Towering Memories and Treasured Dreams

Prologue: The Beast Below

"Don't look at me like that!" Nami snapped back angrily. "It's not my fault! I'm just predicting the weather! Not causing it!"

"You can create weather though now!" Usopp reminded her. "Can't you make it nice?"

It was just another day of hell in the New World. The Thousand Sunny had looked particularly tired after a string of bad weather over the last two days. At the moment, the Straw Hats were all over the deck, enjoying the warm weather while it last.

"But it is nice now, Usopp-san," Brook called happily from the swing as he swung back and forth and drank his tea. He then looked up and sang out, "Truly, not a cloud in the sky!"

"I meant before!" Usopp retorted sourly, though he had reasons to be a little ill-tempered. Over the last two days, they had to fight off back-to-back cyclones, as well as a sudden deep freeze which caused the whole bottom of the ship to become incased in ice, and they had just escaped a battlefield of icebergs when they were then trapped in a fog. Only now did the weather turn bright and sunny again, though Nami was already predicting more bad weather sometime tonight. They were all of the agreement to try and get to the next island as soon as possible and just wait it out.

"You know me better than that," Nami poked at Usopp in the head. "Stop complaining and get back to work."

Usopp sighed before he went wandering off, muttering bitterly under his breath about what he was really thinking about Nami before he went to join Robin on the upper part of the deck to make sure that the plants survived the sudden freeze.

Nami rolled her eyes before she looked down to make sure that the others were also working. Franky had come up from the lower parts of the ship after he managed to break off the remaining ice that had clung to the ship like a fungus, and was up already repairing the torn sail.

Sanji was inside the kitchen, cooking up something warm for dinner tonight to help take away any remains of a chill that anyone might have had, while Luffy and Chopper were both on the grassy deck and were laughing as Luffy was entertaining him by doing his favorite pastime game by imitating the others. He was just showing Chopper how Usopp looked after he slipped on some ice and banged his head on the deck while Chopper laughed.

"Yeah!" Chopper giggled as Luffy was making faces, "That's just what he looked like!"

Nami sighed at the sight of them acting like they didn't have a care in the world. Well, at least they were keeping out of trouble for the moment.

As for Zoro...

Nami glared up at the front of the ship where it was Zoro's turn at the wheel, sporting a large lump on his head from where Nami had hit him earlier. She shook her head angrily, wondering how on earth the idiot could have slept through all of that chaos? He didn't wake up until they had just left the fog and the weather turned nice again. Which led to her giving him a beating to vent some of her frustration.

"Nami!" Luffy whined as he looked up at her, already bored with imitations. "Are we near the next island yet?"

"Would you relax?" Nami called back with a sigh. "In case you hadn't noticed we just entered the next island's climate zone! It shouldn't take us much longer, so stop your whining!"

"Really? YES!" Luffy cheered as he jumped to his feet and punched the air as Chopper jumped about excitedly. Just then, Brook jumped from the swing and went over to them to start singing a song at how they were going on a new adventure as soon as they saw land. Nami shook her head as she watched them all act like idiots once again. Yet this time, she felt the little smile appear on her mouth as she looked at Luffy's laughing, smiling face.