The Jackal Guardian's Ascent

Chapter 4

The Straw Hats had made quick work of escaping from the monsters they had just seen earlier and had finally made their escape.

"Impossible." Anu commented out of breath from manning the sails. "Nothing could be that big."

"Something's just not right today." Sanji added.

"A falling galleon was bad enough." Zoro commented.

"The needle was pointing up to the sky." Nami chimed in.

"A weird monkey came to salvage the shipwreck." Usopp commented.

"And a giant turtle gobbled it up." Chopper said.

"It suddenly got dark." Robin added.

"And finally those super gigantic monsters showed up." Luffy remarked.

"Yeah. That was really scary." Masira added. 

"Wait a minute. What are you still doing here?" Anu asked as he drew his swords.

"O-Oh u-uh, I was just leaving haha." Masira said nervously sweating as he suddenly remembered where he was.

"GET LOST!" Luffy, and Zoro said as they unceremoniously gave Masira the boot and kicked him off the ship.

"Wow, that thing was huge." Usopp said as he looked over the rail with Chopper.

"Yeah." Chopper replied. "I never wanna bump into that again."

"But you know something, Chopper?" Usopp asked the reindeer.

"What?"

"If we really tried, we could beat that thing."

"Really?!"

"Sure, I brought down ten of them all by myself once."

"TEN OF THEM?!"

"Can you guys tell me..." Nami asked the trio that attempted to salvage the ship. "Why you bothered to dive down to the bottom of the sea?! All you brought back was junk! None of this tells us how to get up to the sky!"

"This is all we could find." Zoro informed Nami while gesturing to the pile of old armor, swords, and various other objects.

"That's the truth, Nami." Sanji added. "Somebody beat us to the ship. Either that, or the people on that ship had slaughtered each other."

"Not everything here is worthless Nami." Anu informed the navigator as he sat and looked over the pile. "Properly restored, everything here is probably worth a couple million Berries."

"How would you know that?" Nami shot back.

"Well, aside from my education. I've always had an interest in history." Anu replied while looking over a helmet that he picked from the pile. "Besides, the Kingdom of Briss was known for it's blacksmithing and other metalworks."

"Where are we gonna find the money to have someone to restore all this junk?!" Nami asked, angry at the thought of having to spend money on something that wouldn't help their situation.

"We don't have to pay anyone Nami." Anu replied. "I took a few courses in artifact restoration. Plus, I'm sure Robin would be happy to study some of this stuff."

"He's right." Robin replied. "Some of this stuff does look interesting enough to take a look at once it's been restored."

"Fine." Nami answered with a huff while crossing her arms. "Then we're going to need some more information! Now listen! If we're going up to the sky, whatever happened on that ship can happen to us! We need all the information we can get. A rusty sword! Dishes! A live octopus! We need something like a ship's log or a map! That kind of stuff!" Nami finished as she was about to start stomping on the salvaged loot. At least, she was until a skeletal hand caught her foot and another one sprouted from her shoulder and turned her face towards Anu, who had a dark look on his face.