One Piece: Grand Endeavours

Chapter Thirty-Six: Rainforest

Kuro
It is weird to be here again. The green canopy gives everything an eerie gleam, almost alien like. Normally I enjoy being in the forest - doing orienteering, tracking or general adventuring- but here just brings back memories I would rather rip out of my mind. I spent a lot of my time here as no one would risk following me and at times I tried to get the dangerous shit to be a whole lot more dangerous so I could have rid of everything going on. Even as a kid, and a pathetic wimpy one at that, I wanted rid of my situation even if that meant rid of everything. I push the thought from my mind because here you need to focus so you don't meander into a man-eating snake, something poisonous, rapids to a waterfall or sinking sand. Quite a load of issues really. Continuous and infuriating. The humidity hangs in the air even more thickly in the rainforest, making my hair hang heavily in my eyes and making my glasses somewhat smeary. Ugh.

We navigate through the Moonshade, and go through the tricky path uneven with tree roots and I make sure we add the most dangerous paths with the insane amounts of spiders, snakes, scorpions and the pack predators. Of course with this route there are still some but just not as many. Not to say it is safe, one wrong move can lead to severe injury or peril. If this was anywhere else then it would be quite fun. But Nightshade Island? That sucks the fun out of anything and replaces it with dark thoughts and trepidation.
"Hey, so what brings you to this place?" Luffy asks, breaking the long silence. "Sense of adventure?"
"Sorta," I agree. "I always liked adventure more than socialising due to being more than a little socially awkward. Plus being here meant being away from everyone. Doesn't mean I like this place though..."
"This place brings back a lot of bad memories, huh?" Luffy asks. I nod. "Hey, at least we won't be here much longer."
"I guess," I mumble. "And things aren't as bad as they used to be here. No longer tempted to get myself kil-" I fall silent, curing myself internally. I am such an idiot! This 'opening up' more thing is great until I slip up and blurt something like that out. Useless idiot, no wonder my parents, uncle and pretty much everyone hated me. Nothing less than I deserved.
"What...?" Luffy asks with an evidently concerned voice and more concerned expression.
"Nothing!" I lie quickly, faking a smile and trying to pretend to be calm. Luffy looks extremely wary and suspicious but doesn't push the matter further thankfully.

A loud hiss echoes and approaching is a huge snake, at least 35 feet in length, it's bright purple and pink scales standing out against the expansive green shades.
"Ooh I bet Sanji could make this taste so good!" Luffy exclaims and I grin properly for the first time in years and shake my head."
"Venomous and poisonous so not a good idea..." I tell him, dodging it as it attempts to bite me so it instead turns a branch to splinters. "Unlike most venomous snakes though it also constricts its pray so watch out for that. Hey, if it is food you want there is a six foot chicken species here." I'm hardly going to let him go in blind. Sure, he is a great fighter but one wrong move and he'll end up being dinner which would be nothing less than disastrous.

It lunges at me again and I silently use every swear word in my head at my uncle for breaking my damn swords. Yes, I can fight well without them. Yes, I studied hand-to-hand combat for years in case I was without a weapon given my parents pressured me to be like them. My style of fighting is even based on gymnastics given how much I was forced to compete growing up so I easily can fight without them but that is not the point! Here, where danger is breathing into the very being of this place, I would like the backup of a weapon especially given everything this place has done to me. I do one of my more recent techniques. I go deadly still, moving at the last fraction of a second so there is no way to change direction of the attack so the damn thing head butts another tree. I let myself have a half smile, remembering the days when I would just run. Now? Yeah, screw that.

It lunges at Luffy instead, who responds with punching it so hard its head slams into the dirt and it seems to get the message, slivering away back into the thicket. Hm. Well that went well and was a whole lot easier to handle than it used to be.
"So Kuro, what is the difference between poisonous and venomous anyway?" Luffy asks me as we keep walking, the heat worsening but isn't as bad here given how much shade the tree's canopy creates.
"If you bite it and die it is poisonous, if it bites you and you die it is venomous," I reply matter of factly. There is a more technical explanation really but I am pretty sure Luffy doesn't want the boring technical explanation. Plenty of people find the scientific explanations dull so I am not going to make that the case more than necessary. It takes another hour of walking but eventually we reach the tallest tree on the island, insanely huge with vines hanging from it.

I climb up so I am a good twenty metres up, balancing on some of the slimmer branches so I can remove the thin sheet of wood where there is a hollow part in the tree. I reach in, glad that I have enough balance for this bullshit, and reach in grabbing the small satchel made of worn leather, stained and scratched.
"Uh...you aren't going to fall are you?"Luffy asks. "Because that is pretty high..."
"Nah, I'll be fine," I call. "Catch this." I drop the satchel, relieved he manages to catch it given something in there probably shouldn't get ruined. I consider and decide I can't be bothered to climb back down so I jump from the branch, using one of the lower ones to slow my fall and finish with a light flip so I land near Luffy at the base of the tree.
"Nice one," Luffy says to me, passing the satchel over. "So what is in the satchel?"
"For one a Devil Fruit I stole from my parents," I say. "They weren't the kind of people you'd want having extra powers so I hid it. Got into a ton of trouble for that." I suppress a flinch at the memories of the outcome of that action. "There's also a bit of money, I think, and some daggers I used to have."
"So that's why the rest of your crew were so confused with my Devil Fruit but you were so indifferent to it..." Luffy comments and I nod.

We begin to head back when a squawking grips my attention unexpectedly. Really? The odds of that? I mentioned this about an hour ago, how is there already a giant chicken? Well, I'm guessing Luffy will be happy with this result though. The amount of meat on one of these is stupid and stupendous. It is also pretty interesting that it is quite a violent, aggressive animal when normally chickens live up to their name. Just as I think that it lunges at me and I quickly go left given each half of its beak is about the size and relative sharpness of a dagger. I don't feel like being stabbed today. Or any day at the moment. Being with the crew is actually decreasing a lot of my issues. Especially the emotional ones I have had the majority of my life. It tries again and given that I am also being wary of the sinking sand it barely misses me, ripping the sleeve of my jacket and narrowly missing my flesh.
"Great..." I mutter, kicking it hard so it falls slightly but manages to get back up. When I dodge again its beak gets lodged in the trunk of the tree, cracking it and chipping it slightly.

Luffy giggles with a huge grin.
"It looks so mad!" it exclaims and I agree, watching the stupid thing flap its wings and squawk loudly. It kicks Luffy in the stomach which, honestly, I didn't expect but its beak is probably rather sore now.
"Oof," Luffy mutters, his anger now clearly rivalling the birds. "What the hell you stupid chicken?! Fourth gear!" His arms go huge and change colour and he punches it so hard that it is probably dead. Huh. He goes back to his normal self with a huge grin.
"Uh...that was cool," I say. "Part of your Devil Fruit?" He nods.
"Wasn't cool at first though," Luffy replies with a grin. "Because of me being rubber when one part of me grew the rest shrank, kinda like a balloon." Makes sense. "Still funny how I got mine by accident."
"How do you accidently eat one?" I ask, perplexed.
"Unlike you not everyone spends their whole life being a genius," Luffy replies with a chuckle. I wouldn't call it genius... "So I was sulking and wanted food so kinda ate it." I try to not grin at that one because it is pretty funny but I don't want to be mean. Not to someone like Luffy who has been nothing less than nice given everything.

The rain turns into a torrential downpour and I huff, almost blinded given waterproof glasses aren't yet a thing. At least not for me.
"We'd better head back, the others are probably wondering what's taking us so long," Luffy comments. I nod but figure I have really messed up. There is no way he brought my 'nothing' earlier when I slipped up about former thoughts and what I wanted to do so I just hope he forgets about it or doesn't care.