The world became a roaring, white monster.
"Luffy, look out!" Sanji's warning was swallowed by the thunder of a million tons of snow tearing loose from the mountain's peak.
Luffy's eyes widened. Instinct took over. He stretched one arm around a thick pine, yanking it from the earth with a sickening crack, and wrapped the other around Sanji's waist.
"Hang on!" Luffy yelled, slamming the tree into the slope. They became a makeshift sled, hurtling sideways across the mountain face, the avalanche's leading edge a frothing, hungry maw just yards behind.
Through the blinding spray, shapes emerged. Lapahns—the giant rabbit-like creatures—stood on a ledge above, their faces twisted in panic. As the Straw Hats shot past, one lapahn, desperate to clear the path, uprooted a tree and hurled it.
Time seemed to slow. The massive trunk spun end over end, a direct line for Luffy's head. Sanji saw it first.
"Idiot Captain!" Sanji snarled. In one fluid motion, he planted a foot against Luffy's back and kicked with all his strength.
THOOM.
The impact sent Luffy careening to the side, the tree sled shattering. Sanji took the full force of the thrown timber across his chest. The sound was wet and final. His body went limp, a ragdoll tossed into the white chaos.
"SANJI!" Luffy's scream was raw, ripped from his throat. He stretched a desperate hand through the blizzard of snow. His fingers brushed fabric—closed around it—and then Sanji was gone, swallowed by the tidal wave of white.
All Luffy held was a single, black leather glove.
The avalanche hit the village of Bighorn like a judgment. Houses vanished. The world became a deafening, suffocating roar. From his palace balcony, King Wapol shrieked, "My kingdom! My treasures!" before leaping onto his strange, walrus-like pet, Motzel, and fleeing without a backward glance.
As the last echoes died, leaving an eerie, crystalline silence, Wapol burrowed out of the snow, his face purple with rage.
"An assassination attempt!" he bellowed to his cowering subordinates. "This was no accident! Those Straw Hat pirates triggered this to kill their king! I'll have their heads!"
*
Beneath ten feet of packed snow, the world was a blue, silent tomb.
Luffy dug. His arms were pistons, burning with fatigue, the cold seeping into his bones. Sanji. Sanji. Sanji. The name was a mantra, a prayer, the only thing keeping him moving.
His hand closed on fabric. Then an arm. He pulled, muscles screaming, until the unconscious, ice-crusted form of his cook emerged. Sanji's breath was a shallow, painful rasp. A dark, frozen stain spread across his shirt.
"Got you," Luffy whispered, voice cracking. He hoisted Sanji onto his back, tying him in place with strips of his own torn shirt. As he turned to begin the impossible climb back up, his foot struck something soft.
A buried lapahn pup, whimpering, trapped beside a much larger, still form—its parent. Both stared at Luffy with wide, terrified eyes. Humans were the enemy. Humans hunted them.
Without a word, Luffy dug again. He freed the adult, then the pup. He met their shocked gaze for just a second.
"Stay safe," he grunted, and turned toward the mountain.
"HALT!"
Wapol's men emerged from the tree line, weapons drawn. The king himself waddled forward, a grotesque smile on his face. "Going somewhere, pirate? You owe your king an apology."
Luffy didn't even look at him. He adjusted Sanji on his back and started walking toward the sheer cliff face—the only route to the castle and the doctor atop the mountain.
"IGNORING ME?!" Wapol shrieked. "Kill him!"
A soldier lunged, sword aimed at Luffy's exposed back. Luffy tensed, but didn't turn. He couldn't risk jostling Sanji. He braced for the blow.
It never came.
A white blur intercepted the soldier. The adult lapahn Luffy had saved slammed into the man, sending him flying. The pup joined, nipping at another soldier's heels. More lapahns appeared, answering some silent call, forming a living barrier between Luffy and Wapol's men.
Their eyes met Luffy's. A silent debt, paid.
Luffy gave a single, sharp nod. Then he faced the wall.
It wasn't a slope. It was a cliff, a near-vertical sheet of ice and rock stretching into the clouds. The castle was a speck at the top.
Luffy pressed his bare hands and feet against the stone. He began to climb.
*
One hour. His fingers bled, painting the rock with smears of red that froze instantly.
Two hours. The wind howled, a knife trying to pry him loose. Sanji and Nami (still unconscious on his back, bundled with Sanji) were dead weight, pulling at his spine. He talked to them through gritted teeth.
"Almost there… stupid cook… you owe me… a hundred meals…"
Three hours. His vision tunneled. Every muscle fiber shrieked in agony. The summit ledge was just ten feet above. Five. Two.
With a final, guttural roar that tore his throat, Luffy hauled himself and his precious cargo over the edge. He collapsed onto the flat stone of the castle entrance, his body finally giving out. The world swam, then went dark.
His momentum carried him forward. Toward the opposite edge. Toward a thousand-foot drop back down the mountain.
He slid, helpless, over the brink.
A hand shot out from the castle doorway. A large, steady hand that caught Luffy by the wrist, stopping his fall with impossible strength.
Luffy's blurry vision looked up. He saw a massive silhouette, a wild mane of hair, and the glint of light on round spectacles.
"My, my," a deep, calm voice rumbled. "What do we have here?"
*
Below, in the shattered woods, Wapol stood triumphant over the last of the fallen lapahns. He glared up at the distant mountain peak, his face a mask of venom.
"You climbed my mountain, pirate?" he hissed. "You hid in my castle? Fine. I'll come up and get you. And I'll eat that castle, stone by stone, until there's nowhere left for you to hide."
He turned to his men, his jaw beginning to distend, unhinging in a horrifying, unnatural way.
"We climb. And I am hungry."
*
Lost in a sea of snow, Vivi and Usopp clung to each other, shivering violently.
"W-we're going to die out here, I just know it!" Usopp wailed.
"We have to find the others!" Vivi insisted, her voice trembling with more than cold.
They rounded a drift of snow and slammed directly into a solid, green-clad wall.
"Oof!"
The wall grunted. They looked up.
Standing before them, covered in nothing but a loincloth and a light dusting of snow, was Zoro. Three swords were strapped to his hip. He had one lifted over his head in a brutal training stance, his muscles steaming in the frigid air.
He blinked down at them. "Oh. It's you."
Vivi stared, speechless. Usopp's jaw hung open.
"Zoro?!" Usopp finally screeched. "What are you DOING? There was an AVALANCHE!"
Zoro lowered his sword, looking mildly annoyed. "Yeah. It interrupted my reps. Annoying." He peered past them. "Where's the idiot captain and the others?"
As Vivi tried to form an answer, a distant, echoing roar of pure, gluttonous rage rolled down from the mountain above them. It was the sound of a king declaring war, of stone being crunched between monstrous teeth.
Zoro's hand went to his sword hilts. His lazy annoyance vanished, replaced by sharp focus.
"Trouble," he stated.
The sound grew louder. Closer. The very ground beneath their feet began to vibrate.
Because Wapol wasn't just climbing the mountain.
He was eating it.
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