Luffy and Skullface continue to trade blows, and Nami keeps trying to bring the mainsail down.
Her hands on the latest knot she's untying, she finds herself hesitating. Nami would be lying if she said that Skullface's last admission hadn't put her off too, but it's difficult for her to feel sympathy for a pirate, still. Luffy and his band of weirdos are easy to root for, but Skullface and his unwilling host are only more reprehensible to Nami's sensibilities the more she hears of them.
She scowls and keeps going. And, well, if she slows down enough with the sail that Luffy can get a few more good hits in on Skullface…
It isn't anyone's business but Nami's.
Far below, on the deck, Luffy almost gets Skullface into a grapple, but Skullface manages to get a hand on Luffy's upper arm, and Luffy has to throw the pair of them apart before he loses the limb to another energy blast. It still grazes Luffy, and he's starting to look increasingly like he's fallen down a tree and smacked into ever branch along the way, but it hasn't appeared to affect his fighting overmuch.
Skullface skids to a stop some ways away and laughs. "Did I hit a nerve? I apologize, truly. It wasn't my intention, and frankly, I didn't expect to. You've better things to do, haven't you, boy?"
"You keep trying to tell me what to do and how I should think!" Luffy snaps, irritated and pointing in accusation at Skullface. "Of course I'll get mad!"
"It's because I'm old, you see." Skullface shakes his stolen head. "I can't help but be embarrassed, when the folly of youth is in front of me. So, I can't help but want to give you advice." He smirks, humorless and full of teeth. "This man never made anything of himself, but he was a pirate, if nothing else."
Luffy frowns. "What's that got to do with anything?"
"He was a pirate, with experience to his name and blood on his hands, and there was nothing he could do to stop me. Not when I took his flesh. Not when his men begged for their lives." Skullface gestures to Luffy with an upturned hand. "What will you be able to do? You're just a boy with a boat."
Luffy doesn't respond right away. Nami, sensing danger, peers dubiously down on the scene from up on the rigging, squinting and with one hand up to shield her eyes from the sun. It's really starting to bear down now, casting a harsh shadow over Luffy from under his hat. His hands are fists at his sides.
And then, Luffy's arm rockets out to close the distance, and he punches Skullface again square in the jaw.
"And I'm going to be king of the pirates, you asshole!"
It feels like the second solid hit that Luffy's gotten on Skullface, and it sends Skullface careening back, bouncing a few times off the deck and landing in a heap. Nami facepalms, exasperated and yet oddly endeared.
The heap that is Skullface begins to shake with laughter. He doesn't, though, immediately get back up.
"King of the pirates?" Skullface wheezes. "Now I know. You have to be joking."
Luffy doesn't even acknowledge Skullface's taunting, and instead, he rushes Skullface. Skullface tucks and rolls away, but Luffy leaps after him, and the two scuffle briefly on the ground. They make it back onto their respective feet at the same time, and then they're going blow for blow again.
"Haven't you had enough of this guy?!" Luffy demands of Skullface's host, dodging a punch to his head. Luffy grits his teeth and throws a return punch to Skullface's jaw, which Skullface also dodges. "I have, and I just met him!"
Skullface hums like an out of tune whistle, accompanied by a surge of that blue energy, in a dome around him. It shoves Luffy back, but doesn't knock him down.
"You are onto one thing, in your own way," Skullface allows. "It isn't about me. But that's just it, boy: it isn't about me. Provided that I'm in control, he's not made to confront what he's done. He won't resist me. I don't believe he's any cause even to try."
"It's not about him, either!" argues Luffy, even as he's already charging Skullface. Addressing the host again, he tacks on, "I don't care about your dumb feelings!"
This is punctuated by Luffy digging his heels in, using the reversal in his momentum to cast both his arms up into the air, and then bring them down on Skullface with his hands together like a meteor hammer. Skullface starts to jump back, but he misjudges just how far and fast Luffy can stretch, and Luffy smacks him upside the head with enough force to send Skullface crashing into and bouncing off the deck. Skullface wheezes, which comes out as really more of a rattle.
"I don't care if you lose, either!" Luffy adds, decisively. "Are you their captain or not? The least you owe your crew is to fight this guy!"
Skullface keeps wheezing, entertained. His hand darts out and latches onto Luffy's ankle. "And what is it, exactly, that he has left to lose?"
Before Luffy can reply, Skullface pushes off the deck with his other hand and twists, flinging Luffy up and away in a great arc. Luffy propels his arms to grab onto the rails on either side of the ship, but he can't reorient himself before Skullface, up now on one knee, fires a lance of energy at him.
It collides with Luffy's torso straight on, and Nami screams before she's even thought about it.
"Luffy!"
But Luffy's hands are on the rails now, and even as he's battered by the flow of blue energy, he holds on. Blue light streams past him, like water from a hose breaking on a rock, and his hat goes flying.
"If you don't fight back soon…" Luffy grinds out, surely in terrible pain, levering himself inch by horrible inch closer again to the ship against the energy's current. "You're never going to…!"
Like a string snapping, like a camel's back giving out, Luffy catapults himself at Skullface through Skullface's blue beam.
As he headbutts Skullface, he yells, "Because I'm going to beat him!"
Both Skullface and Luffy smash onto the deck, Skullface onto his back and Luffy flat onto his front, some ways apart. Luffy gets up first, and sends an arm out and up into the sky to pluck his hat back out of the wind.
Luffy jams his strawhat back onto his head in a right huff. He points accusation at Skullface's host. "So hurry up already!"
Skullface, with slower, more deliberate motions, makes to get back to his feet as well.
"You can't honestly believe…" he starts, but as he's rising, he pauses.
Coughs.
And then his eye and mouth holes light up blue from the inside, and he begins to clatter like crazy.
X️XX ️ ️
Over on the island, Usopp and Treva have been navigating the jungle in avoidance of the Eldoraggo Pirates.
Treva is, as Usopp learns, really quite good at not being found. Periodically, she drops down to brace on her book and leak gunk onto it, and then stands back up again with an updated idea of where all the Eldoraggo Pirates are and where they will soon be. Then, she and Usopp go precisely where the Eldoraggo Pirates will not be.
As Usopp and Treva walk their meandering path, leading the goose chase, Usopp swings the sock with the rock in it in an idle circle. They come up on a stretch of their route that consists of flat stone jutting out over the trees, from which they can see the ocean, and the half of the Eldoraggo Pirates' ship that survived.
"Why do you even carry this thing around, Treva?" Usopp asks her, of the rock in a sock. She gave it to him, to Usopp's understanding, as insurance, in case they run into the Eldoraggo Pirates anyway, or unless they maybe run into a hungry and carnivorous jungle animal. "There's plenty of weapons out there that're easier to use."
"This is an anti-wizard weapon," Treva explains, nonsensically. That's how most of Treva's explanations are, Usopp supposes. "What I really wanted was a half-brick to put in the sock, but I couldn't find one, and a full brick was too heavy. So the guy at the hardware store told me to get a rock."
"Treva," Usopp starts, frowning. He stops spinning the rock in a sock. "Wizards aren't…"
Real, he was going to say, but just then, blue arcs of terrible light begin to shoot haphazardly out of where the Eldoraggo Pirates' ship is, crackling with an ominous charge.
"... A threat to be taken lightly!" Usopp finishes, wild with hysteria. "Next time we're in town, we should go ahead and get ourselves a half-brick! We don't want to leave anything to chance, after all!"
Treva beams up at Usopp. "Yeah!"
Usopp throws his head back and laughs, because otherwise, he will cry. Treva laughs too, with a much more genuine, much less sensible confidence.
They do this for some time, until Usopp has gotten, privately and with an admirable quickness, through the five stages of grief.
️ ️ ️XXX
As soon as the light show kicks off, Nami hurries to untie the last of the mainsail's knots, then gets up on top of the crosstree to sprint back to the crow's nest.
"Luffy!" Nami calls as she runs. "Get up here!"
Before she's even finished speaking, Luffy is already throwing his arms out to anchor onto the crosstree near the crow's nest, and then already reeling himself up. Even in her haste, this display of faith still unsettles Nami, but she ignores it.
The two of them leap into the crow's nest as the mainsail goes down, collapsing like a curtain onto the deck and onto Skullface. It's shot through repeatedly by the beams of energy, becoming pockmarked with holes, but the canvas of the sail still isn't light. Nami immediately picks up her bag of treasure, ready to yell at Luffy until he does the sane thing and helps her get them both clear out of dodge.
She opens her mouth to do so, but energy pulses out in more of a dome from Skullface, and the ship rocks violently. So that they're not knocked out of the crow's nest, Luffy holds onto the top of the mast poking up through its center, and Nami holds onto the rail.
Several more expulsions of force follow in this manner. Nami has never been seasick in her life, but as she and Luffy are shaken rather like the contents of a blender, she feels that she's coming perilously close to it.
Luckily, the quaking stops before matters can get too dire. Nami sinks to her knees in relief, breathing out a sigh, while Luffy goes and pokes his head over the side of the crow's nest to look down below. He squints, and when he doesn't promptly get shot at, Nami takes that as something to be relieved about too.
She gets back up and dusts herself off, and then goes and joins Luffy in his squinting. Down on the deck, the body of the man that Skullface possessed seems still not to have rejected him, at least not entirely. His head is still a skull, and he's still spasming wildly, from what Nami can see of him. The man's lower half is smooshed under the canvas of the sail, but the rest of him sticks out, face down on the floor and missing his bicorn, through a hole.
Nami and Luffy look to each other. Luffy's expression is oddly blank, which Nami is increasingly inclined to suspect means he's waiting to see what she wants to do, or what she's going to do.
Nami grimaces.
"We should go," she says.
Luffy shrugs, accepting this easily. He turns his attention back on the Skullface situation. "You go ahead. I'm gonna see what's up with him."
"Luffy, wait—" Nami tries, but he's already launched himself back down to the deck.
She huffs and makes her own way down, more carefully. Luffy has his eyes on Skullface and his back to Nami when she gets to the bottom of the mast, but he's still keeping his distance, for reasons Nami is sure only Luffy himself or maybe Zoro could understand. Nothing as sensible as caution, certainly.
Nami debates just leaving Luffy to it, but it would be bad if Skullface turned out to still be in fighting form and attacked them from behind. And she's not incurious. So she huffs again, and walks up next to Luffy. She nods to him, and he lights up at her, which Nami is determined to find wholly unnecessary.
They go over to the body, Luffy taking point and Nami trailing after him. As they approach, the skull seems to jolt, freeze, and look up at Luffy. Instinctively, Nami hides behinds Luffy, and Luffy throws out an arm to give her better coverage.
Abruptly, Nami remembers what Luffy had been on about before, about being a captain. About what a captain owes his crew. Even though she knows better than to let herself get distracted, she glances briefly away from Skullface, the threat in front of her, to the back of Luffy's head.
Even someone like Arlong is loyal to his men. But still, she feels atypically unsettled.
She doesn't get to dwell on it for more than a moment, because before anything else can happen, Skullface gives a final, wretched rattle. The body gives out, and the skull thunks onto the planks. It then, rapidly, fills back out with organs and skin, the latter of which shrinks as if aging years in just seconds. The host's hair grows back out, long and dark, before turning white.
It's all absolutely horrible. It takes an effort for Nami not to gag too obviously.
Luffy, in contrast, has no trouble crouching down next to the body, with an air of bile fascination about him.
"Hey," Luffy says. "Anybody still in there?"
The body—the man—coughs, terrible and pained. He struggles to look up at Luffy, his eyes wide and mad, brimming with a desperate gratitude.
He rasps out a final, "Thank… you…"
And then his eyes gloss over, and Nami realizes, with a pit in her stomach, that he's died.
Nami and Luffy both stare. Nami can't make out Luffy's countenance from under his hat, but she can't imagine that he's happy. Even if she still can't quite read him, she's confident in this, if nothing else.
"You heard what that ghost said," she's compelled by her own uneasiness to say. "Even if he was sorry about what he did to his crew, in the end, he probably never even thought about all the people they killed and all the lives they destroyed as pirates. He felt bad enough for himself for the both of you."
Luffy is quiet for a beat. A worry stirs in Nami that she was too harsh for him to stomach, but then he exhales and sits back with a thump, leaning on his hands and turning his gaze skyward. The lines of his mouth and eyes are frustrated, but anyone would be, Nami supposes.
"Everything hurts," Luffy complains, petulantly, instead of arguing with her.
Nami exhales too. She looks away.
"After we meet back up with the others," she allows, "We can find somewhere to bury him."
Nami doesn't need to see Luffy to know that he's grinning his stupid, sunny grin at her.
️ ️ ️XXX
Note: I'm still writing by the seat of my pants until we've closed out this arc and moved on to the Baratie Arc, which I already have a part of written and ready to edit. If I'm a bit late with any chapters between now and then, let's all hold hands in a circle and pretend that I wasn't.