Chapter 49: Kidnapped!

Chapter 55:

Kidnapped!

(Or would it be Pirate-napped?)

"A priest has fallen, Wiper," a soldier grunted, only his head inside the command tent.

"How?" The man who asked had a deep tan and tattoos along his left shoulder and bicep. His upper half was bare to the world, giving his wings freedom. His lower half was covered only in a brown kilt of leaves and dial shoes. Long brown hair came down to his mid-back in a single braid, keeping the hair away from both his face and the large bazooka on his right shoulder.

"We aren't certain," the soldier answered, "but there were reports of Blue Sea Dwellers from our spies on Angel Island. Apparently, they set out for Upper Yard some time ago."

"If they are fighting with the priests, this could be the chance we've been hoping for. Get the warriors ready. It's time to finally light the Fire of Shandora once more."

"Maybe we should have gone with them," Chopper wondered aloud from the couch. "They could get hurt." The three who had stayed behind were in Pagaya and Conis' house while the others hunted down God. Conis was in the kitchen, preparing the rest of the food. Off in the corner, Pagaya was tinkering with the old waver he'd found on the Merry while installing the temporary breath dials, Su sleeping against him.

"Don't worry about them," Usopp waved off next to him, whether because he wasn't afraid for the others or because he just didn't want to have had to go as well was unknown. Nami said nothing; she was standing on the patio, staring off toward where Upper Yard was supposed to be.

"Here you go," Conis announced, placing a tray of food in front of the girl. "Your friends ate everything father made before, so here is some food just for you."

"Thank you, Conis," Nami nodded. "You didn't have to do that."

"It was my pleasure." Taking the tray, Nami walked back into the house and sat on the opposite couch before placing the tray of food on the table in front of her. While she ate, the others kept up idle chitchat to keep their minds off the battle they knew must have started by now.

"Worried about your crewmates, are you?" a voice questioned. Everyone's heads swiveled toward the balcony where Eneru sat, lounging as if he owned the place.

"Ahh!" Usopp and Chopper screamed, hugging each other. "Weird guy!"

"W-Who are you?" Pagaya asked, trying to keep the fear out of his voice. Su blinked, waking up.

"Some followers you are," Eneru chuckled. "You can't even tell when you're in the presence of your God."

"What a-are you doing here, y-your majesty," Conis tried, hoping that everyone would make it out of this in one piece.

"I was bored," God answered, waving his hand absent-mindedly. "Your friends defeated one of my priests. I'm rather surprised, I have to say, but there is still time before they reach the sacrificial altar, so I decided to set up a party for when they get there."

"Sacrificial?!" Usopp screamed.

"Altar?!" Chopper questioned. (Not that he knew what an altar was, but it didn't sound good.)

"Well sorry, pal," Nami bit out. "We don't want to go to your damn sacrifice party."

"Don't make him mad!" Usopp yelped, tripping over the table to cover Nami's mouth before she could say more.

"I'm afraid you don't have a choice in the matter," Eneru responded to Nami's statement.

"Please," Pagaya begged. "These three aren't fighters. They don't wish to be part of the battle."

Eneru only let him finish his sentence out of godly courtesy. As soon as he'd finished, though, Eneru pointed his pointer finger at the man. Wordlessly, he fired a compressed ball of lighting the tore through the right side of the Skypian's abdomen like a bullet. Pagaya fell back with the sound of thunder, his blood staining the carpet and a couple of spots on Su's white fur. The cloud-fox jumped and hissed.

"Father!" Conis cried, running to his side. Usopp whipped out his slingshot and fired three Lead Stars, but the attacks went through the aggressor. Eneru turned toward the sniper, zapping forward to press one finger to his temple. With a single shock, Usopp was unconscious and spasming on the floor.

"Usopp!" Chopper screamed as smoke rose from his friend's mouth. "You monster!" The doctor charged the God figure in his Heavy Point, but he was met with the same fate. Su growled at leapt at the blond, but Eneru snatched her out of the air by her tail, holding the struggling animal at bay. With a tsk, he swung the fox around until her body impacted one of the walls, the poor animal coughing up blood.

"Su!" Conis cried, but she did not move from where she was trying to stop her father's bleeding.

Panicking by this point, Nami brought the whistle to her lips and blew as hard as she could, the high pitch causing Eneru to flinch. He lightning-traveled forward and backhanded the girl, ending the sound.

"Shut up, you pathetic mortal," Eneru hissed. "Your shrill cry rivals that of a banshee." The navigator moved to blow the whistle again, but the man of lightning moved faster. Grabbing the noise maker, he supercharged his hand, heating the metal to the point where it melted between his fingers. That painful thing destroyed, God knocked both Nami and Conis unconscious the same way he had with the male pirates. Since no one was in any shape to fight anymore, Eneru rounded up the unconscious and slung them over his shoulders, leaving Pagaya and Su.

"You... You'll never get away with this," Pagaya coughed, red falling from his lips and coloring his beard. "He will return. And when he does, the true God will take his throne one more."

"As much as I would love to kill you, old man," Eneru began, "I can't. I still need you to give a message to that has-been if he shows up. Tell him that the final battle has begun and that I refuse to lose to a soft-hearted old man like him. Remember that." In a flash of light, the current ruler of Skypia left, taking the four unconscious teens with him. Pagaya stayed still, keeping pressure on his wound so as to not bleed out, the silence of the room broken only by the labored breathing of Conis' pet. About three minutes passed before a well-known call sounded and a pink bird with brown spots landed on the windowsill.

"It appears I'm too late," Gan Fall sighed sadly.

"No," Pagaya coughed, pain flaring from his wound. "He took them to the Upper Yard. Please, he has my daughter and the visitors. Save them."

"I'll save you first," Gan Fall answered, pulling a bundle of cloth from his pack. He bandaged the man, Pierre moving over to Su to care for her.

"Please, God," Pagaya rasped just before the pain took him into unconsciousness. "He said that... that the final battle has begun. Please..." He trailed off and passed out.

"Rest now," Gan Fall ordered. "Pierre, it's time to go. We're taking this man and the cloud-fox back to our homestead before setting out for Upper Yard. It's time we finished this once and for all."

"PIIYAAY!"

"This is boring," Luffy whined as he draped himself over the figurehead. The Merry had been steadily cruising along the milky road for nearly half an hour and there had been no action, much to Coby's relief since that gave him and Zoro time to rest. Luffy, on the other hand, wanted something to fight. The section of forest they were in ended, spitting the Merry out in a field covered in crisscrossing Milky Roads and human skulls on spikes.

"That's a nice image," Amy remarked dryly.

"It could be worse," Zoro shrugged.

"Yes, it could," Robin agreed. "They could still have flesh on them."

"Robin!" Coby yelped while Grace drove for the railing to avoid losing her lunch on the deck.

"That's not ok!" Amy yelled, agreeing with Coby for once.

"Amy-chwan is stunning when she's angry~!" Sanji noodled. "And Robin-chwan is beautiful when she's imagining morbid scenery~!"

The Merry continued forward, twisting its way toward where all the paths combined to climb up the largest tree any of the pirates had ever seen. Suddenly, a war call from the left attracted the crew's attention. They turned to see an army coming toward them, each armed with a heavy weapon of some sort and dressed in light clothing of plant material. Most of the army flew over them, only giving the pirates half a glance, but the leader flipped and fired his bazooka.

Luffy responded much faster than he had the first time and inflated to repel the projectile with a Gum-Gum Balloon. Many warriors' eyes widened at the act while the leader's narrowed.

"That is not normal," he grunted, landing on a tree branch, "not even from those of the Blue Sea. He must have eaten of a Devil Fruit."

"Hey, you bastards!" Luffy yelled angrily. "What do you think you're doing, firing at our ship?!"

"You were in our way," the leader of the army answered, "but you are not as weak as I had thought. Why are you here?"

"We're here to kick God's ass!" Luffy answered. "He's a dick and I don't like what I heard about him!"

"...I see."

"Wiper," a woman with long black hair said, jumping up to rest on the same branch as the leader. "We were told that some Blue Sea Dwellers had come to Upper Yard, then we got the report that one of the priests was defeated. Could these be the ones responsible?"

"If they are," a large man commented, the top half of his face covered in a toboggan, "do we want them as our enemies? The enemy of our enemy is our friend, as the teachings of Kalgara say."

"We are here to defeat the man known as Eneru!" Wiper finally announced. "Have you heard that name or the word 'Shandora' before?"

"I don't think so," Luffy pondered.

"You never think, moron," Sanji sighed. "Eneru was the name of the God of Skypia."

"Oh! Then we're here to beat up this Eneru guy!"

"Is there any way we could use these people to help us kill Eneru?" the woman whispered so the pirates wouldn't be able to hear her.

"It sounds like they want the same thing we do," the large man grunted.

"We will leave them be," Wiper ordered. "If they get in our way, though, we will take them out without mercy."

"Understood," the woman and man answered.

"Be gone!" Wiper ordered. "But stay out of our way!"

"Don't get in our way and we won't have a problem!" Zoro responded as the Merry began climbing up an incline and out of sight of the army. The small ship continued up until reaching the apex, giving the crew a view of the entire island. Off toward where the army had headed, an explosion ripped through several trees. A stalk spiraled out into the air from the center of the island, two Island Clouds stuck near the top giving it a second and third layer. The path below them twisted into a counterclockwise corkscrew. Several members screamed, drowning out their captain's laughter as the Merry tipped and began her acceleration.

"Sharks!" Amy yelled, clutching the railing so tightly that she was losing blood circulation in her fingers. At the bottom of the path, where the Milky Road ended in a lake of Sea Cloud, a swarm of skysharks waited with their mouths open. Luffy hopped onto his Captain's Seat and threw a Gum-Gum Gatling at them, beating them away. Hitting the clouds with a splash, the Merry slowing drifted to what appeared to be small pyramid in the center of the lake.

"Ooh," Luffy awed. "What's this?"

"It appears to be an altar," Robin answered, studying the symbols carved into the stone. "I'm not sure what it's for, but there are stairs leading to the top."

"Yahoo!" the teen cheered, jumping off the Merry. Zoro followed and Amy floated upward.

"What the?" the swordsman questioned. Lying on the altar's platform where Nami, Usopp, and Chopper, each unconscious and with their hair standing on end. Suddenly serious, Luffy stepped over to the orange-haired girl's side and kneeled to gently shake her shoulder.

"Nami," his whispered as Zoro made his way to Usopp and Amy to Chopper. "Nami, what happened? I thought we left you guys back with Conis and her dad." Nami was stirring, but it was Usopp who answered the question as he bolted upright.

"No! Leave us alone!"

"Calm down, Usopp," Zoro said. "What happened?"

"What? Zoro? Luffy? Wait, but that means... Shit! We're in the forbidden land, aren't we?" The sniper's voice, which had started out as a shout, had fallen to a whimper by the end.

"What happened, Long-Nose?" Amy demanded, considerably less gentle than the captain and first mate.

"God attacked us," the sniper whimpered as Chopper bolted upright, screaming. "He shot Pagaya and hit us with this weird technique. All our attacks just went through him!"

"Sounds like this God has a Logia Devil Fruit," Robin commented, stepping over the small lip around the altar's platform. "It seems Mr. Swordsman was right: we aren't facing God, just someone with that title."

Nami was the last one to wake up. Whereas Usopp and Chopper had jumped up, she slowly came to, the image of her significant other swimming into view.

"Luffy?" she asked, her throat sore; she hadn't drunk very much before Eneru appeared and the electricity had evaporated some of the water in her system, so she was rather dehydrated. "What? Where are we?"

"Take it easy," the teen ordered. "We found you three on top of some altar."

"Three? But there should be... wait. Where's Conis?"

"He took Conis, too?" Luffy's eyes hardened, an almost heavy feeling beginning to surround him. "That bastard!"

"I'm afraid there's nothing we can do right now, Captain," Robin commented, pointing at the fading source of light in the distance. "The sun is setting. We'd only get lost at night, so we might as well make camp on shore and regain our energy."

"But that asshole has Conis!" Luffy tried to argue.

"We can't do anything," Zoro grunted. "I doubt even the Love Cook could find her in this forest at night, and that's without a non-human madman holding her prisoner."

"I'm with them," Amy added. "Walking around an unknown forest at night is suicide."

"But..." Luffy turned to Nami, hoping she'd back him up, but there was only pained acceptance in her eyes. "Fine," he growled. "We'll wait until tomorrow, but if that bastard does anything to her...!"

"Why don't we throw a party to try to take our minds off it, hmm?" Robin suggested. "That's one thing I've learned this crew is good at."

"Alright." Luffy's voice didn't hold near as much enthusiasm as it usually did, but still, the camp was set up and the festivities began.

End of Chapter 55

Not quite the explosion you all were expecting, eh? People like Eneru (or Enel for those of you who like that. Personally, I think Eneru rolls off the tongue better) like to play with their prey and refuse to believe anyone could harm them, no matter what handicaps they give themselves. He wants everyone in on this game. All the pirates, anyway. Conis... Let's say I might get some hate for what's coming. It's nothing permanent... except maybe the mental scars. Anyway~

Read and Review!

-SwordOfTheGods