Chapter 108: Strong World

PSA: mostly 'cause I wanted it ta be known. I based much o' Gin's home of Virgio on the great Mountain State o' wild'n wonderful West Virginia. In case ya couldn't tell, that's mah home, accent an' all. It seems like people, even from the States, don' know we're our own state, callin' us "Western Virginia" an' all that. Not everything is taken from West Virginia stereotype: we don't live in tents or anything, but it thought it would be fun to write the accent... and I was right! The accent is staying in smaller bits.

On a separate note and to see who actually reads these, I have a question. When it comes to Merry and Sunny, Who is the big sibling and who is the little sibling? Some would say Merry is older because she came first, but others would say Sunny because Sunny is bigger. Thoughts?

Chapter 112:

Strong world

Nami breathed in and out slowly, tension draining from her body before she dove into the pool before her. Her dive was perfect, projecting her through the water. Opening her eyes, Nami scanned the bottom of the pool rather than the warm plants and glass walls she had become too familiar with over the last week. Something caught her eye, a grey square against the uniform blue of the pool floor. Satisfied, Nami let herself float to the top of the water, swim to the other side, flip, and swim back. She climbed out of the pool and made her way to the hammock that held a white towel. She didn't towel off for long, the room had no breeze to cool her wet skin, but she did take a seat to stare at the ring on her finger. "Where are you, Luffy?"

No sooner that words left her mouth than when a trumpet fanfare sounded, dragging the startled woman's attention to a tan canvas with three silhouettes. Her surprised look quickly fell into one of disappointment. The canvas dropped, revealing the three beings on the other side as they began what seemed to be a well-rehearsed dance number. The first and leader of the group was Shiki the Golden Lion, the pirate who had kidnapped her a week ago. To the left of Shiki was a gorilla with dark pink fur in a pink suit jacket and yellow-and-green floral fedora, two long fangs jutting out from its lower jaw. It also had green-on-yellow floral shorts and a white scarf.

To Shiki's right was a man dressed as a clown, face paint and all. His blue hair matched parts of his colorful outfit as well as his enormous shoes. A long scarf bounced around his neck, defying the laws of gravity behind him. Covering most of his outfit, which left a good portion of his chest bare, was a white lap coat. With a final four-part trumpet cord, the trio finished their dance with a gesture toward the bikini-clad prisoner.

(Seriously, the dance is ridiculous. Go look it up on YouTube if you haven't seen it!)

"Don't even look at me," Nami sniffed, turning away from the men.

"Cold as ever, Babydoll," Shiki chuckled, taking a few steps forward on his sword-legs.

"Don't call me that," the navigator hissed, glaring at the pirate captain.

"Aha!" the clown gasped, running over to his captain. Each step of his shoes let out a pronounced fart sound, each one making Shiki flinch.

"Are those really the only pair of shoes you own, Dr. Indigo?!" Shiki demanded, rounding on the man. The clown froze on one leg before performing as elaborate series of claps and hand gestures as if to convey some message. "Spit it out already, Doctor!"

"I just remembered I forgot to tell you something!"

"You can talk?!" The captain's gaping was followed by the slow claps and chuckles of the gorilla, dragging a startled expression from Shiki. "Grandma?"

"That's obviously a gorilla!" Indigo yelled, slapping the back of Skiki's head. As one, the three struck another pose like some traveling show. Nami blinked slowly, unamused. Turning away from them, Nami's feet carried her from the squabbling trio until her hand came to on the glass surrounding her prison. She stared out at the snow beyond.

"Where did it all go wrong?"

"Sshhhhiiiiiittt!" Luffy yelled, massive trees toppling over about 100 feet behind him. At his side ran Gin, Grace in a bridle carry. The girl rapidly mixed paints together, doing her best to keep the proportions right as the Electric Devil jumped over logs and rocks. Cresting the hill behind them came their pursuer, a giant, flat crocodile. Said crocodile snarled at them, its bulk bulldozing through all flora in its path.

"It's catchin' up!" Gin yelled, sliding under a downed tree the captain jumped over.

"Two more minutes!" Grace insisted from his arms, mixing a dark powder into her paint.

Running full tilt, Luffy and Gin blew past the forest's boundary onto what once was a stone plaza. Nearer the far end rested a fountain and two statutes of a unicorn and a lion. They and the fountain before them were covered in moss and ivy. The pirates spun around, waiting for the crocodile to emerge from the woods, but a giant pink octopus with blue spots slithered out of the trees instead.

"Tha Hell?" Gin demanded as he and the captain turned to run from this new creature, a screech alerting them to some new threat. They fled right, avoiding the giant praying mantis that flew in from over the cliff at the end of the plaza. The octopus roared its challenge to the insect, curled tentacles punching out toward it. The mantis nimbly skirted the attack, its bladed arms slicing out and through the octopus' tentacles. The sliced appendages toppled to the ground, the krakin staring at them for a second before turning to the giant bug sitting on the old fountain. Both yelled a battle cry, but before the octopus could turn, the mantis blindsided it, throwing it away. The octopus rolled to a slow stop and did not move.

The giant bug alighted itself on the decrepit fountain again and cried out its victory, chittering loud until a pair of massive paws locked each of its arms to its sides. A black bear with white stripes and arms twice the length of its own height almost lazily swung the mantis through the fountain headfirst. The bug crashed to the ground, surrounded by debris. The bear approached, undeterred by the cries of the now red-eyed and foaming creature, the bear grabbed the mantis' claws and pulled the insect into a bear hug. The praying mantis' voice cut off abruptly as the bear pile drove its head into the tiled earth.

As seemed to be the custom of the island, the bear yelled its victory over its fallen foes, panting until a forgotten scent reached it. It turned to the pirates, a fire in its eyes.

"You wanna fight?" Luffy demanded, jumping up. Gin followed his example, golden tonfa slowly building in momentum. Grace rose as well, careful to keep her new mixture from splashing. Luffy and the bear charged, meeting each other in the middle of their battleground. Luffy jumped yelling, "How about a Gum-Gum Pistol!"

The creature sidestepped the attack faster than any beast its size had any right to be, its arm smacking the pirate off into the forest. Gin came in from below, his tonfa coming up together to impact the monster's jaw with a crunch. The bear staggered backward, Gin's weapons coming in once more. The beast staggered from the force to its gut.

From around Gin ran Grace, the girl showing a newfound speed as she dashed around the dazed bear, painting its fur into a rainbow. The bear roared at her as she backed up, but the smaller pirate smirked, undaunted, as the bear came toward her.

"Try this," she said, pulling a packet of oil from a pouch. She tore the packet, the quick-lit oil inside igniting upon contact with the air. She tossed the fire, the bear having too much momentum to dodge. "Colors Trap: Art is an Explosion!"

The paint on the bear exploded, burning through its fur instantly. The smoke cleared to show a thoroughly-charred husk of what once was the bear.

"Holy Hell, Grace," Gin swore as Luffy landed his jump from the forest. "Wha'd ya put in that paint?"

"Oh you know," she waved off. "Gunpowder, magnesium, C4, benzene, nitroglycerin..."

"Hey, Gin!" Luffy called from over by the octopus. "Come fry this for us! I'm hungry!"

"Yes, Don," the Logia responded. A stomach rumbled from next to him, Grace scratching her cheek in embarrassment.

"I don't have any more rice crackers," she muttered sadly, as if that explained the rumblings.

"Come on, man!" Franky called behind him, Amy and Robin pausing as the cyborg turned to watch their skeletal musician. Brook didn't answer as he stared at the small, old temple they'd climbed over. The group of four stood on a long, stone bridge with massive, artificial pools on either side. Something catching her eye, Amy turned to stare in horror as a massive, green shark with two torsos, one in front of the other. The shark was a total of 20 feet long.

"Holy shit!" Amy squeaked, grabbing Robin to hide behind her. At the same time, a chittering sound drug the men's attentions to the temple. Out of its front came a black swarm of ants, hundreds of them, each with tiny weapons and armor.

"Run!" Franky yelled, grabbing the girls and bolting away from the ants. The insects run past the cowering Brook, ignoring him as they ran for the other three.

The shark, taking notice, turned and began to approach the bridge, jumping out of the water. Dropping the girls, Franky pulled the skin-like covering from his right hand.

And then the ants jumped. The cloud of black flew over the trio, impacting with the shark. In seconds, the ants ate the entirely of the shark, leaving nothing but bones that crashed into the water on the other other side. The ants themselves landed gently on the bridge.

"Hey, it's like me now," Brook mused, his eyeless gaze on the floating bones of the shark. Shaking his skull, Brook hurried toward his crewmates. "Are you all alright?"

"We are for now," Amy grumbled. "You'll be fine, though."

"Oh, why?"

"They want meat," Franky grunted, "not your dried-up, old bones."

"So I'm not good enough for you, huh?!" Brook yelled, jumping over the flesh-and-blood pirates and charging toward the ants with his cane-sword out. The insects charged as well, ignoring Brook altogether.

Finally clearing the swarm, the musician sauntered to a stop, replacing his sword into its sheath slowly. Seeing this, Franky replaced his glove. The cyborg, archeologist, and chocolateer began walking toward the ants without a care. The insects jumped just as Brook locked his blade into place.

"Three Verse Humming: Arrow Notch Slash!"

A wave of panic flowed through the cloud of ants, each one feeling its tiny back break before darkness claimed the entire colony. They fell like rain around the pirates, Amy going so far as to open her umbrella. They paused behind Brook, who was still motionless.

"I may be nothing but bones, but I'm still sensitive about my appearance. So tell me... do these pants make my butt look fat?"

"NAMI-SWAN! ROBIN-CHWAN! AMY-CHWAN! GRACE! MERRY! WHERE ARE YOU?!"

"Shut up already!" Coby and Usopp yelled, trying to grapple and muffle the enraged chef before some other bohemian creature crawled out of the forest to confront them.

"It's been a week!" Usopp continued. "Just shut up and let us rest for a little!"

A growling grew from behind them, the three turning slowly to see a giant, green caterpillar with a mouth of razor-sharp teeth.

"Run!" Usopp cried, Coby switching into his Hybrid Mode to grab him and Sanji before bolting. The caterpillar gave chase, following them to a tree overlooking a cliff. Panicking, Coby threw his crewmates to the side and jumped, grabbing a hanging vine. The monster steamrolled off the cliffside, roaring.

"That was too close," Coby breathed as its voice echoed to nothing below.

"Uh, Coby," Sanji began, Usopp still and pale beside him. "Don't freak out, but you've got a cat."

"What? I..." he trailed off, a rumble reaching both his ears and his hands. Slowly, the rosette turned his attention upward. There, resting upon the branch over him, was a massive, blue sabertooth tiger with six legs and two tails. The blue eyes of this tiger bored into the Zoan as Coby's vision followed one of the cat's whiskers down until seeing his own hand.

Without warning and as quickly as he could, Coby jumped back toward the cliff, swinging from vine to vine as the incensed tiger slunk from its resting place to reveal its true size.

"Oh no you don't!" Sanji and Usopp yelled.

"Tabasco Star!"

"Concassé!"

The giant cat's eyes widened in shock and pain as its flaming tongue was trapped within its burning mouth, the cook's foot forming an indent in its skull as its chin forcefully met the ground. Coby landed behind Usopp, his hybrid arms catching something that sent him skidding backward into the sniper. A sort of compact bull wiggled in his hands, smoking.

"The Hell is that?!" Usopp cried. Two holes opened on either side of the trio, an entire herd of the bulls appearing in the trees. Coby tossed his bull into the air, cutting it in half before sending a 32 Caliber Phoenix to cut down another one. Still, more and more rained down, shattering and cracking the cliff.

"We're going down!" Sanji screamed, the cliff giving way beneath them.

Monsters were nothing to the Straw Hats. Snakes that could swallow the Lord of the Sky whole? Mincemeat. Massive dinosaurs with antlers? Breakfast. An entire woolly mammoth? A pet to ride.

The constant blizzard was a different story.

"It's left!" Zoro argued, his forehead and Merry's pushing against each other. "That's the way out!"

"No, it's right!" Merry growled. "The wind is blowing that direction, so there's warm air there!"

"The way to go is the hardest way to move!"

"Not all who wander are lost, but you sure as Hell are!"

"You wanna say that again, Half-Pint?!"

Chopper sighed over his crewmates' squabbling, using his human form to keep the little girl they'd found half an hour ago warm. They'd been stuck in this freezing tundra for the three days and had recently captured a mammoth to carry them. They found a little native girl shortly after, passed out and about to be eaten. She was short, four feet at best, with straight red hair that brushed her shoulders and a bird-like face. Pale pink feathers, frosted over from the cold, lined the lengths of her arms and her little purple-and-white dress did nothing to protect her from the cold. Clutched in her nearly-frostbitten hands was a small plant with a pearl-like flower.

Slowly, her eyes began to open.

"W-Where am I?" the little girl asked, her stutter either from the cold or fear of the gorilla-like face that first filled her vision. The sounds of squabbling and the feel of the warm, furry whatsit she sat on reached her a second later.

"Oh good," Chopper smiled. "You're awake."

"W-Where am I?" the girl asked again. "W-Who are you?"

"You can call me Chopper. Tony Tony Chopper. Behind me are Zoro and Merry. We found you freezing and about to be eaten by a huge monster, so we saved you. You're on the back of a mammoth right now. What's your name?"

"Umm, I'm Xiao," the redhead answered carefully. "How long has it been?"

"We found you maybe six hours ago, but we've been on this island for three days now."

"What?" she questioned, sitting up. "Why are you still in the Winter Zone? It only takes half a day to get across." She scanned the horizon before pointing ahead of them and to the left. "You can see the edge of the island over there!"

Chopper felt his eyes twitch as the arguing behind him stalled. His head half turned, one eye glaring at his crewmates.

"We have been wandering around in this blizzard for three days," the Zoan growled.

"She/He did it!"

End of Chapter 112

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-SwordOfTheGods