Towering Memories and Treasured Dreams

Floor 13: Hell and Nightmares

"I can't tell which is worse, not knowing what's gonna happen or when I do," Franky said as they jogged along Level 5.

"Knowing is," Usopp panted out as he ran. "I rather not know what's gonna happen then being forced to play it over and over in my head while watching it happen!"

They were all travelling across the floor of ice and snow, eventually finding their way to the stairs that would take them up to Level 4. Luffy was running alongside Crocodile and Jimbei up the stairs, already leaving the cold behind and the temperature was quickly rising. As they ran, Jimbei spoke up, mentioning that right now they have only a few hours to get to Marineford and save Ace. If Whitebeard was going to stop them, he would undoubtedly attack several hours before so the battle could be breaking out right now.

Which they knew wasn't going to happen for those marines were going to kill him ahead of schedule. Yet, Luffy held onto the faint hope though that they could make it there in time when Crocodile went flying upwards and already reduced the door to sand, causing as urge of hot air to hit them when they reached the next floor, and they saw that there was already a large group of guards and jailers waiting for them.

"Wow, how did they all assemble here so quickly?!" Chopper asked as he looked around at Level 4 with misery, silently glad that he wasn't here in real life.

"It was only going to be a matter of time before they discovered that they weren't on Level 6 anymore," Nami sighed, "They must have guessed that they be planning a breakout and the only way up is through the stairs now."

"Not that it matters," Zoro said knowingly The fight started off as a stand-off, they heard one of the jailers contacting their back up, informing them of all three of them were there and that they better be ready for anything. "They weren't a challenge at all. If only there weren't so many of them here...?"

"I'm just surprised that they didn't bring Magellan here with them," Brook said. "Not that I'm upset about it, of course, but...?"

"He's probably handing Ace over to the escort ship. He's probably already on his way down here. I guess as soon as he hears, he'll head down to the lowest levels to try and prevent some of the bad names from getting out," Sanji said knowingly. "But this is his prison, so no one knows it better than he does. Catching up won't be a problem for him."

"Right," Robin nodded, "They couldn't waste even a second down here."

The jailers and guards went straight for the three of them, but they were easily overpowered. Their shots went right through Crocodile before he was able to dry them out, Luffy rained down with his fists and blew a good few dozen away at once while Jimbei took out any who were left standing.

"I hate that I'm saying this about Crocodile, but he's a badass fighter," Franky whistled out. "They are kicking some serious butt here!"

"GO LUFFY AND JIMBEI!" Nami and Chopper shouted, preferring to forget that Crocodile was with them.

"Damn, I wish I was there," Zoro moaned out, his entire body aching for a chance to be part of a mob like this.

"Hell ya," Franky agreed as he punched the air. "Not every day you get a chance to break out of prison."

The jailers quickly realized that they were no match, but they were determined to hold them here for as long as they could until reinforcements arrived.

"No one in their right mind would wait around with the thought of that poison freak coming," Usopp muttered darkly as memory Luffy warned them to move. All three of them charged, with the guards opening fire once again. But they might as well have just been punching bags from how effective they were. Crocodile went flying off with some keys as he began to release other prisoners, who quickly joined in the fighting and things were speeding up.