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Chapter 36:

Escape

"I don't understand, Billy," Grace muttered. "The prints are gone."

"Wah?" the duck suggested, flapping his wings.

"I don't think so," the chem-woman said with a shake of her head. "It walked all the way here, so why would it start using its wings inside?"

"I think you should listen to the bird," a feminine voice said from above them, a dangerous undertone lacing the words. Both Grace and Billy spun around, their eyes rising to a line of pipes attached to one wall high above. There, perched on one, was a curvy woman with green hair and a mischievous smile.

She was dressed in a green shirt that matched her hair, the word HAPPY printed on it in a darker shade, and a pair of black shorts that showed off her yellow-and-orange legs. They were bird's legs ending in talons that matched the prints they had followed and, where her arms should be, were wings decorated with pale-green feathers. She licked her lips, the temperature around them falling. "I thought I felt the air move. Looks like I get to have a bit of fun, too. It's been so long since I've got to hunt the prey on my own."

Grace and Billy screamed, running the other way.

The cackling laugher of the harpy followed them through the halls as the human and bird tried to backtrack the way they'd come, their footsteps pounding against the floor with no concern for the noise they were making.

"W-Wah!" Billy said.

"If that's a wisecrack about me wanting to find the monster, I don't want to here it!" Grace snarled.

"Come ba~ck!" the woman called, the flapping of her wings in the air as she flew after them. "I just want a bite! You'll barely feel a thing!"

"Stay away!" Grace yelled back, wracking her brain for a compound she could use even as natural adrenaline flooded her mind. They reached a corner and turned, Billy flapping his wings to spin so he faced their pursuer. He squawked, launching a bolt of electricity at the birdwoman. A crack echoed through the hallway as the smell of ozone appeared.

The harpy didn't so much as pause. Her abdomen seemed to swirl in on itself, turning a blinding white thick as the snowstorm outside. The duck's lightning impacted this swirling section, a part of it turning clear before blending back into the white until the whole thing shifted back to the normal color of her skin.

"Wah‽" Billy cried, his talons digging into the tile floor as he corrected his angle and ran down the hallway, catching up to Grace who had pulled ahead while his back was turned. The harpy's shrieking laugh followed them.

"Devil Fruit," Grace muttered. She spun, yellow-green gas pouring from her clothes into the air. "Chemical Bending: Reused Reaction!"

The gas spread down the hallway, filling it with the same color that had previously covered the Sunny. The harpy laughed again and Grace imagined that she would have clapped if she had hands to do so. Freezing winds blew after a couple powerful flaps from the mythological monster, the gas losing its heat and sinking to the floor as something akin to a liquid state.

"That was a good try!" the green-haired being mocked. "Too bad it wouldn't have worked on me anyway!"

"I've got an idea, Billy," Grace muttered, swinging into the saddle on his back around the next turn so she could focus, the turn itself making the gas along the floor puff up. A swirling, colorless ball began to form between the redhead's hands as she pulled the required atoms from the air around them. She leaned forward, holding the ball so the duck could see it, the sphere now about the size of a baseball. "When I say so, turn and hit this with a bolt. Got it?"

"Wah!"

"Oh?" the harpy grinned. Grace glanced back to see her mouth had filled with sharp, blindly-white teeth and her skin had paled. Billy made a final turn, the door they had entered through now directly ahead of them. "What have you prepared, my prey?"

Grace rolled the clear ball into her left hand, an Argon Whip forming in her other hand with a single thought. She threw it forward, lashing the end around the handle of the door and yanking it open with a pull. The cold of the outside air rushed into the building, Billy's speed quickly carrying the pirates from the structured hallway and into the cave.

"Now!" Billy spun as Grace threw her clear creation behind them, the gas within spreading out. Electricity sparked, the Gigafowl releasing a bolt of lightning into it. The gas exploded into a conflagration of burning reds, yellows, and oranges on contact, shaking the whole mountain. The harpy screeched within the BOOM of the blast, the expanding gasses blowing Billy and Grace off their feet, through the rocky tunnel, and out into the snow in a rush of black smoke. The two began to freefall, the winds buffeting them, while the tunnel collapsed.

"Wah!" Billy flapped, trying to fight the winds and the pain of the burns that had scorched away parts of his feathers. Grace ragdolled just out of his reach, the young woman making no sound of her own as gravity pulled the pair down into the side of the mountain. Billy stretched himself, just managing to get his beak around one of Grace's arms.

The top of the mountain rumbled as Billy tried to slow their fall, Grace unresponsive in his insecure hold. He transferred his hold, grabbing the woman's waist with his talons, before turning his attention to the rumble. His eyes widened.

The top of the mountain was shaking, flows of white starting down its side and building in intensity. Billy cursed in Avian and turned, trying to fly away, but the air around him was already starting to move. It pulled at him, dragging him backwards as the coming avalanche sucked air below, speeding itself up. Lacking the raw power needed to press forward, the displaced snow fell over both bird and unconscious human, sweeping them away.

Higher up and within the mountain, a comparatively-small amount of snow pulled itself together inside the ruined hallway. The harpy reformed from this powder, coughing up smoke as she winced. Soot covered her form, burns running over her exposed skin and patches of her wings. One wing pressed against her side as she tried to open her eyes.

"That bitch tried to blow me up," she hissed to herself. She looked up, what had been her special doorway to the outside now nothing more than a blocked-off pile of rubble. The walls and floor were cracked, the origins of such buried under several tons of rock. Cold air blew into the building through it.

"Miss Monet!" a voice called, the woman turning to see a contingent of hazmat-suit-clad workers running down the hallway. "Miss Monet, are you alright?"

"Does it look like I'm alright?" she demanded. "We're compromised. We have loose intruders that just escaped outside, a woman that can create gasses and a bird with the abilities of lightning. She knew about the sleep gas used on ships that come in, so inform the Master and get in contact with the boarding crew. Capture them, but I want the girl alive. She's mine!"

"Yes, ma'am!" The workers scattered, some to search the building for areas now at risk of coming down while the others went to inform the Master of this unfavorable turn of events. Monet turned back to her own problems, slowly healing herself with her Devil Fruit Powers.

"She better have survived that, because I want to rip her throat out personally."

"Audubade Right-Hand Strike!" Brook called, his pink flash of air piecing the shoulder of yet another covered man as he as his similarly-dressed companions tried to encircle him. "Begone! No one shall lay a hand on my captain's son until I wither away to nothing! Although, I suppose I've already done a bit of withering, haven't I? Yohoho!"

"Don't hurt my grandpa!" Ace yelled, stabbing another attacker in the leg with his Very Sharp Stick. The man let out a cry of pain as his leg stopped supporting his weight and he crumpled. "Just go away, you meanies!"

"There's only three of them and one is a kid!" the apparent head of the group shouted, the man waving a gun at them. "We shouldn't be having this much—!" He didn't get to finish, a cannonball hitting the ground beside him in a spray of snow and earth. The force knocked him and several others off their feet.

"Raahahaha!" Sunny laughed, her Klabautermann clinging to the rigging as she overlooked the battle. "No one touches my family and gets away with it!"

"Damn fairies," a man hissed as he pressed his back into a snowbank, another cannonball blowing another group away. "How the hell did they manage that? No pirates with a Klabautermann have made it past Fishman Island in a year."

Something crunched beside him, the man slowly turning to see the headless and legless torso of the samurai balanced on one hand. Its other held one of its two swords, the light glimmering off its blade. The man swallowed.

"This is so fun!" Ace laughed as a whip of rope lashed down from Sunny, grabbing the ankle of a man that was ready to catch Ace from behind. The living ship hoisted him up, smacking him into the snow-covered ground to leave a silhouette in the powder. Ace, unaware of this, smacked his Very Sharp Stick into the leg of the closest enemy with all his considerable-for-a-toddler strength, the man jumping with a yelp. Sunny knocked him out of the air. "Giiihihihi!"

"We need reinforcements!" a man cried into the snail he'd taken from his unconscious leader's pocket. "The ship is alive and there were pirates that managed to escape the gas! And the samurai's torso is here! They're cutting us down like wheat!"

As he finished, a great BOOM echoed across the island from the direction of the mountain, though nothing could be seen through the snowstorm. The torso dropped its sword and tried to cover its ears, though there were no ears to cover.

"Master!" the suited men called in a chorus, worry in their voices. Sunny took the chance to knock them all off their feet, using the one she had a hold of with her rope as an improvised flail.

"Raahahaha!" Sunny continued to laugh only for the ship-girl to cut herself off. She jerked, her head whipping the other way as something pinged in her senses. At almost the same time, an ice flow that had blocked the route to the sea crumpled, opening that passage. A ship decorated blue and white sailed through, G-5 painted on its sails and with the Marine gull flying from the masts. "Ah shit," the pirate ship cursed. "Marines to our backs!"

"Marines?" Brook echoed. "That does not bode well!"

On the Navy vessel, a similar air of unease was falling on her crew.

"I know that flag," the leader of the marines growled, the amount of smoke billowing from his dual cigars doubling. "The Straw Hats are here just like we thought."

"But how did they get here so quickly?" the woman at his side questioned. "We were sailing here all the way through the Neo-Marines debacle and they still beat us."

"I mean, we did have that storm," one of the men commented, wholly unconcerned about his superiors' grudges.

"And had to resupply," another added.

"And we had to get over those hangovers after resupplying."

"Then we ran into that other pirate crew and had to fight them."

"Then we had to make repairs."

"And—"

"Shut up!" Smoker roared. "Prepare to land alongside that ship! Am I clear‽"

"Yessir, Smokey!" The crew set about readying in case of combat only for the ship to shiver under their feet. They froze —metaphorically even though the temperature was low enough that such a thing in a literal sense was a concern— and turned their eyes on the brigg sloop ahead. The battleship slowed without any input from the marines.

"What…?" Tashigi muttered, her eyes being drawn to a vaporous figure in the rigging of the pirate vessel. It had one hand thrust out toward them. "What is that?"

"I'll bet it's the Straw Hats' second Klabautermann," Smoker grunted. He grit his teeth, unbidden memories of the War of the Best flashing through his mind. "They already made one, so of course they could make another. Men! Prepare to land, but I don't want to hear any of you suggesting stupid things like hoisting them over a bonfire! I don't want to fight the Straw Hats if we don't have to!"

The ship below them jolted at his words, its forward momentum returning. A glance at the figure above confirmed that their hand had lowered, but their head followed their path.

"Commodore Smokey!" the lookout yelled. "There's a fight happening on the shore! It's… I don't know how to describe it! It's weird!"

"Isn't everything in this Goda-forsaken ocean?" Tashigi muttered before raising her voice. "Find a way to describe it, sailor!"

"There's a skeleton, a toddler, and torso without a head or legs fighting a group of people in yellow hazmat suits while the pirate ship swings one of the guys around!"

"…" Tashigi blinked. "That is weird," she admitted.

Smoker dispelled into smoke as his Devil Fruit allowed, the man floating his parts to the roof of the crow's nest on the Straw Hats' ship. The hazy figure was there when he put himself back together, the man being sure to do so slowly with his hands up. Up close, he could see that the figure was not one color, a near ring of burgeoning red around the top of its head and shadows giving it definition. It was also rather tall, coming up to his nose.

"And you are?" the Klabautermann asked, the unconscious man on the rope rising to their height to hang threateningly by the ankle. Smoker noted that the hazmat suit he wore would protect him from the kind of toxic gas that the marines had been forced to sail through to get here.

"I am Commodore Smoker, the acting head of Marine Branch G-5. I don't want to fight."

"We are pirates."

"I know that."

"And your power?"

"A Logia. The Plume-Plume Fruit. It lets me turn into and manipulate smoke."

"Hey, Smokey!" one of the marines yelled. "Do you need some help up there or are you good‽ I mean, it'll take us a while to get there, but we can try!"

The figure snorted in their attempt to hold back a laugh. A mouth spread across the face in a smile. Idly, they swung their arm, the rope with the man swinging down in a mirrored movement to brush off a small group that had been trying to climb the starboard side.

"Your men are funny, Smokey, and I like your name," the Klabautermann said. "I'll only fight you if you make me. Or if Captain Luffy or Mrs. Nami say so, but they aren't here right now."

"Then can you explain what the Hell is going on here? And I trust you have a name."

"I'm Sunny, the Thousand Sunny, and those guys down there attacked us. Brook, Ace, and I are only defending ourselves. You gonna help or just watch?"

"Will you talk with me when the fight's over?"

"Maybe."

Smoker sighed before he looked over the relative chaos below. The organized men were easy to pick out in their yellow against the white of the snow. Again, Smoker broke into an undefined form, flowing downward. His mass spread over the battlefield, taking hold of men and drawing them together into a single bundle.

"What‽" one of them questioned only to catch sight of the man's uniform as Smoker rematerialized. "The Navy?"

"The Navy?" Brook echoed, picking up Ace.

"The Navy?" Ace questioned. "Like the guys Old Man Garp works for?"

"Easy there, Soul King," Smoker grunted, the marine ship pulling up alongside the Sunny. "I'm not here for you and yours. We—" He stopped, spinning around as he drew his jutte. It clanged against the sword of the torso the lookout had warned him about.

"He's not with us!" Brook shouted, backtracking. The Commodore sidestepped two swings before jabbing his weapon into the torso's chest and pressing its back into the snow. The strength in its arms left as the marine kept it pinned.

"Alright, Smokey," Sunny said, the man turning his head to see the Klabautermann sitting on her own railing. "Now we can talk."

The Boaty Banana continued to slide through the low waves of the circular lake, every stroke causing their breaths to condensate more visibly than the last. To go along with this, a white mist also began to grow around them as the droplets of water in the air also felt the increasing cold. The crewmates aboard the herbal boat strained their arms as they pulled the plant-ship through the water, the air around them rapidly losing its heat as the flames behind them shrunk. The water around lightened in color as, at first, little chunks of ice started to appear in the small whirlpools their plant-paddles made. Soon, however, the little chunks were replaced by pieces the size of their heads until the crew were having to paddle past whole ice flows large enough for all of them to stand on comfortably.

"This cold cannot be good for this egg," Coby commented, the young man trying to cradle it as per his captain's instructions to share his body heat and keep the egg from freezing. Robin provided her own assistance, several pairs of arms having grown to wrap the squishy dragon-to-be in something like a hug.

"It'll be fine," Luffy waved off. "It's not that cold."

"Maybe not to you, Captain, but the temperature is rapidly dropping."

"Luffy, we've got shadows ahead!" Usopp warned as they rounded another near-glacier, several dark shapes shifting in the mist around them. "I think they can see us, too!"

"You're sure these aren't the same shadows you saw two minutes ago?" Zoro muttered. "The ones that turned out to be just ice?"

"I'm sure these are actual things, Zoro!" Usopp sniped back. "I can't be the only one that can see them!"

"No, Uncle Usopp is right," Merry put in, her senses telling her as much. "They're waiting on the shore and I don't think they're gonna be friendly."

"Do you think you could throw me to the shore, Captain?" Coby questioned, trying to judge the distance. The fog made it a little harder but it was still doable. "There's only two dozen of them or so and they aren't that strong. Any one of us could take them out easily enough if we got close. Well, except Usopp."

"Hey!" the sniper yelled as the others chuckled. "I'll have you know I could win against them if I wanted to! Maybe not up close like you all, but I could do it!"

"Poot!" the legs yelled. "This is a very interesting battle! I wish to know whom I am crossing blades with!" The pirates ignored the talking legs with surprising ease.

"Yes, Usopp, you're very strong," Robin placated. "Although, considering the slim possibility that my eyes may be deceiving me, does there appear to be some component about our potential adversaries that seems… uncommon?"

The mist started to lift as Robin finished speaking, the multicolored coats of very-much-not-ice humanoids coming into view. They stood at a variety of heights that were all taller than the average person and, at their center, was a man far taller and wider than any of the others. Atop his head was a tricorn hat and in his hands was a massive sword. His most distinctive facial feature was his beard of brown hair, such having been meticulously braided into three braids side by side. In addition to that…

"Centaurs!" Luffy cheered as the lower bodies of the people standing on the shore came into view. Most of the people had the legs and bodies of ungulates, those being deer, horses, zebras, or other hooves mammals, but the biggest man of the bunch had the body of a crocodile attached to his waist. He studied them closely as the Boaty Banana drew closer. "So cool!"

"Most of those I can understand," Merry commented, "but the tall guy confuses me. Aren't crocodiles cold-blooded?"

"Then he should feel just fine in this weather," Zoro nodded.

"That's not what that means, Zoro-sensei!" Coby admonished, smacking his teacher in the back of the head.

"The Hell was that for, Shrimp?" the verdet yelled.

"That was for being a moron!"

"Cold-blooded means that an animal can't make its own heat," Usopp offered.

"Additionally, humans are warm-blooded," Robin added. "Therefore, something of the level of a crocodile centaur should be, theoretically, impossible."

"So should burning water," Merry pointed out.

"You have no room to talk about impossibilities," Coby commented. "You are the manifestation of a ship come to life without the use of any Devil Fruit."

"Fair enough," Merry acquiesced. "My existence aside, can we agree on the most likely cause of that?" She gestured to the group standing on land in the snow.

"Devil Fruit," the rest of her crewmates chorused with unanimous nods.

"And who are they probably working for?"

"The Master," every person except Luffy said.

"That big guy." The pirates turned to their captain, the young father tilting his head at their incredulous looks. "What? In my experience, usually if there's one big guy in a group of smaller guys, then the big guy is in charge."

"That is… a decent argument," Coby admitted. "Could the big guy there be the Master the giraffe guy was trying to call?"

"Let's talk to him and find out!" Luffy dropped the legs into the boat and climbed onto the cross section that was leading them forward. "Hey! Centaur guys! Hi! I like your legs!"

"You are…!" the big guy trailed off. One of his hands let go of his sword to rest on his heart. "Oh… Well, thank you."

"That's really nice of you!" all of the centaurs on the shoreline said.

"I don't know how he does it," Coby sighed. "Stupid, broken charisma."

"So, can you all help us?" Luffy asked. "See, we came to this island because our snail started crying and some guy was yelling about a samurai, which is apparently this really strong type of swordsman that one of our swordsman really wants to fight, but then we got on this island and got attacked by a dragon!"

"Oh, that thing," the man with the crocodile legs nodded. "I've heard it's really scary. Will fry a man with one breath and eat a man with another, that thing. I've lost a few boys to it in the past few months."

"I know, right!" Luffy nodded. "So we killed and ate it."

The centaurs' eyes bugged out at the nonchalant statement. "You ate the red dragon‽"

"Yeah. It was real tasty!" The Boaty Banana was decently close to the shoreline at this point, the pirates now able to see the individual patterns on the centaurs' winter coats. "Kinda spicy, though. Probably 'cause it breathed fire. Anyway, we went back to our ship only to find it gone! You guys live here, right? Do you know where it might be?"

"Hmm…" the big man stroked his beard and stared off into the distance, the Boaty Banana bumping against the frozen earth. "It's possible the Master had it moved," he said after a moment's pause. "You all were docked on the burning half of the island where it's really hot, and most ships are made of wood. If it stayed there for too long, it could've caught fire, so it might be over on this side of the island."

"Ah, Boss," one of the other centaurs muttered, this one with the legs of an antelope. "If their ship moved, then the Master probably took their crewmates captive and these guys are enemies."

"What?" the big guy questioned. "Nonsense! These fine folks are nice people. I'm sure the Master wouldn't hurt such nice folks. I'm sure there's just been some kind of misunderstanding."

At that moment, an echoing BOOM resonated from the direction of the mountain, every sentient in the area flinching at the sound.

"What was that?" Merry yelled, looking up to see a plume of dark smoke starting to disperse.

"That came from an upper floor of the lab!" the lone girl among the four-legged beings noted. "And it looks like the explosion triggered an avalanche!"

"Avalanche?" Luffy questioned, the word tickling a memory in the back of his mind. "We've been in one of those before, haven't we?"

"Back on Drum Island," Coby nodded.

"Man, that was cold." Luffy blinked, suddenly hugging himself. "Shit, it's really cold out here!"

"You're only now noticing‽" the rest of his crewmates demanded.

"That snow is really coming down!" the big guy said. "And it's coming straight toward us! Come with us; we'll get you coats inside and get this whole mess sorted out, ok?"

"Yeah, that sounds good," Luffy agreed before pulling the bodyless legs out of the Boaty Banana. Several of the centaurs bucked at the sight.

"What is that?" one of them demanded, pointing his gun at the things. "What did you do?"

"Oh, we didn't do this," Luffy waved off with a smile. "We found them like this. Sometimes they'll even say funny things!" He shook the legs.

"Poot!" they said. "The draft has gotten worse!"

"Are we going in or not?" Coby questioned, gesturing to the coming snow.

"Ah, right," the big guy nodded with far less urgency than Coby believed he should have. "Follow us."

"We are going to save these kids," Nami said, no room for argument. "As a mother myself, I can't just stand to the side while these kids talk about wanting to go back to their own parents. I refuse to leave them behind! Gin!" —The monk snapped to attention— "Give these guys a shock!"

A devious smile spread over Gin's lips as he dropped the head. "Yes, Donna."

And he was on the other side, electric wings flaring behind him as a net of lightning divided the room in half. The men in hazmat suits jumped, one unable to stop as he ran into the divider and yelped, creating a larger version of what happens when a bug meets an electric flyswatter. Two of them brought their guns up and fired, the bullets pinging off Gin's Armament Haki.

"My 'pologies, y'all," Gin chuckled. "Twas your fates t' cross th' Straw Hat Pirates, so tis your fates t' fall. I'd say it's nothin' personal, but ya pissed off th' Donna and I don' wanna lie."

"Don't think you can have all the fun alone!" Franky laughed, planting himself on one side as his body opened to reveal various weapons. "I'm feeling extra super right now!"

"Don't count me out," Sanji commented, lighting a cigarette with Gin's electric net. "Nami's made up her mind, and I can't help but be at the beck-and-call of a pretty lady."

"I'll leave them to you!" Nami said. "Everyone else, come with me. We're getting these kids out of here!"

The sounds of battle, the crashing of objects breaking, and the cries of pain started to echo as Nami, Chopper, Amy, and Kaku led the children out of the Biscuit Room's back door.

"Come on, everyone!" Nami called, ushering them along. "This way!"

"Do you know where we're going?" Amy muttered.

"Not a clue," Nami smiled. "That's it, kids! Follow the animal doctor and the funny giraffe man holding the head!"

"Giraffe man?" several of the children echoed. Neither woman decided to elaborate as Kaku and Chopper took the lead, the latter shifting into his Walk Point to stay ahead. That seemed to distract several of the kids. "Mr. Raccoon turned into a pony!"

"I'm a reindeer!" the doctor insisted.

"So what now?" Amy questioned as they made their way down the hall.

"I'm sure those guys can handle it," Nami waved off. "Why don't you leave some sort of trail they can follow to catch up to us?"

Amy reached out, ripping a pipe off the wall that blew out a puff of steam. She spun it in her grip before jabbing the end into the floor. Her Kilo powers ran through it, the woman dragging it so it left a trench in the material. "I don't have my umbrella, but will this work?"

"Yeah, that works."

"I can do this, too!" The women looked up to see Chopper shifting through his Points, much to the delight of the children. "Heavy Point! Guard Point! Horn Point!"

"What?" a voice ahead of them yelled, a group of workers staring at them. "The children are loose!"

"Now you all get to see my new Kung Fu Point! Wha-chaw!" Chopper flipped forward, his hooves a blur as he laid waste to the workers in their way.

"Blunt Tempest Kick" the ex-agent called, a swing of his leg launching a thick arc of air forward. It acted almost like a bat or a moving wall, blowing workers off their feet.

"What form of magic is this?" the head in Kaku's hands questioned. "How can one perform such acts without a sword? Are you a type of yokai?"

"I'm just a guy who trained really hard," Kaku waved off.

"What?" the head said. "What's this? Oh! All of my parts are now on the same side!"

"What are you talking about?"

"My body is currently battling someone in the snow —where I cannot tell you save it is cold— and now my legs are cold as well. I am that much closer to reuniting."

"These two are silly," one of the girls giggled.

"Nami, there's a door ahead!" Chopper informed them. At his warning, Nami sped up, overtaking each of the kids so she took the lead of the group. They came to a stop before a massive door with a big handle in the shape of a ship's steering wheel. Nami reached up, trying the handle.

"Crap, it's locked," she hissed.

"Allow me, then. Wha-chaw!" Chopper jumped, giving a showy spin before kicking the door off its hinges, causing the children to ooh and aah, clapping. "Thank you! Thank you!"

"You're awesome, Mr. Raccoon!"

"I am not a raccoon!"

"But you do look like one in that form," Nami chuckled. She stopped as a freezing breeze rolled past them, her sheer cover-up doing precious little to keep in heat. "Geeze! Is this a way outside? It's too cold!"

"Feels perfect to me," the doctor said.

"You're from a winter island," the navigator shot back.

"There… might be a problem goin' through this hallway," Kaku commented, his extensive investigative training allowing him to look deeper into the revealed passage. "I ain't no expert or anything, but everything in here is frozen solid, and I ain't talking about just metal. There're bodies in here."

"Bodies‽" the pirates questioned. They squinted as their eyes adjusted to the darkness of the frozen hallway, the walls' and floor's innards slowly becoming visible. Within were rows and rows of immobile people, each dressed in the black-and-white stripes of prisoners. Nami and Chopper grabbed each other, screaming.

"This is the way those guys brought me in here," Mocha told them, her hands balled in fists by her chest as the young girl tried to work through the memories.

"Well, that is disconcerting," Amy said, sounding oddly like Robin about the whole deal. "It looks like these guys might have been involved in the Impel Down breakout two years ago. I wonder if they're still alive."

"That is none of our concern!" Nami swallowed. "If this path goes outside, then we should take it."

A BOOM echoed from above, the whole building shaking. Every member of the group wobbled, trying to keep their balance until the phenomena ended. In response to this, one of the frozen walls cracked.

"Nevermind, we'll find another way!" Nami yelped, she and Chopper leading the way while Amy and Kaku brought up the rear, the children sandwiched between them.

"Ow!" the voice of the crew's cyborg called from behind them, the group looking back to see Franky rolling toward them on tank treads coming from his shins. Gin and Sanji were clinging to his sides. The boys in the group cheered at the awesomeness of tanks and robots. "What's up, guys? We super followed your trail after beating those guys up. They're some weird combo of sheep and man, horns and all."

"Yeah," Gin agreed. "Like a discount Merry, really."

"What was that explosion, though?" Sanji questioned. "It sounded huge."

"Nevermind that," Nami said. "There has to be a door around here somewhere. That creepy ice trap can't be the only exit."

"I feel weakened all of a sudden," the head muttered. Everyone ignored him.

"There!" Kaku called, kicking into the air with Moonwalk "I see another door ahead! Wait, make that two! They're side by side!"

"Chopper, can you do the same thing you did last time?" Nami asked.

"Screw that, I want a turn!" Amy cut in. The young mother turned to look at her only for the baker to leap over the group in a single jump, landing with a small crater ahead of them. She launched forward, each step leaving a dent in the metal floor, until she reached the door and reeled back her arm. "Master Fist!"

"And that's the long and short of it," Sunny finished, the incomplete Klabautermann having convinced Smoker to sit beside her on the railing for prosterity's sake. Ace sat on her lap, giggling as he played with his toy recreation of the Going Merry, while Brook played a concert for the rest of the marines. Tashigi watched all of this from the sidelines, within earshot of the conversation from the railing while making sure none of the men got out-of-hand from their impromptu entertainment. The torso had had its arms tied behind its back with smoke, its swords being inspected by the woman. If it had a face, Sunny imagined its expression would be very disgruntled. "We answered a call, Captain Luffy and his group went looking, and the rest of us got knocked out for the most part. Then we woke up here."

"Then you all are the victims of whomever has made this island their home," Smoker grunted. He mulled over the information, chewing on his cigars as he did. A dozen different ways to go about this flashed though his mind alongside memories that spawned each. No matter what, he certainly wasn't going to call headquarters and ask for assistance. Not from anyone loyal to the mad dog, anyway.

"So why are you all here, Smokey?" Sunny asked, one of her hands petting Ace's head. She noted the way Smoker was eyeing the hat that hung behind the boy's back but would not mention it until Smoker made a move, assuming he would. "I mean, I guess you could have chased us here, but I don't think that's it. You would have attacked first otherwise."

"That's true," the Commodore sighed, having already failed to dissuade the spirit from that horrible nickname his men insisted on. "When the Neo-Marines debacle started, the Fleet Admiral called me a wild card and ordered me here to investigate rumors."

"What rumors?"

Smoker considered his words. If he could convince the Straw Hats to not get in his way, or to even to fight alongside him, that could go a long way to preventing catastrophe. "They say someone has taken up residence in the old lab here, picking up on forgotten research the World Government declared too dangerous. We're here to check in and, if it's true, put a stop too it."

"Well, someone is here and they attacked us for no reason," Sunny said. "You won't see us helping them. And when he learns that Mrs. Nami got kidnapped, I'm sure Captain Luffy will want to beat the boss here black and blue. So… truce?"

"Tru—"

The front doors rocketed from their hinges with a clang, bouncing off the steps and carving trenches in the snow. In the broken doorway stood Amy, arrayed behind her the kidnapped crewmembers and a group of children.

"We're free!" several of the kids yelled, running out into the sunlight despite their thin clothing and bare feet.

"Wha— Kids?" the marines questioned.

"Marines?" the pirates in the doorway echoed.

"Smoker!" Sanji gasped.

"Mommy!" Ace yelled, the boy wiggling in Sunny's grip. She clamped her hands on Ace's waist so he wouldn't fall into the water while she brought a rope down to carry him to the shore.

"Ace!" Nami called, disregarding the marines as she made her was to the ship. Her child met her halfway, the young mother sweeping him into a fierce hug. "Oh, my baby! I'm so glad you're ok!"

"My body!" a head declared in Kaku's grip.

"So…" Sunny began, directing her words to the stunned Commodore at her side, "the other kids are new. I hope we aren't adopting. I don't have room in my hold."

"It's one Goda-damned problem after another today," the Master muttered, hanging up the call that had informed him of the most recent thing to go wrong on his island in the last hour. The pirates were loose, the children were loose, his forces were taking losses, Monet was injured, the pirates' ship couldn't be moved, and now the Navy of all people were ready to knock on his door. The only potentially-good thing would be if the marines and the pirates decided to fight each other, but the symbol on the battleship announced that contingent as G-5, possibly the most unpredictable of the Marine Branches. "Why does everything always happen all at once? It's hard enough to keep track of my projects and what lies I've told to which moronic minions."

"Sounds like you need a hand or two."

The Master turned to see a shadow leaning in his doorway. They were of average height with a dark coat as well as a white hat spotted with black in a pattern similar to what one might find on a snow leopard. In his hand was a sword almost as tall as he was. The man turned his shadowed face to the one known as the Master.

"So you've deigned to awaken, have you?

"Well, that explosion wasn't exactly easy to sleep through," the man shrugged. "I passed the destruction on the way here. That will be a pain to clean up."

"The minions do a good enough job," the Master commented with a shrug in his voice. "More importantly, we have pirates running around and the Navy is here. Go look into that."

"What do you want me to do about it?"

"I don't care," the Master spat. "Just figure it out and eliminate the problem however you feel like it. Just make it so they won't get in the way of my research."

"Got it." The man turned, walking away down the hallway. The Master watched him go, a frown on his face. Something didn't feel right, but maybe that was the stress talking. Or maybe the headache coming on.

End of Chapter 36

Read and Review and Happy New Year!

-SwordOfTheGods