We walked to the shore on the far side of the cacti, which we found out were actually huge hills with gravestones of all the people the bounty hunters of Whiskey Peak had killed and/or captured. Vivi looked a little disturbed at that, and I felt a bit sick in my stomach, but we passed through the path without much excitement, thank goodness. Otherwise Nami never would've let us hear the end of it.
We reached the end of the island and Igaram stepped into a simple ship that didn't seem like much more than a fishing boat.
"Mah ~ Mah ~ Maaaah!" he coughed. "Ahem! Well then, I, Vivi, shall be leaving here now."
Lucy giggled. "Shishishi! Ossan, you're just like her!"
Zoro and I sweatdropped. "In what way?"
He held out his hand, careful not to overturn the small boat. "Now, Princess, please hand me the Eternal Pose." Vivi started digging around in her pocket and brought out what looked like a Log Pose, except an almost hour-glass-like case surrounding it.
Nami was mystified. "Eternal Pose?"
"I'll try to explain," Igaram sighed, probably thinking about Lucy's simple naivety. "It is an eternally preserved version of a Log Pose. A Log Pose guides you from one island to the next, but an Eternal Pose never forgets the magnetic location of the single island it is set to. It shall 'eternally' point towards that island, hence its name. And this one points the way to Alabasta, our home island."
Lucy nodded. "I see. So it's a mystery compass!"
I facepalmed. "No, you idiot! He just explained it! Instead of pointing to multiple islands, an Eternal Pose always points to the same island."
"Oh."
Vivi looked at her friend seriously. "With this, you can get to Alabasta."
He closed his eyes. "Vivi-sama, after making a few stops, please hurry to Alabasta. I have never done it myself, but I am certain that you can follow the Log two or three times to get there." He looked at each of us in turn. We were all grinning, or in Zoro's case, smirking. "And with that, I leave the princess in your care."
"Sure!" agreed Lucy.
"Igaram..." murmured the ex-Baroque Works agent. She bit her lip worriedly.
"I know the journey will be dangerous," he assured her, smiling, "but I'll be fine. Please be careful along the way."
"Iga—"Vivi trailed off and shook her head. Then she smiled and clasped hands with the old man, nodding. "You, too."
As Igaram set sail, there was a warm feeling in the air that had nothing to do with the rising sun chasing away the cool night breeze. Igaram's boat cut through the water as easily as butter through a knife, and he inched closer and closer to the horizon, grinning back at us the whole way. The light wind ruffled my leather jacket and long hair.
"Well, he's gone," Lucy remarked, arms folded behind her straw hat. "He was a cool ossan, wasn't he?"
Vivi smiled at her warmly. It was hard to imagine her as the bitchy girl we'd traveled here with. When she was truly happy, she looked like a totally different person. "Yes. We can count on him."
I gave her a thumbs-up, feeling very cool indeed. "You can count on us, too, Vivi-chan! Believe it!"
(In a totally different universe, a blonde ninja with whisker-like markings on his face suddenly sneezed. He blinked. "I think someone just stole my catchphrase..." he whined, pouting.)
The good moment was cut short, however, by a sudden flourish of a thousand hands. Our eyes widened in horror as... as... as Igaram's ship freakin' BLEW UP OUTTA NOWHERE!
The poor desert princess was beside herself with concern. "Iga... IGARAM!"
Lucy gritted her teeth and turned around, starting to run away. "He... HE WAS A GOOD MAN!"
"Dammit!" I cursed. "They caught up to us so quickly?!" I'd forgotten the little fact that Robin shows up and blows up Igaram until just now. Then I remembered something else. He hadn't actually died, whether the archaeologist had planned for it to happen that way or not.
Still... that was in the original plot. Who knew what my being here could change?
"Shit!" Nami swore.
Zoro turned to her. "Nami! The Log!"
She checked it and gave a thumbs-up, though she was still glaring out at the sea as if she could kill the perpetrator of Igaram's "death" with her gaze. "It's already set. We can escape."
"Grab her! Get to the ship!"
"Vivi! Vivi!"
I didn't see much else, because I was already in full sprint for the Going Merry, but I did hear the swordsman order Lucy and I to grab Sanji and Usopp, who were still snoozing away in the party room like the morons they were. We nodded and tore off.
When we found them, Lucy wrapped her arms around Sanji's feet and I groped down for the nearest handhold on Usopp that I could find—which happened to be his abnormally long nose. We crashed out of the room and took off for the ship again, waking them up.
"WE'RE LEAVING!" Lucy announced loudly.
The sniper and cook bounced roughly behind us.
"WHAH DE HELL AWE YOU DOING, YURIl!?" Usopp screeched. "DAT'S MY DOSE! YOU'RE GONNA BWEAK IT!"
Finally, we found the ship. Zoro had already pulled up the anchor and was getting ready to lower the sails. "Oi, Zoro!" Lucy called. "We got 'em!"
"Get on!" he told us. "We're ready to go!"
I gritted my teeth as I thought about the supposedly dead cross-dresser. "Dammit! We'd better leave right this moment or else we're gonna end up like Igaram!"
We scurried up the ladder, dragging Usopp and Sanji with us, since they had fallen unconscious from the bumpy ride somewhere along the way, much to Lucy's confusion. As we boarded the Merry, Vivi and Nami came tearing out of one of the streets of Whiskey Peak. The desert princess looked distraught and Nami was trying to make her see sense.
"We can't look for him!" she told the bluenette. "We have to go now!"
Vivi bit her lip again. "But I can't leave him here all alone!"
"Oi, what's wrong?" Zoro called down to them.
"She says that her spot-billed duck is missing! Apparently it should've come when she whistled, but we can't find it!"
I heard a quack somewhere to my left and blinked. A huge duck was sitting on the upper deck near the figurehead, looking very annoyed. Zoro rubbed his chin.
"Ya mean that duck? He was onboard before I got here."
"Carue!"
"Smart duck," I said, a little impressed.
Both Nami and Vivi tic-pulsed and went shark-like. "YOU WERE THERE THE WHOLE TIME?!" they exploded.
The desert princess started climbing up the ladder. "If we sail down this river, we'll be able to go through the island," she informed us. "We'll be able to get on course faster." She lifted herself up onto the ship, Nami right behind her.
Lucy and I unfurled the sails.
"ALRIGHT!" my captain declared. "LET'S GO!"
The sails caught wind and the Merry started moving downstream. Everyone took their respectful positions, except for Usopp and Sanji, who were still knocked out.
"Oi," Zoro said, walking down the steps from the bathroom to the lower deck.
Vivi blinked and looked at him. "Mr. Bushido!"
"Just how many hunters are we talking about?" he asked. "How many guys might we have to fight?"
She and the duck frowned thoughtfully. "I don't know," Vivi admitted. "Baroque Works has about two thousand employees, but most of them have about the same power as the bounty hunters you fought last night. Oh, and I've heard that there are more villages like Whiskey Peak in this area."
"Really, 2,000 people?" Nami gasped.
I smirked. "If you think that's a lot, just wait until we face an army of 100,000 fishmen!"
"100,000 FISHMEN!?"
Usopp's eyes fluttered open and he looked about in confusion. "O-Oi... we're on the ship... and it's moving...?"
The navigator glared at him dangerously. "You're finally up?"
"WAIT!" Sanji complained, adamant in his lady-chasing endeavors. "Let us stay another night!" Usopp nodded quickly and the cook continued. "This town was so much fun and the girls were SO CUTE!"
"WHEN WILL WE FIND ANOTHER AWESOME PLACE LIKE THIS!?" Usopp demanded.
I rubbed my chin thoughtfully. "Ah, I'd say... never."
"MY POINT EXACTLY!"
"LET'S TAKE IT SLOW, DAMMIT! WE'RE PIRATE!"
"IT'S NOT EVEN MORNING YET!"
I sweatdropped. "The sun's rising, idiot. It's morning."
Zoro facepalmed as the two continued with their complaining. "Those idiots still don't know what's going on..."
—BAM! BAM! BONG! BAM!
"They understand now!" reported Nami sweetly, her fist a bit red.
"That was quick..." the swordsman muttered.
"Yeah, well, I skipped the boring details."
I shivered. "Remind me never to get on Nami's bad side."
After about fifteen minutes, the two beat-up morons recovered themselves and went to work, though they still grumbled about not getting to stay. Sanji went into the kitchen and made us a quick, simple pancake-and-sausage breakfast, which we didn't even bother eating in the dining room, and we all hung around on the upper deck. Finally, as the fog returned to the island, we were able to make out the end of the river in front of us.
Vivi sighed in relief. "We're about to leave the island. We're safe."
"Cool!" Lucy cheered. "Fog!"
I sweatdropped at her antics. "It's just fog! There's nothing cool about it, except its temperature!"
"It'll be morning soon," Nami mused.
"Like I've said before, it's morning already... nobody listens to me around here..."
"Well," someone said, so quietly I almost couldn't catch them, "it's a good thing you've gotten away from your pursuers!"
The navigator nodded. "Yeah, it is."
"Watch out for the shallows so you don't strike the hull."
"You can count on me!" There was an awkward silence, then we all looked at Lucy. "Eh..." Nami said. "Was that you, Lucy?"
"Huh?"
We looked at the back of the lower deck. A woman dressed all in purple and wearing an equally purple dress sat on a barrel. She had flowing black hair, almost a dark blue color, and half of her face was shadowed by her hat. The woman had a rather large bust, even bigger than Lucy's and my own. She wasn't wearing any lipstick. Her fingers drummed against her tan, almost brown, cheek. "Nice ship," she approved.
Nami freaked out.
"Wh-Who's that?!" Zoro demanded.
"N-Nico Robin!" Vivi gasped in recognition.
My eyes lit up. "COOL! Nico Robin, the woman who has escaped the clutches of the World Government for almost thirty years! Unjustly nicknamed the 'Demon Child' because the government hates her and given an 79,000,000 belli bounty for something she didn't do! CAN I HAVE YOUR AUTOGRAPH!?"
Nami hit me over the head hard. "IDIOT! DON'T ASK FOR THE AUTOGRAPHS OF STOWAWAYS!"
Lucy blinked. "Eh? Is she a good guy?"
Robin chuckled, amused. "You want my autograph? I must say, I have met many people in my lifetime, but none have said that. Regardless... no, you may not."
I immediately sank to the deck, a cloud of depression hanging over me. "This sucks..."
She tilted her head and smirked. "I saw Mr. 8 not too long ago, Miss Wednesday."
Vivi's face was ashen. "You killed Igaram!"
"Even if you did," Lucy yelled, pointing at her, "why the hell are you on my ship? Who are you?"
"What are you doing HERE!?" Vivi demanded. "MISS ALL SUNDAY!"
"Miss All Sunday?" Nami repeated. "Which number's partner is it this time?"
"Crocodile's..." I said helpfully, still in my state of utter depression.
"EH!? THE BOSS'S PARTNER!?"
"So she's a bad guy," Lucy decided.
Vivi nodded. "She is the only one allowed to know the Boss's true identity and life. We shadowed her in order to find out who he really was."
"Or to be more precise," Robin corrected her, "I allowed you to shadow me."
Lucy tilted her head. "So she is a good guy?"
Vivi clenched her fists and glared up at the purple-clad archaeologist. "I knew that! And then the one who informed the Boss of his exposed identity... was none other than YOU, wasn't it!?"
"Correct."
"So she's a bad guy," my captain grumbled, confused.
"Just drop it," I muttered, banging my head on the floor in depression. "You're confusing the hell outta the situation..." I pretty much stopped paying attention there, wallowing in my self pity, but I was drawn back into the conversation when I heard the sound of glass breaking and Lucy shouting.
"OI!" she was shouting. "YOU DON'T DECIDE THE ROUTE FOR THIS SHIP! ONLY I DO!"
"I see," chuckled Robin. "Too bad, then."
"Damn you..." Nami growled, face twitching at Lucy, who was on the ground for some reason, sitting up and straightening her hat.
"She blew up the chikuwa ossan," the black haired pirate explained. "I hate her."
The purple-clothed intruder just smiled and started walking to the port side of the Merry, saying, "Well, I don't hate those with high spirits. May we meet again under more acceptable circumstances."
"NO!"
Robin nodded and jumped off the ship. "Let's go, Banchi."
I blinked, forgetting my depression. "Banchi? Who's that?" We ran over to look off the side of the Merry, and what we saw made our jaws drop. An enormous turtle was swimming there, with a purple and yellow shell and something like a built-in cockpit. Robin landed lightly in the cockpit thing, a canvas umbrella-like thing rising up over her. She sat down in the white seat of the cockpit and the turtle swam away.
"W-What's that!?" Zoro gasped.
Usopp freaked. "Is that thing a Sea King!? Wait, no, it's... WHOA! A TURTLE!"
Lucy was impressed. "That is one HUGE turtle!"
"WHY IS EVERYTHING IN THIS CRAZY SEA SO FREAKIN' HUGE!?" I complained, tic-pulsing.
Vivi collapsed to the deck. "That... that woman! I can never understand what she's thinking!"
"Then trying to understand is a waste of time," Nami told her.
"Yeah," Zoro agreed, motioning at Lucy, who was still peering out at the enormous turtle. "We've got people like that on the ship already." His snide comment went unnoticed by our idiotic captain.
Usopp pouted. "Oi, can someone please explain this to me? I have absolutely no idea what's going on!"
"Oh~! Miss Wednesday, are you going to be one of our nakama now?" Sanji cooed in delight.
"Oi, will someone please explain... WHAT!? WE HAVE AN OSTRICH NOW!?" Carue quaked loudly in response. "What the hell's going on?"
"SO SLOW!" Nami roared, smacking the long nosed moron again. She was wearing a white shirt with blue sleeves now, and I had changed out of the... revealing... horrid pink shirt that the navigator had forced me into, opting for a much more comfortable sports bra and dark green shirt with the number 18 on it, stating my age. I still wore my usual leather jacket, jeans, and sneakers, though I'd had to get a One Piece brand because my others didn't fit my much smaller feet.
We explained everything to Sanji and Usopp, who both frowned, though for entirely different reasons.
"I see," the love cook mused. "I have done a terrible thing to you. But fear no more, for your knight in shining armor has awakened. I shall make it my duty to ensure your safety." He winked at Nami and I. "Jealous, Nami-chan and Yuril-chan?"
"Not in the slightest," we deadpanned.
"Damn...!" gasped Usopp. "I'm glad I was asleep!"
Vivi bit her lip, a habit she needed to stop, and looked down at the deck. "I've been wondering... is it really okay for me to be aboard your ship? I don't want to be a burden."
I grinned and folded my hands under my breasts. "What are you saying? Of course it is!"
Nami, however, was unmoved. She stepped forward and started poking a surprised Vivi in the forehead. "Shut up!" she commanded. "You're the one who got us marked for death by 2,000 people! If you didn't want to be a burden, you shouldn't have done that in the first place!"
"So cold," I said.
"Sorry..." muttered Vivi, not wanting to bring on the Demoness of the Going Merry.
"Right, Lucy?" Nami called back to our female captain, who was sitting cross-legged on the railing of the ship beside Usopp. Both froze, a look of fear crossing their faces.
Lucy gulped and pumped her fists in the air. "OH! I'm hungry!"
"But we ate an hour ago..." I pointed out, sweatdropping.
Vivi sweatdropped, too. "I don't think she cares."
Zoro, who had been reclining against the railing casually, shrugged. "Well, in any case, we know our next destination now: Little Garden."
"Is it really okay to go there?" Usopp fretted.
I grinned. "If you don't mind a dash of Jurassic Park, yup!"
"What's Jurassic Park?"
"Not telling~!"
"Who cares if it's okay?" Lucy asked dismissively, grinning and pointing out to sea. "Let's go, crew!"
"YOSHA!" we all shouted, though the others were uncertain and Usopp's was a bit late, so it sounded like an echo. Whether we liked it or not, the dawn of a brand new adventure was upon us. And this new, big adventure would decide the fate of a kingdom and its citizens...