The air on the Going Merry tasted of salt and dread.
"Forty-one degrees," Vivi whispered, her hand trembling as she pulled it back from Nami's burning forehead. "It's climbing faster now."
Nami lay shivering in her bunk, her skin slick with sweat, her orange hair plastered to her face. Her breaths came in shallow, ragged pulls.
"Meat," Luffy declared, holding up a drumstick as if presenting a sacred relic. "Meat fixes everything."
Sanji snatched it from his hand, his usual grace replaced by a frantic energy. "This isn't a scraped knee, you rubber-brained idiot! She's burning up from the inside!"
"But your cooking always helps," Luffy insisted, his brow furrowed in genuine confusion. "Food is… medicine, right?"
"Not for this," Sanji snapped, then immediately softened, running a hand through his hair. "Sorry. I just… I prepare her meals with extra care. More greens, balanced nutrients, love—" He cut himself off, cheeks flushing. "It's not enough."
Zoro, who had been methodically lifting weights in the corner, let the iron bar clang to the deck. "How long to Alabasta?"
"A week," Vivi said, her voice tight. "If the winds hold."
"A week?" Usopp's voice cracked. "Look at her! She won't last a week!"
Nami moaned, her eyes fluttering open for a moment—glassy, unseeing. "Cold… so cold…"
But her skin was furnace-hot to the touch.
Vivi turned to the crew, desperation edging her words. "Is there anyone else with medical knowledge? Anyone at all?"
Four blank faces stared back.
Luffy scratched his head. "What's being sick feel like?"
"You've never been sick?" Vivi gaped.
"Nope."
"Me neither," Zoro grunted.
Sanji shook his head. Usopp just shrugged, though his knees were knocking together.
Vivi stared at them as if they'd grown extra heads. "How is that possible?"
"Strong immune systems?" Usopp offered weakly.
"Or just stupidly durable," Zoro muttered, eyeing Luffy.
---
Meanwhile, on the shores of Alabasta:
Mr. 2 Bon Clay adjusted his frilled collar with a dramatic sigh, staring at the tiny Eternal Pose in his palm. The needle pointed unwaveringly toward Little Garden.
"What a bother," he whined to the empty dunes. "Sending me to some primitive giant-infested rock to check on those two buffoons? I have rehearsals! A new ballet number to perfect!"
He kicked a puff of sand, his flamboyant irritation at odds with the barren landscape. "Dorry and Brogy. Two ancient relics arguing over a fish. How utterly… mundane."
Still, orders were orders. Baroque Works didn't tolerate delays. With another exaggerated sigh, he boarded his waiting ship, casting one last disdainful look at Alabasta's capital, Alubarna, gleaming in the distance. "This had better be worth my time."
---
Back on the Merry, the world had narrowed to the single room of the women's quarters.
Nami's fever spiked again. Forty-two degrees.
She began to mutter, trapped in delirium. "Bell-mère… don't pay them… the maps… the maps are wrong…"
"We need a doctor now," Sanji said, his voice dangerously calm. "Not in a week. Now."
Usopp was frantically scanning a tattered map, his finger tracing coastlines. "There! Drum Island! It's a medical kingdom! It's… it's close. A couple of days north, against the currents."
"A medical kingdom?" Hope sparked in Vivi's eyes.
"It's also known as the 'Winter Island,'" Usopp read, his face falling. "It's perpetually locked in snow and ice. The log pose will need time to set, and the currents are treacherous—"
"We're going," Luffy said.
No debate. No question. It was a decree.
He stood in the doorway, his straw hat casting a shadow over his eyes. For once, there was no laughter on his face, no vacant grin. Just a terrifying, solid certainty.
"But the Alabasta mission—" Vivi started.
"Nami comes first," Luffy interrupted, his voice low. "Always. Change course."
The crew snapped into motion. Zoro began hauling lines without a word. Sanji was already in the galley, preparing broths Nami couldn't yet swallow. Usopp scrambled to the helm, fighting the wheel against the prevailing current.
The Merry groaned in protest as she turned her nose away from the desert kingdom and toward the frozen north, cutting through waves that grew darker, colder.
---
On Little Garden, the earth shook.
Two giants, each the size of a small mountain, stood facing each other across a primordial forest. Dorry and Brogy. Their beards were frosted with age, their armor scarred from a century of combat.
"The volcano rumbles, Brogy!" Dorry boomed, hefting a sword as long as a mast. "Another hundred years have passed! Ready to concede?"
"Concede?" Brogy laughed, the sound like crumbling cliffs. "When the fish you caught was clearly smaller, Dorry? Your eyesight fails with your age!"
They were not fighting for treasure, or land, or glory. They were fighting over a memory. Over which of them, a hundred years ago, had hauled the larger sea beast onto Elbaf's shore. An argument that had fossilized into a ritual, a duel repeated every century, leaving the bones of their catches piled so high they formed new mountain ranges on their island home.
They felt a pang of nostalgia for those simpler days—just two brothers of the sea, competing in good fun. Before the argument consumed everything.
The volcano erupted, a fiery signal they had awaited for a hundred years.
Their nostalgic smiles vanished, replaced by warrior grimaces. They charged, the impact of their weapons clashing sending shockwaves through the island, toppling ancient trees.
The duel for pride—and the answer to a forgotten question—began anew.
---
On the Going Merry, night fell.
The temperature plummeted. The first flakes of snow, alien and frightening in the Grand Line, began to swirl on the deck.
Nami's condition was deteriorating. Her mutters had ceased. Now she was terrifyingly still, save for the rapid, shallow rise and fall of her chest.
Sanji refused to leave her side. Vivi applied cool cloths that warmed instantly.
Luffy stood on the bow, staring into the gathering blizzard ahead, his fists clenched at his sides.
Usopp called from the crow's nest, his voice thin with cold and fear. "I see it! Drum Island! But… but something's wrong!"
Through the veil of snow, a jagged silhouette emerged. Not a welcoming port city, but a monstrous, sheer black mountain, its peak piercing the clouds. And circling that peak, a flag—not a medical cross, but the stark, terrifying Jolly Roger of a grinning skull with a crown.
"That's not a medical kingdom," Usopp whispered, the words carried down to the deck on a frozen wind. "That's a pirate fortress."
The Merry drifted closer, helpless in the grip of the converging currents, toward the icy cliffs. And from those cliffs, they heard the deep, resonant BOOM of a cannon being fired—not at them, but as a warning.
A spotlight lanced through the snow, pinning their small caravel in its blinding glare.
A voice, amplified by a loudspeaker and thick with menace, echoed across the frozen water:
"Turn back, fools. Doctors are a forbidden luxury here. The only medicine on Drum Island… is death."
On the bunk behind them, Nami stopped breathing.
End of Chapter 155
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