One Piece (Love Story) [Part One]

Chapter Twenty Five [Rewritten]

-Chapter Twenty-Five-

"Okay, enough with the sand already—I'm not impressed anymore!" Luffy demanded, finally growing annoyed with the storm as he squinted his eyes and tightly held onto his hat so it wouldn't be blown away.

"I don't think the sand cares if you're impressed or not!" I called over the roaring winds.

"I should have mentioned it earlier—sandstorms are another one of the desert's dangers!" Vivi shouted, using her arms to shield her face from the harsh wind that blew sand in our faces.

"You got to start remembering this stuff!" Usopp screamed as he was knocked off his feet and blown back. I found myself feeling rather disorientated by the time the storm had subsided, my head now spinning as my eyes stung and watered at the grainy sensation of sand in my eyes and inside every orifice on my face.

"What the hell was that?" Zoro grunted as he sat up, knocking off the blown-over tent and copious amounts of sand that had covered him while he slept through the storm. I coughed, spitting up a few grains of sand that had worked its way inside my mouth as I made an attempt to stand only to halt when I found that I couldn't.

"Uh..." peering down, I was greeted by the sight of my entire lower half buried underneath a pile of sand. Once again did I try to pull myself free, only to be met with the same result as my body stayed firmly in place. Heaving a sigh, I soon began to dig at the sand pressed against my lower half in an attempt to loosen it.

"Here" I didn't make it far before I felt a strong pair of hands loop underneath my arms and effortlessly yank me right out of the pile of sand as if I weighed absolutely nothing.

"Oh, thanks" I widely smiled up at Zoro as he helped me to my feet. "What was that?" my ears twitched the second he grumbled, his words barely intelligible...yet I was certain I had heard the word, "friend," being said. My heart leapt at the thought even as that small voice in the back of my mind bitterly reminded me that we were technically friends already—to mistake his words for a confession of remembrance was stupid.

"I said no problem" he said a little louder this time, causing me to owlishly blink as my shoulders deflated just the slightest. With the shake of my head, I quickly regained my smile the moment I saw his eyebrow raise in a questioning manner.

"Can't a guy sleep in?" Sanji groaned, finally emerging from the sand along with the others that had been buried.

"Dammit, Luffy..." Usopp groaned the second the rubber man kicked more sand in his face as he was trying to get back up and out of the sand.

-Later-

"Hey, Sanji, let's have some more of those box lunches" Luffy suddenly suggested after a good while of walking through the desert once more.

"Not yet, not until Vivi says so" the blond dismissed. Lowly did I start to whistle, mindlessly swinging Zoro and mine arms back and forth in an attempt to both quell the boredom I was starting to feel and to distract myself from the slow building heat of the day that was only getting strong the higher the sun started to rise.

"Come on, Vivi, how about it? Let's eat—doesn't that sound good?" Luffy pleaded, attempting to coax the princess into telling Sanji to give out the food so he could eat.

"But we're not even a tenth of the way to Yuba, Luffy" Vivi argued. "We have to make our food last the way there" she reasoned.

"I'd rather not end up starving to death in the desert for the vultures to eat just because of your gluttony..." I muttered under my breath which caused the swordsman beside me to snort.