The air on Little Garden was thick, humid, and tasted of ancient earth. On the deck of the Going Merry, a familiar tension crackled.
"The log pose is resetting now," Nami stated, her voice tight with urgency. "We should leave. This place feels… heavy."
"Leave?" Luffy's head snapped up, his eyes already sparkling with a dangerous light. "Are you crazy? Look at it! It's huge! And weird! We just got here!"
A sigh of exasperation escaped Nami. "That's exactly why we should—"
"I'm going exploring." Luffy declared, already stretching a rubbery leg over the railing.
"Luffy, wait!" Nami cried, but it was useless.
To everyone's surprise, Vivi stepped forward, her usual regal composure replaced by a raw, restless energy. "I'll go with him."
"Princess?" Nami blinked.
Vivi offered a fragile smile, her fingers twisting the hem of her cloak. "If I sit here, I'll only think of Alabasta… of the war waiting. I need a distraction. Even if it's just for an hour." She turned to the large duck beside her. "Come on, Carue."
"Quack?!" Carue protested, shaking his head violently, but Vivi was already dragging him by the feather after the bounding Luffy, disappearing into the wall of prehistoric foliage.
A different tension settled over the remaining crew. Sanji, watching Nami's worried face, lit a cigarette. "We are running low on supplies. A lot of our stock got soaked last week." He turned a sidelong glance at Zoro, who was dozing against the mast. "Oi, moss-head. Make yourself useful. Go hunt something. Something edible, for once."
Zoro's eye slid open, a low grumble in his throat. "Take your own orders and shove 'em, cook. But fine. I'll bring back something bigger than your ego. Which, granted, isn't saying much."
Sanji's eye twitched. A vein throbbed at his temple. He would not—could not—look incompetent in front of Nami. He spun on his heel, facing Zoro fully. "Is that so? Then it's a contest. You and me. We split up, we hunt. Whoever brings back the greatest total weight in meat for the crew wins. The loser does the winner's chores for a week."
A fierce, competitive grin split Zoro's face. "You're on, curly-brow. Try not to get lost on your way to the pantry." In a flash of green and black, he vaulted the railing and was gone in the opposite direction Luffy had taken.
"Idiots," Sanji muttered, but he was already gone too, a blur of smoke and polished shoes into the jungle.
---
On the island, time felt different.
"Whoaaaa!" Luffy laughed, his voice echoing through a primeval valley. "Vivi, look! That lizard has a neck as long as the Merry!"
Vivi stared, her personal dread momentarily swallowed by awe. The creature was a living mountain of flesh and scale, peacefully stripping leaves from the canopy. "Luffy… that's not a lizard. And that one over there… it runs on two legs with tiny arms…" Her eyes widened with dawning, terrifying comprehension. "This island… it's not just weird. It's prehistoric. This is the world of dinosaurs."
"Shishishi! Dinosaurs! That's awesome!" Luffy's grin was feral with delight. With a mighty stretch, he launched himself, landing squarely on the head of the browsing brontosaurus. "Hey! Give me a lift!"
"Luffy, get down! That's not a ride!" Vivi shouted, Carue quacking in frantic agreement.
But Luffy was already king of his new domain. He shielded his eyes, peering into the distance. "Hey! Over there! There's a big rock with a bunch of weird holes in it! Let's go check it out!"
The great beast, annoyed by the chattering parasite on its head, gave a monumental snort and jerked its neck back in a sudden, violent motion.
"LUFFY!" Vivi screamed.
The dinosaur's maw opened, and Luffy, with a yelp of surprise, tumbled straight down its cavernous throat.
---
On the Going Merry, silence had become a tangible, suffocating thing.
"They've been gone too long," Usopp whispered, his hands trembling as he pretended to polish a cannon. "What if they're digested? Or… or squished by a giant foot?"
"Don't say that," Nami hissed, though her own heart was a frantic drum against her ribs. She was pouring over a large, leather-bound book she'd found in a storage locker. "It says here… 'Little Garden'. The name comes from… from the giants. To them, this island is just a small garden." Her blood ran cold. "Giants. Giants, Usopp."
A shadow fell over the deck.
It wasn't the shadow of a cloud. It was vast, blocky, and moved. It swallowed the sun.
Nami and Usopp slowly, mechanically, looked up.
Filling their entire world was a being of myth. A man as tall as the ship's mast, with a beard like a thicket and eyes like glowing caves. He leaned down, his breath a warm, ale-scented gale.
"HEY, TINY PEOPLE," his voice boomed, shaking the very planks beneath their feet. "DO YOU HAVE ANY RUM?"
Nami and Usopp couldn't scream. Their voices were frozen in their throats. They could only stare, two small statues of pure, undiluted terror.
Suddenly, the giant—Brogy—winced. "OW! THAT BITES!" He reached behind his back and plucked off a snarling, snapping tyrannosaurus rex that had been clamped onto his rear. As casually as a man swatting a fly, he gave the colossal dinosaur's neck a sharp twist.
CRACK.
The sound echoed across the bay.
Brogy held the dinosaur's severed head aloft, a trophy dripping onto the Merry's deck. "HAHA! LITTLE PEST! LET IT BE KNOWN, I AM BROGY! THE STRONGEST WARRIOR OF ELBAF!" He then beamed down at his petrified guests. "NOW, COME! YOU ARE VISITORS! YOU MUST SHARE A FEAST WITH—"
He stopped. Nami and Usopp had collapsed onto the deck, limbs stiff, eyes wide open and unblinking. Playing dead was the only language their terror could speak.
---
Deep in the jungle, Sanji heard it.
A woman's scream. Nami's scream. It cut through the ancient air from the direction of the shore.
Every nerve in his body ignited. "Nami-san!"
He exploded into motion, a blue streak through the ferns. He burst into a clearing, skidding to a halt. His blood turned to ice.
Before him, shaking the ground with each step, was a Tyrannosaurus Rex. And it was staring right at him, a low, rumbling growl vibrating from its chest.
Not far away, Zoro had found his own challenge. A massive Triceratops had lowered its three-horned skull, scraping the earth with a hoof, its beady eyes fixed on the swordsman. Zoro's three blades were already drawn, a feral smile on his face. "Now this is more like it."
---
And high above, Luffy's adventure took a sudden, wet, and dark turn.
He was sliding, tumbling through a slick, muscular tube. "Blegh! This is gross!" he complained, just as a blinding slash of light appeared above him.
A monstrous blade, larger than a ship's sail, sheared through the dinosaur's neck from the outside. The world lurched. Luffy was falling, spat out from the severed throat in a shower of… well, dinosaur.
He landed in a heap on soft moss, coughing. He looked up, wiping gunk from his eyes.
Another giant, even larger than the one he'd glimpsed from the dinosaur's head, stood before him. This was Dorry. He was laughing, a sound like boulders crashing together. "A TINY ONE FROM THE BELLY OF THE BEAST! A GOOD OMEN!"
But Luffy wasn't looking at the giant's face. His gaze was locked past Dorry's shoulder, to the giant's massive shield. Embedded in its center, catching the savage sun of Little Garden, was a symbol that stole Luffy's breath.
It was a familiar, swirling, stylized…
"Hey," Luffy said, his voice uncharacteristically quiet, all playfulness gone. He pointed a sticky finger. "That mark. That's the same as on Shanks' flag."
Dorry's titanic laughter died instantly. The ancient, friendly light in his eyes extinguished, replaced by a storm of profound, world-shaking shock and a dawning, terrible rage.
"YOU…" Dorry's voice dropped to a tectonic rumble that promised violence. "YOU KNOW THAT MAN?"
The very air around them seemed to solidify, heavy with the weight of a history Luffy had just, unknowingly, shattered.
TO BE CONTINUED.
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