-Chapter One Hundred-
"A fish in the sky? I wonder how it would be different from a fish in the sea" I pondered aloud, curiously tilting my head.
"This island remains the only unexplored domain and as a sailor and adventurer, I feel it is my destiny to one day reach the sea in the sky—Montblanc Noland" Nami finished, causing the three men around her jaws to drop. "Do you know what this means?" she asked.
"Sky Island must really exist!" Luffy brightened.
"Just like Robin said it did—now we just have to figure out how to get there!" Usopp cheered, causing the reindeer that had been resting on his shoulder to topple off onto the ground.
"Sky Island does exist!" Chopper excitedly exclaimed, causing the three to happily cheer.
-Later-
"What did you want to tell us, old-timer?" Usopp asked as we piled outside under Cricket's insistence.
"Listen up and listen good, I decided to tell you guys everything I know about Sky Island" the man gruffly said just as my ears perked up to the sound of snoring.
"Already?" I sweat dropped when I saw that the swordsman beside me had already fallen asleep. "Hey, wake up..." I mumbled, jabbing my elbow into his side which only caused him to grumble as he shifted around.
"Most of this is rumor and hearsay, so you have to make up your mind on whether you believe it or not" Cricket said as I started to poke the swordsman's cheek, my own puffing up in slight annoyance.
"You aren't really going to sleep through this whole thing, are you?" I asked as he sleepily swatted away my hand, irritably grumbling before relaxing as he continued to snooze.
"I believe it" Luffy firmly nodded.
"Quiet!" Usopp snapped, hitting the back of the captain's head.
"There's something strange that happens in this part of the ocean" Cricket said, ignoring the two as he pointed out toward the sea. "Everything will suddenly turn black as night right in the middle of the brightest day" he revealed.
"Hey, yeah" Luffy perked up as he eagerly raised his hand as if to catch the man's attention. "The same thing happened to us, right?" he asked, looking to Usopp for confirmation.
"Yeah, it was like the sun vanished and then these enormous monsters showed up" Usopp nodded.
"You saw the giants? There's a tale about where they come from, but forget about them for now—we can go into that later" Cricket dismissively waved before crossing his arms. "Now about this strange nightfall, it's caused by the shadows of an extremely dense cloud" he explained.
"Cumulonimbus clouds?" Nami questioned. "But it was too dark for clouds—it was like the sun went out!" she argued.
"Yeah, it was more of an eclipse" Luffy agreed. "Clouds on a cloudy day are sort of cloudy."
"Yeah, just sort of cloudy" Usopp nodded.
"Yeah, cloudy" Chopper echoed.
"Yeah, what they all said" I chimed in.
"Shut your mouths and listen!" Cricket snapped. "This cloud is called a Cumulorgalis cloud—it forms high in the sky, it has no eternal air currents and never turns rain, no light can reach the ground and a sunny afternoon turns black as pitch" he explained. "It's like some giant hand reaches up and snuffs out the sun like it was a candle. Some say that Cumulorgalis clouds are floating fossils—petrified clouds that hang in the sky, unchanged for thousands of years."
"You got to be kidding us—a petrified cloud that drifts around for centuries?" Nami frowned in disbelief.
"Yeah, that's kind of hard to believe" I nodded. "How can something that isn't even solid to begin with be petrified?" I questioned, certain that for an animal to become petrified in the first place it had to have a corporeal form that could be fossilized.
"Hey, I'm just telling you what people have told me—whether you believe it or not is entirely up to you" Cricket frowned as the ginger settled back down.
"So it's a mystery cloud" Luffy suddenly said.
"Yeah, that's it" I snorted. "Good job in figuring it out, Luffy" I chuckled as the rubber man looked back at me with a beaming smile.
"Don't encourage him..." Nami grumbled, shooting a pointed look back at me.
"Yeah, I guess that sums it up about as well as anything else" Cricket nodded in agreement with Luffy's way of thinking, causing the ginger to heave an exasperated sigh.
"This is so awesome!" Chopper sparkled in awe.
"You see, there's only one place Sky Island could be if it's real and that's on top of one of those clouds" Cricket confessed.
"Okay, let's go! We're on our way up to the clouds—come on, Zoro! Wake up!" Luffy grinned as he and Usopp started to jump around, happily cheering as they thanked the old man.
"Luffy, if I couldn't wake him up earlier, I don't—" I was cut off by the sound of Zoro grumbling as his eyes fluttered open.
"What? Is it morning already?" he yawned as he stood up with the rest of us.
"Luffy, you need to teach me your ways" I said, causing the captain to laugh.
"I told you idiots before, we don't know how to get there!" Nami snapped, beating Luffy and Usopp up as she forced them to sit back down.
"Yeah, that's going to be the hard part, because you'll be risking your lives every minute" Cricket hummed.
"You mean like now?" Usopp and Luffy weakly asked.
"There's only one way to get there, the Knock Up Stream—it shoots you straight up in the air, so it could theoretically take you up to the sky if you're lucky" Cricket explained.
"Wait a minute, are you saying that this current can send ships flying?" Nami blinked.
"If you're implying we use that, isn't there a fifty-fifty chance we'll either live or die a horrible death?" I frowned.
"Great, then it'll be a snap! All we have to do is hitch a ride!" Luffy grinned, ignoring what I had said after processing what Nami had asked. It seems his mind wasn't on the thought of failure.
"On an ocean current...?" Usopp mumbled in thought, actually taking my words into consideration as his face paled.
"Except, wouldn't we end up falling back into the ocean and getting smashed into pieces?" Nami asked. "It's like Skylar said, this is a fifty-fifty chance of success or failure."
"Usually that's right unless you can get the timing right" Cricket nodded. "It's one thing to sit here all comfy and talk about riding the Knock Up Stream, but if you think this trip is going to be some kind of pleasure cruise then you're in for a rude awakening" he scowled. "The Knock Up Stream is as dangerous as any hurricane, it should be avoided at all cost" he warned.
"So it's more like a one out of a hundred-percent chance of survival" I said, correcting my previous statement upon learning this new information.
"But how can a current of water rise up in the air in the first place?" Nami questioned. "Come on, we've never heard anything like that before—right, guys?" she asked as the others nodded in agreement.
"I've heard a lot of different explanations for the Knock Up Stream, but there has only been one that's made sense to me—though so far no one's been stupid enough to try and confirm it" Cricket said. "It's like this, deep below the ocean floor there are large cavities filled with air, cool seawater seeps into these pockets and geothermal energy heats it until it becomes steam. Over time, pressure builds and when it finally becomes too great, there's a tremendous explosion" he explained. "This explosion hurls the water into the air and creates a current to the sky."
"In an odd way, that makes sense from a logical standpoint" I nodded.
"The effects last for about one minute, connecting the ocean to the sky like a bridge" the man revealed.
"One minute?!" Nami gaped as she shoot to her feet. "Do you realize how big of an explosion like that would have to be?!" she shouted.
"The explosion occurs in widely different locations about five times a month" Cricket continued.
"We'd be blown into fish food if we tried that, old man!" Usopp cried out, growing even paler to the point I feared he was about to be sick.
"Anyway, you can't really explain something like this with words and theories" Cricket shook his head as he turned his back to us. "It's one of the great mysteries in creation" he sighed.
"So...so then we've got to ride this current that shows up five times a month into the air to reach some island in the sky and just hope it's waiting for us?" Usopp frowned, clearly baffled by the idea.
"I say that sums it up pretty well and if you miss, you fall back down, slam into the ocean, and get blown into fish food just like you said" the man hummed.
"Okay, so we're going to forget about Sky Island, right?" the sharpshooter nervously laughed. "Cause it's nuts, Luffy! It's completely insane!" he cried as Luffy only smiled. "You must be luckier than Mr. Lucky McLuck Luck of Luck Land on his luckiest day to pull off a stunt like this one!" he started to sound desperate the longer he spoke once he realized that our captain didn't have any plans on changing his mind.
"That's a lot of luck" I whistled.
"It'll be okay, let's go!" Luffy brightly cheered.
"Yeah, truly..." Usopp whimpered as his shoulders drooped. "How can you say it'll be okay? Think about it for a second—what about the poor Going Merry?! Did we even stop to consider the shape she's in?!" he cried, now pointing at the ship as he reminded us of her poor condition. "The way she's suffering, there's no way you can expect her to stand up to a disaster like this in her condition!"