"Oh-no no no!" Usopp gropes, reaching, but misses the retreating hem of Luffy's shirt as he yells and tumbles over the side of the smooth bottomed, oversized sitch that they've been walking along for te better part of fort-five minutes. "Can't you, just, not!" Usopp whines, flapping his hands to his sides and groaning as Luffy bumbles down the steep sides of the almost ravine and plods along the glassy black ground toward his hat, which is still skittering along as the wind pushes it insistently away from Luffy, who just treks doggedly after it.
It wouldn't be so bad but this is the fourth time in those fortyfive minutes, and Usopp is tired of having to fret that an unfortunate state of events is going to lead to Luffy being down there and him being up here and one of Luffy's lapses causing complications.
So far so good, but he's not holding his breath.
Luffy turns and shades his eyes to see Usopp up on the edge of the steep wall, laughing and spreading his hands.
"I'm fine Usopp, see, fine!" He turns in a circle so Usopp really can see and Usopp grumbles a little but waves him on. It's so tiring having to look after Luffy when he actually needs looking after, usually it's just all of them being worry warts and the omnipresent fear that Luffy's troubles, which he coulf get out of on his own, would grow to involve them, who had a harder time getting out of said troubles.
There's a low rumble and Usopp turns to regard they top of the mountain, their destination, not so far off now, heck, close enough that the can see the lava has begun to ooze down. Well, he hasn't looked in a while, it's possible that it's been going for a time. Lazily he traces what little of the run the lava has carved for itself over time he can see, it buries itself in a reasonably thick carpet of tree canopies a litle ways off, but if he traces is it right...
He does, and he sees it and shoot it's going way faster than lava has any right to go, and look there's the warning bell! How nice of it to ring! The lava roars and hisses as it carves it's way through the run, funneled down into the black obsidian rut that Luffy is still in, bending over, reaching to tenderly lift his hat back onto his head with one palm. Geez, now is not the time to be gentle nor theatrical. Accident prone moron!
"Luffy get out of the way!" Usopp's screech carries easily over the sudden, earth shaking barrage of sound and Luffy snatches his hat up from the dusty ground to look up at him queryingly. The ground's been shaking a lot, usually things like that only scare Usopp the first three or four times.
He opens his mouth to call back up a reassurance, Usopp'll listen, he's just nervous...
Before he can call though his knees go weak and he feels a wave of pain and nausea sweep through his body, curling into his stomach as a hard knot of agony, it floors him. He hears Usopp's panicked shout as he sinks downward, and his mind fumbles for an explanation but there isn't one. Other than the spider nothing's happened, nothing to warrant something like this, this feels like the aftermath of a big battle, a huge battle. It feels like… His eyes widen and he holds out his hands, wondering; it feels like it does after his training sessions, the ones he only indulges in when he gets a new idea. Second Gear is still in the works but whenever he uses it he gets this same drained constituition. You're in the future, Usopp said this would happen. He reminds himself but it doesn't stop the hint of disbelief, that in a few minutes he'll be back on Merry's head, mourning and deplorably affronted. He hates it. He musters the strength to push himself up to all fours instead of just lying here, miserable and weak. Usopp cheers and rapid fires questions that Luffy can't quite unerstand, he sounds like he's underwater. He looks up, searching for Usopp, but instead he faces down a wall of fire.
Lava, something in him corrects, volcano, remember. "Cool," He murmurs, watching the wave wash closer. This is why the valley is obsidian, it's a river-bed, lava probably flows through here naturally. He chokes out a laugh, glances up at Uspp, a blurry figure at the top of the wall, digging frantically through the bag at his side. Usopp'll get him out of this. He turns back to the wave of lava. It's slow, not crawling, but not like water, it's slow, if he could just move…
Tears come unbidden to crowd behind his eyes and the world blurs into a new shade of red.
Flames crawled over her hull, flickering a red orange light over the surrounding ocean, he grips the torch hard, getting splinters in his palm. Luffy drops the torch into the gaping chasm, it falls, fals, falls to the floor of Nami's bedroom, the flames spread inside now.
His knees feel weak, he knows he'll be buckling soon, but he only has to stand for a few more minutes, just a few more minutes, just to listen to her last words.
"Everyone, I'm sorry I couldn't carry you for just a little longer!" Her voice is smooth, he wishes he could have heard it sooner, it all feels too late. The snow stings in his bloody cuts, she's gone silent, he buckles now, knowing that everything he could have done has been done and still he feels like it's not enough. He stares at the red, the orange, the blackening brown.
"Merry," He whispers, and suddenly there's more colors, different sounds, he's still weak, but his cuts feel less intense, he's no longer on the verge of collapse, and the rocking of the lifeboat is no longer present, sturdy ground; semi-sturdy ground, a voice?
"Luffy! Get up, come on, come on!" He whips his head around, his vision blurs and merges, and there's Usopp, it's gotta be Usopp, with his long nose, but he looks different, really different.
Details are cast aside and he springs forward, clambers up the wall Usopp is standing at the top of, a rocky thing that he has to scrabble at for purchase, he doesn't feel like stretching. He's still sore, even though he's not on the verge of unconsciousness.
"Luffy! You idiot, what were you doing!" Usopp scolds as he mounts the wall, finally at the top "You looking to get ki-mph!"
"Usopp!" He gasps out, he can't help it, he really can't. Usopp is no longer on his crew, he knows this, he shouldn't accept him back without compensation, he knows this as well, But nothing can stop him from wrapping his arms around him and squeezing with everything he has left.
"Luffy!" Usopp gasps, his voice raspy "Please- loosen!" Luffy shakes his head furiously, slackening only the smallest increment. He doesn't dare let go. He'd lost one nakama today, another would not be slipping through his fingers.
Usopp groans and leans backward, losing his balance and falling onto his butt, Luffy still clinging tightly.
"I'm sorry Usopp, she, she had to go…"
"W-what?" He stutters as he tries to pull Luffy's arms looser.
"Merry," Usopp stops pulling, feels tears bud in his own eyes. "She was happy though, she said so. She could talk, she loved us." Luffy sniffles and Usopp hugs him back. "Usopp, don't leave."
He hesitates, and then resolutely pushes Luffy off of him. Meeting Luffy's teary gaze with his own moist eyes.
"I should apologize first," Luffy opens his mouth but Usopp shakes his head. "I shouldn't have doubted you, you were right."
"No, Merry was nakama, I shouldn't have,"
"Yes, you should have. Merry couldn't sail anymore, she knew that. She didn't want to fail us."
"She never failed us," Luffy agrees tersely. wholeheartedly. mournfully.
They stand for a few minutes, wrapped up in each other and their emotions, it's hard to say goodbye. Luffy hates goodbyes.
Finally, Usopp slumps, pulls tentatively away and Luffy doesn't want to loosen his grip anymore but he does, because he can't, he won't force Usopp into anything he honestly doesn't want to do. But… he thinks Usopp might be lying to himself.
"Hey, come on, just let go of me already, I've gotta talk to you."
"You are talking to me," He frowns into his sniper's shoulder, annoyed becuase he just wants to sit here for another moment, he aches, from Lucci and from the door guy that had bull horn hair, and- and just aches. The burden of a Captain is heavy.
Usopp lets out a breathy laugh, shakes his head.
"You were singing a different tune just an hour ago, come on, there's a volcano exploding, you wanna go see it, we're almost at the top."
"A volcano? But, there're no islands, Usopp-"
"It's weird and confusing but you'll get it, you always do." Usopp sighs and rifles through his bag with one hand. "Here, I, being the great Usopp-sama, thought of a way to provide proof that I'm telling the truth." He pulls out the tone dial and clicks the apex of the shell.
"Cool! You're letting me use a tone dial?" Luffy's voice warbles from the shell and the Luffy now clinging to Usopp's shoulders twists around to stare at it. "I mean, you always keep them to yourself, stingy." Usopp's voice says something in the background and Luffy's voice makes a whiny petulant sound. "Meat isn't the same as a shell. Stupid Usopp." He huffs than seems to remember he's recording. "Oh, yeah, Usopp says that we're not actually at Water 7 anymore, it's some island in the New World. He also says I'm going to forget this ever happened soon, which is why he's making me record this. Weird. Hi, future me!" Usopp chuckles as the Luffy wrapped around him twists around to almost sit in his lap, making a confused noise as he turns the shell this way and that. "So yeah, I shrunk or something stupid like that. I don't remember, I thought I was sitting on Merry's head after Usopp- nevermind, it doesn't matter. It doesn't." The voice goes steely and Usopp can't stop the relieved and happy smile that spreads when he hears the confidence in that statement. "Because that was two years ago! It's like time travel but just in my head, or something. I don't get it. But future me should listen to Usopp, because, I guess if I don't remember making the message than I really need convincing? But why would I forget? Usooooopp, it doesn't make sense!" Usopp's voice grumbles out of the shell again and Luffy continues, glib. "So yeah! I gues that's it! Usopp, the volcano, look! If we don't hurry we're gonna miss the-" The shell cuts off and Luffy fiddles with it till he presses the apex again. "Cool! You're letting me use a tone dial?"
Luffy grunts and listens to the message playing again while Usopp tries to move the boy off his knees, he's starting to lose circulation. Luffy scoots obediantly onto the dirt and Usopp stands, brushing himself off.
"Well, if that explains a few things…"
"Yeah, I guess." Luffy hums, handing back the shell before it finishes it's message. "Weird. Must be a mystery… mystery!" Luffy laughs and pushes himself to his feet, only to find his balance wobbling. He manages to maintain it and smiles at Usopp's suspicious look. "You know, cause we don't know what's going on, so it's all a myste- woah!" In trying to step forward his knees had given out and he'd found himself plummeting toward the ground, which was rock, he now noticed as his nose neared collision.
"Knew it!" Usopp wraps his arm around Luffy's and tugs hard, pulling his captain back into a standing position, but he doesn't release him, instead letting him lean against his shoulder. "Didn't you just fight against Lucci? You're exhausted, idiot!"
"I'm okay!" Luffy protests, though he doesn't resist the help as Usopp wraps an arm around him. Usopp has a sneaking suspicion it's because he can't. "Just, a little tired. And sore. Fine." Luffy's face is set into determination as his mind runs through the events of the last few days, Robin, Usopp, CP9, Iceburg, Franky, Merry… Merry. Sadness wells up in his chest again and he shakes his head a little to try and disperse it. He doesn't want to worry about that now. Merry wouldn't want that…
"You're doing it again." Luffy blinks and glances up at the sniper who's staring down his nose at him, a look that borders on anger twinkling in his eyes.
"Doing what?"
"Hiding it. Out of sight, out of mind; is that what you think? You can't just pretend it's not there you know."
"Sure I can," Luffy answers before he realizes he has no idea what Usopp's talking about.
"What are we talking about?"
"Just-" He waves his hand around in the air, searching for the right words, it feels like a sensitive topic, but it needs to be said; apparently. He never had to be taught how to be upset. "Your thoughts."
"I don't think a whole lot," Luffy tells him and Usopp slaps his palm against his face because he most certainly knows that already.
"I mean, you're upset and you're thinking about it but you aren't telling anyone," He elaborates helplessly, shifting to give Luffy a bit more support as they start to hike. In a split second decision he starts walking them down the mountain. "If you're trying to figure something out it's okay to talk about it."
Luffy seems to consider this for a moment before shaking his head.
"I don't want to," He says, voice level. "Everything works out fine in the end."
"But it doesn't, not always!" Usopp protests and Luffy gives him a weird look.
"Sure it does, you can't say it doesn't because it hasn't ended yet. Hey I thought we were going up the volcano?"
"If you can't walk right just now how do you expect to hike up a mountain?" Usopp grumbles and Luffy laughs and leans a little more heavily on Usopp's shoulder, giggling.
"How do you keep smiling like that? It's not all right you know?" Usopp snaps, "Things aren't perfect right now, there's a volcano exploding, the marines are after us, you just lost your first ship." Luffy's face shifts into a more melancholy smile, peaceful mourning he supposes.
"If you wait for everything to be perfect then you'll never smile," Luffy tells him calmly, "If you never smile then what's missing is being happy. You guys worry too much."
"Yeah- well, well so do you!" Usopp fires back, stuttering, but he knows it's a weak return. He fumbles with his thoughts that he'd been so confident with. "There are times to smile and there are times when it's okay to be sad, because being happy all the time, being okay with things always means that you're never really really extra excited." He finishes lamely, and it's weak but Luffy is nodding, a frown marring his features.
"I guess, but I always feel really happy, and I like it like that, why should I change what works?" Cause things like the Grand Line and devil fruits mess with reality and shrink you down to age seven. Usopp thinks glumly but doesn't say anything. "Anyway, I'd rather be happy than sad, wouldn't you? So if I can I wanna be happy."
"I get that, just remember that you can't shove all the sad stuff off a cliff because that kind of stuff is resilient, it'll probably just drag you down with it." It is dragging you down with it, I see you there.
"It could," Luffy agrees "But that's why I'm sad about Merry, because when it really matters I have to be sad or else I'm not respecting it. Merry deserves a lot of respect, don't you think?"
Usopp shakes his head forlornly. He just can't win.
"Yeah," He chuckles. "She definitely does."
~7~
Something deep in his gut turns ugly and the sense of forebearing casts a heavy shadow of impending doom. Usopp stops walking and stiffens.
"Usopp!" He winces as the shriek tears through the air, she's hurtling down the hill, running full tilt, her climatact clenched tight in one hand. "This is all your fault!"
"Nami!" He turns around as Luffy twists in his grip, trying to see his navigator, he holds up a hand in greeting.
"Yo-" Smack. Nami rams her climatact's end into Luffy's face, which pushes him out of Usopp's grip and onto the ground, a red mark spreading across his face where the metal smacked.
"Hey!" He yells, shaking his fist as he struggles to sit up, "What'd you do that for!"
"You stay down!" Nami hisses at him and he almost shrinks away from her fury, almost. "And you," She rounds on Usopp "'Finish the hike' you said 'We'll meet you at the top' you said. Where do you think you're going? Down the mountain? You were supposed to meet me, idiot! Inconsiderate deserter! You left a lady defenseless! Oh, wait till Sanji get's his feet in your face!" Usopp sputters as Nami wrings him out with rapid fire insults and a sharp looking pointer finger, strangely she doesn't strike. "Lucky for you I've got marines on my tail so I need you capable of walking so you can beat them up for me!"
"Oh yes, very lucky!" Usopp squeaks and Nami nods, still fuming. She sniffs than looks down at Luffy again, who is staring at her.
"What's wrong with you?" She snaps.
"Nothing!" Luffy grunts, goping to get up "I'm fine-"
"Like heck, Usopp what's wrong with him?" She holds out her climatact and puts the tip against his forehead, keeping him from getting up as he swipes at it and growls.
"Lucci." He answers glumly and Nami nods again, all bussiness.
"You and me are going to hide in a tree." She says to Luffy who sputters before being dragged off into the treeline, "And you!" She calls over her shoulder, "Get rid of my tail! Now grab that branch up there, come on, the one way up, stretch!"
While Nami and Luffy climb the tree the first wave of marines comes over the hill and Usopp almost drops his kabuto because shoot that's more than a tail that's a freaking hunting party. No that's a platoon. Crap.
~7~
"That way! I can smell them that way!" Chopper points wildly and tries to make his voice heard over the rev of the FRU-IV Black Rhino as Franky pilots it up the moutain, leaping over ditches and glancing off trees as they find there way through by smell. It's hard to smell anything but soda with the cola motors running full power.
"Left?" Franky yells in reply and Robin shouts beside him:
"Correct!" as he swerves to make the change in their course. Chopper can hear Sanji kicking the air right above him, there's hardly enough space on the motorcycle so Brook and Sanji had had to run along. It wasn't a problem, they were both plenty fast. Though he hadn't heard Brook laughing for a little bit, he hopes he didn't get lost.
"I've found them!" Robin's lips bloom beside his ear and he titches as she speaks, "Up ahead, around the bend and at the bottom of the hill." She pauses, "A lot of marines, Usopp is holding them off for now, he seems to be… hm, yes, Luffy and Nami are hiding in a tree."
"Luffy is?" Chopper repeats, fearful that his energetic captain is refraining from a fight but also relieved that he won't be hurting himself.
"Nami seems to be forcing his hand." Robin explains and Chopper breathes a sigh of relief.
"Let's SUUUUPERRR STORM THIS PARTY!" Franky sounds a bit like he's yodeling as he revs the engines again and weaves through the next set of obstacles, flying over the next ridge and barrelling into a turn around the bend.
Chopper has a split second thought of what Usopp is going to think as he watches the motorcycle fly over the top of the hill, Franky's "OW! WATCH OUT FOR THE SUUUUPER CAVALRY!" echoing across the small battlefield. But then they've landed and the marines are all over the place and even if they're too shocked to attack quite yet that just means that he ought to use this time to get a few debilitating hits in.
So he does, he shifts into heavy point and starts smashing heads together while Robin crosses her arms and several of the marines who carry rifles find their weapons being tossed into a pile, where an instant later Sanji lands, steel plated shoes stomping hard on all each and every one.
"I heard someone ordered take out." He breathes out a heavy plume of smoke before scrubbing out the finished cigarette on a nearby marine's shirt. Chopper kind of wants to die from the coolness.
"Guys!" Usopp cheers with a relieved sort of sag, "Oh, thank you, thank yooouuuuuu!"
"No prob, Uso-bro!" Franky flashes him a thumbs up and grins "It's what we're here for!"
"Usopp, I suggest you hide in a tree in order to snipe because being in plain sight often leads to snipers being marked as high priority kill targets." Robin advises and Usopp 'eeps' as he gathers up a few pop greens he'd dropped and hightails it for cover. Chopper tries to refocus on the fight, but Brook still isn't here, and maybe the skeleton, light as he is, wasn't fast enough to keep up with Franky's awesome robot motorcycle?
His fears prove unfounded as Brook yohohoho's his way into the fight, bow striking up a storm of notes that bang and clash against each other in Chopper's sensitive ears but seem to serve their purpose as the marine's attention is caught. And, and behind him is Zoro! Brook found Zoro! Chopper breathes another sigh of relief and shifts into kung fu point so he can go into his more skillful attacks.
Things are going to be fine, Chopper realizes as Zoro blows by him, swords crossed and attack names flying from his lips as the blades swirl. They have to be because look! Culmination! It must be the end because it's a huge fight and Sanji's foot is aflame and setting marine uniforms aflame along with it. They're all together and it won't be long surely, since Usopp has turned the battlefield into an unkept garden. Perhaps he can stop worrying about blood pressure and blood loss for a little whil now because just look at the storm clouds gathering overhead! At the many hands holding swords, each armed hand branching into fingers that are decorated with identical fingerprints.
And he knows Usopp always says not to jinx things, not to ask questions that he doesn't want to know the answer to, but in his head, surely, it's alright?
What could go wrong here?
And that is when it does.
~7~
"Haha! No one minds the weather except a good navigator, shows them what's important on these seas." Nami cheers quietly to herself again and Luffy cranes his head over the branch, watching as his nakama duke it out with the marine squadron that had been following Nami. He's not entirely sure where they all came from, his nakama, not the marines, marines are kind of endless at times. But his nakama, they... Are awesome. Apparently Franky is on his crew now, and a skeleton- a skeketon. Who is playing music, which meant he is a musician. Plus all of his crew look really cool, older and stronger and different but still clearly them. It's nice to see. Merry left, but they've all continued and gotten even stronger, gone even farther, she would've liked that.
"Alright Luffy," Nami turns to him and wags a finger around his nose. "I'm going to go down there and pick those loser's pockets clean. You stay here. Right. Here. Clear?" He nods and she casts a suspicious look over him before grabbing his arm and using it to rappel down the tree, he watches her sneak off into the chaos and tracks her by her orange hair ducking and weaving through the white caps.
He can track all of them like that, actually. There's Franky with the blue (though he towers over everyone and is riding a red and yellow motorcycle so he could see him with or without blue hair) and there's Chopper with the blue and pink hat, Brook with the afro, Sanji with the blond. He can pick out Usopp's hat from all the plain standard issue caps. Robin has black hair but she never gets too close to marines, maintaining a safe buffer-zone between her actual body and the fighting. Oh, and there's Zoro! Green!
He leans back against the tree, watching them fight, a breeze blows by and he laughs to himself, it's a good day, sunny. It makes all the trees look greener.
He only closes his eyes for a second but when he looks back the tide has shifted, or is shifting, quickly. The marines had reinforcements, apparently, and the white caps are taking over the color, there are just too many to fit on the battlefield, too much white. He notices the green disappear first, then the afro dropped into the white, then Usopp's hat is knocked off and he can't follow him at all because a lot of the white caps have fallen off too. Luffy blinks, watching, his fists tightened unconsciously. Sanji lets out a furious yell and Luffy's attention snaps to him as he drops to get below a sword swipe but doesn't pop back up right away, and then another familiar yell Franky's loud "SUUUPPPERRRR" and Luffy's attention is caught into that, he's trying to keep an eye on all fo them now, the Nami is trying to weave her way back through to him but she's forced down under the white as well. Chopper's heavy point is bigger now, but when he shrinks to a different form Luffy loses sight of him, Chopper's too short. He focuses his attention on Robin, some part of him is thinking they're all fine, that it's just a fight, that they're all going to reappear in just a second and he should keep looking. He doesn't move to take his eyes off Robin though, and so he sees the exact moment when she turns and stumbles for half a step and a man with a long coat jumps forward…
He doesn't look anymore, he can't see, only the green, the green is still there, it's light and summery and happy and he can't help but want it all to go away, because- because…
Gone. Nothing more than a quiet 'pop'. It shouldn't be possible, to have it all ripped away so quickly. And Ace. A voice says but his panic quickly overrides it, his current problem, his burden as Captain has suddenly grown unbearable, or maybe it's because it's because it's been taken away, because he can no longer carry it because he's dropped it and it's broken.
The bubbles float peacefully, but he feels like he's thrashing inside one of them, unable to escape. He's trapped inside this bubble of panic and he can't do anything to rationalize a solution, to fight, he's defenseless. He stumbles forward a step, his knees buckle, dig into the grass as he collapses upon himself. He can't hold himself up. He caves in, he's hollow.
"What- what's wrong with me?" He finds his voice breaking, he chokes a sob out of the way so he can speak. "Why-?"
Kuma is standing over him, speaking, he had thought, but he can't hear anything, nothing but the popping of the bubbles, the popping of Kuma's devil fruit powers at work. He chokes again on the sorrow in his throat, burrows his head into the ground, not bothering to swipe away his tears, just allowing them to fall and 'plop' to the ground.
In an instant everything fades, and simultaneously grows bright.
~7~
"Back off already! Stupid, weakling- crap."
"What? Crap what?"
"Luffy's not in the tree."
"Crap."
"That's what I just said."
"Don't be stupid, this is really bad!"
"I know that, I'll go find him."
"Oh, no, I don't want to hear that from you!"
"What?"
"Travel safely~ Bon Voyage~"
"Shut up,"
"Oi, wait, you're actually leaving me here? Zoro! I might die!"
"Not my problem."
"Cold!"
Zoro ducks beneath an erratic sword swing and slashes at the opening the marine had left to his abdomen, half cutting and half pushing the living obstacle out of the way. Usopp is still complaining behind him but he's decided to stop listening, waste of time and focus that he needs to figure out a way through these marines. He doesn't have enough space to set up a flying slash, and he doesn't want that kind of attention anyhow. Oh hey, what about… He sheathes his swords and steps aside pointing.
"Usopp, make a path."
"What!" The sniper straightens and shrieks, "You want me to clear a path? That's your job!"
"Hurry up, they're filling in," Zoro gestures and Usopp growls before holding out his kabuto and yelling "Skull Bomb Grass!"
The boom resounds across the battlefield and the nearest marines scatter (or are blown away) and Usopp 'harump's, crossing his arms and nodding.
"There, a path, happy?"
"No, I wanted something inconspicuous!"
"Then why did you come to me!" Zoro ignores him and traipses off down the cleared way (more or less cleared he should say, he keeps having to step over bodies.) but he quickly turns because he's pretty sure there's a gap between those marines that he's supposed to go through…
"No, bad Zoro!" Usopp's hands are on his shoulders and straining to turn him around, he turns with a nincomittal growl.
"Get your hands off, I'm fine. You're stupid path is twisty."
"No, it's a circle that you have to walk the diameter of, just go straight."
In this haphazard manner the span of the battlefield is traversed, and Usopp tells Zoro as they reach the end that he'd rather guide Luffy across a fight then Zoro any day. Zoro smirks because that's one heck of an achievement.
"RAH!" An overconfident marine with a set of brass knuckles surges forward and swung for Usopp's chin, who in answer shrieks and ducks, stumbling forward and tripping through the final thin layer of marines who made up the fringes of the battle. Zoro unsheathes a sword and sends the audacious marine flailing, then turns to follow after Usopp, immediately on guard as he hears the sniper's yelp.
"Ow… I tripped on something around here." Usopp complains as Zoro slashes through the thin perimeter of marines. "Er, in there." He points back into the fray but Zoro's stopped listening again, he's looking around but Luffy isn't around, not on the ground, not hiding somewhere (that he can see) and when he looks up he's not in the tree either.
"Usopp, did you get us lost?" Zoro demands and Usopp answers with a squawk of indignation which Zoro also ignores.
"No, I didn't." Usopp grinds out, getting to his feet and beginning to look around as well. "But Luffy isn't here… He was right up on that branch, if he'd fallen he'd be around here."
"He probably got tired of watching and jumped in."
"No, he's all the way up to Enies Lobby now, his body thinks he just fought Lucci. He's ready to fall asleep." They stand for a moment before realization strikes simutaneously.
"Hey… How far do you think rubber would make him bounce?" Usopp whimpers.
"Shoot!" Zoro leaps forward with his swords bared, slicing through the marines and scowering the ground, for a flash of red or yellow.
"I've captured Straw Hat Luffy!" The yell rings across the battlefield and captures all of the fighter's attention instantly, Zoro swivels with a snarl and bursts forward, trying to follow the voice to its source. "Straw Hats! Surrender if you want him to die on an execution stand instead of before your eyes!" Zoro can hear them all moving, forging their own paths through the suffocating white and streaming towards the voice, towards Luffy's voice too, Luffy who is whimpering. No, Zoro won't believe that, he's hearing wrong.
But the desperate murmur escalates into a mutter, and then a continuous moan, before finally turning into understandable words, the tone of furious insistence.
Zoro bursts through at the same time as the rest of them, but by that time it doesn't seem to matter that much. For a second Luffy is limp in the hands of a burly marine, a knife blade biting shallow gashes into his neck, and the next he's twisted around with the blade of the knife between his teeth and has a fist imbedded in the man's face.
"ERE ARE EY?" He demands around the dagger, staggering for a moment before he pulls it out of his mouth and swipes it around as another marine charges forward to attack. "I SAID, WHERE ARE THEY?" He demands, stalking forward as the wall of enemies tightens. "KUMA WORKS FOR THE MARINES, DOESN'T HE? DOESN'T HE? WHERE DID HE GO?"
"Kuma isn't-" One man stutters but falters as Luffy sweeps around in a precarious step towards him, the dagger brandished wildly.
"Where?" He hisses and they all feel the wave of accidental conquerer's haki that rushes forward. The marine faints, Luffy stumbles around again.
The battelfield that had been loud with clashing swords and yells of pain moments before has dropped to a grave yard's hush, Luffy the only one speaking, demanding. Zoro clenches his hands on his swords and carefully reaches up, taking Wado from his tightened jaw.
"Luffy." He says and Luffy swivels on unsteady feet to look, his eyes blown wide and jaw clenched as tears steadily course down his cheeks. He looks like he's seven again, helpless and lost and scared. A captain shouldn't look like that, a captain should be strong and fearless. So Zoro swears that his captain won't ever look like that again. "We're right here."
"Zoro…" Luffy's face relaxes and it's not a full blown smile, not even close, just a broken cresent sliver that is hanging by a thread. "You're alright, you're all alright, good…" He gives a weak little laugh and Zoro's expression tightens as a both dauntless and foolhardy marine shifts and moves to strike.
"Platanus Shuriken!" Usopp calls and sharp blurs of green shoot past Zoro's ear and over Luffy's shoulder, biting through the marine's clothes and shallow cuts into his skin. He cries out and retreats. Luffy doesn't move.
"I'm sorry guys," He starts, taking a wavering step toward them, seemingly drinking up the sight of them. "I guess I messed up there." He dropped the knife and it made a light thud as its handle met the ground. "I must've been seeing things… Weirdest dream…" He's murmuring again, talking to himself while the crew keeps a close eye on the crowd of marines, dealing out murderous gazes. None of them should be seeing this, Straw Hat Luffy's moments of weakness. Once their captain is out of the way the marines are all goners.
"A weird dream?" Robin prompts, though her expression remains steely towards the enemies.
"Yeah, there was a bear-guy, and his devil fruit, he made you guys- you guys disappeared." The tightness in his voice is well disguised but not enough to hide it from them. "But, but I think it was real too…" His steps are getting slower, Zoro curses inwardly. Don't stop yet, come on, a few more steps. You're almost to us. He wants to say, but he doesn't.
"You look different, Zoro, what happened to your eye?" Zoro tightens his jaw but there's no sword there to hold and no enemy to fight. "Zoro? Guys?"
Marines are cowards, and cowards are not only defined by their affinity to running away.
The wall of white surges into a wave, the entire thing made of broken water, frothing rapids, Luffy doesn't turn, he's still eraptured, by them, by he simplicity behind having nakama to look at and hold and keep close.
Zoro can sympathize, they all can, because recently they've all realized that they ought to have held him closer.
"Luffy, duck!" Zoro hears someone yell, it might be Usopp but it could have been Chopper, they both get really shrill when they're nervous. Sanji curses in a long string of words finishing with "Get down, you moron!" And Zoro scoffs because if that's what he wanted he should have just said so.
Luffy does, though it's mostly by accident, he missteps and dips into it for a moment and that moment affords Usopp a shot and a marine an emprty swipe of a sword. Luffy's face twists as though he's remembering he has marines behind him, but he doesn't change his pace, not his direction.
"Hey, cretin! Stop standing there like a pile of useless plant matter and grow a little faster!" Sanji shoves him from behind and he starts off, shoving his sword back into his mouth. "Grow in the right way, oaf!" He switches direction.
The battle is shifting, had shifted. What had started out as an easy paced fight became hard, which then fell into stillness which has now grown into desperation. The crew, desperate to reach and protect their captain, the marines, desprately attempting to find a foothold in the chaos that is a fight with the straw hat pirates when they have something very important to fight for, and Luffy, desperate to keep every last one of his nakama in his sight.
To a bystander it would have appeared as some twisted game of whack-a-mole. The colorful heads would all be sticking up and then one would drop and their name would be shrieked out over the clamor of the fight. "SANJI!" And the blond would rocket upward, launching into a series of high kicks that seem slightly strained, as though he hadn't been prepared for the move. And then the tip of Chopper's hat would fall beneath the white and his name would be howled and inexplicibly the reindeer would shift into one of his larger or taller forms.
And at one point or another Luffy stopped having to yell, because they were all there, they'd all found their way through the fray to his side and he had to only reach out and they were there.
His sigh of relief is loud even over the pandemonium, or at least it is to those eight sets of ears (seven if you want to get specific about Brook).
"Guys…" He breathes, laughs lightly, breathlessly. "I- sorry… I won't let that happen again, sorry…"
"Shut up," Sanji spits out, twisting around to face his captain, Franky and Brook fill in the hole he temporarily leaves. "Don't you start saying that was your fault, Kuma, because he wasn't. There was nothing you could have done."
"Nothing at all," Usopp agrees in a shout, Luffy's face crumples a little in displeasure.
"There was, there should have been." He says quietly and Sanji strides forward and pokes Luffy's forehead with his finger.
"There isn't much in there, Captain." He starts, chewing irritably on the end of his burned out cigarette. "But there's a heck of a lot in here." He moves his hand downward and jabs at Luffy's chest. "So don't think so much and listen to us telling you that what you did was your best, and what we did was our best. It's not something to be proud of, but there's nothing to regret. Call it unlucky, call it skillful on the marine's part, heck, call it fate. But don't you start calling it your mistake."
Luffy shifts slightly, peering up past the brim of his hat and at the fringe of hair that covers half of Sanji's face. He gives him a wobbly smile and tips forward, wrapping his arms around the older man's torso and burying his face in his dressy jacket. Sanji pushes the straw hat back into place and adjusts his cigarette with one hand to hide his smile.
"Sanji, your eyebrow… is really cool!" Luffy sputters and Sanji throws him off with an angry snarl.
"Geez, crap Captain, you're so thick." He grumbles and Luffy snickers, splayed out sloppily in the grass. "You get what I mean, right?"
"Yeah, thanks, Sanji." Luffy practically glows with the radiance of the true gleaming smile that he now wears and Sanji nods curtly, backing back into the fight without another word as Luffy finds hi footing and then his place, slipping, just a little wobbly now into the sliver of space between Zoro and Nami that cracks open wider to leave room for him.
The circle feels complete with ten people making up the edge, and it's more sturdy, even though it no longer has a solid core.
"Very true, Sanji-san." Brook murmurs as he lunges forward with a splintering stab motion, "He has such a huge heart. I envy him, for I have none at all!"
"Don't say that Brook," Robin interjects "Your heart is very much there in spirit."
"Ah, yes! I have enough spirit to go around!" He realizes with a start, "For I am made entirely of bones and held together by my spirit!"
"We know," Nami deadpans and Luffy laughs loud and clear.
"Skull joke!" Both he and Brook cry and the yell rings around them as the first truly carefree thing Luffy has said all day.