-Chapter Eighty-Eight-
"It's Rapanui!" Rongo brightened.
"He came back to us!" Akibi grinned.
"Thank goodness, Rapanui" Isoka sighed in relief.
"Oh man, I was worried about him too!" Usopp sobbed.
"There, there" I said, patting his back as he sniffed.
"I'm sick of this mayor, how big of a pain can one guy be?" Zoro grumbled as he and Akibi helped Luffy and Rapanui out of the water.
"What? What the...?" Henzo frowned, looking around as a loud banging noise began to echo within the mist which was then followed by a violent trembling. "It can't be..." he muttered in disbelief.
"Professor?" Robin questioned.
"What's going on?" I asked, curiously looking around.
"This isn't good at all—Ape's Concert maintains only a very delicate balance to begin with, if you set off an explosion like that one in a place like this...there's no telling what might happen next" Henzo stressed.
"What's that?" Zoro asked upon noticing something strange in the sky.
"Whatever it is, it doesn't look too good..." I nervously muttered.
"You're right, it doesn't" Henzo agreed. "The warping of space and time is expanding quickly, at this rate we'll get caught up in it and we'll all die."
"Alright! We have to get out of here!" Usopp cried out.
"Yeah, but how do we do that?" Nami asked.
"Hm, got anything in that book of yours, Robin?" I inquired.
"I'm looking..." she mumbled as she quickly flipped through the pages of her book. "The author of this book once visited Ape's Concert, he must have talked about the way out somewhere in here" she explained.
"What's wrong?" Usopp asked when the archeologist suddenly gasped.
"It must be in the next volume though..." she weakly admitted.
"You have it, right?" he hopefully asked. "Oh crap!" he frantically wailed when she shook her head.
"What now?" Luffy asked.
"Look over there!" Rapanui suddenly shouted, pointing toward a bright light in the distance that was barely peeking through the mist. "The light over there, it's the setting sun!" he proclaimed.
"The sun?" Usopp and I questioned.
"That's right" Rapanui nodded. "The light of the sun is shining through the crack in space—Luffy and I followed that light earlier and we ended up outside" he explained.
"You did?" Usopp asked.
"Really?" I tilted my head, amazed that this entire time the two of them had been outside of the mist while we were left looking for them.
"We need to hurry, that light could disappear at any moment now!" Henzo shouted once he realized that the two were right and that we were now running on limited time.
"Up—throw the sails, everyone! Row as hard as you can!" Nami quickly ordered.
"Right!" we nodded before setting off to do as we were told.
"Why don't you guys come and give us a hand too? We're trying to get out of here now" Zoro offered, calling down toward Lake and his men who were all currently squished together in a small rowboat.
"Okay" one of them nodded after exchanging looks and small talk with the others before they finally rowed over to us and climbed aboard the ship to help. Once everything was in order and everyone was in position, Nami blew her whistle and signaled for everyone to start rowing.
"I feel like we're going nowhere" I remarked after a few minutes of rowing and noticing how the ship looked as if it hadn't gotten very far at all.
"Huh?" Zoro blinked. "Shit! We're going in circles!" he cursed once he realized that instead of advancing forward, we've just been going in circles. "Hey, what are you doing? Row right, okay!" he snapped, already quick to place blame on Lake and his men.
"We are rowing right, you!" Lake snapped right back, resulting in a verbal fight breaking out between the men on both sides of the ship. It was that that moment that one of the paddles suddenly struck against something and snapped in half with the other one breaking not too long after.
"Well then..." I deadpanned, staring at the broken paddles.
"Look, you guys, the light is starting to disappear" Usopp worriedly pointed.
"So, this is how it ends..." Henzo sadly muttered.
"You guys, get off and push us from behind!" Zoro suddenly ordered as he looked toward Lake and his men.
"You're crazy!" the older redheaded man snapped.
"If you all kick your feet really hard, it might work" Luffy suggested, quick to jump aboard Zoro's idea to have the other men push us to safety.
"No way!" Ian, Lake, and the others snapped.
"Luffy, even if they went through with your guys' crazy plan, I doubt it would even work" I said.
"Not with that attitude it won't!" the raven-haired man huffed, causing me to sweat drop.
"What we really need is a tailwind to blow us" Nami said.
"So all that we need is some wind?" Rapanui questioned before suddenly jumping off the ship and into the water below.
"Hold on, what are you planning?" Nami called after the blond.
"I'm going to blow up our ship!" the blond called back before he started to swim away. "It was originally a Marine ship after all, so it's fully loaded with explosives—if I light those, the explosion should give you a pretty good tailwind" he explained.
"You can't!" Akibi gasped.
"Wait, Rapanui—don't do it! If you blow up the ship, then what's going to happen to you?" Henzo worriedly asked.
"Rapanui!" Rongo shouted as he and the other children jumped into the water.
"Hey!" Usopp called out to them all. "What are you doing? Come back here!"
"You can't seriously be thinking about following him" I worriedly frowned.
"We can't do that, we're Pumpkin Pirates too!" Pukau firmly shook his head.
"We're all friends, we swore that we would live and die together!" Akibi added as they swam off after their blond-headed captain.
"They're going" Usopp said in disbelief.
"I guess it's not that surprising..." I softly sighed. "They've shown before that they're loyal to that boy, so it's no surprise that they'd follow him even if it leads to their death" I said.
"Yeah, but..." the sharpshooter murmured with a frown.
"Think of it like us with Luffy, we're always following him into dangerous situations that have almost gotten us killed, right?" I smiled, watching as Usopp heaved a heavy sigh before nodding in agreement when he realized he couldn't argue.
"Rapanui is planning on blowing up the ship because he wants to save us all, don't let him sacrifice himself for nothing—do you all want to die?" Henzo called after the children.
"No, we aren't going to die!" Isoka called back with a smile. "Henzo, I promise you, we're going to come back! Whatever happens, we're coming back to Ruluka somehow!" she assured him
"Isoka..." he muttered, a tense silence now falling over us as we now waited—waited to see if the children's plan would actually work.
"Whoa!" I wobbled, quick to cling to Zoro before I could lose balance as a massive explosion sounded out and sent the ship flying.
"Careful" he said, wrapping an arm around me as he grabbed hold of the ship's railing to steady himself. In the blink of an eye, we broke through the mist and went sailing over the town before eventually crashing back down into the water on the other side which sent us flying from the ship. Not only that, but the harsh landing was enough to also break the ship's already damaged mast and cause it to topple over on top of a few nearby ships.
"Nami!" Sanji worriedly called out as we dragged ourselves ashore.
"You guys!" Chopper worriedly cried as he and the blond came running toward us.
"Oh, look at it! My precious ship!" Usopp mourned as he sadly looked back at the ruined ship.
"Hey, Sanji, long time no see" Luffy waved as Zoro dragged him and me ashore by the back of our shores.
"I didn't need your help getting ashore, Zoro" I huffed as the swordsman set me down.
"I know" he responded, setting Luffy down as I started to rinse out the water from my hair and clothes.
"Nami, dear!" Sanji cooed, ignoring Luffy as he rushed right for Nami who was quick to lash out and strike him atop the head.
"I'm so annoyed, I could scream" the ginger snarled as she angrily stalked away.
"But...why, Nami dear...?" Sanji weakly asked.
"All the treasure she had on deck got blown away and she isn't taking it too well, so I wouldn't get close to her right now if I were you" Usopp explained as Chopper scampered away from the woman to avoid her wrath.
"If she didn't want to lose it, I don't see why she didn't put it below deck" I scoffed, quickly holding my hands up in defense when the ginger suddenly turned around to face me with a sneer. "Just saying..." I muttered, right as the sound of a cannon being shot reached our ears.
"Alright, pirates, that's far enough!" a Marine soldier shouted.
"Marines?" Sanji questioned.
"And it's the same ones who were chasing us" Usopp pointed out.
"Finally caught up with us, I see" I said.
"Please! Help us, sir!" the older redhead man suddenly pleaded. "These people are terrible criminals—they've stolen everything that our town's great mayor owns!" he lied, dropping to his knees before the Marine as if attempting to make himself appear helpless and in desperate need of their help.
"Let's see..." the Marine suddenly hummed as he roughly grabbed hold of the redhead's wrist and examined the ring on his finger. "This is the ring of Princess Alicia, it was stolen by pirates years ago...and here it is, sitting on your finger—now why do you have this?" he asked.
"Well, you see...uh..." the redhead nervously laughed.