Hey everyone, hope you like your Halloween eve gift!
While I'm happy to be back, I gotta make a quick confession. It's been a rough month. I was dealing with some stuff, nothing new when it comes to reality. But it just reminds me why I love fiction and creative works.
I hope I can continue to write stories that will do the same for all of you.
I started a new posting schedule, I've been filling more slot stories. I hope you'll continue to support me. Special thanks to my sprouts and seedlings for making it possible for me to keep writing and posting so consistently.
I can't wait to grace you with more stories to take away your pain and lift your spirits.
Happy Haloween!
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CHAPTER 38
"We just got here."
Nami sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose, as she looked over at Sakura and Chopper, who were seeing to their latest patient. They moved the man into the house after he collapsed and laid him out on the bed, covering him in cold towels.
Their ship's doctors were quick to discern the cause. He was suffering from caisson disease, a common affliction among deep-sea divers. His breathing had stabilized, so there was little else to do but wait for him to wake.
Sakura stepped back, rolling her shoulders to ease the tension, when something behind Nami caught her eye.
"No way."
Nami turned. "What?"
Sakura pointed at a framed picture on the wall. It was framed perfectly, without a speck of dust, showing off its importance, but the content within was concerning. They saw the same man they were treating, standing proudly between two massive, familiar figures.
"No. Way." Nami and Sanji shared the words, both equally shocked.
Just then, the door burst open, nearly slamming off the hinges. And in walked the very same two figures from the photo. Two ape-like figures that had a habit of causing havoc this side of the sea, and wrecking ships with their voices that trespassed. Masira and Shoujo.
Usopp and Chopper were quick to take their arrival as a signal and go into panic mode, running around the small space in a flailing frenzy.
"What are you people doing here?"
"And what are you doing to the old timer!?"
Luffy answered their aggression with surprising calm, "We're trying to help this guy, so go somewhere else."
While everyone else remained quiet, they had partially expected some sort of violent confrontation. Zoro already had a hand on the hilt of his sword, and Sanji had lifted up to the tip of his right foot, but to everyone's shock, the two apes burst into tears.
"YOU GUYS ARE SO NICE!" they wailed, snot dripping down their faces.
They immediately started babbling with Luffy, their loud voices filling the small house. Sakura's eye twitched.
"HEY!" she snapped, cutting through the noise like a blade, her shoulders up to her ears and eyes blazing with an anger that mimicked Nami's when she was at the end of her rope. It was the side of Sakura's coin that had been etched into her with Tsunade polishing her temper, but it wasn't one she liked flipping.
"SHUT UP AND TAKE IT OUTSIDE NOW!"
Usopp, Luffy, and Chopper, who seemed to have forgotten that he was also the crew's doctor and actually a vital presence all scurried out, pushing Masira and Shoujo through as well. When there was two seconds of silence, Sakura took it and let out a heavy huff.
Nami raised an impressed eyebrow. "Wow, pretty strict when it comes to patients, huh?"
Sakura huffed. "No, they give me a headache."
"Oh my darling Sakura, don't worry, I won't let them bother you again!" Sanji said, coming up behind her, "Let me rub your temples and take that headache away."
She didn't even respond to Sanji's comments and had just shifted away, her face puffed up, which was becoming her signature look for anger. Even if she yelled at him, he was probably going to just gush over her further instead of running off scared since he found everything the girls did endearing.
Nami studied her for a moment. Sakura had been unusually irritable lately. "Hey, is something bothering you?"
Sakura waved her off. "Nothing,"
Her eyes flicked toward Zoro, who stiffened before abruptly turning toward the door.
"It's too stuffy in here," he grumbled, making his exit, but he could feel the glare hooked on his back, but he kept walking until he was out of her sight.
Sakura clenched her teeth and, through them, called out aggressively, "Chopper, get back in here!"
"Ha-ye-yes!"
..
..
..
Outside, the raucous laughter of Luffy and the two ape-like salvagers, Masira and Shoujo, echoed like the unruly cries of seagulls fighting over scraps. Those were Sakura's exact words as she grumbled through her treatment.
Nami rolled her eyes. "Of course, he gets along with them."
The man on the bed, Montblanc Cricket, stirred, his eyelids fluttering. Chopper, who had been carefully monitoring his vitals, let out a startled yelp and scrambled backward, nearly knocking over a precariously stacked pile of trinkets.
Cricket groaned, pressing a hand to his temple as if trying to piece together reality. "What… happened?"
"You passed out after surfacing too fast," Sakura explained, crossing her arms. "Diver's sickness. You're lucky you didn't stroke out."
"Oh Acorn's awake!" Luffy called, coming through the doorway.
First thing the patient did upon awakening, he grabbed a cigarette and through the puffs apologized for sporadically attacking the crew. "I thought you were trying to steal my gold,"
And as it so often happened at the mention of treasure, Nami's eyes were filled with berrys in them.
"What was it you wanted from me?"
"We're searching for Sky Island. Tell us how to get there!" Luffy cut in, his eyes bright with excitement again.
In response, Cricket through his head back and barked with laughter, dry like the crack of old parchment. Nami's eye twitched as she got hit with it, reminiscing about her time back at the bar. Usopp had to hold her back from unleashing a verbal and perhaps physical lashing.
"He's sick! He's sick!" Usopp reminded her before he had to duckto avoid an elbow to the nose.
"So… there's no Sky Island?" Luffy pressed, undeterred.
"Only one man ever said there was," Cricket said, rubbing his temples. "And people called him a legendary liar."
Sakura's fingers brushed against her arm as she folded them neatly. "You mean Noland. From the children's tale. I noticed he shares the same last name as you."
Cricket's expression darkened slightly, shadows pooling in the hollows of his cheeks. "My ancestor. Because of him, my family spent centuries in disgrace. Even with two hundred years between us, the name 'Montblanc' was a curse. But…" He clenched his fists. "No one in my family hated him."
Luffy tilted his head. "Why not?"
"Because Noland wasn't a liar. He was the most honest fool who ever lived."
Cricket's words hung in the air. He explained how Noland had been absolutely certain that the island he reached was Jaya, that the ruins of a golden city had sunk beneath the waves. But the world had called it desperation. A dying man's delusion.
"It's depressing," Sakura admitted, but her mind was already dissecting the tale. "But think about it. Why would Noland convince a king to sail halfway to hell just to prove a lie? Most fiction is rooted in some truth. Maybe we're just missing the piece that connects it all. Is that why you're here?" Sakura pressed. "Diving until your body breaks, risking your life-not to clear your family's name, but to… what? Spite the man who ruined it?"
"Don't be ridiculous," Cricket snarled, but there was no heat left in it. "I don't give a damn about honor. But try being a kid, laughed out of every town because of the blood in your veins. Four hundred years, and the world still won't let us forget. Others in my family sailed to restore our name. None came back. I ran. Became a pirate. But fate's got a sick sense of humor. I ended up right where he did. Now I'm here, digging for gold in the same damned spot, with no crew left to humor me."
Sakura sighed. "And yet, you're still going."
"It's not about gold," Cricket muttered. "It's about facing the bastard who ruined my life, even if he's been dust for centuries."
"I… really don't get it," Sakura admitted, though something in Cricket's words resonated. The stubborn, self-destructive pride of a man who refused to let go. She was all too familiar with that kind of pride. And she still couldn't fully understand it.
Usopp, meanwhile, was sniffling dramatically. "T-This is a man's pride! A warrior's resolve!" he warbled, tears streaming.
Luffy, ever the master of tact, finally exploded, "I DON'T CARE ABOUT ANY OF THAT! JUST TELL ME ABOUT SKY ISLAND!"
But Cricket just laughed. "You're all insane."
Cricket went to a cabinet and took out a weathered book. He flipped through the pages yellowed with age. It was Noland's own journal, a relic from 400 years ago. A foolish family heirloom that haunted Cricket and gave so many of his relatives a sliver of hope that the stain on their reputation could be refuted. He then passed it to Nami with a rough toss, telling her to read the section he opened.
Nami's fingers traced the faded ink as she opened the fragile pages, her eyes scanning the looping script.
"Following the Log Pose, we should be heading east-northeast..." She read out loud, "We obtained a rare item from a bumboat-a ski-like one-person vessel called a 'Waver.' A mysterious craft that generates its own wind, capable of moving even on a windless day..."
Luffy, Usopp, and Chopper immediately crowded around her, their eyes wide as saucers, breaths held in.
"The power source for this device appears to be a product found only on Sky Island. Speaking of Sky Island, one of my explorer friends showed me a live sky fish. I was astonished by its bizarre appearance..."
Sanji's cigarette nearly fell from his lips, his culinary curiosity piqued. "Sky fish?"
It wasn't the context that Sakura had focused on, but rather the nonchalant tone and sense of familiarity that Noland wrote with, as if the sky islands were common. "So, Sky Island wasn't just a legend-it was a documented place. But it still doesn't tell us how to get there."
The crew was so engrossed in the journal's revelations that they didn't notice Cricket slipping out of the house.
..
..
..
Cricket didn't walk far, just outside to taste the salt in the wind and engage in a short conversation with his ape-like companions. When the crew gathered outside, he motioned for them to open their ears.
"Listen close," he said, his voice rough. "What I'm about to tell you is the key to reaching Sky Island if you've got the guts to believe it."
He began by mentioning something that sent a jolt of recognition through the crew. "Sometimes in the middle of the day, night suddenly falls."
Shoulders became tense and breaths hitched silently; it wasn't a pleasant memory for anyone to recall. The way those giants had overshadowed their entire world and swallowed the sun. They had all shared a sense of helplessness, and they didn't like it.
"We saw that!" Luffy exclaimed, throwing up his hand like a hyperactive child that had been sitting still for hours.
"And the giants,"
"It's not night," Cricket continued, dismissing the topic of the giants, though he apparently knew something about that as well. "It's the shadow of a cloud so dense, so colossal, it blots out the sky itself. Imperious Cumulus, the Emperor Cloud. They say it's been unchanged for thousands of years."
Clouds with no air current or rain and dense enough to block out the sun. This information sounded more like something from fiction and for Nami it was especially hard for her to swallow this without choking in disbelief. Navigation was the only contribution she could offer the crew, no one else could read the winds and feel the seas like she did.
The Grand Line had taught her that the sky was as treacherous as the sea, but this? A cloud that defied time?
"That's…" She wanted to call it madness. But then she remembered the ship that had fallen from the sky. The Waver in Noland's log. The impossible was stacking up like cards in a gambler's hand.
Cricket smirked at her hesitation. "Take it with a grain of salt. But if Sky Island exists, that's where you'll find it. It's not like the sources are-
Before Cricket could finish, Luffy was already on his feet, tapping happily and calling for Zoro, who had decided to take a nap.
"WE'RE GOING TO THE SKY!"
Nami's temper flared. "LUFFY, SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP FOR ONCE! WE DON'T EVEN KNOW HOW TO GET THERE!"
Cricket ignored the chaos, blowing a puff of smoke as he dropped the second piece of crucial information. "There's only one way up. A phenomenon called the Knock-Up Stream."
Usopp paled. "That… sounds violent."
"It is," Cricket confirmed. "A geyser of the sea itself, erupting with enough force to launch a ship into the sky. It happens when underwater caverns trap cold seawater. Geothermal heat turns it into steam, building pressure until… He clapped his hands together. "…..the ocean punches a hole through the sky."
"Whoa! Hold on! If we're taking a ship straight up, what happens then? Won't we just smash into the sea?" Sakura asked, reminding everyone of what they had just seen with the previous ship that nearly crushed them.
Usopp's knees knocked together. "A-And our ship?!"
Cricket's gaze flicked to the Going Merry, and his lips twisted into a wry grin. "Let's be honest. That dinky little boat would splinter like kindling."
There was an obvious tick of annoyance to Going Merry receiving any insult but Usopp knew this was their best way to get out of risking their lives on this pipe dream that could cost them in blood. However, Luffy was undeterred, in fact his grin had risen passed his ears now that Cricket gave them a path to the sky.
..
..
..
Or so they thought.
But if the path to Sky Island were truly so simple, they wouldn't be stumbling through a jungle at midnight, nets in hand. The air was thick with the scent of damp earth and the murmurs of unseen creatures that occupied that space, the kind that slithered and skittered.
Sakura looked up at the night sky, her neck craned back with an evident contentious expression she tried to hide from her friends.
The reason they were in this predicament? Because Cricket had failed to mention one crucial element they required in order to achieve their pipe dream of reaching the sky islands. He remembered eventually, while they were gathered at his place, stuffing their mouths and trying to get drunk. That's when the realization hit. When he was assuring the crew that their ship would be set in order to take the hit of the knock up stream, Cricket recalled that they first had to find the knock up stream.
He had taken Noland's Logue book, it regaled about bells and birds heard when he reached the island that held the city of gold. And that story of ancient Jiya was what unlocked that crucial corner piece of the puzzle. Although Cricket had been diving for years and suffered for it, there was one consolation. There was some gold found at the bottom of the depths. And he was eager to show it to his new acquaintances.
A gold statue, in pristine condition, unbothered by the elements, supposedly for hundreds of years, that he had found on the ocean floor. It was the statue of a bird, with a very wide and heavy-looking beak.
The South Bird. It only ever faced in that compass direction, its gaze locked. And apparently, they needed one. Why? The knock-upstream, only appeared in the South and the Grand Line turned even the most expensive compasses into drunkards that spun without cause.
And so, Cricket had chased them into the night, his voice chasing after them, "Find it! Or you'll be sailing in circles!"
That's what brought them to their current situation, no longer enjoying the comforts of the party but facing the consequences of their desires to reach the sky.
There were only two things they knew about the South Bird, what it looked like and, according to Cricket, that it had a call unlike any other bird or fauna. However, he couldn't elaborate further than that and they didn't have the time to dig for the information themselves. The knock up stream had them on a time limit or it would be another five months before it appeared again.
'This is such a genin mission,' Sakura couldn't help giving a hard swipe to the air with her net.
"Saying that a bird has a peculiar call is too vague!" Usopp complained, but it was a sentiment shared.
Sanji glanced around in the dark, "He said we'd know once we're in the forest….
JOOOH
The cry cut through the jungle. It was odd, dissonant, like a rusty hinge.
"That's a weird sound," they muttered in unison.
"ALRIGHT, LET'S GET IT!"
"Three nets, three teams, let's split up and find it!" Sanji said. He was eager since Nami decided to stick with him. Usopp also decided to tag along. Sakura called to Luffy and Chopper, and Robin who was the first to actually put her team together, called but one. Zoro. Rather eager to take off first, grabbing the swordsmen. The good news, was no one had to redistribute because anyone with symptoms of Dyscalculia was paired with someone who could keep them from losing their way. Under normal circumstances, they would be left to their own devices but with a time limit, it wasn't worth creating more side quests.
And the hunt was on.
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-Kunoichi amongst Heroes chapter (89, 90, 91, 92)
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- (Bleach crossover) Kunoichi amongst Reapers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
-Commission: Demon slayer x My hero academia (PART 1 & 2)
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