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Wyper's perspective
"Let me go, you crazy bitch!" I yelled, struggling against the pink-haired woman dragging me through a cold room.
"Negative Hollow!" she called out, and a ghostly figure passed through me, filling me with a deep sense of despair. "I should dig a hole to die in," I mumbled.
"That's better," she said with a smile. "You're so much cuter when you're not yelling."
She led me into a room where a large man was talking with a few others. Suddenly, I saw Luffy locked in a cage. "Wyper! What are you doing in here?" he yelled. "Get me out of here!"
"I have to get myself out first!" I shot back.
The large man turned to us. "Will you two be quiet! Turn the light on!"
He stepped over to Luffy's cage, reached in, and pulled out his shadow. My eyes widened as he snipped it off the floor with a pair of scissors. "What the hell?" I muttered.
"Perona, bring that one here," the man said, pointing at me.
"No, he's mine! Don't take his shadow, he's perfect as is. Look, he has wings!" Perona protested.
"We can just cut them off and put them on a zombie," the man said simply.
"Don't touch my wings!" I yelled.
"Well, we can't leave him with his shadow," the man replied.
A bright light came on, blinding me. He reached over, grabbed my shadow, and cut it off just like he did with Luffy's. Everything went black. As I drifted into unconsciousness, I heard him say, "You can do whatever you want with himā¦"
Steve's perspective
"WAAHH! That was so sad!" Franky cried, tears streaming down his face as we ran through the mansion.
"Why did you ask him that question, Steve?" Robin asked, her expression unreadable. "And what's with that smile? You look creepy."
"Don't worry about it," I said, waving her off.
"Hey, look!" Lil yelled.
We found Usopp and Chopper being attacked by a group of zombies. We quickly threw some salt at the zombies, purifying them and saving our two friends. "We weren't fast enough," Franky said. "One's missing."
"Are you two alright?" I asked, helping them up.
As we headed for the stairs, Robin explained how our salt trick hurt the zombies, while Usopp told us what happened to Nami, Wyper, and Luffy. "Let's go back to the ship and regroup," I ordered.
A short time later, we found the ship.
"Why are the stairs lowered?" Franky asked.
"The dock's all messed up and full of holes," Lil pointed out.
We climbed onto the ship, which was now a wreck, but there were no zombies in sight. "Hey, they're in the dining room!" Usopp shouted, pointing.
Franky and I ran over and slapped the four of themāLuffy, Sanji, Zoro, and Roseāto try and wake them up. "I'm up!" Rose yelled, his eyes flying open.
"What about those three?" Lil asked, referring to Luffy, Sanji, and Zoro, who were still out cold.
"There's a beautiful lady swordsman carrying meat!" Usopp screamed, pointing at the still-sleeping Zoro.
"Beauty?" Sanji mumbled.
"Meat?" Luffy whispered.
"Swordsman?" Zoro said, finally waking up.
"They're hopeless!" Chopper yelled in frustration.
Luffy immediately tried to run out of the room. "Give me back my shadow!" he demanded.
Franky stopped him. "Moriah isn't even here, stupid."
We filled the four of them in on everything that had happened since they'd lost their shadows.
"What do you mean she got kidnapped?" Sanji exploded. "Who did it?! Where is he?!"
"We have three things to get back," I told them. "Nami, Wyper, and our shadows."
"You forgot food," Luffy added.
"Fine, and food," I conceded. "We need to hurry and get Nami back before that Absalom guy marries her."
"Marry?!" Sanji was furious.
"Usopp and Chopper saw Sanji and Luffy's zombies, and I saw Rose's," I explained. "We'll need to find them."
"I think I met Zoro's zombie," Luffy added.
"So we track them down and throw salt in their mouths," Zoro said, getting to his feet. "That will make our shadows come back. What about Wyper's shadow?"
"It's inside a zombie with big black angel wings," Chopper said.
"What about Wyper?" Rose asked. "Where's his physical body?"
"That woman, Perona, dragged him off," I replied.
"How did you guys find out about the salt trick?" Zoro asked.
"Brook told us," Franky explained.
"Yeah, we met him, and Papa was very rude," Lil said.
"Oh, right, that," I said, sitting up. "We did meet him. I was going to blow off your idea of having him join us, Luffy, because I thought he was just a bag of bones. But I was wrong. I've had this nagging question in my heart that I wanted the answer to."
Flashback: The Spider Web
"You know, going out into the world looking the way you do would only scare people," I told Brook. "Most people in your situation would have given up on living a long time ago."
"Steve, you're being rude," Robin said softly.
"Why do you want to leave this sea?" I asked Brook, ignoring her. "What are you trying to accomplish? What promise did you make?"
"Have you ever heard that there are some questions you just shouldn't ask?" Brook replied. "But I will answer you. Long ago, my former pirate crew left a very important member behind. It was hard, but we made a promise to return. And then we were wiped out. That left me to wander this sea, alone. I have a long-standing obligation to return. It's been fifty years."
"That's older than me!" Franky yelled.
"That's older than my dad," I added. "No one could possibly wait that long."
"I know he's most likely not waiting," Brook said. "But if there's even the smallest chance that he's still waiting, how lonely must he be? He must think we betrayed him. But if he is still waiting, imagine how strong his feelings must be."
"This guy could be dead for all you know," I said.
"I have to get back," Brook insisted. "I have to get back to the coast. We swore to meet Laboon again."
"Laboon?!" I thought to myself.
"Wait, your friend's a whale?" Lil asked.
My mind raced. Crocus said he was deadā¦ He said they went homeā¦
"Are you alright?" Robin asked me, noticing my silence.
"Death isn't an apology," I said, my voice barely a whisper. What the hell are the chancesā¦?
"STEVE?!" Luffy's voice snapped me out of it.
"Huh?"
"Brook left, let's go," Luffy said.
"Yeah, let's go."
Flashback End
"So Brook needs to get back," I told Luffy.
"You all look like you're going to be sick," Chopper said, looking at our faces.
"We know him," Luffy explained. "We met Laboon. He's waiting at the Twin Capes. He's waited for fifty years because they promised to come back."
Sanji explained everything we knew about the whale to the rest of the crew.
"Hard to believe he was waiting for that skeleton," Zoro said. "Small world."
"Well, then it's settled, right, Luffy?" I asked, looking up at him.
"Of course, Brook has to come with us!"
I just laughed. "Yep."
"Well then, the number of shadows we need to get back just went up, didn't it?" Zoro said, hopping off the ship.
"Let's go," I said, jumping down after him. "That old guy said if we beat Moriah, all the shadows will go back. Leave him to me and Luffy."
"He's right up those stairs! Let's get going and kick his butt!" Luffy yelled.
"I'll go with Sanji to get Nami," Rose said.
"What about your shadows?" Usopp asked.
"You guys can handle it," Sanji replied.
"It's my fault Nami got taken," Usopp said, his voice full of regret. "I'll go with you."
"Franky and I will go look for the skeleton and Wyper," Zoro said.
Usopp handed out bags of salt to everyone. "Understand something," he said seriously. "Right now, it's midnight, and the fog is protecting you four, Brook, and Wyper. There's no guarantee the sun won't break through the clouds in the morning. Think of dawn as a time limit."
A few moments later, we wasted no time breaking through the mass of zombies blocking our path.
"What are you two idiots doing on the ground?!" I yelled at Luffy and Sanji, who were cowering on the ground.
"It's those ghosts again," Robin said calmly.
Usopp quickly killed the zombies that were trying to drag them away, and I scooped up both Luffy and Sanji, continuing to run. Something crashed into the walkway we were on, separating us from Sanji and Rose.
"What the hell happened?!" I yelled.
"The stairs are gone!" Usopp shouted.
"Let's go, they'll be fine," I said, and we kept moving.
With Chopper as our guide, we made our way through the mansion. We came out into a large hall with two people in it.
"Hogback!" Chopper exclaimed.
"This guy's with Moriah, right?" Luffy asked. "Leave him to me."
"Wait!" Chopper said, putting a hand on Luffy's shoulder. "Please let me do this. The freezer is right there, so you two go. I can handle this."
"Alright," Luffy and I said in unison, heading for the freezer. A lady tried to throw plates at us, but Robin stopped her.
"Go on ahead," she said.
"You're the best!" I yelled as we entered the freezer. "You three be careful. There better not be a scratch on those two, Chopper, or I'll have to teach you a lesson!"
Luffy and I reached the end of a long corridor and entered a room. Standing in the middle was a manāhe was huge and had a very strange, lumpy shape.
"There you are," I said, a grin spreading across my face.
Rose's perspective
"What the hell do you mean that's Luffy's zombie?!" I said, trying not to pass out from the sight.
The monster, Oars, ripped a piece of the building off to wear as a hat and wandered off, paying us no mind.
"What do we do now? He tore down the way across," Zoro said.
"Give me 30 seconds, and I'll be finished," Franky said, getting to work on a new bridge.
"What?!"
We used Franky's emergency bridge to cross the gap and enter another room. "It's so fancy," I commented.
"HoroHoroHoro," a high-pitched voice laughed. "I planned to let the zombies on the stairs deal with you, but Oars got in the way."
"It's the girl who took Wyper!" Usopp said.
"Where's our friend?" I asked.
"You mean the winged man?" Perona said sweetly. "He's my new plaything. He's waiting for his master to return."
"So you're a pervert," I said bluntly.
"I am not! I just like cute things! Negative Hollow!" she shrieked, throwing a bunch of ghosts at us.
"Run!" I yelled.
"I should have had both my arms cut offā¦" Zoro groaned, consumed by despair.
"You guys get up and go rescue the others," Usopp instructed.
Wyper's perspective
"I finally managed to break free of those damn ropes tying me to the bed," I said to myself. "What a freak."
I opened the door and stepped out, only to be greeted by some weird half-animal, half-human zombies.
"It's Mistress Perona's lover," a tiger-man said.
Her what?! I thought, my mind racing. Maybe I should play along to move about freely. "Yeah, uhhā¦ where is the lady?" I asked.
"She is currently engaged in combat with the long-nosed man from your former crew," the tiger replied.
Usoppā¦
"Her powers don't work on him. You must aid her, sir."
"Whatever," I said. "Which way?"
The tiger, which walked on two legs and had an atlas beetle horn, led me to a room where Usopp and Perona were.
"Hey, Usopp!" I called out.
"Wyper!" he yelled back.
"What are you doing out of bed?" Perona asked, surprised.
"I'm not your eye candy," I told her. "You can't tie me to a bed and leave."
"Rose was right, she is a pervert," Usopp said to me.
"Grrr! I am not! I just think his wings are cute!" she pouted. "He's super rare! Raphael!"
"I'm not a collectible stuffed animal!" I retorted.
The skylight shattered, and a man with large, pitch-black wings came in and knelt before Perona. His mouth had been sewn shut, so he only nodded his head.
"Please take your former master back to his room," Perona instructed him.
"Wyper, that's the guy with your shadow!" Usopp yelled, throwing me a bag. "You have to get salt in him to get it back!"
The dark angel flew forward and tried to stab me with a lance. "Whoa!" I yelled, dodging the attack. I didn't have my skates or my bazooka, but I did have the Axe and Impact Dials in my pockets.
"Bring it on," I said, a smirk spreading across my face.