink-. Lol.
'thoughts'
"Words"
(inner Kaede)
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Well, I would like to say that nothing to surprising happened while we were following Nami, but sadly, that wouldn't be true.
As soon as I had explained where Nami was headed, leaving out a couple details as I didn't thing I had the right to tell them certain things, a huge ass black and white shark appeared out of nowhere and swam off with Yosaku in his mouth, thoroughly scaring the shit out of all of us.
"What the hell?!" I shouted in horror, only to remember a few seconds later that the shark was how Yosaku was able to tell Luffy where we were heading. "Oh, never mind."
"What do you mean never mind?! That thing just carried him off in it's mouth!" He shouted in horror, clearly thinking that I was nuts.
"Nah, she's right, I think the shark's heading for Baratie." Johnny said, not really worried about Yosaku now that he was sure about where the shark was taking him.
"Besides, if Kaede says it's OK, then it's OK." Zoro said, getting ten points added to him in my book for finally trusting my word for once. "Then again, he could just get eaten."
Well, the points were nice while they lasted, good bye points.
It took Usopp several minutes to finally get over his horror at seeing Yosaku getting carried away by a shark.
"By the way," He said once he had finally gotten over, changing the subject to something else that was bothering him. "how come you never told us that Mihawk was your father?"
I had been wandering when one of them was going to mention that.
"Yeah, I mean, your father's one of the strongest men in the world! Most people would want everyone to know something like that!" Johnny said, way to interested in that little fact for me to ignore it.
He was obviously scared that my father might hunt him down and kill him if he ever found out about all the times Johnny had 'accidentally' walked in on me in the bathroom.
"Because I didn't know." I said simply, shrugging my shoulders at him.
"You didn't know that Hawk-eye Mihawk was your father? Sure didn't look like that to me." Zoro said, clearly thinking that I was lying.
"Yeah, you seemed to recognize him alright." Usopp said, just as skeptical as Zoro was.
"Yeah, what gives?" Johnny added, not wanting to be left out of the conversation.
"No, that's not what I meant! I meant that I didn't know he was Hawk-eye Mihawk, I've never heard anyone call him that before, so I never knew they were the same person. He goes by a very different name then that when he's around family." I explained, only half lying this time.
"He goes by a different name when he's at home?" Usopp asked curiously.
"Yep." I said, closing my eyes and laying back so that I could get a bit of sleep before we got to the island.
"So," Zoro said, unwilling to let the conversation about Mihawk go. "What was it you were so angry about when he showed up?"
"Yeah, I wasn't able to hear any of the conversation, you guy's were whispering way to quietly." Usopp said, causing me to smile slightly at his comment.
"Yeah, though it didn't exactly look like you guy's were whispering. At one point I thought you were yelling at him, but for some reason, I couldn't hear it." Johnny said, proving that he was the most observant out of the three.
"Yeah, I would kind of like to know why I wasn't even able to hear it with my ears." Lil asked, a little annoyed at the fact that she had been left out of the loop as well.
"Yeah, that was kind of cool." I said. "My dad used a silence spell to keep everyone from hearing what we were talking about."
"A silencing spell?!" Lil exclaimed, clearly understanding the importance of what I was saying, and some how figuring out that I wasn't lying when I said it.
"Huh? You mean you witches really do spells? Like those things in a spell book?" Usopp asked as Zoro and Johnny simply stared at me, the three of them clearly surprised about that bit of information
"Yeah, like those things in spell boo-" I said, freezing half way through the word 'book' at the realization of what I had just said.
Didn't my dad say that there was probably a spell book in my froggy bag?
"That's right! I almost forgot!" I exclaimed, grabbing my froggy bag and starting to dig through it.
When I wasn't able to find what I was looking for, I promptly dove into it down to my waist, not at all surprised when I fit in it without a problem.
I was, however, very surprised when I saw that I was now in what seemed to be an endless room with thousands of floating objects moving around it.
Some of the objects were every day types of things, like a teapot or a bowl.
Or like the large latter that came flying out of nowhere and hit my in the head.
"Ow!" I said in pain, rubbing at my abused noggin and shoving the later aside as I continued looking at the 'room'.
Now as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, some of the things in the room were normal, but others weren't even close to being normal.
For instant, there was a dancing frog singing 'hello my baby' that went flying by my head, which wasn't normal at all.
"Now if I was a spell book, where would I be?" I asked out loud, wishing that it would come to me instead of making me go after it.
The phrase 'ask and you shell receive' seemed to be the theme of the 'room', because as soon as the thought entered me head, a book came flying out of nowhere and smashed right into my face, causing me to go flying out of the bag.
"Hay, you OK?" Johnny asked, completely ignoring Usopp as he tried to help me up.
"Ug! That hurt!" I said in agony, raising a hand to my head to touch the spot that the book had struck me, only to find that I had a huge bump there now that was the size of my fist.
"I'll say, that thing must have hit you pretty hard, because you came flying out of that bag faster then you can say 'captain Usopp'!" Usopp said, causing me to grown again, though this time it was in annoyance.
"Ug, please stop with the jokes Usopp, I'm already in enough pain." I said, blinking stupidly for a few seconds so that my eyes would stop spinning.
"What is this thing anyway?" Johnny asked, drawing me out of my dazed state as he picked up the book and opened it in an attempt to read it. "Huh? This is just jibberish!" He exclaimed, unable to read the words that were in the book.
"Only to you." I said, finally standing up and dusting my self off, ignoring that fact that there wasn't anything on me anyway as we were on a boat in the middle of the ocean.
"Huh? You mean you can read this stuff?" Usopp asked, looking over Johnny's shoulder and trying to read it himself, only to find that he had never seen writing like it before.
"Yeah, it's probably the writing of her people." Zoro said, not bothering to get up and look at it as he had already learned about my written language when he found the 'Magical mechanics for morons' book back on the merry.
"Huh? You mean she doesn't read plain old Japanese?" Usopp asked, clearly surprised by this information.
"Why did you think she was taking reading lessons from Nami?" Zoro asked, quirking an eyebrow at him.
"Wow, so that makes this the language of witches, doesn't it?" Johnny asked in amazement, causing me to shake my head at him.
It was best to just continue on with my lies, just in case they saved my ass later.
"No, I'm a witch through my father, but a Ctarl-Ctarl through my mother. So I'm half and half, and this is my mothers language." I explained, flipping the book over so that it was right side up, and reading the title out loud. "Black Mage Spells, Level one." I read, wandering if that meant there were other spell books in my bag, and the fact that it said 'Black Mage' wasn't lost on me either.
I mean, I have a chocobo for crying out loud, it's kind of hard to miss the connection.
"Black mage? Does that mean evil magic?" Usopp asked in a worried tone, causing me to use my trusty mallet on his head.
"I do believe that it is referring to offensive combat magic, mister lumpy head." Lil said, sniffing at the book as she did so.
"I don't know if I would call it combat magic, but it I think you're right about the offensive part." I said, flipping open the cover and smiling when I saw that the first page was an index.
"Ok, eeeew!" I said excitedly, happy that I was right about the 'Black Mage' connection, and even happier when I flipped through the pages and found the spell I was looking for.
"Cool, and ice spell." I said happily, causing Usopp and Lil to exchange looks of apprehension, both of them clearly fearing for the worst.
Pessimism, party of two.
"Oh, don't look look at me like that, I know what I'm doing!" I said defensively, ignoring the fact that I had never actually done any magic before.
And here I thought my little black cat would be happy about having a witch for an owner.
"Well, if it's battle magic, then I guess it's better for you to practice it before you actually have to use it in battle." Zoro said, though the fact that he had moved to the other end of the boat told me that he wasn't actually as enthusiastic as he claimed to be.
OK, Pessimism, party of three then.
"Well thanks a lot, at least Johnny trust my abilities." I said in an annoyed tone, only to see that he was the farthest one away from me.
OK, so I was alone in my enthusiasm, but that still wasn't going to stop me.
"Fine, be that way." I said defensively, turning around and facing out into the ocean so that I wouldn't hit any of them with the spell.
"Does that mean you're still going to do the spell?" Lil asked fearfully, only to be ignored as I simply read the directions for the spell.
"Ok, so, all I do is concentrate on something really cold, then fling my hand out, and shout the name of the spell." I said, reading it over one more time to make sure I hadn't missed anything. "Ok, that sounds simple enough."
Taking a deep breath, I closed the book and set it down so that it wouldn't get in my way when I did the spell.
"Alright, here we go." I said, balling up my right hand and holding it against my chest as I concentrated on the coldest thing I could think of.
Concentrating as hard as I could on laying on a sheet of ice naked, I flung my hand out and shouted the spell.
"Blizzaga!" I shouted, still thinking of the bed of ice, only to me met by silence a second later.
Nothing happened.
Nothing.
Notta.
Zilch.
Not even a small breeze.
"Um? Was something supposed to happen?" Usopp asked, wandering if the spell took a minute, or if it was simply something he couldn't see.
"Some how, I don't think that's what it's supposed to do." Lil said, staring at me blankly for a few seconds, though I was unaware of this fact as I was still staring stupidly out over the ocean with my arm stretched out and my hand opened wide.
'It didn't work.' I thought stupidly, still unable to believe that the spell hadn't done a thing.
Dropping my hand down to my side, I turned my head and stared at the book blankly for several minutes, all the while aware that the others were still staring at me.
When I was finally able to move again, I bent down and opened the book, and reread the directions for the spell several times, trying to figure out what I had done wrong.
"Ok, maybe I just need to say it with a little more umf." I said aloud, standing up again and turning back to the ocean.
"Blizzaga!" I commanded, only to be met by nothing again. "ok, BLIZZAGA!"
Still nothing. It was as if I was simply unable to do the spell, and that just sucked.
"What the hell?!" I demanded, plopping down on the floor of the small boat and opening the book up again.
I was going to figure out what the hell was wrong with the fucking spell if it was the last thing I did.
After several minutes of rereading the spell, and checking over the page as hard as I could, Lil finally spoke up.
"Um? Kaede? You did read the title of the spell's page, right?" she asked, looking over it her self and realizing what was wrong.
"Of course I did, I've read every inch of this damn page, and haven't found a thing!" I said in frustration, wishing I could figure out what was wrong and completely unaware of the fact that my cat seemed to be smarter then I was.
Then again, a rock was probably smarter then I was at the moment, because even though I had read the entire page several times through, I had failed to actually comprehend the heading of the page.
"So, you know it says that this is 'the third ice spell for the first level of black mage magic', meaning that there are two ice spells that come before it." She said, causing me to look down at her for a few minutes.
"Yes, I know there are two ice spells that come before it, Blizzard, and Blizzara." I said in an annoyed tone, only for her to roll her eyes at me.
"Yeah, well did it ever occur to you that you might have to master those spells before you get to do this one?" she asked, though the look of annoyance on her little kitty face said that she already knew the answer.
It hadn't.
I simply stared at her stupidly for another few minutes before finally looking back down at the book and turning the pages back a few times until I came across the 'Blizzard' spell.
"Ok, well if that's the case, then I should be able to do this one, right?" I asked, though I already knew the answer.
If her theory was correct, then I should at least be able to do the blizzard spell, though I did remember that my father had said that the spells would be extremely weak the first few times I used them.
"Ok," I said, standing up again and doing the same thing I had done with the 'Blizzaga spell', only this time planning on saying 'Blizzard' instead of 'Blizzaga'.
Concentrating as hard as I could, I flung my hand out once again and shouted the name of the spell.
"Blizzard!" I commanded, still concentrating on the coldest thing I could think of.
A single, half inch round ball of ice fell from my hand onto the floor of the ship, causing everyone to face plant on the floor of the boat, including me.
"That was the big spell?" Usopp exclaimed in surprise. "I thought you said it was offensive magic? The only thing that attack would take out is a very tiny ant!"
"Yeah, what gives? I thought it was magic you were supposed to be able to use in a fight?" Zoro said, demanding to know how that spell could ever be used in a fight.
"I'm not even sure if that spell's strong enough to make a good glass of ice water." Johnny said, scratching at his chin in disappointment.
While the three guys were complaining, Lil on the other hand was rolling around on the floor of the boat, laughing her fuzzy little ass off.
"Ahahaha! Oh, that's good! Hahaha! A single ice cube! Ahahahaha!" she laughed, holding her stomach as she continued rolling around on the floor laughing, clearly asking to get the shit bopped out of her by my mallet.
She might be a cute cat, but that wouldn't stop me from killing her, it really wouldn't.
"Ug, so he wasn't exaggerating when he said the spells would start off really tiny and weak." I said, hanging my head in despair.
There went my plan of turning Arlong into a shark man Popsicle.
"Huh? What do you mean?" Usopp asked, wanting me to explain what I was talking about so that they all knew what I was saying.
"My dad said that the spells would start off small until I got better at them, and that a fire spell would only be a small spark until I got better at it." I explained, sitting down onto the boat and starting to practice the spell over and over again.
The idea of creating a huge wall of ice to protect my self, or freezing the ocean behind the Merry so that people couldn't follow the ship was extremely nice, and I wasn't about to stop trying until I could do that.
"Huh, so I guess that means that your spells wont be very good in battle for a while then." Usopp concluded once he had digested the information.
"Hey, does that mean you've never done a spell before?" Zoro asked, wandering how I could be a witch without having ever done a spell before.
"Hey, you're born a witch, you don't choose to be one, but the spells aren't exactly necessary and I never had a spell book before to learn them from." I said, still doing the spell over and over again, slightly annoyed by the fact that I had already done it twenty times and the ice balls weren't getting any bigger then the first one.
In fact, I was pretty sure that they were actually getting smaller.
"Does that mean you're father gave you the spell book when you were talking to him?" Johnny asked, only to shake his head and answer his own question less then a second later. "Never mind, I didn't see him hand you anything when you two were talking."
"Yeah, I didn't see him hand you anything either, but if you didn't have the spell book before that, then where did it come from?" Usopp said in a confused tone.
"I'm betting it's been in your bag this whole time, and you never knew about it. Am I right?" Zoro asked, once again proving that he was a lot more observant about these kinds of things then most people gave him credit for.
"Yep, my aunt gave me this bag just the day before I met Luffy, and there are so many things in it that it's impossible to know what I'll find the next time I look in them, so I never knew about the book in the first place." I explained, causing Johnny and Usopp to tilt there heads at me, clearly wanting me to explain how a bag this small could hold so much in it.
"What do you mean it's impossible to know what you'll find in it when you look in it?" Usopp asked, causing me to remember for the first time that he still didn't know much about my magic bag.
While he had seen me use it before, I never did actually explain it to him, all I said was that it was a magic bag.
"Yeah, and come to thing of it, your entire upper half of your body fit into it, and it didn't even look like anything was in it." Johnny said, making me wander how he could have possibly just now realized that.
"Yeah, I guess I never really explained that." I said, grabbing my froggy bag and holding it out in front of them so that they could look inside.
"Allow me to explain." Lil said, cutting in before I could even start my explanation, huge teacher like glasses appeared on her face. "Now, Kaede's magic bag, as well as my ears, are able to hold an impossible amount of things in them without ever filling them up, though my ears are not as limitless as the froggy bag.
"In side these three things, my left ear, my right ear, and the froggy bag, are spaces that exist outside of this world that allow us to store whatever we want in them. Now, while this is true for all three spaces, there is a big difference when it comes to Kaede's froggy bag.
"My ears only hold what I put into them, and half a semi limited space, but the froggy bag is able to hold anything and everything that is put into it, and it also has things inside it that no one put in it. Meaning that strange things can sometimes appear out of it without anyone having to have put it in there to begin with." She finished by pulling one of my mallets out of her ear. "See."
'Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew. A thousand times ew. That is one of the ickiest things that I've ever seen, and I can't believe she's been keeping my huge ass impact mallet in her hear this entire time. Ew!' I thought in horror, doing my hibijibi dance and wishing I could go wash my self.
That was just grouse.
"ew!" I finally said in disgust, shivering violently at the fact that I was going to have to use that thing again sometime in the future, a fact that was already traumatizing me, and it hadn't even happened yet.
"Grouse! Now that was just wrong!" Usopp said, clearly thinking the same thing that I was.
"Wow! That was grouse!" Johnny said, though he didn't exactly sound like he thought that was a bad thing.
OK, he just dropped a few notches in my book for that.
"Huh, so that's how it works." Zoro said, completely unfazed by the fact that my cat had just pulled my exploding mallet out of her ear.
'Wait a sec, doesn't that thing explode whenever someone touches it? And isn't it to heavy for her?' I thought, staring at her for a few seconds as I continued trying to figure out how that worked.
"Hey, how are you able to touch that, or even lift it for that matter?" I finally asked, shivering slightly when she put it back into her ear.
"Huh? I thought we already had that conversation back when we met Buggy, me and Choco can both touch it without it blowing up on us, probably because you're our pet." Lil said, once again proving that she had the whole pet thing backwards.
She had always been like that, acting as though I was her pet and not the other way around.
Choosing to ignore her mistake, I instead turned my attention back to my other question.
"Oh yeah, but how can you lift it?" I asked, wandering why she was able to lift something like that.
"Well, it isn't exactly heavy right now, I think all the energy in it got dispelled when you took out all those men back in Syrup Village." She said, pulling it out again and holding it out to me.
Trying desperately to ignore my ick factor, I held out my hand and took it, trying to ignore the fact that it probably had her ear wax on it.
"Huh, you're right." I said, feeling it's weight and acknowledging the fact that it was now extremely light, though it should still have been to heavy for her as it was still a good seven or eight pounds, which made it about as heavy as she was. "But it's still just as heavy as you." I added, handing it back to her and letting her put it back into her ear as I washed my hands off in the ocean.
Grouse, grouse, grouse, grouse.
In answer to my question, she simply shrugged her shoulders, indicating that she didn't know either.
"Well, it doesn't really matter now anyway." Zoro said, finally sitting back and closing his eyes, fully intent on snoozing until we caught up to Nami.
"Yeah, I guess." I said, knowing that he was right.
After all, Lil was a talking cat with magical ears, so her being able to carry her own weight wasn't exactly the strangest thing about her.
"Yeah, what we should really be worrying about is the fishmen." Johnny said, causing Usopp to nod his head in agreement, and causing Lil's mouth to start watering at the mention of the word 'fish'.
One tracked mind, even as a magical cat she had a one track mind.
"Fishies." I said as she slid to the floor, her eyes glazing over slightly and drool poring out of her mouth as she slipped off into lala land.
"Don't worry, if they were really going to be a problem, I would have said so already." I said, waving him off as I turned back to my spell practicing. "After all, I am a psychic."
Johnny and Usopp didn't seem to except this answer as they instead started telling me, Lil, and Zoro that we were all three crazy for even considering going up against a bunch of fishmen.
But luckily, we were able to ignore them.
It took us a good four hours of moving as fast as the little boat was able to go to finally be able to see the island off in the distance, and by that time I had already started creating little bouts of wind and ice, though it was still no where near strong enough to be used in a fight.
In fact, Lil had actually forced me to use it on her at one point because was so weak that it felt more like a massage then an attack.
Practicing the spell over and over again had also had a downside that came with it.
It seemed to be making me tired.
It was like swinging a mallet over and over again. The more you did it, the more tired you were going to get, and your arms were going to start hurting after a while to.
"Hey, I think that's Arlong park up ahead!" Johnny called, causing me to look up as I continued rubbing at my sore arm.
"Arlong park, huh?" Usopp said fearfully, glopping hard before continuing to talk. "So this is the home of Arlong the fishman pirate from the Grandline. I hope Nami's really here..."
"Hm, I would have thought that you would be hoping that she wasn't really here so that we wouldn't have to go in." I said, causing his head to snap toward me so fast that I actually heard his neck pop.
"You mean we don't have to go in there if she isn't here?" Usopp asked, hoping that I was about to tell him that she wasn't in there.
"Yep." I said, not giving him what he was asking for.
"Well? Is she in there?" Johnny asked, just as scared as Usopp was at the thought of having to go into Arlong's hideout.
"Yep." Lil said simply, answering for me and causing Usopp and Johnny to start crying in disappointment and horror.
They really didn't want to go in to that park.
Ignoring their crying, Zoro stood up and pulled out his one remaining sword.
"Let's attack." He said ominously, causing Usopp and Johnny to nearly jump out of their skins.
"Are you crazy?!" Johnny shouted, thinking that my father had done a bit more damage then we were able to see.
"What?! Attack?! You idiot! We know absolutely nothing about this place!" Usopp shouted in horror and anger, thinking that Zoro was trying to get him killed.
"Yeah! These guys are the fishmen!" Johnny shouted, trying to reason with the idiot swordsman, and I couldn't help but agree.
We couldn't exactly take them on without Luffy, that would be stupid.
"I say we go after the fishmen!" Lil said, clearly thinking more about her stomach and less about what was actually going on.
"While the two of you are busy blabbing and wimping out, I'm busy placing my thoughts on the battle we're about to face." He said, standing up at the front of the ship and readying himself for battle. "Luffy told me to bring her back, and I'll do just that!"
"Don't even think about it." I said as I felt the two of them sneaking up behind me and Zoro.
When they lunged forward for us with two of Usopp's hammers in both of their hands, I simply jumped up into the air and out of the way, causing Johnny to almost fall overboard while Usopp successfully knocked Zoro out.
"I'm a psychic, remember?" I said, smiling down at them from my position on the top of the mast, happy that my kitty abilities had causing me to land on it perfectly.
The looks on their faces were priceless. If I had a camera, I would have taken pictures of them to memorialize those looks forever.
"Don't worry, I'm not going to untie him, that would be stupid." I said, causing them both to exhale deeply as I jumped down and steered the ship so that we were no longer heading toward Arlong park, but were instead heading to the right of it and around to the other side of the island.
"Well that's good, for a minute there I thought we were goners." Usopp whispered to Johnny, only for both of them to hit the floor of the boat when I hit them both over the head with my mallet, paying them back for trying to hit me with one of Usopp's hammers.
"Next time, don't try to knock out a psychic and you wont get hurt, understood?" I asked, bending down and looking from one to the other as they both started to sit back up and rub at there now lumpy heads.
"Yes ma'am." They both said, hanging their heads like children that had just been scolded by their mother.
Nodding my head at them, I picked up Lil and the spell book and jumped off of the ship and onto the side of the rocky cliff, causing the Johnny and Usopp to yell after me.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?!" They both shouted in unison, demanding to know why I was leaving the ship.
"I'm going to go explore the island on my own, I can sneak around on my own a lot better then the two of you can, so I'm going to go gather some information for us." I lied as I jumped up the short cliff and onto the top of it. "oh, and if you keep following in this direction, you'll reach a village, but I'm going to take the map so that I can find my way around on my own."
The moment the words left my mouth, Johnny started searching his pockets, clearly recognizing the map as his.
Nami would be so proud.
"Hey! She stole my map!" Johnny exclaimed, causing Usopp to sweat drop.
"Well, she is the other thief on our crew besides Nami, so I guess we should have expected it." Usopp said, shaking his head in exasperation.
"I'm not stealing it, I plan to give it back as soon as possible, it's just that you two aren't really going to need it." I said, turning around and walking off into the forest.
"Hey! What do you mean we aren't going to need it?!" Usopp shrieked in horror, knowing that whatever I had meant by that probably wasn't going to be good for his health.
Ignoring his and Johnny's shouts, I unrolled the map and continued walking planning on heading over to the nearest town first.
On an island this small, it was amazing that it had more then one town on it.
"Let's see," I said, looking at it and trying to find the nearest town. "The closest village is... Pomoly?". (Please read A/N 1)
I couldn't remember ever even hearing about a town called Pomoly in the anime before, and that was saying something because I had always watched and re-watched every episode when I was back home.
So it was kind of a surprise to find that the town was the closest one Arlong park, apart from a small town called Mafida that was right next to the park, which probably meant that that town had been abandoned almost as soon as Arlong showed up. (Please read A/N 2)
"Well, I guess well head there first." I said, wandering if Pomoly was big or not as I started walking and let Lil act as navigator, which just meant that she was to warn me if I was about to trip over or run into something.
It took me about fifteen minutes to finally reach Pomoly, which was a testament to how small the island was.
Seriously, the way it looked on the map, it would take you about an hour or two to go to all the towns one the island and still have time to get back to your ship if you ran the whole time.
Sheesh, that's small.
"I'm surprised you didn't get us killed back there, and it was only a tree root!" Lil said, praying against all odds that we wouldn't have to walk through the forest again as it seemed to be a death trap for me.
"Oh, come on! I only tripped six times." I said defensively, ignoring the fact that most people wouldn't have even tripped once.
"Yeah, and each time I nearly went flying into a TREE!" Lil said angrily, wishing I would learn to watch where I was going.
"Oh, it was so not that bad!" I said, waving her off as I continued walking, heading for the town now that we were out of the forest. "And besides, we're out of the forest now, so there isn't much for me to- umf!"
It was as if good was playing some kind of sick joke. The moment I had been about to say 'trip', I ended up acting the action out as I promptly tripped over a large hard object.
"Great, now my fur is all covered in dirt." Lil said angrily, once again dusting her self off with her paws before jumping back onto my shoulder as I stood up. "What did you hit this time?"
"I don't know." I said, looking around for whatever it was that I had tripped over, pausing when I realized that it was a severally bruised kid.
'OK, Arlong is officially on my shit list.' I thought angrily, bending over and rolling the kid onto his side, praying that he was still alive.
With all the bruises and all the blood, I was amazed to find that he was. It looked like he had just been thrown into the middle of a stampede, then left to die.
And he probably was.
"Hey kid, kid!" I called, shaking him slightly in and attempt to wake him up.
He wouldn't wake up.
"Kid, come on, wake up now, oh please don't do this!" I said, hoping that I hadn't found the kid, only for him to die on me.
If that happened, then Arlong wouldn't even have to worry about Luffy, I would kill the saw nosed bastard my self.
"I think we need to get him to a hospital, and I think we should get him there now!" Lil said, just as worried as I was.
"Right." I said, picking the small child up and looking around for a hospital, only to realize for the first time that the town was completely destroyed.
'Arlong...' I thought in horror, knowing that he was the one that was responsible for this.
"Lil, where's the closest town?" I asked, hoping we could get there in time.
"Um, Raia and Lech are the closest ones to us, unless you want to try mafida." Lil said, already knowing my answer to that. (Please read A/N 2)
I wasn't going to even bother trying to find a doctor in mafida, I already knew it had to be completely abandoned, either that or it was a fishman town, and that wasn't exactly any better.
"Ok, which way?" I asked, holding the child firmly as I waited for Lil's directions.
"Just head left, but I think it's going to take another fifteen minutes if you walk there, judging by how long it took us to get here." Lil said, knowing what she was asking, and for the first time not really caring.
A child's life was way more important then her comfort, and she knew that.
"Right, read?" I asked, allowing her to dive into my backpack, which had become a permanent feature of my wardrobe.
"No, but does it really matter?" She asked from the safety of my backpack.
"Good point." I said simply before I started running, and then jumping over and over again.
It was the fastest way for me to travel, and it would get us to Lech or Raia in no time at all. The only down side of it was that it had a tendency to make Lil sick.
Luckily, her worry seemed to win out over her sick stomach.
By the time we got to Lech, I ended of having to turn and head south as Lech was almost completely destroyed and only had a few people wandering around, and none of them were doctors.
"Great." I said angrily, already heading to the south exit of the town, wandering how long it was going to take me to get to Raia, only to find that I could see it just off into the distance before I had even left Lech.
"Well, I guess that means I'll only have to deal with the hoping for a few seconds this time." Lil said, jumping back into my backpack as I prepared to start jumping again.
This time I managed to get to the town in less then a minute, and was happy to see that it was relatively untouched, though there were a huge number of somber looking faces, and most of them had cuts and scratches all over them.
"The must be the survivor of Pomoly..." I realized, slowly walking through the town and searching for a hospital.
Lucky for me, god seemed to be in a giving mood.
"Kevin!" A voice shouted from somewhere to my left.
Looking over my shoulder, I saw a rather squat looking woman running toward me, her eyes locked on the small figure in my arms.
It was his mother.
"Kevin!" She shouted again as she finally reached us. "Oh Kevin! Where did you find him?" She asked me, taking her son into her arms and crying over him.
"In Pomoly, he was laying in the middle of the street, and I can't get him to wake up." I said, almost instantly regretting my last words as her eyes widened in horror.
"What?! Kevin! Kevin! Wake up! Kevin!" She shouted franticly, trying to wake her son up as tears started to slide down his face.
"Lara! Lara!" A man shouted, hearing the woman's shouts and coming over to see what was wrong. "Lara, what's- Kevin!"
Yep, definitely her husband, either that or some other family member.
"This young lady found him in Pomoly, I told you he was still there! Why wouldn't you listen to me?! I told you he hadn't gotten away!" She cried, still clutching her unmoving son to her chest.
"I'm sorry, I thought he got away! He's so much faster then the rest of us!" He said, not yet realizing that we were unable to wake him.
She simply cried in her husbands arms for a few minutes, unable to say anything else, though she knew she had to. She had to tell him, and she had to find her son a doctor.
"He wont wake up." She finally cried, sinking to her knees as she said it.
"What?!" Her husband exclaimed, unable to believe what she had just said.
"It's true, we need to find him a doctor as soon as possible, the longer we wait, the worse of he's going to be." I said so that the mother wouldn't have to say it.
She was already in enough pain, if she actually said it out loud, it might just make things worse.
"Right! Doctor Tomson's over this way." I said, jumping to his feet and helping his wife to hers, taking his son into his arms so that he could get his son to Dr Tomson faster.
When we got Kevin to the doctor, who turned out to be a wizened old man that hadn't been in the anime, it took him all of half an hour to finally tell us that Kevin had been poisoned.
"Poisoned? By what?" I asked, realizing that me and Lil were the only once that didn't know the answer to that.
"By Kongo, the Lion fishmen on Arlong's crew." the doctor said, confusing me slightly, though I didn't allow that to show.
Who the fuck was Kongo?
"Which means he probably doesn't have long, a week at most, but no longer." the doctor said, causing me to blink at him stupidly.
"Um? Come again? Can't you give him an anti-venom or something?" I asked, trying to understand how he could just give up like that, but failing miserably.
Weren't doctors supposed to fight for their patients? Weren't they supposed to care? Weren't they supposed to do everything that they could to help?
"Unfortunately, we can't. We don't have the anti-venom needed to treat it, and the only way to make some, is to get a few of Kongo's poisonous spurs. " The doctor explained, causing me to stare at him for a few seconds.
"can't you just use the spurs you pulled out of the kids back?" I asked, remembering the six inch needle like things he had plucked from the kids skin.
"I could, if they still had venom in them, but sadly, all the venom that was in them is now running through the boy's body." He said, causing the mother to bury her face in her hands, unable to to do anything but cry now that she was being told that her son was going to die.
Fuck Arlong, the son of a bitch that poisoned the kid was going to get fried, and I was going to have to learn a completely different spell then the one I was already working on to do it.
All living things are hurt when struck by lightning, and a fishman was about to find out just painful it was when you pissed off a witch.
"Can you keep him alive as long as possible?" I asked, causing the doctor to look at me as though I was crazy.
"What are you planning to do?! You can't go and fight him!" He said, already knowing what I was planning.
"You're right, I can't go and fight him, but I know that all sharpshooters need to practice their aim, and that means that fish-boy is going to have to spit out some spurs sometime, and when he does, I plan to bring them to you." I lied, fully planning on beating the shit out of
The doctor didn't seem to believe me, but I didn't give him a chance to try to change my mind as I instantly turned around and left his clinic, heading off to start practicing a new spell.
Anyone for extra crispy, or do you want original recipe?
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A/N 1: in the anime, Johnny has a map of the island that shows 12 towns, 20 if you look really hard, and Pomoly is one of the 3 towns between Cocoyashi village and Arlong park, and it is also one of the only towns I could actually read. (and I think each town only has around 70 -100 people, so it's not really that big of a deal)
A/N 2: I couldn't read the name of these towns, so I made them up while trying to get as close to the right names as I could manage, but they are on the map that Johnny showed Usopp in episode 31.
I still haven't decided on the pairing and I'm still waiting for more people to make suggestions for it before I put up the new poll, so you don't have to worry about it just yet.
Question: Should I give Kaede a bounty at the end of the Arlong ark like Luffy?
Also: Should I change the summery? And if so, do you have any idea's of what it should say?
Oh! And PLEASE REVIEW! PLEASE? I BEG YOU!
read and review, ------------ (and check my profile for polls, there's always one up,)