One Piece (Love Story) [Part One]

Chapter One Hundred and Twenty Two [Rewritten]

-Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Two-

"Hm? This seems to be some sort of altar for sacrifices" Robin suddenly pointed out after a moment or two of closely examining our nearest surroundings.

"Altar? Wait...sacrifices?!" Nami cried out.

"Nami, what's a sacrifice?" Chopper innocently asked.

"You know, like an offering to the Gods" Nami answered with a shrug as she gave the reindeer the most basic answer she could think of.

"Oh, is that all? I thought it meant being boiled alive in a big stew or something" Chopper sighed in relief.

"That's an interesting way to look at it" I raised an eyebrow.

"Actually, that's about right" Robin nodded. "But regardless of the method, the thing being offered is generally someone's life" she said.

"That's not technically true, perhaps for a long time there they would offer up humans as sacrifices before it was eventually switched over to animals, usually a goat" I corrected her. "Sacrifices were mainly performed to please the Gods in hopes of a better year, whether the people were suffering from a natural disaster—like a drought—or because they just wished for a better harvest that year" I explained.

"You didn't have to go into so much detail!" Nami snapped. "Why would anyone need to even know all that creepy junk?!"

"Are you both trying to tell me we're all going to die here!" Chopper fearfully cried as he shakily stumbled back before accidentally tumbling down the stairs of the altar.

"Chopper?!" Nami gasped.

"H-hey!" I flinched.

"Dammit!" Zoro hissed as he was the first to react, quickly racing down the stairs and going after the tumbling reindeer. Just before Chopper had the chance to fall right into the water, Robin quickly stopped him with the help of her Devil Fruit powers.

"I advise we bring him back up here quickly" I worriedly frowned, quick to notice that something was lurking down there in the water—most likely a Sky Fish of some sort—and was already starting to advance toward the reindeer.

"Oh no! What is that?!" Nami fearfully asked just as giant Sky Fish burst out of the clouds and dived straight toward Chopper, but it was quickly blocked by Zoro which gave the reindeer enough time to scamper back up the stairs and away from danger.

"A shark in the sky" Robin answered.

"So basically a Sky Shark" I clarified.

"Zoro! Zoro!" Chopper cried just as the swordsman tumbled into the water along with the shark that was quick to follow after him. "What happened to him?! No!" he whimpered when the swordsman didn't resurface immediately.

"Roronoa, you better resurface right now or I'm going to kick your ass!" I worriedly shouted, my mind already working a million miles a minute as I tried to think of what to do. Diving straight in after him would just be plain stupid—I've never really fought underwater before nor fought something as big as a Sky Shark meaning that I had more of a chance of just being a hindrance to him if I went straight in. I'd have more of a chance of making a bigger problem for him and everyone else by just recklessly diving right in after him...especially considering that he's currently the strongest person out of all of us here right now...

There really wasn't much any of us onshore could do seeing how none of us had any long-ranged attacks on us and I had an inkling that even if we tried to distract the Sky Shark, all that would do in return is cause it to just repeatedly hit itself against the altar until one of us went tumbling down again toward it. We were clearly in something akin to a lose-lose situation. A situation where we couldn't exactly help Zoro in any way, but at the same time knew that any attempts we could have made had a high chance of just making things worse for him or all of us in return. It didn't help that most of us were stricken by fear which in return made our limbs feel like lead and made thinking nothing more than a muddled mess of jumbled up words and ideas that didn't make sense or sound logical as I'm sure that just like me, the others were attempting to think of something we could do.