22: the priest and old god

while alex was napping chopper was freaking out as he figured out he was in the most danger being alone in the ship with only alex, but eventually he calmed down and started to fix the ship of damages the crab caused. as chopper was fixing the ship he saw the whistle gan fall left them and decided to keep it on him for emergency, just in time as one of the priests arrived on his bird. Chopper freaking out on seeing the priest blows the whistle to alert gan fall he's in danger, but this also woke alex up from her nap pissing her off.

jumping down from the tree alex sees chopper getting attacked by the priest with the weird moustache and bird, so she rushes up to him and redirects his lance attack into the ground with her foot.

"Oye Oye Oye! the hell do you think you are attacking someone as cute as him you loser?!"

alex says while giving a death glare at the man while standing on his lance, even as it lights the ground on fire.

"why do you struggle?There's no way that you can escape death! Die gracefully!"

the moustache guy says as before his bird breaths fire at alex, who just watches as it nears her. Seeing the flame about to hit her alex coated her body in black fire just before it contacted her, this caused her flame to burn the other to nothing but made it look like she was engulfed in flame. Seeing alex be engulfed in the flame chopper thought she died and started to freak out, but noticed that as the flame was dying out there deemed to be a spot of black within the flame.

Alex walked out of the fire completely unharmed and charged at the bird guy as chopper tried to put out the fire he caused on the merry. Every time alex was about to be able to hit the guy he would dodge the attack after stating what she was going to do before retaliating with more fire attacks, this went on and caused the ship to catch fire more making chopper work harder to put it out. After a badly sent fire attack the mast of the merry caught fire which led to chopper tearing it off and throwing it into the water below

"Goddamn bastard just stand still amd let me kill you!"

alex yelled in frustration as more of her attacks were dodged, even though alex wasn't able to hit him he was only able to mildy injure her with his lance as the fire aspect doesn't affect her as it would others. Looking around alex sees that they are slowly destroying the merry and decided to try and lure the guy away so chopper can fix it, before she's able to though gan fall arrives and attacks the guy. The two guys them end up in a sky battle on top of their birds where they have an epic battle before gan fall is stopped mid air with his bird, where he is then stabbed as he is unable to defend himself in his frozen state.

Gan fall end up falling from the sky into the cloud water, chopper seeing this jumps in after him and the moustache guy sends gan falls bird in as well expecting all of them to die, as the bird and chopper are zoan and he thinks he killed gan fall.

" chopper you goddamn idiot! how can you keep forgetting you can't swim!"

alex yelled after seeing chopper jump into the water after gan fall. alex then hears an explosion in the distances and sees the moustache guy speeding off in the direction of the forest, and she tries to think of a way she would be able to get gan fall, his bird and chopper out of the water without going in as she also can't swim. Before she is able to do anything though a couple of giant south birds dived into the water and pulled them up, chopper wakes up after being dragged out of the water and starts talking with the birds and healing gan fall who the birds called god.

After working of gan fall alex and chopper heard nami, robin and zoro return and ask if they were alright and if anything happened while they were gone, luffy usopp and sanji also arrived a little after the other three. Usopp upon returning to the ship and seeing the damage done to merry asked if alex and chopper were okay before saying that it's good they were fine and he'd fix up the ship later. Chopper then went to explain to the crew what happened while they were gone me brought them to the injured gan fall, before the crew decided to celebrate getting back together on the lake shore with a campfire.

the crew talked about what they experienced and learned during the time they were separated including how the priests use something called mantra to predict movements and that upper yard was apart of jaya in the past. Sanji then makes stew for everyone as nami explained how the island of jaya was split and how noland wasn't a liar like everyone thought he was, and how she figured out where the gold noland saw was located. After eating a pack of wolves appeared and ended up partying with the crew after the leader and nami became friends with choppers help, they all then had a giant bonfire and partied around the fire for the night.

Gan fall woke up during the party and explained to some of the crew why upper yard is a sacred ground as it is the only place that has vearth which allows them to grow greenery and more plants that they would normally not be able to. Alex after the party started to die down went back to the ship as she wanted a shower before going to sleep, is greeted with the sight of an incorporeal person repairing the ship. Looking at the person all alex was able to see was a kid in a cloak so she walked up and asked who they were

"I'm merry nice to finally meet you alex."

this shocked alex as she didn't know ship could become people like she was clearly witnessing, as this was happening alex heard usopp scream and looked through the fog to see him standing at the shore pointing in the merry's direction with a look of terror on his face before he passed out and zoro came to get him. Seeing all of this alex started to giggle as she found usopp being scared of one of the things he loves the most hilarious and eventually calms down and helps merry fix some of the ship.

"how come you only appeared now? i'm sure the crew would love to meet you."

"it's not yet time for me to meet the crew, so don't tell them please"

was merry's cryptic reply to alex's question. Alex then went for a shower before climbing her tree and going to sleep. The next morning the crew gathered at the merry and were shocked that the ship was repaired with seemingly no one to do the repairs and all questioned about who could've done it, while ignoring the sleeping alex as she doesn't seem to know anything about repairing anything. After getting over the fact that the ship was repaired usopp tried to use the boat that him sanji and luffy arrived in to pull the merry off of the alter and back into the water.

The crew then splits into two groups with one bringing the merry to the shore of the island and the other going for the gold that nami made a map to, the groups were luffy, robin, zoro, and chopper going for the gold and alex, nami, usopp, gan fall and sanji bringing the merry to the shore. Alex went with nami, usopp and sanji as they didn't wake her before sailing away from the other group so she was dragged along with them.

Gan fall explained to them about how the sky islanders kicked the natives on jaya that were called shandians off of jaya as they were greedy for the vearth it was made from, they then made it into a sacred ground and wouldn't let the shandians back onto their homeland. he told about how he was the lead protector of the sacred ground and therefore called god, but then eneru showed up from another sky island with warriors and took control of upper yard six years ago and became the new god.