Chapter 254 - Thriller Bark 01!
[Chapter Size: 2100 Words.]
Third Person POV
Thriller Bark, First Half of Grandline.
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The crew took a while to understand Luffy's words, looking at their captain wiping away the tears that some had from the meeting with Laboon and Brook.
"How are we going to take down another Shichibukai?!" Uta immediately asked while the others intensified their gaze towards their Captain.
Luffy flashed his rogue smile, "That has always been my goal for coming here, after all, Moria lives here. It will be a good opportunity to loot his treasures," he said.
"We're out of money, we need more money..." Luffy said sincerely, the gold was running out and he didn't want to rely only on the system. He also used the navy's money to buy a specific fruit, from a user he had killed a while back, so he was in need of money again.
'I'll see who will be the user of this fruit after the war. After all, we must strengthen all the kingdoms under my domain...' Luffy thought and returned to his crew.
"Be prepared for battle, but I don't believe it will be a fight like what happened at Enies Lobby, far from it." Luffy commented and looked forward again.
Soon, the coast of Thriller Bark began to appear as the fog started to dissipate. But the structure that claimed this place was a ship, still remained hidden with these other parts still distant, closed off by the fog.
"Is that where the Shichibukai lives?" Nojiko asked.
Even seeing just that part, it was obvious that the island was sinister with a horror theme, with old and macabre trees.
"What place is this? Is this an island?" Alvida asked.
"No, it's a ship," Luffy replied calmly and looked at his group. "Get ready, because we're going to see zombies, strange creatures, ghosts, everything in this place," he commented, as Nami clung to Vivi looking at him with frightened eyes.
"How can you say such things!!" They screamed frightened.
Luffy didn't care and started to prepare. The ship found a kind of wooden deck on the side like a kind of harbor, Franky ended up steering the ship there, stopping at the deck.
With the bow falling into place, they were getting ready to disembark.
"Luffy!! I want to stay on the ship!" Chopper cried.
"Sorry Chopper, but I won't leave the ship here alone, these waters are treacherous. I plan to take the ship in my pocket." Luffy commented, but having to take out other ships from his pocket, after all, he couldn't shrink them more than they were.
At this moment, Brook opened the kitchen door, still crying. It seemed they had talked a lot. They approached while Laboon was still clinging to him.
"Laboon told me about you and your adventures... Thank you!!!" He said sincerely looking at everyone still with tears in his skull bones.
"I see you're getting along," Nojiko spoke to him with a smile.
"Yes, we never forgot each other. Laboon will always be my friend. It's good to see him after so many years. Maybe he's the only one who survived of all the people I've known," Brook spoke with a melancholic tone.
He was going to speak again, but for the first time he took his attention off the crew in front of him and looked towards where they were, Thriller Bark. "Are we here?!!" He yelled scared, even leaving Laboon confused.
He was afraid of this place, after all the people here were so strong that they even stole his shadow and he could do nothing about it. On an impulse of instinct, he simply acted scared and irrationally. "We have to run!" he shouted, leaving Laboon aside and jumping into the water, starting to run on the sea due to his lightness from being just bones, while moving away from the coast and the ship.
Everyone was puzzled, even Laboon made a confused sound. Luffy, from a distance, sighed "How can he run away like that after finding his friend?" and looked at Chouchou. "Can you catch him and bring him back?" he asked.
Chouchou, hearing that, had a sparkle in his eyes. After all, in his opinion, those were succulent bones. "Woof Woof!" He barked positively. Then he jumped on the edge of the ship, not falling into the water, but soaring into the air as he used Geppo with his paws, going after the fleeing skeleton.
"How can he run away like that?" Kuina complained.
"Let it be, Chouchou will bring him back," Zoro commented, returning his gaze to the island they were on, hoping to find something interesting.
"Now let's enter the island," Luffy said, as they began to disembark. Laboon, despite looking a bit dazed at where Brook and Chouchou disappeared, followed his captain.
Luffy waited for everyone to get off the ship, then touched it and shrank it to the point of putting it in a box along with his other ships.
He looked at his companions. Nami, Vivi, Hachi, Chopper, Usopp, Uta, Megalo, Karoo, Bepo, and Greg were afraid as they looked at the "Island" in front of them, while they armed themselves with all kinds of anti-ghost weapons that Usopp used.
'Most of them could easily destroy this island, but their fears seem to dominate them...' Luffy couldn't help thinking as he watched the scared group, but he couldn't blame them, after all, his crew had their own fears and insecurities, and he could understand and respect that.
He could also simply fly to the middle of the island where Moria's castle was located, but he ended up not doing so, wanting to spend time with his crew like in the old days when they were on the ship and investigating the islands, as happened in the West Blue. He didn't even enjoy Water Seven, wanting to resolve the issue with the navy at Enies Lobby.
"Let's go!" Luffy said as the fearful members followed, seeing that they had no choice but to follow Luffy and the others in the crew. They were a large group of more than 20 people, animals, a fishman, a mink, a mermaid, and even an experiment.
The place was gloomy, a spectrum of horror with the fog limiting the view ahead. Chopper swung a burning incense through the area while Usopp distributed garlic chains to everyone.
"You're exaggerating..." Zoro commented.
They continued entering the place until there was a kind of gate from the harbor to the island's forest, and at this location, there was a huge animal sleeping in front of the entrance.
"Wait a second... that's a three-headed dog!" Uta exclaimed.
"This reminds me of someone..." Alvida commented beside her.
The dog moved its ear, hearing them, lifted its three heads with a sleepy face, it was a bit surprised by the crowd of people looking at it.
"How cute!" Shirahoshi commented.
"Cute, that's Cerberus, the one who guards the gate of hell!!" Usopp yelled.
"How scary!!" Nami exclaimed.
"Ahhh!! We need to run!" Bepo exclaimed.
"Nee... I think it was a bad idea to come here!" Hachi exclaimed.
The dog heard the group and began to fully rise, starting to growl at them with its 3 heads.
Luffy was in front of everyone, not intimidated like his companions, or a part of them, because the others didn't even care about it, just looking at a weak animal.
"He went through various experiments..." Hugo noticed the stitches on the animal.
"Which makes him a fake..." Kuina completed.
"What a disappointment, in the end, he doesn't even seem dangerous, at least my Haki says I don't need to worry about him." Zoro commented.
"But doesn't he look cute?" Robin commented.
"I think he would make a fine dish..." Reiju commented.
"Isn't that meat rotten? Who would eat that thing?" Lami commented.
"Luffy, what do we do with him?" Nojiko asked.
"Master... Should I prepare him?" Baby-5 asked while her hand transformed into a chainsaw.
"We could use him as a mount..." Yamato suggested, scratching his chin.
Moria's Cerberus was growling, but when it began to hear each one of that group, mocking and not being afraid of him, it became a bit dazed, wondering what it was hearing, with wide eyes and some fear starting to fill it at that moment, since it didn't like what it was hearing at all.
"We can..." Luffy said but stopped when he felt something coming from the sky. An object with great mass fell to the ground with force and caused an explosion behind the crew, destroying the whole place.
Before anyone could wonder who it was, those with some Haki already knew who had arrived, and in the middle of the explosion, as the dust began to settle, a huge Cerberus appeared, but this one was the real deal. While in its middle head's mouth, it seemed to be chewing something.
"Help, help me, I don't want to die, though I've already died again, Yahohohoho!" Brook exclaimed while he was between the dog's teeth, Chouchou seemed happy to bite into that bone. Suddenly, his gaze returned to Cerberus, at least the fake one, as he glared furiously at it, seeing that thing as a poorly made copy of himself.
Cerberus, already bewildered by the group, was scared when he saw that huge dog with 3 heads, it was 3 to 4 meters tall, but that giant monster was at least 20 meters tall, making it look small in comparison.
Chouchou transformed towards that dog while spitting Brook out onto the ground, and fiercely looked at the animal, which began to retreat step by step.
One of Chouchou's heads began to emit lightning, and before anyone could react, a huge thunderbolt passed over the heads of all the crew members, hitting the stitched animal in front of them and destroying the gate and a part of the forest with it.
BOOOOOOOOOOOMMMM!!!!
The explosion echoed across the island, in Moria's castle, he was having his meal alone, with a zombie bringing something for him to eat, when he looked towards the window with the echo of it.
"What's that?! Are those zombies blowing something up again?!" He commented with some anger, after all, zombies always caused trouble, despite being the greatest army in the world in his opinion.
"What's that?!" Perona woke up startled, imagining that lightning struck during a storm over Thriller Bark, her ghosts surrounded her making their usual sounds.
"I'm scared..." She said as she hugged a huge bear she had in her room.
"Did you hear that?!" A group of people who had lost their shadows, hiding in the forest, were surprised by the sound echoing on the island.
"What's going on here..." Among them, a fat woman with pink hair, Charlotte Lola, murmured.
Back at the explosion site, everyone saw the gate collapse at that moment while electricity sparkled in the air with the destroyed ground, and Cerberus zombie was black from the lightning that burned it, the only color coming from its white eyes.
Chouchou saw that he hadn't destroyed it and began to concentrate icy energy in his other head, ready to destroy that being, freezing and breaking it into a thousand pieces.
"Wait, Chouchou... Don't kill him." Luffy ordered, and Chouchou stopped generating the attack and looked at his owner.
"We'll use him, and you did a good job bringing Brook here." He looked at Brook lying on the ground.
Chouchou returned to his normal size after that, turning into a small dog with lots of white fur, barking at Luffy.
"Good boy..." Luffy said.
Brook finally got up wondering what was happening and saw Luffy petting that monstrous dog, he still remembers when the dog caught him in the sea and transformed into those monsters, devouring him in its mouth and bringing him back to the island again.
'This crew is full of monsters!! What have I gotten myself into?!' He murmured, after all, he still remembers the maid woman trying to kill his captain and how his captain didn't hesitate to say that he would die if he tried to ask for the panties of any woman there.
Luffy stopped petting and returned to the group. "Let's continue, Yamato, you can use Cerberus zombie as a mount and Chouchou, make sure Brook doesn't run away." Luffy said as they began to walk past the destroyed gate.
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