Chapter 8

And so we set sail, following Dorry and Brogy's directions and traveling forward in a straight line. Hardly a minute after we had disembarked, the sea parted, revealing a gigantic goldfish. The entire crew's reaction was, "HOLY SHIT!" while I coolly sat waiting for what would happen next. It was too late to change direction, of course, so we proceeded directly into its open mouth.

"Don't worry, guys. Dorry and Brogy have got this," I tried to assure everyone. I was met with varying cries of disbelief.

Seconds later, we heard the giants call out their attack name: "HAKOKU SOVEREIGNTY!"

The goldfish suddenly split open, freeing our ship and allowing us to continue sailing. Now that I had a chance to think about it, I wondered why the giants would have directed us right towards the goldfish, even if they were planning to save us. I didn't think about it for long though; after all, the whole encounter hadn't even delayed us a minute.

With that hurdle cleared, the only one left was trying to distract myself from Nami's inevitable illness. I offered to spar with Zoro, which he happily took me up on. That lasted several hours, but eventually I became bored, so I made my way up to the crow's nest and, just as I was realizing I didn't have much to do—

"Hey, Declan! I need some help down here!" Nami called out. Guess I'd spoken too soon—or thought too soon.

I headed to the map room, where I found Nami sitting at her desk.

"Yeah?" I asked her simply.

She gestured to the charts she was drawing. "The waters we're currently in are starting to get turbulent, so I need you to hold my chart still while I draw it."

One thing about that perplexed me. "Why can't someone else help you with this?"

She got an annoyed look on her face. "Because Zoro's napping, Sanji's in the kitchen, Usopp's in his workshop, Luffy's a spaz, and Vivi's playing pattycake with Carue."

I checked outside and saw that Vivi and Carue were indeed playing pattycake. That gave me a quick chuckle as I took hold of her chart. The process didn't take very long, given her skill.

As I left the room, Fencer asked a weird question. "Humans are mammals, right?"

"Yeah, why?" I asked, confused.

Fencer looked back at the map room. "Something about her scent is off."

"Really?"

"Yeah, she kind of smells like a reptile."

"…What?"

A couple days later, everyone on the ship was minding their own business when Zoro noticed something else strange about Nami.

"Is something wrong?" he asked her.

"No, why?"

"You seem unsteady on your feet." Zoro frowned. "You sure you're okay?"

Nami looked annoyed. "I'm not unsteady! I'm fine. Trust me."

Despite her insistence, Zoro kept his eye on her as she hobbled away. Suddenly, he felt something crawling up his back. Before he could react, he heard Fencer whisper into his ear, "You noticed something is up with her too?"

The swordsman nodded. "Yeah, but I'm not sure exactly what's wrong with—"

"Wait a second, dude!" Fencer cut him off. "Look at her feet!"

Glancing down, Zoro noticed that the navigator's heels were raised slightly off the ground.

"She wouldn't bother doing that on purpose, right?" the fire ferret asked.

"If she's not doing it on purpose," said Zoro, "then why is it happening?"

"Good question. The mystery deepens."

Later that week, the sky started clouding up, and it became clear that yet another thing was amiss with our navigator: her skin seemed darker than normal.

"Hey, Nami, have you been tanning?" Luffy asked her innocently.

"What? No, I've had my hands full directing the… ship." Her pause near the end made Luffy frown.

"Uhh, are you sure you're okay?"

"Yes, Luffy, I'm fi—" Nami paused again, looking slightly queasy. "Okay… Maybe I'm not fine. I'm gonna go rest."

After a few days, Nami still wasn't getting better, and eventually Vivi confirmed what we were all thinking: "Hey everyone, Nami is really sick!"

The princess had assembled us in the girls' cabin. It was just like she said: Nami was sick. Her face was flushed, her skin had darkened, her nails were sharper, and…

Wait, what the fuck?

"Guys? Are her teeth normally pointy like that?" Fencer asked.

Luffy shook his head. "No, her teeth only get sharp when she's yelling at us for being stupid." I knew he was being serious, but I laughed a little at that anyway. "Wait a second," our captain continued. "Sanji, cook her some meat. That should fix her up."

Sanji just kicked him. "A good meal won't fix something like this, you idiot!"

"What exactly is wrong with her?" Usopp wondered aloud.

Vivi shook her head. "I have no idea. I've never seen anything like this before."

"I doubt any of us have." Zoro said before looking in my direction. "Except maybe you."

Everyone turned to look at me, but for once, I found I didn't have any helpful prophecies to share.

"Don't look at me," I said with my hands held up in defense. "This isn't what happened in the story at all. It was just supposed to be a high fever. Nothing like…this."

"What can we do about it?" Sanji asked.

I shrugged helplessly. "I don't know."

The tension on the ship didn't decrease in the days that followed. We took turns checking up on Nami, and every other time we did, something seemed different. I saw that her teeth were getting even sharper. Zoro said her pinky and ring fingers were shrinking. Usopp reported that her temperature had been extremely high when he'd touched her forehead. Vivi even said her skin was starting to feel scaly.

As Nami's condition worsened, so did morale. I wanted to do something to lift everyone's spirits, but failed miserably each time I tried. I tried telling jokes to Luffy and Usopp, but I didn't get any laughs. I gave Fencer that belly rub I'd promised her, but it didn't make her any less worried. I even made snickerdoodles, but they sat untouched on the counter.

The next day, snow started falling, which gave me an idea. I waited for an evening when everyone was on deck.

"I love snow," I sighed. "It reminds me of a certain song."

"What song?" Luffy asked.

"You could say it's a kind of valley winter song," I answered, hoping that mentioning the song's name would work—and it did, I realized as I heard the background music fade in.

"It goes something like this," I said. And with that, I started singing.

"Hey sweet Annie,

Don't take it so bad.

You know that summer's coming soon.

Though the interstate is choking under salt and dirty sand

And it seems the sun is hiding from the moon."

The whole crew looked at me in surprise. I really hoped they were liking this so far. My only indicator was that they hadn't tried to stop me yet. I continued with the song.

"Your daddy told you

When you were a girl

The kind of things that come to those who wait.

So give it a rest, girl

And take a deep breath, girl

And meet me at the Bay State tonight.

And the snow is coming down

On our New England town

And it's been falling all day long.

What else is new?

What can I do?

I wrote a valley winter song

To play for you."

Luffy and Usopp started to dance, and Fencer and Carue were tapping their feet to the rhythm. Even Zoro, Vivi, and Sanji were smiling by now. It looked like everyone's mood was finally improving. I would've done another verse but at this point, my shyness won out. I looked at the sky, raised my hands in the air, and yelled, "Okay, that's enough!"

The background music faded out, earning various reactions from us. Surprise from me, since the universe had actually obeyed my request; disappointment from Luffy, Usopp, Fencer, and Carue because my song was done; and confusion from Vivi, Sanji, and Zoro at my sudden decision to stop singing.

"Aw, why'd you stop, Declan? That was awesome! Why didn't you tell us you could sing?" Luffy asked.

I chuckled awkwardly. "I'm self-conscious about my singing voice," I muttered, rubbing the back of my head.

"Are you kidding? That was amazing! Right, guys?" Fencer said, getting nods from the rest of the crew.

"Oh… Thanks." Despite my embarrassment, I felt happy to have succeeded at last in lightening the mood.

"Hey, uh, Declan? I have a question," Usopp started.

"Yes?"

"What's an interstate?" he asked.

"And what's a Bay State?" Luffy chimed in.

"Quack, quack," said Carue.

"He just asked what New England is," Fencer translated.

I sighed. And so began a lengthy explanation about the geography of my world. But that night, everyone went to bed in a good mood. So mission accomplished.

The next night, I patrolled the deck while the whole crew was asleep. As usual, I had Skeleton Buddy in the crow's nest while I carried out my nightly duties. It was honestly pretty boring.

In a slightly desperate effort to pass the time, I snuck into everybody's rooms one by one and took a few minutes to watch them sleep. I was so starved for entertainment that I didn't care if it made me look creepy.

But when I opened the door to the girls' room, standing there, holding a big bag of Nami's money, was somebody I never could have expected.

Standing at seven feet tall—if you counted the two red spikes on his head, which I did—Mantax looked almost exactly like his Bionicle set. His long right arm sported a set of pincers, he wore heavy armor on his shoulders, and two sharp spikes jutted out slightly above each of his knees.

He had his back to me when I opened the door, and I couldn't help but notice that his tail wasn't two stiff pieces as it was in his set; it was a single, flowing, and organic-looking body part. He was very impressive in real life. I was fucking speechless.

As he turned around, his red eyes met my eyeless sockets.

Our little staring contest only lasted a few seconds before I pulled myself together and did the sensible thing. "INTRUDER!"

That woke up Vivi, and Mantax immediately decided to bail. He rushed at me, swept at my knee with his pincers, and then ran out the door, wrenching his body sideways to get himself through. That explained how he'd managed to enter the room despite those shoulder pads of his, although it was still a tight fit.

While Vivi was getting her bearings, I ran onto the deck to see that Skeleton Buddy had confronted our intruder. The black and gray Bionicle character faked a thrust with his pincers and then threw a Spartan kick. SB fell for the fake, and Mantax sent him flying.

Zoro was the first of the crew to appear on the quarterdeck, and he was as surprised as I was to see Mantax. That didn't stun him for long though. He hopped down from his perch, throwing a downward slash. Mantax caught the blade between the tips of his pincers, much to the swordsman's shock. It was just enough time for the seven-foot living Lego set to roundhouse kick him across the deck.

Mantax looked around as Vivi, Sanji, and Usopp appeared on the quarterdeck as well. Seeing he was outnumbered, he lowered his arms to his sides and stood completely still. The next thing we knew, he was gone. It was like he'd just popped out of existence.

Usopp pulled out his slingshot. "Special attack: Multi-Ketchup Star!"

His projectiles hit nothing but thin air, splattering on the floor. It seemed like we'd lost our perp until a footprint appeared in the ketchup. Sanji leaped down, doing multiple front-flips to gain momentum, and brought his foot down on the space where the footprint had appeared. Before he hit the ground, his foot made contact with something, and there were two sharp cries of pain.

Mantax became visible, showing that our cook's attack had hit him right in the head. Unfortunately, Sanji had grazed his calf on one of the enemy's head spikes in the process. Mantax fell to one knee while Sanji collapsed on the deck.

I took the opportunity to get close and throw a right hook, knocking our would-be thief out. At least, I thought I knocked him out. His face was just a blank stare.

"Who or what exactly is this thing?" Usopp asked, voicing the rest of the crew's thoughts. Before I could explain further, more footsteps caught our attention.

We all turned to see Nami, wrapped in a blanket.

"Holy crap! Your face!"

Real smooth, Luffy. Everyone except me rolled their eyes.

Luffy wasn't wrong to be surprised. Nami's face looked even more different than before. It was like her face had…extended, kind of like a muzzle or a snout.

Vivi gently draped her arm over the redhead's shoulder. "Nami, you need to get back in bed."

As the two girls headed back to their cabin, I decided to introduce our intruder. "This is Mantax, everybody."

"Is that its name or what it is?" Zoro asked.

"It's his name."

Before Zoro could ask what Mantax was, Luffy asked a question of his own. "Hey, is Sanji gonna be okay?"

In all the excitement, we hadn't noticed our cook was still lying on the ground, totally limp.

Oh fuck.

"Okay guys, I'm going to need to explain everything about our thief now, because it's important. He's not from the comic I mentioned before, and his powers are basically stealth and venom."

"You mean like a ninja?"

I didn't even bother acknowledging that. I had more urgent matters to deal with. "Hey, Usopp, got any rope? We need to tie this guy up and help Sanji."

The sniper quickly produced some rope and helped me tie up our prisoner. Wrapping the rope around his torso would be difficult given his unorthodoxbuild, so we hog-tied him instead, securing his legs together and then tying his arms to his legs.

Zoro re-addressed an important point. "Is that venom you mentioned lethal?"

"It paralyzes muscles and organs."

"But that would mean things like the heart and lungs," the swordsman pointed out in alarm.

"He's okay, guys!" Usopp called out. He had his head to Sanji's chest. "His heart's beating just fine." He looked at the cook's chest to see it still expanding and contracting. "And he's still breathing too."

Luffy looked at me. "How long does the venom take to work?"

"It's supposed to take effect right away," I replied. I was sure those were the effects of Mantax's venom, so why was Sanji still breathing?

"Well, if there's no immediate danger, can we just bandage his leg wound and get back to bed?" Zoro whined.

Then the morning came. I was glad the crew was awake so there were people to entertain me. On the other hand, being up all night all by myself had given me plenty of time to think about our new prisoner. If Mantax was here, did that mean other Bionicle characters would show up too?

On the topic of getting no sleep, I'd been staying up all night every night. For some reason, I hadn't slept or even felt tired since eating my Devil Fruit. Was it because I didn't have a brain? I figured that was the part of me that needed sleep the most. But what did I know about stuff like that?

I snapped out of my thoughts as a news coo landed on the railing of our ship to deliver the morning paper. I walked over to the coo. "Hey there."

The bird chirped his salutation and handed me a paper. I handed him some beris and began to read the headlines.

Huh, new type of transponder snail discovered? Reading further, I saw a more troubling headline about three hundred thousand royal soldiers defecting for the rebellion. After a couple minutes, my mind started wandering, which gave me an idea.

"Hey, Fencer." Hearing her name, the fire ferret trotted over to me and climbed up onto my shoulder.

"Yeah?"

"I'm gonna teach you how to read."

"Uh, okay?"

She seemed a little confused, but she didn't protest. After taking a brief minute to gather some paper and a pencil, we got started.

"Okay, this is the letter 'A.'" I wrote both uppercase and lowercase versions. "It makes an 'ah' sound." My teaching plan involved starting with the sounds of the individual letters of the alphabet. Then we'd move on to actual words. That was how I'd learned it in school, and since I wasn't teaching her to write, I thought it might save us some time.

Then I heard a certain someone call out, "Breakfast is ready!"

"It can't be," I said, and practically ran to the kitchen. There was Sanji, up and about like nothing had happened.

"How are you moving? I thought you were paralyzed!" I just couldn't contain my shock. Was the venom just temporary? I could swear it wasn't supposed to be.

Our chef blew out some smoke from his cigarette. "I'm not sure what happened. All I know is when I woke up, I could move around just fine." He tried to demonstrate this and winced slightly. "My leg still hurts though."

As we continued to make our way from Little Garden, I kept working with Fencer. She was learning surprisingly fast. It was a nice feeling to know I was able to teach so well. At this rate, I thought we might even be done by the time we finished saving Alabasta.

As for the rest of the crew, they were minding their own business, happy to have some time to carry out their duties without being interrupted by action sequences. Mantax still hadn't spoken a single word.

As we cruised along, snow still falling lightly around us, everything was going smoothly—that is, until Zoro spotted something.

"Hey, guys? I see a man standing on the sea."

"Where?" I asked.

"Just there. Not too far away."

"Is it another ninja?" Luffy asked excitedly. Zoro shook his head.

I recognized the man instantly, which was a relief after the Bionicle incident. It was Chess. He looked just as dumb in real life as he did in the anime, with that ridiculous jester outfit and those weird zigzag lips of his.

He broke the ice by calling out, "It's very chilly today! Wouldn't you agree?"

Usopp and Luffy did seem to agree, nodding their heads in response.

"It's not that cold to me," I said to no one in particular. I hadn't been feeling cold at all until the snow started falling, and even then, I only felt it when the snowflakes actually touched me.

"Pfft, lightweights," scoffed Fencer. "I'm not even a little bit cold." It didn't really mean much coming from a fire ferret.

Suddenly, something began emerging from the sea almost directly beneath us. We scrambled to grab onto something to avoid falling over, but it only took a minute for things to settle again.

"Holy crap. Is that a watermelon?" Luffy wondered out loud.

Fencer's jaw dropped. "That's not a watermelon, idiot!"

Right after she said that, the big metal object began to transform, turning into a more proper-looking pirate ship. The crew was in awe as they watched—that is, until an army of green-coated men with rifles filed off the big ship onto ours, surrounding our crew.

Sanji came out of our makeshift sickroom, probably to see what all the commotion was about. "What's going on out here?"

"Yeah, what's with the hostility?" I asked the rifle-toting goons.

"Don't you already know?" Fencer whispered to me.

"Yeah, I do," I whispered back. "I'm just making small talk."

And then he appeared, the short, fat, metallic tyrant of Drum Island himself: Wapol. One thing I'd always wondered is if his metallic-looking parts were natural, a kind of sophisticated armor, or just the result of assimilating the metal he probably ate with his Devil Fruit.

The ugly bastard was eating a piece of meat off his sword as he boarded our ship.

"Ahoy, peasants." That was a pretty rude greeting. No surprise. "Out of curiosity, are you really a group of pirates? Your crew seems rather small."

"We're a skeleton crew," I told him without missing a beat.

The rest of the crew rolled their eyes, but Wapol looked indifferent and, having finished his meat, he ate the sword as well.

"Ah. I see what you did there. Anyway…"

Seeing that the conversation was about to go the way it did in canon, I took Fencer off my shoulder and whispered to her, "Get ready to fight. Also, try not to use fire attacks."

"Why?"

"Because the Merry is mostly made of wood." Her eyes widened a little, but she nodded.

Wapol's eyes scanned the deck. "If you'll excuse me, I'm feeling a bit hungry—"

No way was I letting him eat part of our ship. I charged the fatso, hitting him in the face with a hammer fist.

"How dare you!" some goon shouted. Then the fighting got started. Luffy punched, Sanji kicked, Usopp fired, Zoro slashed, and I… also punched. It looked like my sparring sessions with Zoro were starting to pay off; I was able to dodge most of the slashes and shots from the goons. During the fight, I caught a glimpse of Fencer. She was taking advantage of her small stature to run around and slash the heels of our enemies.

The fight lasted about a minute and ended the same way it did in the show. Luffy launched Wapol off the ship and into the distance, until he was only a glint on the horizon. Seeing him flung so far he was reduced to a mere twinkle in the distance made me laugh; this was the kind of thing you could really only watch in a cartoon.

"Get this thing off me!" We turned our attention to three of Wapol's henchmen. Fencer was crawling all over the guy in the middle, scratching and biting him. The other two took turns trying to hit Fencer with their rifles, but Fencer always dodged the hits, letting the blows land on her victims instead.

After a few more seconds of this, Fencer shot a few small fireballs from her mouth at the other two green-coats, knocking them out. Wapol's remaining forces gathered up the defeated men on their ship and left, shouting stuff like, "Save the king!" and "He can't swim!"

"Well, that just happened," I said.

I expected we'd get a little more time to relax now that Wapol had been defeated, but the calm did not last long. We heard screams coming from below deck.

Rushing down to check it out, we found that some of Wapol's men had apparently been left behind and were now preoccupied with an unrestrained Mantax.

One man slashed at the Barraki in panicked self-defense, but Mantax used his longer reach to strike first, piercing the guy's temples with the tips of his pincers. Releasing the goon, he set his sights on the last guy and was on him in an instant. He grabbed him by the shoulders, pulled him close, and sank his mandibles into the poor sucker's lower jaw before pulling away and ripping it off.

Luffy and Fencer were shocked at this sudden violence—and Usopp was rightfully horrified—but Zoro and Sanji kept their cool, and I was a little calmer than I thought I'd be. Maybe it was all those horror movies I'd seen. Either way, once we'd all gotten over what we'd just seen, we surrounded Mantax.

He looked around at all of us and finally spoke for the first time. "I surrender."

The crew looked surprised, but judging from his reaction last time we'd cornered him, I figured Mantax didn't like to be outnumbered. He knew he couldn't escape us now.

Then Luffy asked something we were all thinking: "How did you get untied?"

He gave no reply.

Luffy kept a stern look. "Usopp, do you have any chains?"

In a few more hours, Drum Island appeared on the horizon.

"LAND HO!" Usopp shouted.

Luffy looked so excited. "All right! I can't wait to play in all this snow!"

"We can play around after we find a doctor, Luffy," Sanji reminded him.

"Guys?" I called their attention. "Just a heads-up, we're not gonna get a warm welcome." The whole crew groaned at that, and I realized what I'd said. "That pun wasn't intended."

It was just like I said. Once we got far enough inland, we found ourselves surrounded by villagers with guns.

"Hey, pirates! Leave now!" one of them spoke up.

"Wait, we have an injured crewmate aboard!" Luffy protested.

"Good," the villagers sneered. "Then there'll be one less pirate in the world."

Sanji took a drag from his cigarette. "Look, buddy, I promise we're not gonna cause any harm."

"You expect us to believe that crap?" It was then that their mayor, Dalton, showed up. "This is your last warning, pirates. Leave now or we'll shoot."

The lack of cooperation was annoying me, but I kept a polite tone to avoid a fight. "Please. I swear on my grandma's grave that we won't—"

"Fuck your grandma!"

BANG!

I only had a split second to process what had just happened. A bullet had just pierced my forehead.

Damn.

Sorry it took so long to actually bring a Bionicle character into this.