The trip across the deck is not without incident, though more with just-barely averted incidents than actual incidents. Usopp spends the walk babbling things to keep Luffy on task and pushing him down as possibly sea stone bullets whiz just overhead, Luffy keeps spouting proudly that he's immune to bullets and that Usopp doesn't need to bother. Usopp is a bit busy to explain so he just keeps on the track of leading his wayward captain across the deck.
And then he loses him.
It's a classic Luffy move, his dodge doubling as an attack, ducking low beneath an oncoming sword blade he uses the momentum to lunge forward into his attacker, his haki clad attacker who immediately sends Luffy hurtling backwards into the fray.
"Noooo!" Usopp screeches, clapping his hands to the side of his face. "Luffy, you're gonna diiiiiie" and then he dives back in himself, wading anxiously through marines in search of the bubbly straw hatted man who is so colorful and yet always manages to vanish into a crowd like this. "Luffy!" He calls, but his voice is swallowed and outdone by all the voices yelling with him, one in particular.
"ZOOOOORROOOOOO." Previously Usopp hadn't thought his Captain could sound that desperate, over the last two days he's been proven very wrong.
Across the deck a number of marines have converged upon the green haired swordsman, trapping him beneath a web of swords and white uniformed bodies. Luffy should know that a pile up is not nearly enough to put Zoro in any semblance of danger, but apparently he doesn't.
~4~
That blade. That horrible black blade that had done nothing but bring Zoro shame is sweeping forward, Luffy can see it in slow motion despite the fact that Johnny and Yosaku who are next to him probably can't see it at all for all of its speed.
Still, Luffy sees, watches, horror stricken as it bites smoothly into Zoro's chest, cleaves through flesh and puts a tear in skin, a long smooth rip, like a popped seam. There isn't supposed to be seams in the human body. If Zoro survives this then there will be a seam where there is now a rip.
Time lapses, Zoro's image overlays with someone else, someone similar, Luffy feels his cry leave his mouth before he can shut it away. That's enough watching, his swordsman is dying, his crew mate needs him.
He springs forward, dodging a suddenly present flock of marines and pushing off some weird guy's head. He flies over top of someone with Usopp's nose, a girl with hair that looks like Nami, but he only has eyes for where he'd last seen the guy with three swords and green hair. Zoro.
He tears into them from above, punching and kicking and biting as best as he can, invulnerable as the marines are attacked from beneath as well. Zoro pulls himself out first, throwing marines off in a massive outward swing, they fall off him in batches, and soon enough Luffy falls in, still kicking his best to get to Zoro.
"What the- Luffy!"
"Zoro!" He cries, dropping to his feet and swinging his leg out to trip all the surrounding marines off their feet. He wraps his arms around Zoro's midsection, it is Zoro, for sure, he decides, even if he is a little bigger and taller and there is this big scar across his chest, he feels the same, he smells the same, he sounds like Zoro should. He glances up at Zoro's face but Zoro isn't focusing on him, instead concentrating on pulling the seemingly easy motions from his blades, slicing away the enemies as they approach. "Zoro… I'm really glad you're okay…" he sniffles and then swipes a hand across his face, pushing the tears away as he offers him a bouncy grin.
"Why wouldn't I be okay, Captain?"
"'Cause of Mihawk," Luffy answers quietly, Zoro stiffens beneath him. "Zoro, where'd everything go? It was really weird. One second you're fighting Mihawk but now all these marines are around."
"A lot of stuff happened."
"I didn't see any of it."
"Alright, Luffy." Zoro shrugs the boy off his shoulder and Luffy catches his footing on what he realizes are slippery deck boards. "There's been some stuff going on that I'm gonna explain, me and Usopp and Nami and the curly cook…"
"Sanji?" Luffy asks, slightly excited, peering over the closest marines to look for the blond man.
"Yeah, him, get back here." Zoro wraps a hand around Luffy's arm and pulls him closer again. "Darn it, why do I have to keep doing this?"
"Zoro?"
"Ok, we're all gonna explain it to you if you can get the two of us to that big yellow and red ship with our jolly roger on the sail everything is going to start making a lot more sense, okay?"
"Mmm, with my rocket?" Luffy looks slightly confused, but not a bit hesitant, just questioning, because Zoro has never (even in the time that Luffy doesn't remember knowing him) enjoyed nor asked for Luffy's rocket (except that one time in Navarone, but he hadn't asked for a rocket so much as for Luffy to get everyone aboard).
Zoro cringes and grits his teeth.
"Yes." He sighs and Luffy can't stop the involuntary grin.
"Okay!" Luffy wraps an arm around Zoro's waist, and in turn Zoro clears a path through the white uniforms with a long swipe of his blade, and Luffy picks the Sunny out immediately. "Oh, there it is!" He chirps and throws his free arm forward, winding it around the railing of the Sunny and pulling the both of them towards it, the few marines remaining being knocked casually to the side like bowling pins making way for the frightening brightly colored ball barreling down the lane.
The familiar twang of Luffy's arms snapping back into their correct shape sounds next to Zoro's ear and he sets his feet down on a comforting grassy deck, straightening as Luffy releases him, pushing himself off the ground that Luffy had 'accidently' plummeted them to. He was too used to uneven landings to be at much of a stall.
"This is a really cool ship!" Luffy is bouncing around, looking at everything and laughing loudly in a way that Zoro now recognizes as his favorite way of hiding relief.
"It is," He grunts and hauls himself up the stairs, towards the helm so he can set up for a Coup de Burst. He's not willing to wait a second longer than is absolutely necessary.
"Zoro-san!" Brook calls cheerfully, leaning out of the observation room. "Are we getting ready to leave? Where is Luffy-san?"
"Is that a skeleton?" Zoro ignores them as Brook handles introductions and happily exclaims that Luffy looks much better than before and Luffy asks in a rushed tone if Brook poops.
"Shoot, which way did Nami say we were gonna sail once we were all aboard?" He calls and Brook scolds him for trying to decipher directions while Luffy bounces to the railing and peers over the space between the marine ship and Sunny.
Unfortunately he's not the only one looking.
"Hey, who's tha- Whoa!" At first it's only two and Zoro thinks Luffy can probably do fine on his own anyway, but then it's six and then ten and frankly, where there's one the rest tend to swarm, so it's only a few seconds before there's a mass exodus of white uniformed ants leaping the gap between the boats and start swinging swords and gun barrels.
Zoro curses and forgets about the direction someone is supposed to set the Sunny facing.
~4~
Luffy moves lithely, ducking and weaving because he found out pretty quickly that his punch isn't enough to floor them, which disappoints him, a lot, actually. He laughs in their faces and cracks jokes and attacks when he can but he can tell he's outmatched, which is a problem 'cause they're just marines, and if he can't handle them then what the heck is happening to his crew?
Zoro was up there a second ago, but now the space behind the helm is empty and the skeleton isn't hanging out of the window anymore. So maybe they're fighting too, Zoro was acting weird, but not un-Zoro-ish, it was confusing. He hopes it wasn't gonna make his head hurt anymore, that Zoro could explain it well. Or maybe he should just call it a mystery and be done with it. Maybe, but this seems kind of important.
At one point or another there are more people, not ants bleached of personality but colorful people who swing in and out of the fight around him and give him hopeful looks and yell funny things.
"Get off my SUPER ship!" A big clunky one says, swinging metal red arms that are the widths of barrels, Luffy has to stop and breathe for a second after he sees him, catch his breath as the shock of something so cool washes over him.
"HiYA!" A fuzzy thing yells as he jumps in and pummels a marine bearing down on Luffy's back. "Luffy! Are you alright? How do you feel? Are you bleeding?" He is, from a small cut from a sword on the back of his calf. It stings, but he's had way worse. "You look good, are you good?"
"I'm good!" He says breathlessly, because he hasn't stopped moving for a long while and they're still surrounded. "You're cool, what are you?" The fuzzy thing looks at him, a little sad and chops at another oncoming opponent.
"Don't worry about it. Don't fall off, okay?"
He agrees, kinda confused, but the fuzzy thing is gone anyway, brown and pink disappearing into the white.
He smells flowers and all the closest marines turn into spiders that choke themselves. He blinks as the row of marines behind the one just felled stares back at him, equally surprised. "Excuse me for intruding on your fight, Captain." He turns and stares blankly at the woman standing there with her arms crossed.
"Who are you?" He asks, cause the marines are already preoccupied with another set of spider arms. She smiles and he kinda wants to punch her cause she's getting in the way (though she did apologize), but she seems nice anyway, so he probably shouldn't.
"My name is Nico Robin," She introduces herself and he nods like that changes things. A marine rises from the deck and raises his sword behind her, but before he or she can do anything about it, there's a black shoe twisting it's heel into the marine's face and a long leg attached to it.
"Crappy cadet," the man kicks the body out of the way as he speaks, "You thought you could attack the most beautiful Robin~chan?" He turns and kneels before Robin, spreading his arms like he expects a hug. "You are safe now, my beloved!"
"Sanji?" Luffy's eyes bug out of his head as he realizes he knows the man. The blond offers him a apathetic glance, then sniffs.
"You look better,"
"Better than what?" He snaps, "I thought you had to stay with the old man? What about that Don Krieg jerk?" He grounds his fist into his palm. "I was gonna take care of him, but… Hey, why's your face backwards?"
"My face isn't backwards!" He yells and makes an angry face, which makes Luffy laugh before he points to his own eyebrow.
"But your eyebrow is supposed to go up!" He pulls his rubber skin into the right shape. "And your's goes down! Plus your hair is on the wrong side!"
"I can change how I do my hair, crap captain!" Luffy laughs again but then stops to think for a second about what he'd said, Robin is wiping out marines as they approach so he's taking advantage of the seconds to breathe.
"Sanji-bro! Roll the sail up!" A voice calls, it sounds like the big clunky one from before, though he looks even cooler now, standing up there by the helm, he's making the ship lurch as he spins it.
"Why should I?" Sanji argues, turning back to Robin as he speaks. "I'm protecting Robin~cha-"
"Robin! Heeeeelp!"
"If you'll excuse me, Sanji." She smiles and he melts as she jumps out of the way of an oncoming marine and steps over him, moving through the fight like she's been living on terrain that moves her whole life.
"Anything you need! My radian-"
"Sanji! The sails!" The clunky one barks.
"I'm going!" He yells "Keep your speedo on, you perv!"
"Aw, super thanks bro!"
"Shut up!"
Luffy is suddenly lost, both Robin and Sanji are gone, he thinks he heard Usopp somewhere in there, and Sanji had called him Captain. He's getting the distinct feeling that he's missing something, but he feels that way a lot, and it usually doesn't matter, so he brushes it aside in favor of punching the next marine who runs at him in the face, he's happy 'cause it looks like it hurts.
The fight goes on like this, he makes his way upward, there's more color by the helm, more likeliness of running into one of the fun people he had seen floating around, one of his nakama, though he kind of misses the grass. Apparently only the lower deck has grass. It's going well, more or less, until a shriek cuts through the chaos. There have been a lot of shrieks, the difference is Luffy knows this one.
He spins around and searches, new marines have flooded in to replace those who've fallen and Luffy growls as a pressure he recognizes as instinctual urgency presses against the inside of his skull.
A flash of orange and he ducks toward it, underneath a marine's raised arm. She's on her knees, clutching her shoulder, a wicked glare in her eye as she stares down a sneering marine with a sword in his hand. Luffy yells, running at him, keen on defending his crew mate, cause Nami may look different, and she may have just stolen Merry, but she's his navigator and he decided that a while ago.
His vision tunnels for an instant as the world spirals away, leaving Nami. For a second his mind swims and then the image flashes bright, shifting in a split second. The marines aren't there anymore, just townspeople, most of them with guns and rakes and insubstantial weaponry that won't do crap against the enemy they're marching against. He knows this, because Nami is strong and she'd fallen to the same person long ago. He feels some twisted sense of shame, a pulsing remorse. This, this crushing sadness she felt, this is his fault.
Luffy steps forward, then back a step, Nami's right, he's only caused problems for her. In the end, he'd made this a lot worse than it needed to be, that was stupid of him. I'll make it better, I'll beat him up really well. He decides, and steps forward again, still upset with himself, because he should be a better captain than this, then letting his crewmates suffer when he knew something was wrong.
She's stabbing herself, and he cringes involuntarily, knowing that he is to blame. Sure, Arlong. But Arlong had meant to do that, Arlong had been there for who knows how long, but he, Luffy, was the one that made her feel like she had to do something other than survive and complete what she'd decided to do. He should have fixed this sooner, the moment he figured out she was hurting, he should have made it better, instead of trying to let her figure it out. Lesson learned. He tells himself, but with each jerking rear of her arm his gut twists with the knowledge that he could have prevented this particular moment of pain. So he stops it, grabs her arm, and the moment she twists her head to stare up at him with hatred and fear she hadn't meant to angle at him (but which he suddenly felt he deserved) he had to take a moment to breathe before he could speak. He wasn't fast enough, so she spoke.
And the world lurches, skips over itself and then melts away, leaving Luffy lilting to the side and subsequently falling to deck boards. Deck boards. When did he get on a ship?
~5~
"Who the heck set off a coup de burst without me giving a heading?" Nami shrieks, supporting herself with her clima tact and holding her hand to her nicked shoulder as she stands and then repurposing it as a club when Sanji runs to her with apologies. The deck is covered in marines, all pressed against the ground as Sunny soars over the ocean, just reaching the peak of the flight. "Which way are we going?" She stomps over to the railing and wraps an arm around the railing as she compares the log pose to the seascape, the island is just to the side of them, thankfully not in their path, and they don't seem to be going too far away… "And would someone get rid of these marines!" She kicks away one that has crawled over and grabbed her ankle, she hisses testily at him. "I live with a bunch of imbeciles…"
She turns back to the ocean as Franky reads her a few coordinates that he calculated and Sanji apologizes from somewhere in between arguing with Zoro over something stupid.
There's a solid sounding grunt and a marine goes flying over the railing next to Nami, she sniffs and rechecks their heading.
"Nami!" Luffy says from somewhere behind her and she hums in response, focusing on the wind trajectory. "Nami!" Luffy repeats, closer. She sighs, turning around to meet him.
He smashes into her and wraps her up in his rubber arms, locking her firmly against him, as she shrieks in disbelief.
"Let go, you idiot! I'm working!" She pushes against him and he reluctantly lets go, stepping back as she establishes a safe distance between them. "What are you do- Luffy?"
"Nothing," He grumbles, scrubbing furiously at his eyes, stumbling backwards and tripping over a prone marine. He yelps and tumbles to the ground, Nami steps tentatively closer.
"Luffy, are you crying?" The others are occupied dropping marines off the sides of the ship and preparing to land back in the ocean, they've started descent now. Luffy looks up at her with a wobbly grin balanced on his face and shakes his head.
"No! I'm alright, I'm fine, but, but Nami, what about you?" His smile melts away like an ice cube on hot pavement and he pushes himself to his feet, a concerned frown marring his features.
"Um- all good here," She evades, "What are you upset about…" She trails as she notices Luffy's attention shifting. " Luffy are listening?"
"Nami, what happened to your arm?" She glances at her arm, but it's just the scratch that one marine gave her. Jerk.
"Nothing too bad. I feel just fine."
"But, just a second ago, you had a knife…" He flaps his hands in an effort to explain and then drops them to his side, looking at her helplessly. Nami's eyes travel across his figure, trying to estimate what Luffy could be talking about. She'd forgotten for a moment that just because he was older again didn't mean that he was all caught up. The X scar is absent, she'd have been able to see the tips peeking just over the neck-line of his shirt, and he was asking her about a knife… Nami pales, her hand flying to her uninjured shoulder and rubbing over her tattoo, the skin beneath rough with scar tissue. She looks up at him and his concern only seems to deepen.
"I'm gonna take care of it for you," He nods, resolute, rubbing one of his shoulders as he rolls it in the joint, stretching. "I know you don't want me around, but you're my navigator, and I should have solved this problem forever ago!" He turns and stomps over the carpet of marines toward the railing. Nami lets out a short string of curses and steps quickly in front of him, putting her hands on his chest.
"No no no! It's alright Luffy, um… I need to explain some things…" She sighs and fumbles with her thoughts, looking for the best way to derail her captain's current thought process. Luffy frowns at her, frustration sweeping across his face.
"I know you just want me to leave, but I'm not going to leave you here." He says, a note of his rock hard finality coloring his tone. "I should've fixed this already, let me fix it now. Come on, just ask, please, Nami?" He's tense with anger and bordering on desperation. Nami wouldn't have recognized it back then, but now she hears the note of raw emotion loud in his tone. He's also a little too close for comfort.
It's nice to have him big enough to recognize, it makes things just a little more normal. She raises a fist and floors him with a swift knock to the head, grinding her teeth as the typical irritation at his stubbornness wells up over the warmth his concern left in her.
"Idiot, would you just listen?" She sighs and watches him grovel theatrically for a moment. "I need to explain some things." She repeats "I'm not pushing you away." He twists his head to look up at her from an unnatural angle and pouts. She rolls her eyes and taps his head lightly with the toe of her shoe. "Could you just stay there? Please?"
He hesitates, nods.
Nami turns to bark an order, but the moment she is about to speak the ship lurches as it splashes down into the ocean, she crumples and Luffy squirms so that he's under her, providing a rubber cushion. It's unusually thoughtful of him. She pushes herself up to yell again but someone was better prepared for the landing than her, a marine soldier with a wicked long blade. He growls at her, sneering and raises the blade to poke at her chin. "You're trying to run off with my promotion, girlie. And that's not very fair, not when I caught it with my own two hands."
"Are you talking about my captain?" She hisses back, taken aback and clenching her fists when his smirk widens and he nods. "Listen, creep, it's a waste to turn him in for a promotion, he's worth a heck of a lot more than that." She snatches up her climatact and swings it at his head, breaking off the end and waving it at the sky to conjure some lightning, the humidity is about right for an easy strike. Before she can finish her attack Luffy pushes her off him and charges at the burly marine who is still smirking. He yells, furious and knocks him aside with a punch to the face, but he's back up and swinging hands with brass knuckles at Luffy's chin before he knows what's happening. The impact makes a loud smack and Luffy rears back, then twists upward to nail a kick into his gut. Nami fumbles with her climatact, swirling together a small storm and calling down the strike to floor the marine before he manages to floor Luffy; a beat passes, the lightning flashes, Luffy strikes forward again. The marine slumps down, crackling with electricity and a thin trail of blood trickling from a cut on his lip. Luffy is breathing harder but he looks much more at ease, calmer, to a certain degree. He turns and regards her carefully, looking at her climatact.
"What was that light? Nami?" She rubs her nose carefully, trying to think this through before she starts to explain it to him, but honestly, it's just as muddled in her mind as it will be once she tells it to Luffy.
"Alright Luffy, you really want to know?" A stiff nod. "We're not on Cocoyashi anymore, heck you're not actually seventeen anymore! It's... complicated, but the basic idea is that a day or so ago you shrunk down to the age of seven and we've been winging it from there. Welcome to the Grand Line!" She spreads her arms and tries to smile without betraying her own worry but it probably doesn't matter, because Luffy's too lost and confused to notice it anyway.
"But, Arlong..."
"Luffy! You're bleeding! You told me you were okay!" Chopper flies across the deck and forces his captain onto the ground as he runs a wet cloth down the back of his calf and begins wrapping it tightly in bandages, scolding all the while. "You know better than to leave it bleeding if you can help it, it was just a stupid marine battle, not anything important, I could have had it fixed up in no time and it wouldn't have been a problem for anyone! You always leave your injuries until the end and if you can stop you really should."
"If he'd stopped you'd have bandaged it, and then it'd be hard to move." Zoro saunters up behind him, adorned himself with a few mummified limbs.
"That's the point! You're not supposed to move when you're injured, and - don't take them off!" Chopper yelps as he turns and finds Zoro unraveling a few of his own bandages.
Luffy lifts his leg and inspects the bandage carefully, he looks perplexed, as it'd been treated in less than a minute and he's not really sure who it was that did it or why Zoro has suddenly gained a long scar over his eye and Nami was telling him stuff that didn't make any sense. He sets his leg down and looks up at her, she gives him a hapless smile and a shrug.
"Two years in the future," She repeats, than points. "Zoro and Chopper; Chopper's your doctor." Chopper turns around when she says his name and his little blue nose wiggles, his narrows his eye at Luffy and then gasps.
"Oh! You're missing your scar!"
Luffy frowns and rubs the scar under his eye, it's still there, he can feel the little ridges.
"He means the one you got in the last two years," Nami explains, then turns to Chopper. "He doesn't know you yet, he just lapsed again, we were back on my home island and he beat someone up for me."
"Arlong," Zoro grunts and Nami nods, Luffy stares at them for a moment, trying to make the piece fit together.
"So I got him?" He asks, "You're alright?" Nami nods, looking relieved that he's finally getting something. He considers for another moment, a flush washing over his cheeks as he continues to ponder.
"I don't get it, just tell me where that creep is already!"
Nami groans.
~5~
"Why not we just find some random fishman to beat up? It's not like he knows what that crooked-nosed felon looks like," Sanji waves his cigarette for emphasis as he talks and the smoke trails through the air on long curving lines.
"Because that's stupid," Nami leans back against the wall, sighing. "Granted, he's stupid too."
"This is great! Look at all the fish! Think of all the sushi!" Luffy gushes, happily cooped up in the Suny's aquarium lounge, staring at all the fish that drift by. It seems Luffy is captivated by the aquarium at any age. "Sanji make sushi!"
"Shut up! I'll make it later, I just fed you a plate of sandwiches!" Sanji barks in return and sucks greedily through the ash covered filter, sating his desire to pummel his captain with the next most attractive option, a good long smoke.
"But I feel like eating fish..." Luffy grumbles but sighs and turns around, crossing his arms and leaning his back against the glass.
"Okay, I need a little distance!" Nami throws up her hands, "He wasn't like this the first time around!"
"Previously, he wasn't kept away from the object of his anger. Correct?" Robin opens the door and hands Sanji a piece of paper, "The boys are making requests for lunch." She explains at his quizzical look.
"Argh!" He throws his hands in the air, though keeps the list firmly within his grasp, "You'd think they'd all been starving for weeks but I know they're not because I just made breakfast for them Three. Hours. Ago." He grumbles a few curses and stalks out of the room, Robin waves at Luffy as he looks up at her. Nami rubs her nose.
"Okay Luffy," She turns, hands held out, placating. "I'm gonna step out for a minute, alright? Just three minutes, and I'll be right back." He nods, slow, looking a little confused and Nami turns away with a muttered 'I'm gonna regret this'. Robin goes to follow her out the door, but stops, turning back to Luffy. "Would you like a cup of tea, captain? It might help you calm down a little." Luffy frowns and shakes his head.
"I don't wanna be calm! I wanna beat up the jerk that hurt Nami! You guys are being weird!"
"No tea then," Robin smiles benignly and follows Nami out the door.
"No tea," Luffy repeats, shaking his head some more, although it's less of a rejection now and more of an effort to get a sudden fog out of his head.
His senses turn over in an instant, swapping, flipping, shifting to relay a new message to his body, his brain jumps the track, his train of thought hurtling into oblivion as a new locomotive begins to puff, he slumps, feels his hands curl, feels the world snap.
~5~
The tea is not nice. He repeats this in his head, over and over and over and over. The tea is the most disgusting thing he's tasted in years, the tea makes him want to smash his cup and stalk off to Sanji so he can get the taste out of his mouth. It makes him want to spit it all out and punch the person who gave it to him in his face.
Nothing he thinks makes any sense to his body. Everytime he considers setting down the cup his hand merely trembles, the thought of punching the girl in front of him makes his mouth bend into a discontent frown, his breathing remains even as his mind runs itself breathless trying to lift a finger in protest.
And behind him the wax is falling, a white haze drifting over the clearing, over the people standing there. And they had been calling for him, but their voices had just echoed around his head, he couldn't respond, just endlessly, "This tea is nice…" He mumbles this, endlessly. There are no longer other voices, none other than his own. And the girl sitting across from him is sipping at her own tea, eyes smiling at him from below the brim of her hat. Tireless.
And suddenly it's not, suddenly he's doing what he's wanted to do for what seems like an eternity. He's up on his feet, turning, reaching, he's going to break that thing till it's nothing but a puddle of wax on the ground and he'll never have to look at it ever-
It's gone, it's all gone. More importantly, they're gone.
"Where'd they go?" He asks, no one, just himself, the room is empty. He can feel his blood rushing through his veins, can hear it boiling behind his ears. "Where did they put them?" His gaze passes over his surroundings, the room is… underwater? The walls are made of glass, some are, anyway. He's standing, just in front of a lounge chair that rings the room.
It doesn't matter. He disregards these thoughts and swings around, finding the door and crossing the room at a sprint to burst through. The door bangs into someone's arm and they take a step back, looking up at him with a semi-surprised expression.
"Oh, dear, Luffy?"
"You!" He bellows, he feels a little woozy, his nakama, his nakama, they were right behind him a second ago, they'd been dying, and he'd done nothing. He doesn't understand much of what is happening, but this person, he knows, she is close (close enough) to the big boss that ordered everything that has gone wrong so far. He throws himself onto her, thrusts his elbow onto her neck as she falls back onto the wall and crosses her arms, him close on top of her, seething. "This is your fault," No, it's yours. Something nasty in his head snarls; he ignores it, channeling the spite to Ms. All Sunday whom he holds almost intimately as an object of blame. "And you didn't even do a thing for yourself! What kind of honor is that? Ordering someone else to do your dirty work? Where are they?" She shakes her head marginally, tensing under his hold and he tightens it in response.
"Luffy. Let go." Her voice says, but she's not speaking, he's inches away, she hasn't said a thing. He whips his head around, she's there too, leaning against the railing of what he now realizes is a ship. He's on a ship, he's not even on the same island. Her double opens her eyes, stares at him straight, She's still tense in his hold but her double looks completely relaxed across the small margin of space between them. "Don't do something you'll regret."
" I wouldn't have any regrets for beating you up." He bites out.
"Luffy! Let Robin go!"
"Nami?" He spins the other way, searching for the source of her voice.
"Clutch!" Ms. All Sunday calls and Luffy feels skin slide against his arms, hands grip his ankles in iron grips and jerk them behind him, up, twisting him into a shape he'd never managed on his own.
"HEY!" He struggles, but there are more limbs then should be present, since in the glimpses he grasped of his surroundings as he thrashed within the holds he saw not several people but only two. Ms. All Sunday and a person that had to be Nami.
"Robin, are you okay?"
"WHAT THE HECK!" Luffy shrieks as Nami hugs Robin and completely ignores his pretzel-esque position on the floor. He twists himself around, strains at the hands gripping his wrists and stretches his neck so he can bite the arms tying his ankles together. "Let me GO!"
"Luffy, calm down!" Nami demands, but Luffy is rather fed up with taking orders right now. "Have some tea." she'd said. "Whatever you do, don't save us." Vivi had yelled. This is why he doesn't follow orders.
"No!" He grunts, twisting his arms free only for them to be recaptured, leaving practically hogtied. "Darn it! Where's Zoro? Vivi?"
"Vivi," Ms. All Sunday nods. "I suppose that explains things." He sneers at her.
"And Zoro… Oh, Luffy!" Nami snaps her fingers. "Was there a guy with a big three on his head, and wax figures?"
"You were the wax figures!" He moans, stilling momentarily, deck boards pressing into his face while a disembodied hand cheerily pokes at his cheek. "You and Zoro and Vivi. And Usopp was getting chased by the explosive guy and I was sitting there drinking tea." He shudders and twists his neck to look up at her, forlornly. "I'm sorry. Are you okay?"
"Yeah," Her eyes soften "We're all fine."
"Good," He breathes, shuts his eyes for a moment. Then he whips himself around again, attempting to break the hold. "Now let me go! Dirty hat stealer!"
"Do you really perceive me as so horrible even though your friends are alright?" Ms. All Sunday smiles serenely, clearly amused.
"Yeah! You're a hat stealer!" Luffy repeats vehemently "And you killed that eight guy, and you're after Vivi's country!"
"Oh my gosh, enough of this!" Nami's fist sends Luffy's vision spinning and he whines at her.
"But Nami, you said Baroque Works were bad guys!"
"Well Robin's not!" She scolds.
"How interesting, you haven't hit him much these past few days." Ms. All Sunday muses.
"Yeah, well, he's a lot more punchable when he's older and not some cute kid blubbering all over the place."
Luffy freezes in his escape attempts, twists vainly to try and look at the two women. "What did you say? Nami, what was that?"
"I said you're a crybaby of an accident prone little rubber kid that is too adorable for me to hit without feeling bad." Nami snaps and Ms. All Sunday smiles demurely beside her.
"I suppose you deserve an explanation, Captain-san."
Luffy's breath stalls as the two women stare down at him, both cheery and fond. A crybaby, a captain. He sucks in a deep breath, holds it as he thinks for a moment. He looks them straight in the eye and yells because he's confused and frustrated and yelling usually works out okay.
"WHAT DID YOU CALL ME?"
~5~
"So…" Luffy stands at the head of the table, pacing in front of the Straw hat's gathered around the kitchen table, stereotypically rubbing his chin. "I shrunk a bunch and we've actually been sailing for two years and you, you, you, and you are all on my crew now." He points to the people he doesn't recognize, Chopper, Brook, Franky and Robin. He speaks to himself for a moment, sums it up in the way his head will most likely understand, then spins around and points to Nami. "And that's why your hair is longer?!" The table groans collectively and Robin smile encouragingly as Nami rolls her eyes.
"Yeah, essentially." She sweat drops, her head resting on her elbows. "It's also why when Zoro get's back to the ship you're gonna see he has a scar over one eye, and Usopp is buff."
"Cool," Luffy nods, sitting down, wiping some sweat off his forehead. "My head hurts now."
"Here," Chopper hands him a leg of meat that Sanji had prepared in advance and Luffy digs into it with a slurred thanks.
"Your memories don't seem to be returning randomly." Robin remarks "The shifts are almost certainly affected by your surroundings, and the points at which you regain memories until seem to all be stressful or painful moments."
"Like what?" Luffy asks as he swallows the current mouthful, his eyes skitter over his crew, everyone is there but Zoro and Usopp, Nami said they went scouting or something, marines or whatever.
"Mihawk and the Marimo." Sanji says simply, setting a refill of the last plate in front of him as Luffy finishes the first serving.
"Arlong Park." Robin smiles.
"Um, uh, Sabo." Chopper scuffs a hoof on the floor and tugs his hat down over his eyes. Luffy stops eating and chews quietly for a moment, his jaw working.
"Sabo." He repeats harshly.
Chopper sniffles for a moment then launches forward, almost knocking Luffy out of the chair as he assaults his chest with apologies and Luffy can only stare for a moment before he wraps his arms firmly around the blubbering doctor and holds him tightly, smooshing his face into the soft fuzz of the reindeer's hat. It's cool against his face, he suddenly realizes he's kind of hot.
"You're on my crew now, don't tell me I brought a big wimp aboard." He scolds.
"HEY!" Chopper rears back but Luffy holds him close and he schools his expression. "I mean, no. I'm not a wimp, I've got a devil fruit, you think my transformations are cool…"
"Transformations?" Luffy repeats, he jerks his head up, eyes alight with enthusiasm. "You can transform?"
"Yeah, but listen Luffy, I'm apologizing!"
"But I don't get what you're apologizing for, so stop." Luffy says. Chopper chews on his lip and nods. "I'm not upset that you guys know about Sabo; he's important to me." He hums, leans back in the chair and his eyes wander along the ceiling. "Ace, if you know about Sabo then you know about Ace, always called me a crybaby and he was right, especially after Sabo died..." Franky bursts into motion, along with Sanji and Brook.
"He's dead?" Franky bawls, suddenly the largest and loudest thing in the room.
"What about those crappy noble parents who flippin kidnapped him? What kind of crappy protection did they give him?" Sanji gushes in some hybrid of righteous anger and desperation, almost equally loud.
"Nooooo, the tragic tale! The trio turned to a sol-" Brook chokes as Nami punches him to keep the words out of his mouth. "duet!" Solo, he'd almost said. They don't need that now.
Luffy clutches at Chopper in surprise and he snuggles closer in response. Luffy looks carefully between them, his face folding into confusion.
"I thought you said you knew about Sabo?" He asks, quizzically, the hint of defense in his tone.
"We knew that he got brought back to his noble parents, we assumed he stayed there." Robin's frown is deeper than her facial expressions typically went.
"Sabo wasn't the kind of guy that would stay in a cage," Luffy says bitterly "He set sail on his own, somebody shot his ship down because he was flying the pirate flag." His voice drops to a hush but he straightens, meeting each of their worried gazes.
"Despite the nature of this news it does bring about a most interesting development." Robin speaks calmly into the silence (would be silence if Franky could stop crying) "So far you've seemed to gravitate to the next most tragic point in your life. The event with Shanks'-"
"Oh, that too?" Luffy winces.
"Sabo's kidnapping, Zoro mentioned a short stint about Coby and a firing squad, then Zoro's loss to Mihawk, then Nami's crisis with Arlong, and now, this would be Little Garden, correct?"
Luffy nods and Nami explains.
"Miss Goldenweek used her colors trap on Luffy, first black, then a bunch of others and she really got him with green. He was sitting there drinking tea while the wax guy turned us into statues!" Nami fumes and Luffy tilts his head down in shame, gritting his teeth.
"Miss Goldenweek is indeed a marvelous match for Luffy," Robin murmurs then refocuses, tracing circles into the table top. "Each of these are a moment of tension for you, but there were others that we missed, aren't there?" Luffy nods again. "It seems that the jumps in memory occur around points when you're very worried about somebody else, like Shanks, Sabo, or Zoro. But I wonder why you wouldn't stop at times like Sabo's death, certainly you were mournful." Luffy sighs and then smiles weakly.
"It made me wanna tear down the whole city," He admits. "But Ace wouldn't help me cause he got tied to a tree."
Ignoring this peculiar comment, Robin continues.
"Nevertheless, with this information, perhaps we can predict where the next point will be. Where did you land after Little Garden?"
"My island!" Chopper pipes up, wriggling around in Luffy's hug. "Drum. Nami was sick so they took a detour."
"Wha! Nami's sick?" Luffy gasps, then considers her for a moment. "You don't look sick."
"Chopper fixed it," Nami explains his confusion away, sorta. "Luffy and Sanji carried me up the mountain to get to the only doctor around, this old witch who charged a lot more then she was worth."
"Doctorine is the best doctor on the Grand Line," Chopper pipes up, protecting his mentor with an indignant scowl. "And she isn't that old."
"Yeah, only in her 'young, too young, hundred thirties'" Nami quotes with her fingers in the air and Chopper shrugs bashfully.
"Probably a tense point there," Robin nods "Then Alabasta."
"Wait wait wait wait!" Luffy yelps "I don't wanna hear this, it's the future! It'll spoil all my adventures! I don't wanna go on a boring adventure!"
"Then get outside," Nami points to the door and then, offhandedly "Take Brook with you, he'll scream loudest if you both fall overboard." Luffy jumps up and cheers, depositing Chopper on the chair and pulling a suddenly animate Brook out the door. "You're my musician right? I finally have a musician, play me something!"
"Yohoho! That's true, Luffy-san, what did you have in mind?"
The conversation picks up again in the wake of Luffy's escape.
"Um, Alabasta… we met up with Ace, and then we had to hike through the desert and then we got split up after Rainbase." Nami supplies.
"After that Luffy fought Crocodile on his own and lost." Robin continues, "but he made it back to Alubarna and fought him again, lost again, and then he followed him down into the tombs under the city and fought him again, winning despite the fact he'd been poisoned."
"Super tense," Franky whistles "But he wouldn't have been worried about anyone."
"No way, worried about Vivi-chwan!" Sanji cooes "And her country!"
"Most likely while in the tomb," Robin theorizes.
"Skypiea's next!" A pause as the group mulls it over.
"Aisa?" Nami tries.
"I don't think there was anything there," Robin shakes her head, "It was rather low key for us. Water Seven however…"
"You caused us a lot of grief there, Robin." Nami scolds and Robin simpers in reply.
"Aside from my endeavor, he also was facing difficulties with Usopp and Merry. I believe that would increase the chances of a lapse there. And after that Thriller Bark, perhaps Zoro's injury?"
"Good enough chance," Sanji sucks in on the filter, "Saobody." He releases a stream of smoke. "No chance he'll skip that. We're gonna have to relive it."
"He's going to have to relive it." Chopper pulled at his hat, stressing. "This isn't good for his blood pressure, it's a lot better than it was but still…"
"Luffy can take a little bit of pressure," Nami dismisses, flapping his hand, "He's gotten through a lot worse. Besides, when has it ever been a problem? He's good under pressure."
"Or rather we thought he was." Robin stares at a corner of the ceiling, lost in thought as she considers. "He doesn't seem to be handling the situations very well when they come back at him, I wonder…"
"It's probably cause it's really sudden, I mean, emotionally…?" Chopper casts around for an explanation but nothing seems right. Luffy and emotionally don't really go together, Luffy is always happy; or really angry. The captain they've had bouncing around the ship for the past couple days isn't the same as they've become accustomed to. "It's a lot of stress I guess. Maybe that's why his blood pressure is higher, 'cause of all this stress. The pressure…?"
"Luffy's better than that," Sanji dismisses but Robin has latched onto the idea, is rubbing her fingers around the handle of her tea cup.
"On the contrary, we're all only human. More or less," She nods at Chopper, smiling wanly, "Humans have limits, even a rubber man can only be stretched so far, I'm sure, perhaps this is pushing at those limits. Singular events such as this suddenly grouped together, it'd be enough, I'm sure, to drive anyone crazy. I hope he doesn't go mad once this is all over."
Chopper shrieks and Franky chortles. While Nami mutters darkly about him deserving a little crazy after all he's put them through. It's an ice breaker, despite the actual idea behind the statement, and the mood dissipates, falling into regularity.
"Guys!" Luffy bursts in through the door, grinning broadly and breathing quickly, not due to being tired but to being excited. "Come see! Guys come look at the mountain! It's mad!" He's vibrating in place, filled to the brim with motion and anticipation.
"I don't suppose you mean that the volcano is exploding, do you?" Robin asks and Luffy nods giddily, he stills for a moment and no one likes the look he gets on his face.
"I wanna go see it." His grin flashes bright again and with a turn of his heel he's gone, and Brook is calling out, asking why he jumped onto the dock, and where is he running to?
Silence, Sanji stands and plods toward the door, muttering maledictions under his breath.
"I'm gonna kill 'im." Nami stands, both her hands braced on the table. Sanji stops, listening with a nonchalant expression. "I'm gonna go catch him and then I'm going to skin him alive. I'll sell his head for every belli it's worth!" She swears, storming past Sanji, out the door. Chopper looks around the room, asks:
"Shouldn't somebody help her?"
"I think that Nami is going to handle this one by herself," Robin hums and Chopper looks affronted.
"But Luffy could already be on the other side of the docks! We should all search!"
"I'll make food for when she brings him back," Sanji sags a little and strolls into the kitchen and Robin uses the distraction to finish.
"He can't get so far that Nami won't track him down. She'll keep him out of might even run into Zoro and Usopp. Luffy's often fortunate like that."
Chopper calms slightly and jumps out of the chair, readjusting the medical bag on his back. He peers out the still open door before shaking his head.
"I hope so," He tells her and meanders back into his office, the meeting adjourned.
Robin nods in agreement and Franky groans and then stands, offering her a wave before grabbing a cola bottle and vanishing into the bowels of the ship.
As Robin sips her tea she waves a hand and a duplicate blooms beside her elbow, reaching down to pull a piece of paper and a pen from the satchel at her side, it begins to scrawl words across the page in her tight, but perfectly legible script. She frowns as she ponders, mulling over the words as she places them out in ink. She sets down her tea.
"As do I."