This is the noise that keeps me awake...

[moneyandmikans]

Characters: Nami, anyone who stumbles upon her.
Time: Early evening.
Location: SO YOU KNOW ALL THOSE PAW-SHAPED CRATERS IN MILLENIUM PARK...
Content: The sudden disappearance of everyone's wallets ARRIVAL.
Format: Prose.
Warnings: Probable swearing and general One Piece logic.

Comments

[skull_joke]

Brook didn't often go running errands of any sort out alone in the city if he could help it, and even less often (which was to say absolutely never) after the sun was down. But he'd gotten so terribly confused and distracted digging through what the signs claimed were music shops but all they had were little flat boxes and t-shirts and that didn't do him any good at all!

Sigh.

After some hours of all that he realized his dire mistake and bolted out the nearest window, in the hopes that maybe if he ran back to the hotel as quicky as he possibly could nothing spooky would happen. (He wasn't fond of spooky, you see.) The several minutes it took him to remember which way to go to get back to the hotel--bean first, go from there--were plenty spooky enough thank you very kindly.

Somewhere along the way he thought he heard a boom, and then he thought perhaps he knew that boom, or else he didn't and the spooky city was misbehaving around him as spooky things sometimes did.

Spooky or no, he couldn't not look.

It was just too bad he lacked the sense to call out or in any way give the world the slightest warning of his swift and light-footed approach. There was only room for so many thoughts in his head! More room than there used to be, granted.

Oh hey a crater let's have a look down th- "Hello?"

[moneyandmikans]

It was hard work, getting her limbs to cooperate after flying through the air for three days, but she was managing just fine, was just pulling herself over the side of the crater when a pair of legs stopped directly in front of her.

Reflexes took hold. Nami slid back down into the crater, grasping a chunk of broken cement in her hand and chucking it as hard as she could manage into the face of the newcomer. Funny, how easy it was to tense up and react, even when your body was very much uninterested in movement. It wasn't until her mind registered the previously spoken "Hello?" that the gears began turning again. She knew that voice...

"BROOK WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING HERE YOU ASSHOLE HELP ME OUT OR IT'LL BE DOUBLE WHAT YOU OWE ME."

[skull_joke]

Even if Brook hadn't been very, very light, he likely still would have gone over backwards like a silly cartoon being thwacked right in the face he didn't have. Their navigator had a definite gift for doing that sort of thing to people--

--their navigator!

After half an instant in which the dust cloud mostly settled, Brook just as suddenly popped back into view with a madly delighted "OH MISS NAMI IT IS YOU!"

He made unfairly quick work of getting himself over the edge of the smoking death-crater, though sad to say he also lacked the sense to do it with a proper sense of fear for his future financial state. "We've been worried for ages and ages, everyone's just going to die when they see you again...although I didn't! YOHOHO~"

Sorry Nami. Reflex.

[moneyandmikans]

Normally, Nami would have stayed upset. She would have continued on in her beating of Brook, and it all would have been laughed and clapped at by the other members of the crew, with no sympathy for the skeleton.

But she was relieved, and severely lacking in the energy and strength to argue. Even his stupid pun didn't bother her as much as it normally might have, she'd been so worried that they had all been killed. And, on top of their being alive, it wasn't just Brook here--he said everyone, so that meant...

"Everyone else is here? Where are they?"

They'd be paying up a few thousand each for her to be stuck out here alone with Mr. Bag of Bones here, but she wanted to know they were safe before she worried over that..

[skull_joke]

The echoing laughter stopped abruptly mid-yoho, and all the loud went right out of him. Lowering his arms slowly after they'd been so dramatically flung wide (and with limbs as long and spindly as his that was very, very wide), he straightened his hat with his fingers and quietly clarified: "Everyone who's here, Miss Nami."

Just as quickly he brightened again, or at least it certainly sounded like he did: "But that's almost everyone properly, now! We've been working on that every day!"

"Anyway we've gotten ourselves set up at a hotel Mr. Franky's found, it's quite nice and they've got coffee and tea and everything. I was just on my way back myself, running back in fact, what with there being vampires about and...and you've...got a bit of...blood on you there, Miss Nami..."

Oh. Oh wait this was bad.

"Oh dear. I think we ought to go."

[iamaman_punch]

After Robin had showed up, Linkara had told himself time and time again that he was not going back to the Cloud Gate. He was not going to be near that bean when another crazy person showed up in another paw print shaped crater and tried to kill him. Nope. Not happening.

And then he heard yelling, and a familiar yohohoho, and dammit he couldn't turn away. The best word for these people was train wreck. He heaved a sigh and headed towards the source of the sound, where he found - surprise, surprise - a fresh crater, with a new person and an unforgettable skeleton. "Hey, Brook," he greeted the latter, then glanced towards the newcomer - one of the girls the jerk had been going on about. "Hey." He nodded towards Brook, still addressing the girl. "I take it you're with tall, dark, and undead here."

[moneyandmikans]

Not everyone had made it. Maybe it was just everyone before her who was here already, and the others would follow shortly. Like they'd ever be that lucky. Nami peered up at Brook, leaning a little more on the ClimaTact so she could see him better. "How many of us?" No just 'almost everyone,' Brook. She wanted specifics.

At least they had managed to find themselves a place to stay, and a fairly decent one at that. Good. She'd be sinking her way into a nice bath as soon as they got there. Ah, but clothes...

Nami groaned, resting her forehead on her hands. "Vampires?" He had to be joking, right? There was no way there were vampires running around because if their were she was definitely going to be their first victim. Oh yeah, they needed to leave, and now.

Unfortunately for the new guy, Nami's head was still reeling around the thought of vampires as he made his approach. TOO LATE one had already come to eat her why oh why had she ever signed on with this crew and gotten herself stuck in this kind of situation!?

Fully prepared to shove Brook at the young man and run, because skeletons, yes, great distraction for a vampire, Nami had already shifted halfway behind Brook by the time the vampire spoke. Eyes wide, she gave him a slow nod. With Brook, yep. Don't be trying anything, mister!

[skull_joke]

The urge to see both their vampire magnet navigator and himself safely back indoors before anyone gave any further thought to anything warred with his sense of duty--the only sort of sense he never lacked--and lost. So, with (or rather, without) a heavy heart, he recited in a level voice the current list of six names, wishing it were longer, not yet knowing that it was.

It was there towards the end that the second unannounced voice of the evening called to them out of the night and Brook's level tone immediately failed as he spun about with the fearsome battle cry of "WHAT THE VAMPIRES-"

Perhaps fortunately for the new arrival Brook was rubbish with projectile weapons and wasn't exactly feeling brave enough to reflexively bolt up out of the crater and into melee with who even knew what anymore; thus, all that occurred was an awkward moment of Brook wielding his cane in a fashion not unlike a housewife with a golf club and burglars somewhere in the house. After that, a pause.

"...Mr. Linkara? Good heavens, man, you're going to give people a heart attack showing up without any warning! People who aren't me!" As if he had any room to criticize anyone, considering what he'd done to earn concrete debris to the head not five full minutes previous.

[iamaman_punch]

That pause was all it took for the situation to sink in. Honestly, why did he keep expecting Brook to be sane? It wasn't ever going to happen; he really shouldn't have been surprised.

The slap of palm meeting forehead echoed slightly in that brief pause.

"Because you don't have one, I know." Linkara finished the pun flatly, shaking his head. It never, ever changed. His attention shifted to the girl, who looked to be just about as freaked out as Brook. Great. "Look, I'm not a vampire and I'm not gonna eat you." That should cover things, right? Well, okay, just about everything. "And the name's Linkara."

[moneyandmikans]

Six. Six was mostly good, it meant that they were all coming here, right? She frowned, though, as Chopper and Luffy weren't mentioned. They could take care of themselves wherever they landed, she was positive of that. It didn't make her feel any better about the situation.

More important matters on hand right now, though. Like this vampire and his bloodthirsty hat and coat and oh Brook knew him. A piece of the ClimaTaxt disconnected almost immediately, and Nami somehow found the strength in her to whack Brook across the back of the head with it. "DON'T SCARE ME LIKE THAT, IDIOT."

Once she was sure Brook had plenty to think about, Nami peeked back around the skeleton at Linkara. He didn't look like much, now that she thought about it which meant that pick-pocketing anything off of this guy would be useless. No way this guy was a vampire, how the hell had she let Brook psyche her out so badly? "Nami."