One Piece Fan Fiction ❯ Cursed Island of the Devil Fruit Gods ❯ Alliance ( Chapter 4 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Luffy finally stopped running and Nami finally stopped beating him with her fists. "Now you've gotten us lost in this jungle, you baka!" she slapped him. "No map, no idea where any of our friends are, or the ship, or even what island this is!" she whined.
"Well you're a navigator aren't you?" Luffy said, as if Nami could find her way out of anywhere.
"BAKA!" she kicked him in the face. "What did I just finish saying? I may be a navigator but I still need tools just like a swordsman needs swords!" she growled. But then she sighed and looked around. "Well we're here now, we might as well just keep going. There was nothing back the way we came so there's no point in turning around." she said.
They foraged through the thick jungle brush and found that the plantlife wasn't exactly friendly. The vines slithered and crawled everywhere, as if following them, watching them. "Luffy...I don't like this..." Nami shivered.
"Stay close." Luffy said, suddenly turning serious. He listened carefully over Nami's nearly hyperventilating breaths. Nothing. But that was bad. No birds chirping, no bugs buzzing, no wind whistling. Something was keeping them all quiet. Or all the living things had been scared away by that something. "Keep moving." Luffy told her. Even though it was the middle of the afternoon and they could see the sun shining faintly through gaps in the leaves above their heads, it began to grow slightly foggy inside the jungle where they were now walking.
"Is this mist? Or fog? Or what?" Luffy stumbled around, trying to get it out of his face.
"It's not natural, that's for sure...this is no rainforest and anyway, this is the wrong time of day for it to be doing this..." Nami gulped. "I can't sense any changes in the weather...nothing smells off...be careful." she whispered. She wasn't so concerned about him, she just knew that he was her best chance of getting out of this alive herself.
Then it happened; a huge blast of thick, dark gray smoke headed their way. Nami shrieked as what looked like the glinting flash of a sword slashed at her, slicing her shirt straight up the middle so that it fell open revealing a bikini top underneath. She screamed out loud, but didn't let it get to her so badly that she didn't pull out her Clima Tact next and block the next string of sword slashes. Whoever wielded the sword was clearly no Zoro, but they way they were grunting suggested it wasn't even a man. "Who...are...you?!" Nami cried, blocking the sword and kicking out, hitting whoever was holding the sword in the gut with her high-heeled shoes.
The sword wielder groaned in pain and fell backwards. Nami used her Clima Tact to blow the smoke and fog away now that she had a free moment and saw that it was none other than Sergeant Tashigi of the Marines who had attacked her, as she was sitting on the ground, rubbing her stomach sorely and looking infuriated. "YOU!" Nami gasped, pointing at Tashigi, who'd lost her glasses again. Nami quickly scooped them up. "These are mine until you tell me what's the big idea!" she growled.
Luffy, meanwhile, was being squeezed by Captain Smoker's wispy grip. "Smokey guy!" Luffy gasped for air as Smoker attempted to crush him into submission by surrounding him with a cloud of solidified smoke.
"Straw Hat! I didn't expect to find you here! I may be stranded here but that doesn't mean I'm not a navy officer and if I have the chance to capture you I have to take it!" Smoker announced. He would've subdued Luffy with his Seastone-tipped cane but he was using both arms and legs to restrain Luffy now. "Tashigi! Come help me!" Smoker shouted.
But Nami was holding Tashigi hostage with her own sword now. "I'm sorry, sir..." Tashigi apologized.
"Let him go, Smoker, or she gets it." Nami bluffed. Smoker spat and scoffed, laughing softly.
"I know you're bluffing." Smoker told her. "Or your friend Roronoa Zoro wouldn't have stopped me drowning in Rainbase." he reminded them. But he let Luffy go anyway. "I'm sorry, Tashigi. It was my fault. I should have known you too would be half-blinded if we ambushed them with a smoke barrage."
"What are you two doing here?" Nami demanded, giving Tashigi back her sword. Since Smoker had let Luffy go, she assumed they had called at least a temporary truce until things were cleared up. After all, it was a pretty big coincidence that their crew and Smoker and Tashigi were both on this mysterious island.
"We were following you after we found out you were in Water 7, and we ran into a huge storm, unlike any we'd ever seen before! Our ship was destroyed and we woke up on the beach here." Tashigi answered.
"I don't mean to be presumptuous but I'm guessing if you two are wandering around here looking like you're lost in this jungle and without your nakama, then the same thing must have happened to you. Otherwise, where would the rest of your crew be?" Smoker guessed.
"You'd be right. We're looking for them now." Nami smirked.
"If that's the case we'll never get off this island. I watched our ship get torn up from underneath by a waterspout that lifted us into the air before I lost consciousness. We'd never be able to repair it even if some of the wood washed up with us." Smoker said.
"Luffy...you were inside the ship, weren't you? Did it get destroyed too?" Nami asked him.
"The ship? No. I remember a big flash of light like when I fought God-Eneru, and Chopper got shocked. It was funny, he turned all fuzzy like his Guard Point without even eating a Rumble Ball!" Luffy laughed
Nami was getting annoyed now. "That doesn't matter! When the lightning struck the ship, did you see it bursting into pieces?" she demanded.
"Nope. The flash was over and there was a big noise. Chopper fainted so I went outside to the deck to see what happened. Then I watched the black clouds getting closer and closer until they swallowed the ship. I tried to see what was past them but I just got really sleepy and woke up here." Luffy answered.
"That...doesn't make sense. But if that's true...maybe if we washed up here, maybe at least some of our ship is here too! It's our only hope! We've got to search every inch of this island for our friends and our ship!" Nami decided.
"I know we're enemies but you've saved my life before. I assume you won't strand us here." Smoker said.
"You can come with us. But it'll cost you." Nami winked. "And pull your weight! I'm sick of Usopp and Zoro freeloading all the time and I'm not putting up with it from our enemies!" she growled.

The four of them wandered deeper into the jungle and came upon a great tree that was as wide around as a carousel. "What the hell is this?" Smoker raised an eyebrow. Some of the tree was covered in ordinary bark but unlike the other trees all around it, it had no moss growing on it, no fungus, and no vines wrapping around it. But at first glance not one of them would have guessed it was a tree. All over it were carvings, symbols, pictures, very colorful, obviously having been painted. "Is it some kind of idol?" Smoker examined it.
"It's a tree." Nami told him. "Look." she pointed down, where barely visible roots could be seen.
"How did someone carve all this ornate art into the trunk without killing it?" Tashigi wondered. They all stood back and examined it more closely. The carvings reached from the very base of the tree all the way to the top, it seemed, where it finally branched out, but bore no leaves. Some of it looked like it was mixed with different colored ink but it all had a certain base shade in common, and most of it was very dark. "What did they use for ink? I don't see any berry bushes around here. At all. Anywhere." Nami commented. "If humans did this I wonder where they live at...and what they do for food..." she wondered aloud.
"Who said food?" Luffy began to sniff around eagerly.
"Shut up." Nami rolled her eyes. She scratched some of it off. It was dry and powdery to the touch. She sniffed it. "Oh, god..." she covered her mouth with her other hand. "Blood..." she squeaked, too quietly for the others to hear her.
"Well if it's a tree it must have fruit! I'm going to go check!" Luffy smiled, oblivious to . "Gomu Gomu no Rocket!" he shouted, firing his arms upward and grabbing one of the branches at the top, then rocketing up to the top of the totem tree. "GOT ONE!" He announced happily, falling back down quickly. Smoker made a cushion of smoke to break his fall.
"What's that? OH!" Nami gasped, grabbing the fruit out of Luffy's hands before he could take a bite out of it. She had completely lost her train of thought about the blood-based ink.
"HEY! GET YOUR OWN, NAMI!" Luffy shouted angrily.
"BAKA!" Nami bashed the side of his face with her Clima Tact. "This is a Devil's Fruit, you baka! If you ate it you would die!" she told him, showing it to him. The shape and color were unmistakable, it was indeed one of the cursed fruits.
"Oh." Luffy said. "I'm hungry..." he whined.
"This island has a tree that bears Devil Fruit? Or does it have something to do with these symbols on the trunk...?" Smoker pondered. "No one, even the World Government, really knows where the Devil's Fruit come from. Maybe this was done as a means to purposely create them...?"
"You mean, if someone carved these into any other tree, it might also bear Devil Fruit?" Tashigi asked.
"Maybe. No one knows the true origins of Devil Fruit, or if they do, they're covering it up." Nami shot Smoker and Tashigi a critical look; that was just the sort of thing the World Government would want to keep a lid on.
"Then this might be our answer. Now we really have to get off this island. The government will want to know how to get their hands on more of them, and reward us for finding out." Smoker said.
"HA!" Nami scoffed, now even more distracted, and completely forgetting about the bloody artwork. "You agents of the government are no better than Crocodile! You want all that power to yourselves for selfish reasons. What's to stop you from taking what you want when you have the power? 'Justice'?" she stuck her tongue out at them. Apparently she was still bitter over the actions of the corrupt Nezumi from the Kokoyashi Village battle with Arlong's crew.
"Anyway, it's mine!" Luffy said, grabbing it out of Nami's hand. He stuffed it in his pocket.
"Give that back! You're going to eat it and die, you idiot!" Nami shouted.
"I'm going to trade it for some other food." Luffy grinned.
"With who? And besides, we could get 200 million berries for that if we ever get out of here!" Nami roared, so loud she managed to make Luffy fall on his butt. "And I'll buy you lots of food if you let me sell it to someone!" She promised, helping him back up.
"But I'm hungry now!" Luffy frowned.
Nami threw a rock at him, bonking him on the head and grabbed it from his pocket. "If you touch this fruit again you'll lose a hand!" she vowed.

"I'm hungry..." Luffy continued to whine.
"Stop saying that! You're only going to waste more energy and make yourself hungrier, baka!" Nami snapped. "Why don't you go eat those nasty-looking fruits over there?" she suggested, hoping he'd get poisoned. Now that Smoker and Tashigi were around she was less concerned about her own safety so needing Luffy wasn't a prerogative.
"What fruits?" Luffy looked around frantically, groaning disappointedly when he didn't see any.
"Those fruits right over th-hey, wait a minute, where did they go?" Nami whirled around. "They were just there a second ago...dark puple berries with little white spots all over them..." she said almost to herself.
"Don't tell me you're starting to get some kind of fever and are hallucinating." Smoker grunted.
"Oh, shut up! I'm fine. Something weird is going on here, and I'm not just talking about this island! That storm, what happened to the ship...this whole place is freaking me out and I think these plants are alive." Nami trembled.
"Plants ARE alive. They're living things." Tashigi pointed out.
"That's not what I mean, I knew that!" Nami said, exasperated. "I think they have minds of their own, is what I'm saying..." she gulped.
"Then I'll just eat 'em til there's none left!" Luffy grinned. "Salad, berries, just appetizers, but they'll fill me up till we find Sanji to make me something good with lots of meat!" he licked his lips, almost in a daze from his hunger.

They continued on, soon forgetting about Nami's theory about the plants and wondering if they would ever see any of their friends again, let alone their entire ship intact and able to get them off the island. Distant screams alerted them, but they had no idea what direction it came from and they dared not split up further. "It sounded like Usopp...I think he's in trouble!" Nami said gravely, having heard Usopp screaming so often it was unmistakable. "Maybe he got attacked by a dinosaur or monster!" she gasped.
"He'll be okay. He's never lost before!" Luffy smiled. "Besides, the others are probably with him!" he said, considering that he and Nami had washed up together.
"And we have no way of knowing what direction that came in, or how far away it is. By the time we get there, if one of your friends is in trouble, there'd be nothing we can do about it." Tashigi frowned. "Let's just pretend we didn't hear it, or we're going to let our guard down worrying about the others and leave ourselves open to ambush."
"She's right. Besides, that was by no means a death scream, he's probably just terrified and running away from whatever's threatening him. Probably just a wild animal, and if he's one of the people who took down CP9, you have nothing to worry about." Smoker spoke up.
"How do you know about CP9? I thought they were supposed to be a secret organization, even for the government." Nami raised an eyebrow.
"I have a knack for knowing things my so-called superiors don't want me knowing." Smoker shrugged. "Anyway, you're lucky you only ran into us. I'm willing to bet whatever else inhabits this island has been using those Devil Fruits to excess. We could be looking at an entire island full of ability users who could put us to shame. Be on your guard." Smoker told them. "And pray that your friends haven't fun afoul of anything like that, or worse. Or walked into a trap."
"Oh, come on. Even those guys aren't that stupid." Nami rolled her eyes.