Kid pulled out the paper list with the upcoming ordeals:
1. S̶p̶i̶k̶y̶ ̶d̶e̶f̶i̶l̶e̶
2. Ugly bird jungle
3. Waterfalls
4. Stone door
5. Treasure
He took out a bitten pencil from his coat and crossed out the first step.
"Now what?". He asked me. Everyone was looking at me. For them, I was still the oracle that warned them from danger. Kid waited for my answer, as always, despite knowing the truth.
"Now... we have to go through the jungle. Nothing special, just bird. Violent birds. Quite violent... Don't look at them in the eye; they take that as a challenge". I said.
"Pff, birds, how scary". A voice from the crew jested sarcastically, followed by his peers' laughs.
We walked inside the vegetation. The tall grass reached our knees, there were palm trees, their trunks slightly bent in every direction possible. Some of the leaves moved, due to the birds that started to fly, being disturbed from its usual calmness. A squawk echoed.
Suddenly, a huge, winged figure perched itself on a rock in the middle of our path. The bird was almost two-metre tall. Its feathers were purple, its eyes big and furious, and a big orange beak with which it could cut down half of the forest if it wanted to.
"Don't move...", I whispered, lifting a hand towards the crew, "Don't make noise. They won't attack if they don't feel like we're a threat". I said calmly, but I was actually nervous. Everything depended on me.
More birds like the previous one appeared, but these were smaller; some were like pigeons, and others were like seagulls. I frowned, seeing a strange glow emanating from some of them. Like a white aura.
"Pretty little birdy...". Toba whispered with a nervous smile, too close to the beak of one of the birds. Its figure also emanated that weird aura.
"Get away from that thing, dude", Wire signed to Toba.
"I'm trying!". He half-whispered half-shouted, stepping away from it. After the sudden movement, the bird squawked and lunged towards Toba, who quickly pulled out his sword.
He would have ended that bird's life in no time, but it wasn't necessary: the image of the bird vanished in the air when it made contact with the blade.
"Did you guys see that, too?". He asked in shock.
"A mirage...". I murmured and looked again at the birds. Of course, the island was full of mirages. There was going to be traps everywhere.
"Ha! They're not real", Nat's confident voice rose among the crew, bothering a bird with his hand and making silly faces, "What are you gonna do to me?". He stuck his tongue out. But this bird didn't have the same aura...
Nat screamed when the bird lunged towards him. This time it didn't vanish; it was real. I'll just say Wire would need to teach him Sign Language if he wanted to communicate non-verbally...
As if his scream had been a war declaration, the rest of the birds got ready to attack.
"God damn it...", Kid muttered, reaching his hand for his gun. He stopped his hand mid-air and changed the direction to grab his dagger. His bothered expression changed into a sadistic smile, "We'll be eating birds for a few days, I see".
The boss bird was going to attack Kid, but it screamed when it saw his sadistic expression, flapping its wings away from him. Had Kid just scared a bird with his look? Yes.
"Don't chicken out". Kid took the bird by its neck with an evil smile and laughed at its own joke.
"Hmm, I don't think they belong to the Phasianidae family". Killer gave an answer to the redhead's joke with a thoughtful appearance. He was holding a few inert bird bodies.
"The what family? Why should I care who their grandparents are?". The blond sighed.
"It's the term used to name the category in which chickens are included".
"Have you been reading about chickens?". They didn't stop fighting the birds.
"Not about chickens; about birds".
"And all of that to tell me my joke didn't make sense?"
"Pretty much". Kid threw the bloody corpse of one of his chickens at Killer. The blond groaned as a complaint.
"Oh, come on, Kid. Now I'm soaked in chick- bird blood". He rectified, trying to dry off a bit of the blood from his shirt.
I interrupted what would become an argument when we got rid of the last bird that attacked us. I tried to only attack the ones that had the white aura around them to go faster since the island's idea was to play with your mind. Make you lose time with fake images, making you wonder what's real and whatnot, so you would end up losing your mind.
"I have news", both looked at me, ". I think I can differentiate the mirages from the real deal. It must be because of my devil fruit..."
"How can you know if they are mirages or not?" Kid inquired.
"The fake ones are surrounded by a white glow; the real ones are not".
"That's quite a big help", Killer nodded, "We're counting on you". I nodded back.
"Well, now that there are no more birds around", I looked at the slaughter. Chum and Toba were picking them up and putting them inside bags. Their mouths were watering. I wasn't sure if it would be a good idea to eat those things, but alright..., "there should be no more problems to reach the next step. But don't let anyone get too cocky". I stated, making it look like it was for the crew but actually directed at the captain, too.
He nodded, obliviously, and crossed out the next step on the list:
1. S̶p̶i̶k̶y̶ ̶d̶e̶f̶i̶l̶e̶
2. U̶g̶l̶y̶ ̶b̶i̶r̶d̶ ̶j̶u̶n̶g̶l̶e̶
3. Waterfalls
4. Stone door
5. Treasure
We stopped to rest a bit by the end of the jungle. The sun was on top of the sky; it was around mid-day. Chum had to cure some of the crewmates hurt by the animals. They were stronger than what they seemed. They also took the chance to eat something, and, even though the most rational thing was to take in some energy, I couldn't take a single bite. The nervousness in my stomach already filled me, not letting me even smell the rice ball that Toba offered to me, two inches away from my face.
"No, thank you, Toba. I'm not hungry". I rejected it scrunching my nose.
"You should eat something", he replied with that rice ball already in his mouth, ", but if you don't want it, for me".
"For you". I assured him.
We could hear water running. We were close to the next point: the waterfalls.
Kid got rid of the undergrowth that blocked our path and vision with his giant metallic hand, tearing down a few palm trees in the process. Before us, an ideal tropical scenery unveiled. It would have been a perfect place to go on vacation if it wasn't because the island had a too high mortality rate for any couple on their honeymoon.
"We're already halfway there", he looked at the list, "This will be a piece of cake". Kid smiled. I looked at him by the corner of my eye, praying so he wouldn't take any unnecessary risks even if we hadn't encountered a bigger danger yet.
"Great", I started to speak. Numerous rivers and waterfalls were falling from mountains, crossing through the dirt, and falling down to other levels of the island, "Now we have to go down...", I looked around, "there". I pointed to a hole in the dirt. There were four waterfalls, and the water fell with strength.
The diameter of the hole was like a kilometre long. I wasn't going to measure it, but it was huge. The Victoria Punk would fit there without touching the walls. In the rivers that flowed to the hole, some of the tree trunks that Kid had cut down before were floating.
"Did an explosion happen here or what?", Toba exclaimed after seeing where we would have to descend, "How are we going to get down there without dying?". I smiled. When my grandfather reached this part of the story, I would always get excited. I would wonder how it would be to do that in real life. And now I could try it.
"Have you ever slid down a water slide?". I asked, approaching one of the trunks.
It was wide enough to sit without falling. Perfect. The crew stared at me in confusion, some of them shaking their hands as an answer to my previous question. With a smile, I guided Toba and Chum towards the trunk, making them sit on it. I sat in front of them, holding onto a branch as support.
"Me neither". I answered my own question. "Hold on tight!". I gave an impulse to the trunk with my foot, and the water current did the rest of the work, taking us towards the cliff.
"____! ARE YOU CRAZY?!" Toba shouted, grabbing my shoulders. Chum was holding onto Toba's waist and shouted for himself:
"Why didn't we throw her at the sea when we could?". Too late for that, Chum.
The trunk started to tilt. My head went in my face due to the position, and I pushed it back with a hand.
"Is she stupid? They'll fall directly". Kid muttered next to Killer.
But, against all odds, the trunk didn't fall vertically, following the waterfall path. Suddenly, another water path, like a descending spiral, appeared as the trunk slid down: literally, like a water slide.
I shouted in excitement, seeing how fast we went, and I felt Toba had relaxed after seeing we were not falling to our doom. I laughed from the adrenaline. My grandfather told me that there was an invisible water path with which you could go down. Thanks to my devil fruit, I identified the path was in this waterfall out of the four ones.
Our trunk fell with a splash on the lake down there, leaving us soaked. Toba and Chum let themselves fall on the nearby grass, getting out of the water, breathing as if they had been holding their breath. I rolled my eyes, but I smiled and threw myself, too, next to them.
"Wasn't that fun?" I said with excitement.
"That was...", Toba huffed and puffed, "THAT WAS INCREDIBLE! Can we do it again?". Chum smacked him in the head.
"As if! There's no time for silly games", he shouted to the rest of the crew, "Guys, it's safe, come on!"
"Use the same waterfall!" I added in case anyone wanted to try another path.
"Can't they use the other ones to get here faster?". Chum asked.
"If they don't want to fall to their demise, no, they cannot". I replied. Chum made sure to shout out that warning.
After a few minutes, everyone had descended, their clothes soaking and a cemetery of logs floating in the lake. I had to admit that Kid with wet hair and water droplets running down his face and chest was something worth admiring. Not to mention how Killer's (already tight) shirt stuck even more to his muscles thanks to the water, revealing the outline of his body. I slapped myself mentally to avoid blushing.
"Wasn't there another way?" Kid muttered through his teeth, drawing out the paper with the steps to follow. It was all wet, and it was illegible. He crumpled it and threw it away on the grass. More pollution, great.
"Oh, yeah, there was a stairway, but this was way more fun". I answered while I tried to get rid of the excess water of my clothes.
"Are you kidding me?". Kid got close with a mad expression. I held in my laughter and stepped back; in case he would get angrier.
"I was joking, I was joking", I lifted my hands as a sign of peace, "Goodness gracious, what a temper...". I muttered. How did he believe there actually was a freaking stairway strategically placed for his royal ass to use?
"What's next? The stone door, right?", he said, vexed, "And the treasure's right there". He smiled as if seconds ago he hadn't been angry.
"Yes, but...". I didn't dare to complete the sentence. Kid looked at me in confusion.
"But?". He inquired.
"But...", I looked around in the hole we were in. Dozens of doors surrounded us, each one with a different symbol. Or the same symbol, but in different colours, painted on the stone like cave paintings, "only one of the doors is the correct one".
"And? You know which one is it, don't you?", he crossed his arms, "Don't you?".
I looked at him in the eye, and managed to whisper:
"No."
I changed the OC's name for the almighty reader insert. I'm sorry for any inconveniences.