-Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Six-
"Uh...look, I tried...but it didn't matter how hard I fought—he still kept burning everything..." Chopper nervously explained, too scared to really look the sharpshooter in the eyes. "I promise, I did everything I could!" he quickly defended, not wishing for his friend to think that he had just sat by and let some stranger damage the Going Merry without a fight.
"Yeah, well, are you going to be okay?" Usopp asked, causing the reindeer to hesitantly nod. "You must have been scared facing that guy by yourself, it's a good thing he set the mast on fire instead of you, right?" he softly chuckled. "We can figure out the details later" he assured, causing the doctor's eyes to widen in slight awe as he realized that his friend wasn't really mad at him like he had feared.
"I promise to be a more dependable man starting right now!" Chopper boldly proclaimed as he climbed on top of one of the railings—puffing his chest out as he made this declaration of his.
"Chopper, stop yelling at the altar and tell me something" Luffy spoke up as he interrupted the reindeer's moment. "How did you get rid of that Priest?" he curiously asked.
"I used the whistle that the Sky Knight gave us and he showed up to rescue me" Chopper explained.
"Smart thinking" I nodded, patting the top of his head as he bashfully smiled at the compliment.
"Oh! Where is he? I don't see him" Luffy's head quickly started twisting around from side to side as he began to look for the old man. Motioning with his head, Chopper led us all toward where he had the man currently resting. "He's willing to risk his life this much for us, even though he gave us that whistle for free?" the captain questioned as he bent down to look at the resting man.
"If it wasn't for the Sky Knight, you guys probably wouldn't have a ship and I'd sure be dead" Chopper pointed out.
"Seems this stranger's done quite a lot for us in such a short period of time of knowing us" I said, nodding in agreement as I realized that what the reindeer was saying was true. If it wasn't for the old man coming to our friend's rescue, things could have turned out a lot differently for us.
"I've got a bunch of questions for him, but I guess I'll wait for him to wake up" Sanji sighed before looking towards Pierre. "We owe you some thanks as well" he gently smiled at the bird that stood guard over his owner.
"His right, you both did such a wonderful job protecting our ship and dear friend" I brightly smiled, gently stroking the top of the bird's head as he made sounds of contentment at the affectionate gesture.
"Luffy!" Chopper squealed when the rubber man suddenly grabbed ahold of the old man's beard without warning and yank it, quick was he in ushering the captain away from the man and all of us back out onto the deck of the ship so that we could no longer bother the old man while he slept.
"The Going Merry is trashed and it'll be dark soon, so there's no chance we'll make it back to Angel Island 'til tomorrow" Sanji summarized as he assessed our situation. "We should hop over on land and make camp for tonight" he suggested.
"Why there?" Luffy asked.
"Because if we stay here and someone attacked us, the first thing to take a beating will be our ship!" Usopp frowned. "Would you use your head, Luffy?!" he irritably snapped.
"Not to mention it's easier to fight from land than from an altar floating on a cloud" Sanji added.
"Basically, it's just better if we slept on land than on the ship" I summarized, feeling that giving the captain the simplest response would make it easier for him to understand what we were telling him.
"Exactly" Sanji and Usopp nodded in agreement.
"Camping!" Luffy happily cheered as he and the reindeer now started to jump up and down in childish glee.
"This isn't a party! We're in enemy territory!" Usopp snapped at the two. "Now, calm down!" he huffed.
"Not a party, got it" Luffy nodded before his gaze wandered over toward the knocked-out Sky Sharks that lay floating in the water, his eyes soon sparkling as an idea suddenly crossed his mind. "Hey, Usopp, is a barbecue a party?" he slyly asked.
-Later-
"These things are tasty!" Luffy grinned, tearing into the cooked Sky Shark as we sat around the campfire we had built for the night.
"Where does it all go?" I asked while leaning over toward Zoro after finally noticing just how much Luffy had eaten in such a short amount of time since we left the ship and settled down onshore. How was his stomach not aching? How wasn't he feeling sick and nauseous from eating that much food in one sitting?
"Don't know" Zoro shrugged.
"You would eat dirt if we told you it was food..." Nami grumbled in slight annoyance as she watched how the captain continued to stuff his face.
"You haven't tried it—what do you know?" Luffy shot right back.
"Luffy, have...have you eaten dirt before?" I slowly blinked upon registering what he had just said.
"Maybe..." he responded before quickly going back to eating his food, not really elaborating on his answer. Part of me knew I couldn't judge him too much for possibly eating dirt, but a stronger part of me felt revulsion at the idea of eating something so grainy and inedible as dirt. At least the food my brothers and I would raid from the trashcans in desperation was edible in a way.
"Quiet down! It is now time to hear everyone's field report!" Usopp exclaimed, tapping against a chalkboard that seemingly came out of nowhere since I don't remember it being there just mere second's ago.
"Where the hell did you get a chalkboard?" I asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Doesn't matter" he dismissively waved before turning his attention towards Sanji and motioning for the blond to speak.
"We ran into this Priest named Satori who uses spheres with different kinds of threats inside each one—explosives, dragons, the usual" Sanji explained. "But what really hung us out to dry in the fight was the guy predicting our moves using a power called Mantra or something."
"The Priest that attacked me was named Shura and he used a spear that catches fire to anything, he seemed like he could predict my moves just like that Satori guy and I tried and tried to attack him but he...he dodged me every single time..." Chopper sadly muttered, his head drooping as his mood soured upon remembering what had happened. "Then the bird that he was riding burnt down the mast and the Sky Knight was defeated" he concluded.
"Sounds like you all had a rough time" Nami said. "Well, what we found out was that this island we're on is actually the missing part of Jaya" she told everyone. "You see, the City of Gold didn't sink into the ocean, it was shot into the sky like us."
"Excellent work! Now based on your report, we've learned that the Priest can predict our moves using a power called Mantra, and the bird and spear burn you" Usopp reiterated. "But most importantly, we've learned that this," he pointed at the words he had written down on the chalkboard, "the City of Gold, is not thousands of lengths down under the ocean as we thought, but it is somewhere on this very island."
"No way!" Luffy excitedly gasped as if he was just hearing this for the first time.
"That was the first thing I told you!" Nami snapped.
"Come on, Nami, he was too busy stuffing his face when you did that" I chuckled, causing her to grumble.
"So what is this Mantra business all about?" Zoro curiously inquired, taking more of an interest in what Sanji had said than in what we all had learned earlier that day during our exploration of the island.
"Maybe it's some kind of sixth sense that you get here" Sanji suggested with a shrug.
"Sixth sense?" Zoro echoed.
"Yo, Chopper! Do I need to grind this down anymore?" Sanji asked as he held up the bowl he had been stirring this entire time for the reindeer.
"Yes, it needs to be a fine powder" Chopper nodded. "He suffered a lot of damage to his digestive system" he explained, making it clear why he needed the medicine so finely grounded down before he could give it to the Sky Knight.
"This is it, an adventure with gold at the end" Luffy excitedly grinned. "I can't wait!" he eagerly started to bounce in place as the thought of a reward at the end of this adventure got his blood pumping.
"Glad to see someone's on my side—I'm ready!" Nami winked with a grin of her own.
"Luffy, no—did you forget what scary Guerrilla guy said about executions?" Usopp whimpered, mentioning something that had most likely been said to him, Luffy, and Sanji while they were heading this way.
"God would be really mad..." Chopper worriedly mumbled.
"I'm pretty sure he'll be mad either way" I said, not seeing any reason to really worry all that much about being cautious when it seems that even the slightest of things could possibly trigger this island's God into anger.
"Sounds like fun" Robin chuckled.
"Well, we wouldn't be very good pirates if we turned our backs on gold, so let's not" Sanji said, seeing no reason for us to really abandon our adventure and skip out on collecting a plentiful reward in the process.
"It won't be easy—we know everybody up here already hates us, which means I'm in" Zoro grinned.
"Come on!" Usopp cried out. "Aren't you even a little frightened of the wrath of God? I mean, I want to live—don't you?!" he shouted in distress, not liking how none of us seemed to be all that worried about the consequences of our actions.
"Ah, we'll be fine" I dismissively waved with a grin.
"Gold! And it's all waiting for us!" Luffy laughed as he ignored the breakdown our sharpshooter was currently suffering.
-Later-
"Why'd you stop?" Zoro asked the second Chopper had stilled.
"All that racket seems to be getting further away" he remarked, referring to the sounds of fighting that we've been hearing since our arrival on this island.
"Well, maybe all those Guerrillas and Priests decided to call it quits for the night, which sounds like the right idea" Zoro suggested as I shifted around the basket I was currently carrying. "Let's go" he motioned, urging us to keep going so we could get back to camp quickly.
"Don't leave me behind!" Chopper worriedly called out as Zoro started walking ahead.
"Here" I smiled, stopping and holding out my hand for the reindeer to take so he wouldn't risk falling behind. "Better?" I asked once I took his hoof, my smiling only widening when he shyly nodded with a small smile of his own.
"If you keep up, I won't" Zoro called back.
"But you don't know how to get back to camp!" Chopper argued, not seeing why the swordsman would go and leave us both behind when he was the one that had trouble getting around on his own.
"He's right, your sense of direction is awful" I teased.
"Shut up!" he embarrassingly snapped.
"Sanji! We found tons of great stuff!" Chopper happily called out the minute we got back to camp, already letting go of my hand and running over to Sanji.
"Excellent, let's see the haul" the blond grinned as he motioned for us to show him what we got.
"We found walnuts and barley" Chopper said as he held up what he had in his arms.
"We also found bananas and garlic" I added, holding up the basket I was currently carrying.
"Rats and frogs too" Zoro said as he held up the dead vermin and amphibians. It was upsetting at first when we had found them and the swordsman decided they'd make for a possibly good meal, but I could argue with him when our choices in meat outside of fish were rather limited.
"Nice, it all goes into the pot" Sanji grinned.
"Disgusting! You don't expect us to eat that mess, do you?!" Nami frowned, disgusted at the thought of having to eat rat and frog.
"Oh, silly me, Nami" Sanji chuckled upon hearing the ginger's disgust. "I promise to take the garlic out" he cooed.
"The garlic is the only good thing!" she snapped as I chuckled.